Would you give up freedoms for safety?

Happened upon this article via the NY Times' Twitter feed today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html

Basically, it discusses the security flaws in the current iteration of the Internet and that some are expressing concern that we must scrap the entire network and start over. And in addition to starting over, abandon the ability to be anonymous for the sake of security and safety. In some respects, it's seems similar to the debate on national ID cards in an effort to stem terrorism and illegal immigrants.

What do you think? Are freedoms or safety more important?

I think that, just as is the case with freedom of speech, some will abuse freedoms at the harm of others. But everyone must learn to expect going into the arena of freedom there is an ever present possibility of being on the receiving end of another person's freedoms in the form of venom. I don't think you will be able to have complete discourse with barriers of protection. Imagine how stifled forms of tactical media and parody would be.

Does the Internet need to be improved? Absolutely. Even if the network evolved into a world of true identities and security, there would be a newly developed element of rouges and evil doers.

Tactical media and Proposition 8

Found this article in the NY Times this morning to be pretty interesting and representative of what we have been talking about in class. The article discusses how these new forms of media and technology in combination with laws for open governing are highlighting a double-edged sword.

Eightmaps.com is the latest, most striking example of how information collected through disclosure laws intended to increase the transparency of the political process, magnified by the powerful lens of the Web, may be undermining the same democratic values that the regulations were to promote.

With tools like eightmaps — and there are bound to be more of them — strident political partisans can challenge their opponents directly, one voter at a time. The results, some activists fear, could discourage people from participating in the political process altogether.

That is why the soundtrack to eightmaps.com is a loud gnashing of teeth among civil libertarians, privacy advocates and people supporting open government. The site pits their cherished values against each other: political transparency and untarnished democracy versus privacy and freedom of speech.

“When I see those maps, it does leave me with a bit of a sick feeling in my stomach,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which has advocated for open democracy. “This is not really the intention of voter disclosure laws. But that’s the thing about technology. You don’t really know where it is going to take you.”

Grassroots effort to connect with Congress on Twitter

Really interesting idea created using the relatively new tool of Twitter to start a new forum with our elected representatives in D.C.

Tweet Congress

The site is in the relatively early stages, but this could be an example of the tactical media that Axel Bruns talks about in Chapter 10. Twitter is a new form of media, possibly considered an alternative media adopting the notion of Gans' second-tier, but it has been adopted into several mainstream media outlets or first-tier platforms recently. Thus evolving out of the tactical media stature and moving towards a new form of mainstream media.

It also could be a form of gatewatching and gatcrashing depending on how the tools are used. The ability to respond to each tweet from either the populace or the lawmaker might help in driving the deliberation. This new story form does have its limitations though. Primarily, it's hard keeping complex issues to 140 characters.

What do you think? Would you be willing to converse with and read about your congressperson via a simple tool like Twitter?

Intersting case study of mobilization

A fellow photojournalist that pretty much despises Facebook sent the link from the NY Times Magazine. It's a pretty long read about how Egyptians were able to use Facebook to organize in a very restrictive environment.

The fact that tens of thousands of disaffected young Egyptians unhappy with their government meet online to debate and plan events is remarkable, given the context of political repression in which it is occurring.

________________

By organizing online, the April 6 movement avoids some of the pitfalls of party politics in Egypt — censorship, bureaucracy, compromise with the regime. But whenever the movement’s members try to migrate offline, they find they are still playing by Egypt’s rules. They almost never meet in real life, certainly not in large groups, and when they do, the police often show up.

It is very interesting to read how increased access to the Internet was a government program, allowing these groups to organize and mobilize to an extent, yet the government also infiltrated the groups online in order to try and quell the uprise. It 's a very interesting read and depiction of social groups using technology to try and change the establishment.

Josh's Twitterific Topic

With tools like camera phones or Eye-Fi loaded cameras, applications like Twitter/Twitpic or Qik and platforms from traditional news outlets such as CNN’s iReport how effective has citizen journalism become? Can citizen journalism replace the beat reporter at a traditional outlet? How have these tools, applications and platforms changed how news is shared, and more importantly how news is initially reported?

The news cycle has transitioned from disseminating information every 24 hours, to dozens of times in those 24 hours seven-days-a-week, to the now. Instantaneously news is shared as it happens. Inexpensive tools as well as some that are practically free have altered the manner in which people find out about breaking news. The most recent example of a passerby being present to share a dramatic fleeting moment was Janis Krums’ photo of passengers on the wings of a sinking plane in the Hudson River. Krums sent the image from his phone to Twitpic and the resulting image not only crashed the servers of the online photo site Twitpic, but also virally across the Internet and onto newspaper fronts across the country the following day. Other events have been documented as they occur such as the Gaza invasion by Israeli forces, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, earthquakes in California as well as China and there are several others.

Is the initial flood of raw information enough to inform a collective community? How has the persistent growth of Twitter users altered the news cycle? Have traditional news outlets been able to effectively engage various circles of social groups on Twitter to help drive and direct news gathering or sharing? How reliable can instantaneous dispatches of 140 characters or less be in the realm of facts and quest for truth? There are now news networks being created solely on Twitter. How will these seemingly radical changes of reporting also alter the business models of traditional and even non-traditional news outlets?

These are some of the questions I propose to try and seek answers to. Feel free to add more to the pile or share thoughts on how you learn about breaking news or become informed about stories.

Shrinking Cities, Dead Space and Green Space

Before we leave the topic of place and public space behind, I thought I would share one of my favorite topics/initiatives. I think I briefly talked about the Shrinking Cities Project last quarter. It is an attempt by academics and industrial professionals world wide to consider the causes, ramifications and opportunities created by the shrinking of nearly one fourth of the planet's major urban settings. Since 2006, they have released three free standing case studies on different regions of the world. From Detroit, Manchester, Liverpool, Leipzig and Halle to Tokyo and Osaka, cities are losing population. In the the first section of their third case study, Philipp Oswalt writes, 

"...even though urban growth will continue to dominate in coming decades. An end is in sight, around 2070-2100, the world population will reach its zenith and the process of urbanization will largely come to an end. Then processes of growth and shrinkage will reach a balance and urban shrinkage will be a process as common as it was before industrialization began."₁

To a large extent they blame four processes for contemporary shrinkage. The first is suburbanization. This is a largely American phenomena, perhaps tied to residual westward expansionist mindsets, where large chunks of the urban population continually move outward.

The second is deindustrialization, which is exemplified by Detroit and Manchester. This process occurs when an industry dies and the former laborers are forced to move elsewhere for work.  The third is demographic shrinkage. Population loss on this level occurs when entire demographics have aged with low rates of reproduction and high rates of brain drain/deindustrialization. The result is a massive swathe of the population simply disappearing. The final process is post socialist change. This process is evident in Russia and many Eastern European countries.  It occurs when the shift of regime creates an economic, technological and cultural vacuum within a country. ₂ The result is once again massive exodus. 

These changes certainly do not affect all urban centers around the world, but this trend has been going on for long enough to grant serious consideration. The simple fact is that around the world there are former urban locations, which are now empty. Imagine entire blocks of vacant housing projects, homes, stores, factories and warehouses. The real question that I find interesting is not whether this phenomena is threatening or what its far reaching socio-economic implications are, but what populations around the world will do with this empty space. Furthermore, I am curious what possibilities these vacant places will grant for artists, critical thinkers and practitioners of digital media. Also, I wonder what this will mean for public space, the public sphere and urban green space.

One project has already responded to the writings of the Shrinking Cities group, with Fiber Cities Tokyo 2050. This project hails from some of the very brightest interdisciplinary minds Japan. They have a four fold plan to convert the empty/dead spaces of the city into public green spaces. They include "green finger", which converts locations further than walking distance of public transportation into a green belt, "green web", a strategy that turns redundant sections of highway into green space, "green partition", a design strategy that uses green space to ameliorate natural disasters (i.e. in earthquake prone regions) and "urban wrinkle", a plan to develop and upkeep linear regions of city.

The question I have is how this could be applied to most any American setting and how these once dead, newly greened spaces will thrive in the ubiquitously connected contemporary city.

Notes

1. "Complete Works 3: Case Study: Japan" (2008) shrinkingcities.com (accessed January 11, 2009).

2. Ibid.

3."Four Strategies" fibercity2050.com (accessed January 11, 2009).