Global Voices Online

In Manchester recently, Vint Cerf was talking about the future of the internet. He had some interesting things to say about the ways in which the internet is having a social and political impact. While there are always links to the repertoires of literate skills and practices each of us needs, his talk has prompted me to think more closely about the changing nature of political engagement in contemporary societies and the ways in which online cultures and technologies may be involved. One positive example of the potential of the internet to facilitate social and political change is Global Voices Online: "an international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to make these voices heard". Check it out.

Agrrrr pirates ahoy!

I move between the UK and Australia frequently. In both places i have legitimately purchased (and continue to legitimately purchase) DVDs. I tell myself that i am collecting 'classics' (anything that contains Oliver Platt; anything that Tarantino has ever touched; 'Lake Placid' (believe me, it will one day be appreciated). The point is, no matter why i think i buy DVDs, i buy them, i have a receipt, i use them in line with the rules/regulations.

Why then can i only play them a few times on my laptop/computer before a big, scary screen comes up telling me that i am about to have my area fixed in perpetuity?? For more info on DVD zones, see DVD Zones and Maps.

Apparently this is because there are pirates who must be stopped from copying DVDs from one area and selling them in another. I AM NOT A PIRATE. Like millions of other people, i buy DVDs, i travel, i have a laptop. My right to view the product i have legitimately purchased is being unfairly restricted.

Makes me wonder who the real pirates are.

BTW: Pirates still sail the seven seas. The Weekly Piracy Report has an update on current piracy. A little more attention to this kind of piracy might be useful.

And ... speaking of pirates, don't forget ... September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Must-use terms

Must-use new words from urbandictionary.com

"dooced"
to lose one's job because of one's website

"mac guyver'd"
to make something useful out of a multitude of completely useless things (finally, a term to describe my life's mission)

"habbo hotel"
a virtual hotel used for chatting to and meeting other people on the internet

Safe blogging

BBC News online recentlly carried a story about an Iranian blogger jailed for 14 years for posting critical comments on the Iranian authorities' treatment of other bloggers. Associated with this imprisonment is a government crackdown on access to blog sites.

Its timely, then, that Electronic Frontier Foundation has released advice on how to blog safely How to blog safely (About work or anything else)

Textual landscapes

Examples of urban textual landscapes. These are from the Mission District in San Francisco.

Orphaned works

I have been writing a paper on blogs. When I attempted to contact the copyright holders of each blog, it turned out that they were 'orphaned'. This has made getting copyright permission a little tricky.

This has led me to spend more time thinking about copyright in academic works than, I have to admit, would be usual. The use of printed texts in academic works has been relatively straight forward - correct citation, limited amount of text, academic purposes etc. etc. As we move further into online research, the issues are becoming a little more difficult.

There's the issue of orphaned works, described by the Stanford law School Center for Internet and Society as "works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available" are a growing issue for those of us whose research focuses on digital texts and technologies.

As well as this, there are issues to do with the different copyright conventions applying (in the non online world) in relation to the use of graphics/pictures than those applying to print. As more and more texts now blend graphic and print to make meaning, the issues of copyright become more pressing.

Kahle versus Ashcroft is an important US based case where copyright extension and renewal are being challenged -- with massive implications for online and orphaned works.

The outcome of Kahle versus Ashcroft has implications for us all. In case you're interested in the background to this case, Brewster Kahle is on a mission to create a digital archive that has been compared to the ancient library at Alexandria.

Belfast

I was in Belfast recently. It struck me as I was wondering around that in a world of high stakes political rhetoric and ongoing conflict, that there is one tie that binds us all. Anxiety. This photo brought this home to me unexpectedly.

Real life: Not real life? Is there any real difference?

I had an interesting conversation with a 12 year old boy today. We were discussing a planned shopping expedition -- previously one of his least favourite tasks. Today however, he seemed more enthused. He asked if he could buy a new shirt. This interest in fashion was intriguing in a boy who until the day before had shown scant interest in issues of personal style.

Yesterday: On a tourist outing to a neighbouring town, we had wandered into a local shopping area. When asked if there was anything he was interested in, he immediately identified a very funky pair of white casual sneakers with blue trim and various artistic strips of velcro--the very type of shoe he scoffed at only a few months earlier. The shoes were described as "deadly" and swiftly tried on and purchased. This incident was interesting but I associated it more with the sudden awakening of image-consciousness that goes with early adolescence. This view seemed confirmed with a follow up conversation about hair. He suggested that it was time for him to get a haircut and perhaps to do something interesting with the color. Black would be a cool color.

Today: Our conversation about shopping actually seemed to engage him but in a way I wasn't expecting. He suddenly wanted me to come with him to view his Sims character (X-BOX game). He had created a Sims avatar who wore baggy jeans, the exact shoes he had chosen yesterday and with jet black hair. The only difference was the avatar's long sleeved white fitted shirt. THIS was what he wanted to look for on our shopping trip. This seems more than the usual image-consciousness of blossoming adolescence.

My question: Is this 12 year old shopping to clone a Sims character or has he created an avator to reflect aspects of himself? If there's a difference, does it matter?

This episode raises, for me at least, interesting questions about identity projection and construction, gender and the potential of in-game characterizations as a space for building new and alternative identities which may (or not) be lifted into the world outside the game.

I think there are interesting discussions to be had here about the dynamic connection between identity construction and projection. It is one thing to construct identity, but like literacy, it's raison d'etre is to DO something which leads us to the importance of projection in relation to identity. The other aspect of these discussions and consequent shopping expeditions is the blurring of the line in the sand between in-game and out-of-game identity constructions and projections.

Interest in these issues can be seen emerging from quite different directions. Gonzalo Frasca from the Georgie Institute of Technology muses on ludology.org about the potential of The Sims characterizations as a vehicle for dealing with ideological issues and social conflict. At the same time, slashdot.org recently noted research efforts at USC and MIT to modify The Sims to provide language immersion environments for foreign language learning. A crucial aspect of the success of programs such as these would have to be the depth of identification with avatars/characters that players construct -- which leads me back to my story about the 12 year old and his Sims/self construction and projection.

Academics who blog

It seems to me that there is potential in the burgeoning blogging networks for academics to reprise their roles as public intellectuals -- actually enaging in commentary and debate around key issues with people from a range of differing positions both inside and outside the academy. Bloggercon has posted an interesting discussion on this topic, led by Jay Rosen from NYU, on the impact of blogging for academic work (http://www.jzip.org/jzip/archives/001003.html). The interactive nature and open access to all-comers impacts on the kinds of discourses produced by blogs, for example: "Question: What changes for academics when they blog? What changes for universities? JR: The audience changes. Instead of student/professor, anybody can walk in".

This points to one of the clear tensions for academics and universities around blogging culture: control of information. As JR notes "Universities have always been about the control of knowledge. Blogging is almost an attack on the DNA of academia. You'll see great resistance to this". The forms this institutional resistance takes will be interesting to note. Already, employees of major corporations are sanctioned for blogging -- BBC News has reported on an airline employee suspended without pay for blogging (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3955913.stm).

Some thoughts on risk discourses

Discourses of ‘risk’ have taken on a life of their own in contemporary culture. These discourses play a key role in repatriating the social, political and economic prioritization of modernist institutions such as nation-state and the church. Risk discourses are rampant in contemporary culture, ranging from terrorism through to juvenile crime and adolescent sexualty to the internet. These depictions are not stand-alone or disconnected from other flows. We are witnessing a case in point. The careful manipulation of this discourse of risk is evident in contemporary politics. The presidency of America’s George W. Bush and the Prime Ministerships of both Tony Blair (UK) and John Howard (Australia) have been predicated on the construction of ‘risk’. But not just any old risk. Risk has been shaded in a quite specific way in these portrayals—risk from terrorists, risk of economic instability, risk of physical harm to individuals and to property. As individuals and citizens, we are told we are all at individual risk of harm from terrorists. Australia’s entry into the Iraq War was announced in March 2003 by the incumbent Prime Minister, John Howard in a speech, which took fear and menace as its baseline:

Iraq has a long history of acting in defiance of United Nations resolutions. Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and an aspiration to acquire nuclear weapons. If Iraq does not have taken from it those chemical and biological weapons, other rogue states will think they can imitate Iraq and as more rogue states acquire chemical and biological weapons, so the danger of those weapons falling into the hands of terrorists will multiply. If terrorists acquire weapons of that kind, that would represent a clear, undeniable and lethal threat to a western nation such as Australia….We do live in a different world now, a world made more menacing in a quite frightening way by terrorism in a borderless world. And the possibility of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists and the need to take action to prevent that occurring is one of the very strong motivations for the actions that the Government has taken. (emphasis added - The Age 18 March 2004 Retrieved 27th October 2004)

Howard’s speech is laced with terms invoking fear and danger, describing a world at threat by weapons of mass destruction and rogue states. HIs use of "they" (rogue states and terrorists) and "we" (the innocents who are at risk of harm from 'they'). As a direct consequence of this sudden threat, governments must "take action" and more than this, they must take preventative action. This theme of fear and a world in turmoil runs through any number of political discourses, reaching their zenith in the 2004 US Presidential election. George Bush gave a speech in May 2004 to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His speech included the following:

In the last 32 months history has placed great demands on our country and events have come quickly. Americans have seen the flames of September 11, followed battles in the mountains of Afghanistan and learned new terms like orange alert and ricin and dirty bomb. We’ve seen killers at work on trains in Madrid, in a bank in Istanbul, in a synagogue in Tunis and a nightclub in Bali. And now the families of our soldiers and civilian workers pray for their sons and daughters in Mosul and Karbala and Baghdad. We did not seek this war on terror. But this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule country by country across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person and mind and soul. A harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free reign. They seek weapons of mass destruction to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks (NY Times: Transcript From Bush Speech on American Strategy in Iraq Retrieved 27th October 2004).

Like Howard, George W. Bush’s choice of wording and positioning of himself as a wartime president weaves a fabric of fear and a vision of a rapidly destabilizing world where terrorism and violence are rife:

Our enemy
The return of tyranny
Death of democracy
Assassinated
Decapitation
Vile display
Contempt for all the rules of warfare
Bounds of civilized behaviour
Hope …or tragedy
Export more violence
Dramatic acts of murder
Demoralize civilized nations
Blackmail
Catastrophic attack

The political pay-offs of fear have been immense. In October 2004, the Howard government was re-elected to an historic fourth term in office. The divisive 2004 US presidential election was bitterly fought (between the Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry) along lines of fear and risk, with a ‘war on terror’ and new patterns of ‘risk’ much cited. Just as these ‘new’ risks and their cause are simplistically painted in political discourses and reflected in the mass media, so are the solutions – armed force, pre-emptive defensive attacks and the reduction of individual liberties in the world’s largest democracies (e.g. The USA Patriot Act with its assault on civil liberties and the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security with more than 180 000 employees making it the biggest bureaucratic institution in history). The waning of many industrial social institutions such as religion, family, gender, nation-state have left a sense of unrest that politicians have been quick to capitalize upon by attempting to rebuild modernist narratives of nation-state, strong leadership and national security. Not only is this unrest seen to come from external forces such as ‘rogue states’ and international terrorism, it also comes from within and the increasing fear of young people and the ‘Other’. This fear of the ‘Other’ can be seen in the rise of fundamentalist religions across the world, in the rise of neo-conservative political parties such as UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) and BNP (British National Party) in the United Kingdom and One Nation in Australia, in British resistance to the notion of a united Europe for fear of inundation by hordes of Eastern Europeans and in the increasingly high profile of concerns about asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in post-industrial and developing nations alike.

There are other outcomes of discourses of risk. The growth of NGOs and internet activism are also responses to perceptions of risk. Online activism –‘cyberactivism’—has become a boom industry, with large numbers of people engaging with and/or tracking local, national and global issues via weblogs and other ICTs. For example, the “Easy Online Activism” site called “Progressive Portal” (http://www.progressiveportal.org) directs viewers to information about upcoming demonstrations, posts information on a range of issues and links to a range of related information). Greenpeace, well-known for its environmental activism has embraced cyberactivism, with discussion groups, email campaigns, information and opportunities to take part in real-world action:

They go by aliases and real names: Echo. Bluplanet. Ann Novek. Tig3933.Chris99. They stop nuclear reprocessing plants, save forests and whales, hound corporations and hold the feet of bureaucrats to the fire. Who ARE these people? They're a non-violent army, a rowdy herd of mice, hundreds of thousands of web-savvy internet inhabitants who ask the question "Why just surf... when you can make waves?"

It's the Greenpeace Cyberactivist Community. On their list of targets right now is Icelandic whaling, and the topic of discussion is which of them is going to join a Greenpeace ship later this month to carry our message direct to the Icelandic government.

Numbering more than 300,000 people worldwide, our cyberspace activists hail from 228 countries and territories, including such unexpected bastions of international activism as Monaco and the Vatican. (Greenpeace, Of mice and whales, Tuesday 1 st June 2004 Available: http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/features/
details?item_id=486962

New communications technologies are a key aspect of life in Ulrich Beck’s theories of reflexive modernity, acting to both reflect and shape the practices and perceptions of individuals and groups in new and old ways. Access to information and the ability to create and distribute new forms of information to large, interactive audiences is one of the strongest and most positive responses to risk discourses we currently have.

For all the concern with digital technologies, particularly in relation to children and young people, it seem to me that the capacity to out-maneuvre institutional and mass media discourses is essential in the maintenance of strong civic societies and the encouragement of a critical citizenship. The role of digital literacies and digital technolgies is clearly going to become pivotal in the creation of skills and knowledge essential to a critical and informed citizenry. This is our ultimate goal as educators, right?