Browsing All posts tagged under »Information Use«

The Right to Remember: A Speculative Community Informatics approach to “the Right to Be Forgotten”

July 5, 2014

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However, I am certain that having communities determine what needs to be remembered and what can allowed to be forgotten makes rather more sense and is more in keeping with the history of memory and the opportunities and value that memory provides us with, than turning those decisions over to anonymous and faceless Google administrators.

Snowden isn’t just about Surveillance. It is much, Much, MUCH worse…

September 30, 2013

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That is, everything that is open to intervention/surveillance through networked digital means, which in the context of the modern world means almost everything is equally open to input, interference, modification,, damage, destruction simply by inserting a few digits into the bit stream.

The Mobile Revolution and the Rise and Rise of Possessive Individualism?

July 21, 2012

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As per the just published World Bank 2012 Information and Communications for Development: Maximizing Mobile the world of ICT4Development (ICT4D) has been undergoing some truly profound changes and including in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Those changes are being precipitated by the remarkable development of almost ubiquitous mobile telephone access into even the most remote of rural areas, the development of low cost mobile phones, and the dramatic lowering of communications costs through widespread deregulation and the related competition between mobile carriers

Gmail Hell(2), an Epilogue: They are the Borg and they are Too Big To Be Allowed To Fail (You and Me!)

March 12, 2012

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After some 6 days of being unable to access or use my primary email address or account with gmail, as suddenly as it started the floodgates opened and I was once again able to communicate and feel in sync with the larger e-world of which I have been a part for the last almost two decades. (See also my earlier blogpost on this is Gmail Hell, Day 4: Dealing with the Borg (Or “Being Evil” Without Really Thinking About It)

A Data Divide? Data “Haves” and “Have Nots” and Open (Government) Data

July 11, 2011

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The idea of a possible parallel “data divide” between those who have access and the opportunity to make effective use of data and particularly “open data” and those who do not, began to occur to me. I was attending several planning/recruitment events for the Open Data “movement” here in Vancouver and the socio-demographics and some of the underlying political assumptions seemed to be somewhat at odds with the expressed advocacy position of “data for all”.

Louder Voices and Learning Networks

June 25, 2011

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But in looking at this array of attractive intellectual baubles I’m left with one nagging concern. Amidst all this media and networking and mobility what exactly will be the content of this “Twenty-first Century University as global learning network”? Where will the content come from, that will constitute the “learning” component of this learning network? How exactly will the promise implicit in this statement—“digital learning is increasingly recognized as an important part of development worldwide” be realized in fact, and by whom, and ultimately in whose interests?

Egypt: From the Iron Rule of Tyranny to the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Can ICT Change the Rules?

February 23, 2011

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In this, I think that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have access to skills and resources which were unavailable to earlier movements that is—the Internet, social networking, mobile telephony and perhaps most important, the experience and knowledge of how to use these in support of collective social ends.

WikiLeaks, Open Information and Effective Use: Exploring the Limits of Open Government

December 29, 2010

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Clearly to ensure that “open information” is not a series of “leaks” and ensuing scandals or becomes a form of information based cooptation and manipulation, those advocating for “open information” and those who are agreeable to providing it must provide a framing and contextualizing as effective use which goes much beyond anything provided by WikiLeaks in partnership with its press collaborators or beyond simply making various statistical runs or information files available to public users.

Open Data (2): Effective Data Use

September 9, 2010

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What the above analysis suggests is that for “open data” to have a meaningful and supportive impact on the poor and marginalized, direct intervention is required to ensure that elements currently absent in the local technology and social ecosystem are in fact, made available..

The Last Quintile (20%): Doing Community Informatics for Social Inclusion in Hong Kong

June 17, 2010

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Regulators, policy makers, access suppliers in Developed Countries have a considerable pre-occupation with how to bridge “the last mile” i.e. the gap between the common carrier and the end user’s premises. Here in Hong Kong, where I have been for the last few days at a conference, the concern on the part of regulators, policy […]

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Michael Gurstein: What is Community Informatics (and Why Does It Matter)?
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