Grass-Mud Horse as a symbol of digital resistance

The grass-mud horse, an innocuous alpaca-like creature whose name is phonetically similar to some vile invective in Chinese dialects, is rising as a digital symbol of resistance to the Chinese government’s attempts to control and censor the internet. Crazy, non?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/12/asia/12beast.php
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/02/china-more-on-grass-mud-horse/

Urban Density – a measure of population or relationships?

Higher density is credited for allowing many of the benefits of city life to develop – effective transit, services, diversity of options, opinions and places. If we conceptualize urban density as an indication of “people per unit area” we can see this quite clearly. (In many developing cities and cities throughout history we can also see density as allowing for the spread of disease and pollution). Jane Jacobs credited the city with generating many social and technical innovations throughout history – the diverse opinions and minds all in the same place, communicating and interacting in relationships allowed innovative leaps to take place at a much faster rate and at a much deeper level. But really, she wasn’t conceiving of density as a measure of population over area, she was focusing on the relationships. With the rise of new media and communication tools – notably the telephone, and more powerfully the internet – the density of relationships that can be supported in a given area has skyrocketed. This new increased social density should be used to augment the existing social relations in cities. If cities posses great social-relational density now, then building deeper networks and incorporating more people will only allow for social and technical innovations to occur at a greater rate. Importantly, the web can allow us to develop new social spaces within cities – social groups spread out over a large area of the city can now connect, communicate and organize more effectively. I think that we as a society really need to research the capability of the internet to augment and expand networks and social-relational density in cities. These tools aren’t just bringing new and increased connectivity, they are really creating new spaces for construction, interaction, opposition, collaboration, innovation and expression.

http://www.worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/007433.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/007234.html

E-Governance heating up…

WorldChaning Canada just published a post by Jason Diceman about E-Governance in Canada, looking at Obama’s policy crowdsourcing example.  Check it out – there are debates heating up all across the country on e-gov and how to better interact with our governments in this ‘age of participation’.  Diceman has also commented more broadly on the use of networks for social change. His blog (and website) is full of fantastic resources on dialogue, networking, e-governance and participatory technology.

See, other people talk about Obama and Web 2.0 too!

Greg Mitchell over at Huffington Post just wrote a blog post about Obama’s use of new media – more and more people are picking up on the fact that this is actually how he won the election. I think the next American election – and hopefully the next Canadian election, if we don’t want to be continually depressed as we go to the polls – will make much more use of these new media. In fact I don’t think an American election will be won without taking advantage of this ever again.

Redistributing the Future

I was reading some old articles I’d tagged on delicious and came across this one, and it’s perfect for the blog!  An excerpt follows, and here’s the link to the full article.  This article got me thinking – if developing countries could adopt open source technology, really start pushing e-governance (using projects like the $100 Laptop and Telecom Without Borders), develop a home-grown knowledge economy, and expand access to the internet a lot could be accomplished.

That ‘a lot’ is not limited to developing creative and generative economic niches in developing countries – think what could happen if those in the developing world had widespread access to the web and its latent networking capabilities.  Community groups facing specific problems – whether social, technical, political or environmental – would be able to network with others in the developing and developed world to generate collaborative solutions.

When I read this article, I envisioned groups of people all across the developing world huddled around computers, exchanging ideas, knowledge and dreams.  Then again, maybe those groups would be huddled around facebook accounts procrastinating the day away, just like the rest of us in the West.

Here’s the excerpt:

Open source: we pay a lot of attention to it here, so much so that several worldchangers have asked why. Outside of the realm of computing, they ask, what does collaborative software have to do with changing the world? With sustainability? With democracy? With justice?

Everything. If another world is in fact coming into being, it must be a world where many more people’s basic needs are met and where their ambitions have realistic meaning. A world of increasingly vast chasms of wealth is a world of instability, war and terrorism. It’s also, as Alan reminds us, one in deep ecological trouble: “A world full of desperate and impoverished people is a world emptied of swordfish, rainforests and panda bears.” A world with billions of people living in absolute poverty is a world without a future.

But, as William Gibson reminds us, the future is here, it’s just not well-distributed yet. The answer to our problems is not to redistribute wealth, it’s to redistribute the future. In very practical terms, that’s what the open source (OS) movement is doing.

power point presentation

so, here’s my power point presentation!

Collaboration and Environmentalism

About

This blog is designed to fulfill two purposes: a) to provide an online resource on collaboration, new trends in technology and social movements, and environmentalism, and b) function as my ‘webposting’ for a class I’m taking (Environmentalism as a Social Movement, York University, Toronto).  Take a scan through the site – there are pages with interesting videos and more than a few resources to check out – the idea is to explore and make your own connections – when you do, feel free to post comments, links, resources etc. to really make this site collaborative as well.