Phase Transitions

GINK

2010-05-18T23:40:00.000-04:00

2008-12-16T21:39:00.002-05:00

I received this email from a OneWebDay Volunteer. Sounds like a good idea...

------------------------

Dear friends of OneWebDay,

We need you to vote for OWD's proposal <http://tinyurl.com/owd-idea> at
Change.org!

Joshua Levy at Change.org (NOT change.gov, fyi) contacted Susan and the OWD
Board to partner with his project "Ideas for Change in America project."
The project is a citizen-driven effort to identify the best ideas to effect
the change the Obama Administration has promised.

Here's how the competition works: anyone can go to www.change.org/ideas and
submit a policy idea, discuss with others, and vote on the best ideas from
around the country. Just before Inauguration Day, change.org will host an
event in Washington, DC and hand-deliver the top 10 rated ideas to a
representative of the Obama Administration. They'll then mobilize the
collective energy of the millions of people on Change.org, MySpace, and
partner organizations to ensure that each winning idea gets the full
consideration of the administration and the 111th Congress.

We identified several ideas that we thought resonate with OWD values, and we
even added our own, "Recognize OneWebDay as National Day to Celebrate and
Promote the Social Benefits of the Web." We hope you will sign up and vote
for our idea, check out the other great ideas we found, and maybe post some
of your own ideas. And, please, help us spread the word!

What you can do:

* Sign up at https://www.change.org/admin/sign_up. If you already have
a change.org account, skip to the next step
* Vote for the OWD submission at <http://tinyurl.com/owd-idea>.
* Also take a look at these great ideas and vote for them if you like
them
o Interactive Government -
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/interactive_government
o Support Network Neutrality Legislation -
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/support_network_neutrality_legislation
o Support the Free Software Movement -
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/support_the_free_software_movement
o Create a National Broadband Network -
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/create_a_national_broadband_network
o APIs for Federal Services -
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/require_the_production_of_apis_for_federal_services
o As you forward this along, please feel free to add ideas you
like
* Spread the word! Forward this message along to your friends,
colleagues, and any lists where you think people will appreciate the
invitation to participate.

The leadership team at OWD is hard at work crafting the plan for OWD 2009,
and we hope you plan to be involved.

Best,
Matt Cooperrider

Help us Make History: 10 Full Days before the OneWebDay e-Democracy Time Capsule Closes!

2008-09-11T14:33:00.003-04:00

OneWebDay is September 22, and you can get involved!

OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event, like an Earth Day for the Internet. It is a platform people can use to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet's future. As OWD grows, it will build a global constituency that will work to protect and develop the benefits that the Internet brings to society. Every year, OWD focuses on a key Internet value. In light of this year's historic US election and the rise of a new online "public square" all over the world, we are focusing on online political participation.

To mark the third OWD in Washington, DC, the DC OWD planning committee launched the e-Democracy Time Capsule in beta on August 22. It is now ready for the public. Check it out by visiting timecapsule.onewebday.org

Anyone across the country and the world can contribute by adding text, images, and video that celebrates e-Democracy to an open blog. We invite you to add the following entries:

Best of the e-Democracy Web: Your favorite tools, citizen journalist site, etc. What empowers you to act online?

e-Democracy heroes: Brag about your friends and colleagues- who is behind the best political technology, content, and critical policy fights today?

Legislation and Policy: What are the issues we face in delivering the best possible future for e-Democracy?

Letters to the future: How do you see the e-Democracy Web growing (or failing) in the future?

We have 10 full days to pack the Time Capsule with the great content YOU submit. Go to http://timecapsule.onewebday.org/how-to-contribute/ to help us make history. If you've already blogged about these issues, please cross post at the Time Capsule. And don't forget to brag about your contribution to your friends on your blog, link over to the Time Capsule, and help us spread the word before OWD!

On One Web Day, September 22, we will hold a closing ceremony for the Time Capsule at the New America Foundation. Stay tuned for details.

Why a Time Capsule? Both politics and technology move so fast, sometimes we forget to recognize that these new tools and the people who use them have opened a brand new chapter in the big social experiment we call "democracy." We built a central hub to gather and document all of the amazing things that people are doing online to participate politically. Furthermore, the Internet of the future may be very different than the one we know today. As Internet gatekeepers strive to put fences around our new public squares, we will work in the coming weeks and months to find historians and archivists to help us create a physical, non-digital version of the Time Capsule that can be shared, studied, and used for discussion and debate for generations to come.

We hope you will join us in documenting the progress we have made in empower people online and in building a future that delivers on the fuller potential of the e-Democracy Web!

Visit timecapsule.onewebday.org

Cheers,

The DC OWD Planning Committee

People's Production House takes you "inside the internet"

2008-07-20T21:16:00.003-04:00

Check out this great video from PPH's Digital Expansion Initiative.

Celebrating Independence and Interdependence on the Web

2008-07-07T12:51:00.007-04:00

Over this Independence Day weekend, I spent some time thinking about what we celebrate every July 4th. Obviously, there are the historic events of a nation state founded in rebellion against monarchical authority and a revolutionary document declaring independence from that authority. As we gathered with our family and our friends to gaze at a sky made brilliant by fire and sulfur, did we stop to consider the state of independence today? Is independence simply a legacy inherited from our long departed founders? I think not. If our history tells us anything, it is that our independence, rights, and liberties are never complete; they are always the fruit of long struggles, both personal and collective. What contemporary authorities must we challenge today as we work for a better world tomorrow? And what, today, deserves our celebration as we honor the spirit of independence?

According to Merriam Webster:

in·de·pen·dent
Pronunciation:
\ˌin-də-ˈpen-dənt\
Function: adjective
1: not dependent: as a (1): not subject to control by others : self-governing...

One space where individuals and communities can experience the challenges and opportunities of independent self-governance is the World Wide Web. As outlined in the Future of Music Manifesto, digital technologies and the web have created a space for musicians and their audiences to connect�, independent of the large music industry conglomerates that had previously dictated the terms of the music market for both creators and fans. It has turned the profession and industry of journalism upside down, while opening new territory for citizen journalists and independent media. From the pioneering grassroots journalists in the global Independent Media Center network, to the contemporary global political blogosphere curated by Global Voices, people are learning that they can do more than consume media messages produced by large and remote corporations - they can declare their independence and be the media. Using the Web, people connect to each other and create innovate ways to tell the stories that matter most to them.

On July 4th, we celebrate the independence of the US. On September 22, One Web Day gives us a chance to celebrate how the Web to empowers individuals and communities to claim ever more independence and liberty. It will be celebrated in cities and towns all over the world.

The idea of celebrating "the Web" might sound, at first, a bit too abstract. What are we celebrating? Web pages, links, lolcats? Is it about the servers, routers, and technical protocols that push electronic bits around the globe? These things have a lot to do with "the Web," but ultimately, they are the means, not the end. By bringing people together in celebration, One Web Day shows us the human face of the Web. For a spider, the power of a web is not in the strands of silk, but in their intricate interconnectedness. For our increasingly global society, the same is true of the Web: its power lies in the connections it builds between people, the linking of stories and voices and human relationships. It is about the flip-side of independence, which I believe is interdependence, for we can never face the power of illegitimate authority alone. To the degree that the Web strengthens our interdependence and our ability to struggle for independence, I think that's something worth celebrating.

As we prepare to celebrate One Web Day, let us also take the time to ask what authorities would stifle the liberating potential of the Web. As One Web Day founder, Susan Crawford, has tirelessly argued, there are any number of Internet gatekeepers who would quell the rising tide of independence and freedom on the Web. Just as our founders questioned the political and moral authority of the monarch, so we should challenge those forces that today claim the power to determine the future of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It should go without saying that we also need to do a better job than the founders in fighting for the inclusion of everyone in the digital world we are building.

Can one day accomplish all of this? One day will not be enough. However, we must start somewhere, and One Web Day gives us the opportunity to focus our attention and energy on the promise and challenge we face building a Web that engenders the ideals of independence and freedom. One Web Day is September 22. I hope you will join me in celebration of and in struggle for One Web for All.

The Newseum: Best Seen from theTop Down

2008-07-04T15:41:00.008-04:00

My folks toured the Capitol last week, and a friend of theirs treated us to a visit to the Newseum. I was glad for a chance to see it, because I know that the Newseum is giving thousands of DC tourists an education in the history, practice, and purpose of journalism, and I wanted to know just what kind of education it offers.

Before entering, I laid out a very simple set of criteria for judging the merits of the museum. First, by whether it meets its own mission, to provide "a forum where the media and the public can gain a better understanding of each other." Second, by asking of each of its exhibits, what argument does it make and to whose benefit?

Upon entering the Newseum, you get a pretty clear idea of how the answer to the second question is going to come out, as you are confronted by a granite wall bearing the names of the founders and funders of the museum, a cabal of media giants that includes the New York Times, Bloomberg, Comcast, Cox, Hearst, ABC News (aka the Disney Corporation), NBC News (aka General Electric), Time Warner, and the Annenberg and Knight foundations for some nonprofit credibility. The entity behind the Newseum is the Freedom Forum, the philanthropic arm of newspaper mogul, Frank E. Gannett's empire. (For a handy guide to these communications empires, check out the Columbia Journalism Review's guide to media ownership).

As we were getting oriented to the 643,000-square-foot space, a friendly guide instructed us to view the introductory film in the lowest level first, then take the elevator to the top level, as the museum "is best seen from the top down." The orientation film is a fast, splashy ad for the news industry. What is news, it asks? Great "firsts," war, peace, love, hate, life, and death, all the great human themes distilled to their most iconic, information-free state. According to the film, there are "big lives" and small ones, good wars and bad. As visitors will be reminded throughout their time in the Newseum, "news" is intimately tied to "Freedom," the single-word lyric to the cheesy anthem that rings in the ears as the film closes.

The space is topped by an impressive terrace offering grandiose views of Capitol Building, the National Gallery of Art, and other Smithsonian properties. Welcome to the lofty heights, folks, leave your sense of self-empowerment at the door, and prepared to be awed and overwhelmed.

The collection is indeed large and impressive, including 4 full pieces of the Berlin Wall, a 3,000 year old Cuneiform brick from Sumeria, perfectly preserved newspapers dating from the early history of the printing press to the current day, and a beautiful and poignant gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photography. Also, the space is brimming with dozens of interactive, multimedia infotainment devices like the NBC News Interactive Newsroom, where "you can be a star," but I didn't pay much attention to these.

I was looking for any scrap of critical reflection on the social and political impact of the news industry, and I found some scraps. I was surprised to find a few panels in the opening exhibit that discuss bias in the news, mistakes, frauds, and the ownership and control of news outlets. Of course, in the bias panel, What Liberal Media? was placed side-by-side with Bernard Goldberg's Bias. Mother Jones reports on a Newseum film concerning news bias that is funded by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. I didn't see it, but I can just imagine it was as fair and balanced as the "news" pouring out of Murdoch's properties. As for mistakes and frauds, according to the Newseum, these are the exceptions that prove the rule of journalistic excellence, and infamous news frauds like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair are just so many bad apples.

On media ownership and consolidation, a display correctly tells visitors that we live in an era of unprecedented consolidation in the news and media industries, where a handful of companies "with little or now background in news" have rapidly acquired the majority of news properties. But that's about as deep as it gets. Why is the media consolidated? How did it happen? There is no mention of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that initiated this wave of consolidation, the aggressive and well-funded lobbying for consolidation by groups like the National Association of Broadcasters, or the history of bad policies coming out of an FCC captured by industry interests, an FCC often antagonistic to the public interest. The display leaves it to the viewer to figure it out. Maybe media consolidation is like the weather, just something that happens, nothing I can do about it.

Later, in the "First Amendment Gallery," we learn that "the First Amendment only restricts the government from interfering with free speech. It does not apply to private companies."

These subtle nods to the ever tightening corporate control over the flow of information in society are present, but I fear most attendees will miss them or forget them as larger, flashier messages intrude. As if to cleanse the mind of these darker aspects of the contemporary news industry, visitors quickly find themselves in the 9/11 Gallery, confronted by a large piece of the World Trade Center, twisted and tortured by the attack of that historic day. And then, of course, there is a film. Let me quickly say 2 things: remembering the attacks and the heroism of those who responded is important, and many journalists are to be commended for sharing in that heroism. In the theater, I sat near to a young boy who probably wasn't alive in 2001, and I could tell he was learning a lot from the reporters telling their stories from ground zero.

On the other hand, the exhibit and film definitely approached a "shock and awe" persuasive strategy, and I know I left in a daze, exhausted, my critical faculties dulled for rest of my experience. If one didn't enter the Newseum with some critical faculties to start with, I don't think they would develop them after being exposed to this exhibit.

Hundreds of journalists rendered an impeccable service on 9/11 in the face of the worst of human horrors? True.

The fact of that service establishes all journalists and their corporate overseers as ever vigilant, ever courageous? False.

Somewhere between September 11, 2001 and the aggressive march to war that followed, I think that most journalists in the mainstream media lost their nerve. And that's all I'll say about that.

Overall, the narrative of the Newseum is about scale. At every turn, the visitor is confronted by giant screens, full size news helicopters, satellites, and news vans. The world is big, you are small. The world is remote, we bring it to you. The world is too complex for you, we simplify it for you. Also, did we mention "Freedom?" We have a lot of it here in the USA. Go, USA!

Like so much of the news today, the Newseum celebrates the overwhelming, the iconic, and the spectacular at the expense of the substantive, the challenging, and the truly educational.

What is the Newseum good for? While there is plenty of valuable material inside, I believe the Newseum serves primarily to say "you are free, America, and your freedom is brought to you by Newscorps, Time Warner, and the Disney Corporation."

Allied Media Conference

2008-06-20T13:54:00.002-04:00

Checking in from Detroit and the 10th Annual Allied Media Conference, the place to meet people working on "media strategies for a more just and creative world." For once, I'm one of the oldest people in attendance.

This morning, I sat in on the "Be the Web: Using Web 2.0 innovations to organize and connect" session. I liked a comparison the presenter made between hierarchical and folksonomical data organization, where he showed us a Web form he'd had to use for an employer to report demographic data (gender, ethnicity, etc.). He said that he felt like folksonomies and tagging are closer to representing our complex identities than these nested data boxes (ie, male, single, caucasion, etc.). I'd never heard someone link Web 2.0 design principles to identity politics, so that was interesting. Wouldn't it be cool to gather folksonomical demographic data for an organization? It could generate a tag cloud to represent the multiple, overlapping identities collected within the membership of the organization. Something like that...

He talked about del.icio.us and twitter, but I always like to learn about new apps and wasn't disappointed. He talked about jott and tumblr. Jott uses voice recognition to interface with email, listserves, feeds, you name it. It can push, it can be pulled; in other words, it can add telephony (land or cell) to your organizer's bag of tricks. Tumblr is the main app for tumbleblogging (new to me, too), or posting short burst, multi-media files, like Twitter, I think, but with pics, vids, and audio files.

A number of issues came up: security, privacy and the reliance on corporate tools and platforms, connecting Web 2.0 organizing to work with communities without access. I warned the group that they have to move away from thinking that they are shifting from old school organizing to these tools, but that it is always adding new layers, and once you start using the new tools, you commit to alway adding these new layers. Email is irrelevant to most 14 year olds. These tools, because they are proprietary, corporate domains (API's or no) and because every individual connects to her or his own favorite mix of platforms, can never attain perfect reach. Using these tools, organizers have to remember they are building and activating social networks overlaid and dependent upon the platforms they choose to engage. Organizers need to be careful that the suite of tools they decide to use don't create gaps of non-interoperability in the social networks they are building. This means you have to be careful using the radical tools, like crabgrass, too. Corporate platforms can come with complications, but, as large and densely populated networks they have reach.

None of this is easy. Must. avoid. shiny. object. syndrome.

I will be starting to use crabgrass for a project soon. More on that as I use it.

Beyond Broadcast: Larry Irving Keynote

2008-06-17T15:49:00.000-04:00

Again, I had to pass through American University's walled-garden-connectivity-hell hoops to get online, so I haven't been able to record the key points, which is a darn shame, because this is a good talk!

Larry Irving is doing a great job challenging some of what we've heard about funding and business model, reminding us, James Wilson did, that we need a media space independent from commercial pressures, driven by discursive necessities and democratic logic. This is especially true, because the advertising market values people differently depending on race and gender and class, and reliance on advertising dollars is a dependence on masters who don't value everyone equally. Why does this even have to be said?

Even further, he's talked about how even foundations can pull the funding if they don't like the message.

Now he's talking about the wireless revolution and the need to open white spaces.

I'm remembering now that I say him talk at the Rainbow PUSH Media & Telecommunications Symposium, moderating a panel of telecom execs and one guy from Pew Internet and American life. I remember the panel being highlighted by a bunch of softball questions and plenty of time for the execs to talk about everything they were doing to deepen broadband penetration.

Now, this guy is on fire. You can find his agenda here.

More on white spaces and the NAB: Larry is advising that people who care about white spaces should throw in with Google on the policy fight. BUt he also makes the point that you might have to go your separate ways on other issues.

Beyond Broadcast 2: Mapping the Money

2008-06-17T14:02:00.000-04:00

Diane Mermigas: "Your stars are perfectly aligned with where the Internet is and where digital media is taking us..." Diane just suggested that people here are grassroots... She said, "When I sit down with Rupert Murdoch and some other big media guys, they're full of questions."

Well, I guess if you're sitting down with Rupert Murdoch, the CPB might look grassroots.

"None of the institutions... have [learned] to really integrate" the interactivity that's possible.

Diane is recommending that public broadcasters put their content online and attach ads. It was more nuanced than that, but that's what it boils down to, I think.

Keith Hopper: Follow Google's lead - build your audience and user interaction, then monetize it.

Craig Reigel: Paying people is important, sustainable business models are important. "Bringing in revenue needs to be decriminalized." Some revenue seeking "disrupts mission, some don't."

Four ways for media orgs make money
1) Participate in commerce
2) Advertising
3) Specific support from people with vested interest
4) Take investers' dollars with some promise for sustainability, spend the money, then go bankrupt

Vince Stehle: Radiohead experiment, pay what you will. "Public radio has been doing that for decades." He's just got something wrong - that one can listen to most of an album on Myspace; this isn't how it happens in my experience. Even small indie bands only put up a couple of teaser songs.

James Wilson: Democracy rests on free, independent, transparent press; media is going through turmoil - ergo "We might be seeing democracy at risk." We need to reintroduce "representation, openness, freedom" into these conversations about business models.

This is a political process - "I can assure you that the NAB has agenda... the MPAA has an agenda, and if you don't have agenda, you're going to lose." At which point, I said "hear, hear" a little too loudly.

James brings up NCMR, and the 3k+ participant. Media makers aren't engaging with the activists. Here, here!

Beyond Broadcast

2008-06-17T13:50:00.000-04:00

Getting online and getting power has been such a headache... I actually have a headache now, so I'm just going to capture the occasional snippet today and maybe to write something more reflective on Beyond Broadcast later.

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture:

"Media is a technical platform and a social and cultural platform

Who gets to participate in participatory culture? Access, skillsets, empowerment questions create and bolster gaps.

NCMR 14: Winning Tech and Media Policy Fights in the States

2008-06-07T12:35:00.000-04:00

Amina is talking on the state "Winning Tech and Media Policy Reform in the States" panel now.

Because states can be a faster catalyst for legislative change and ideas can move from state legislative bodies to the Federal level, "It's absolutely crucial the this work begins at the state level." This is an interesting point: states can protect consumers at a level that the federal never can, because state governments are accessible and more connected to people's lives on the ground.

I hope someone talks about influencing organizations like the US Conference of Mayors and National Conference of State Legislatures. If not, I'll ask about it.

Cool - WA State Senator Kohl-Welles is up. On the plane, her neighbor asked "aren't there more important things to spend money on" than broadband deployment; when she said she was concerned about connectivity in rural places, he replied "well, can't those people just move somewhere else?"

The Senator mentions a Cascade Curtain, referring to the break between Western and Eastern Washington. I'd never heard that phrase; of course I'm usually just griping about the east side of the state.

She talks Connect Kentucky in a positive light. I hear bad things about that program but haven't been able to look into yet. Finally she talks about a community technology opportunity program.

Ah, our facilitator is walking us through the problems with Connect Kentucky. Here's one - confidentiality provisions block the publis from verifying the state's study of connectivity.

Next up is Catherine Settanni, The Community Technology Empowerment Project. She works locally and launched Minneapolis' free wi-fi network, which includes a community portal. She has a great idea about pressuring the states to ensure that any time taxpayers' money is spent to move something online, it has to include a set aside for digital inclusion efforts.

Susan Satter, senior assistant attorney general in Illinois, is the final presenter. Got distracted for a minute, but tuned in again to hear that Susan thinks that state utility commissions are highly vulnerable to capture, due to being appointed positions, and a point about attorneys general being resources advocates can use, especially in their role as consumer complaint arbitrators.

Senator Kohl-Welles and Julie answered my question:

The senator is an executive of the NCSL, and says that our agenda is starting to come through. She also mentioned that Ron Simms, King County Executive, published an op-ed calling for a national digital inclusion strategy to be developed at NCSL
Julie reminds us that state legislators very often are motivated by a spirit of public service, but they are often pressed and some times working other jobs, even, and if we want to influence them, we have to provide the model legislation, the messaging, and an opportunity to be a hero on our issues.

Beth is now asking if there are things cities and states could do better if the federal government made some changes, for instance improving e-rate and lifting the ban on schools and libraries from offering their networks to the broader community. The answer is "yes" on e-rate from Catherine. Other opportunities might include getting more fed money for broadband mapping (in the Farm bill), but also fixing the fact that, apparently, there is more federal money for mapping than actual deployment. There is another bill on infrastucture in the House now that includes some money that localities could use to improve digital access.

NCMR 13: A little self-promotion for good measure

2008-06-06T03:04:00.000-04:00

I am putting together a "self-organized" session during the conference. Tentatively looking at using the Sunday, 9:30-11 slot. If you're reading and interested, I hope you'll come. The outline is below...

Understanding Collaboration in Media Change Movements

Organizations that work to create a better media system through media policy advocacy, grassroots organizing, media literacy training, and independent media production are increasingly working with each other across organizational boundaries to attain shared goals, leverage the respective strengths of their partner organizations, and build a more interconnected, robust and responsive movement that reflects the diversity of our communities and strategies. While we rightly celebrate and learn from the positive outcomes of our collaborative endeavors, we rarely reflect on the process of collaboration itself. Besides evaluating the "end product," how do we know if a collaboration has moved our larger strategic goals forward? What are the challenges, costs, and opportunities of collaborative projects? If successful collaborations rely on the relationships between the individuals involved, how do we evaluate and document the practices that make collaborations successful to share that learning with new collaborative partners and to ensure that our organizations can call upon institutional learning with or without the presence of the original players?

In this session, we will have an interactive discussion and begin to earnestly assess how we go about planning, implementing, evaluating, and documenting our collaborations. This conversation will lay the groundwork for a long term project to produce a document that organizations can use to enhance their collaborations, including a taxonomy of collaborative models, a set of "best practices" guidelines, and an evaluation and documentation framework .

NCMR 12: Historical and Contemporary Challenges, continued

2008-06-05T16:04:00.000-04:00

Angela Campbell, Institute for Public Representation:

What are the unfavorable consequences of social science research in the media reform movement? Better research won't necessarily lead to better policy.

Policy process at the FCC:

FCC gives public notice and request for comment (Notice for Proposed Rule Making or NPRMs), but it is usually industry that intervenes in the comment process
The FCC issues a decision
Which can be appealed in court

The FCC is not a neutral fact finder. Appointments are political, and the agency is vulnerable to aggressive lobbying.

The role of 3rd party studies at the FCC:

Industry studies are often preferred in the first place
If reformers have a study, the FCC will cite "conflicting evidence," and industry wins
The industry has more studies, and industry wins

Solutions

FCC should conduct it's own studies or commission them. Unfortunately under Powell and Martin, this process hasn't worked very well. For instance, Pritchard was commissioned to submit a study that was based on previously published, industry funded study. Academics should support FCC data collection, but they should also monitor it.
Make proprietary industry data publicly available.
Legislate that FCC relies on better quality data. The Data Quality Act was not in effect in the 2002 media ownership review. By the time it took effect, it slowed the process, but it didn't stop the FCC from following the Republican majority's predetermined plan.

I don't know. These solutions so far don't seem to be working; every solution can be and has been skewed.

NCMR 11: Historical and Contemporary Challenges, continued

2008-06-05T15:51:00.000-04:00

Victor's starting his presentation of historical precedent in the 1940s. "We come to learn that our current policies are the product of political practices, not best practices." Say it!

"Early on, there was a social contract between media institutions, the public, and the state."

Victor is establishing that

Public discourse criticizing radio in both the left press, but in popular venues like Reader's Digest
There was a coalition of disgruntled intellectuals, labor, women's groups and others
This coalition coalesced around a laundry list of complaints that should be familiar to any of us today
Results include the 49 fairness doctrine, in unpublished government proceedings, proposals as radical as public utility, community run newspapers were being considered
Unfortunately, the social contract that developed priveleged media producers

Why did the movement fail?

Failed to coordinate activists, especially between DC-based and grassroots groups
Dramatic rightward shift in national economic discourse, ie corporatism (alliance between big business, big government, and big labor)
Progressives moved away from structural criticism to focus on policing content

I can't tell any more if he's talking history or braking news in the media movement.

3 lessons:

Solidarity, as reformers become more aggressive, the national-grassroots coordination becomes more important
Recognize connections to larger political and economic forces
We ignore recurring structural problems at our peril, ie "we give the audience what they want," "the Internet is solving everything"

To step back a bit, I just have to wonder if Victor's intimacy with the current movement hasn't sent him seeking parallels in history, but I'm no expert in historiography.

Still, awesome presentation.

NCMR08 9

2008-06-05T14:40:00.000-04:00

I hate academic presentations that are read from the presenter's paper. I know it's the norm, especially in the humanities, but it's just ineffective public speaking.

This is my subject matter, I'm a quick study/information sponge/sharp analyst; I'm a fast typer. If I can't record your major points, you're doing something wrong.

Here's a project: better training for comms grad students in public speaking and presentation techniques. True, the more seasoned professionals give a good talk, but younger communications scholars should be amazing spokespersons for their own work, at the very least, if not for the advocacy community in general.

NCMR08 8: Digital Technology Challenges - Net Neutrality

2008-06-05T14:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm tuning in time to blog Brian Dolber, UofI, whose paper is called "'Divide and Conquer': The Racial Politics of the COPE Act and the Network Neutrality Debate."

Claim: the telecoms lobby divided the African American advocates community on the COPE Act. Somehow he's connecting this to Gandy's Panoptic Sort argument, but again so quickly the argumentative chain was hard to follow. Here's a case where a simple, well designed slide presentation would have helped.

Brian's outline of the lobby's strategy:

Isolating "radicals": illustrated with the astro-turf video from Hands Off The Internet
Co-opting "realists"

NCMR08 7: Independent Media session, continued

2008-06-05T12:48:00.001-04:00

Caroline Nappo, UofI, Librarianship as Media Reform. She's talking about access to alternative collections. Libraries are part of the sustenance of independent media. She's also making some great points about how the history of the library is consistent with the democratic communications theory that drives most of our community's work, again so rapid fire I can't catch it all.

She has a good beat on where the ALA is on these issues, and I want to follow up with her. I pass the ALA building almost every day in DC and regularly wonder about bringing them into our work.

What is the ALA doing? It has not "problemitized oligopolistic media control." I can see that and want to figure it out.

NCMR08 6: Sustaining Independent Media

2008-06-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the room in time, so I've arrived late for Tracy Van Slyke and Jessica Clark's presentation on their progressive media mapping and impact measurement project presentation.

Tracy: "It's a time of experimentation, but there are questions about how we measure the impact of our work."

Traditional metrics:

Money
Attention
Buzz
Credibility

New categories:

Mainstreaming an issue
Taking it to the Hill
Combining pop and politics: pop culture as a "beat" to uncover political consequences
Reaching nontraditional audiences
Fighting the right
Uncovering the news: covering missing stories
Pioneering new journalism models: creating projects that push the boundaries of "traditional objective journalism," crowdsourcing, live blogging, etc
Chasing the tech: harnessing new platforms
Challenging the story
Building infrastructure
Poking the bear: from WAM! - to force reaction from the other side to generate buzz. Nice.

Check the work out at www.buildtheecho.net.

Adam Davis, Southern Illinois Universty on Current TV. Current is Al Gore's adventure in user-generated media, launched in 2005, reaching 41 mil homes in the US. Viewers are still only producing 1/3 of the content. Adam's question: "Is current TV a new model for public access and what do Gore and investors stand to gain?"

User generated content is cheap
Turned profitable in 2 years

Adam relies on Habermas' conclusion that the public sphere must be completely independent of the commercial sphere, and he has assembled an impressive collection of instances of commercial warping of the public-spirited concept of Current TV. His tone is pointed, but I have to wonder - why didn't we do it first? Is there room in our work for for-profit models for user-generated new media? What if that model was intended to create synergies between progressive media and socially conscious businesses? Respected progressive print outlets do this.

In the audience, there is scoffing when we are confronted with the enthusiastic blurbs of Gore and his marketing partners' commentary on their business model. I haven't investigated Current TV and have no judgments on it, but I don't know how productive knee jerk reactions to the realities of the corporate sector in this space can be.

There's a rarely spoken inconsistency unveiled here, today already, and I think I'll continue to see it throughout the conference. On the one hand, we recoil at the intrusions of commercial incentives in the media system. On the other hand, we know we are embedded in the system that generates those incentives and embrace measures like tax incentives to increase minority ownership of commercial outlets. Personally, I'm undecided, possibly ambivalent, on the issue, but there hasn't been a larger dialog that identifies and articulates this inconsistency. I don't know that such a dialog is immediately necessary or that community-wide consistency is possible or necessary, but I feel like I encounter this question all of the time.

NCMR08 5: "Media Reform" Targets Conservatives

2008-06-05T11:01:00.000-04:00

We interrupt this wonkiness (which I love) to inform you that some conservative blogger is onto us! We're caught RED handed. They know the score; we've all gathered here to use "the power of the federal government to hand over more media properties to liberals."

Damn, the gig is up.

NCMR08 4: FACT, continuation

2008-06-05T10:52:00.000-04:00

Krishna Jayakar, "I'm a member of the Penn State mafia." Universal service!

Four programs:

Lifeline and Linkup
Schools and Libraries (E-rate)
High Cost Areas
Rural Health Care

This money comes from end-user fees, to the tune of $7.4 billion over the last four quarters. However, Universal Service Fund (USF) expenses has steadily increased while telecom revenues are flat. Proposals:

Make the USF funding sustainable

control costs: capping High Cost Areas Program (I'm going to have to look this up later)
expand contribution pool. Ouch - he's talking about adding fees to VoIP calls and all broadband traffic. That's not going to be popular.

Improve effectiveness

Cross-promoting Lifeline and Linkup (again, to look up later)
Consumer protection against unpredictable phone bills

Long term proposals:

Emphasize value creation over affordability. I don't understand what this does for universal service.
Move from uniform service to consumer choice
Foster innovation in service
Ensure continuance of support for the disenfranchised

I really don't see how this pro-consumer framework gets us to Universal Service. I'm not saying I disagree, but I don't think Krishna made the case. It might have just been a case of the attack of the Powerpoint presentation - bullet points over coherent argumentation. It happens.

Marvin Ammori, Free Press/University of Nebraska on broadband adoption. "We need to move forward with the idea the competition does work."

Need info on our markets
Need to understand other regimes abroad
Need a broad commitment to competition
Possibly include some structural separation to create more competitive markets
Net Neutrality

NCMR08 3: FACT, continued

2008-06-05T10:39:00.000-04:00

Kathryn Montgomery, American University, will discuss children's issues. Kathryn works closely with the Jeff Chester at the Center for Digital Democracy. She highlights that both the Executive transitions and the digital transitions work together to open opportunities for positive change.

Major points

The new digital marketing infrastructure is taking shape. Still, it's fluid, and there are opportunities for intervention. Marketers are looking at the digital media culture as an ecosystem that develops across platforms, creating "brand-saturated environments." They are leveraging social networks and encouraging young people to actively market to their peers through these ne
Intervention opportunities

Food marketing - most of the debate has been around TV advertising, but it's time to look at digital marketing. Kathryn is working on the FTC on this.
Childrens' privacy online: IPR, US PIRG, CDD and others are also pressing the FTC on this.

Why is the FTC the regulatory body to pressure on children's issues? I guess its better to work within the trade framework than the speech framework to protect kids.

Rob Frieden, Penn State, on wireless policy. Frustrations:

Policy favors concentration in control for carriers. Verizon announced intentions to acquire Alltel. "The FCC never saw a merger it didn't want to approve."
40 years ago, the FCC said consumers can own our own phones, despite the Big Bell's prophesies of doom. Carterphone for wireless! Wonky radicals, unite!

NCMR08 2: FACT

2008-06-05T10:18:00.000-04:00

First off is Richard Taylor, Penn State, who wrote on the transition of cable and other platforms to the broadband network. "Everybody gets fast Internet - that's where we'd like to end up."

Radi0ctive Gavin just sat down next to me, so I missed the denser points Richard made, but on PEG: channel slamming, loss of close captioning, Richard has worked out a long list of public service, continuity, do no harm policies for PEG.

I can see now that I wish they had produced a 3-5 pager collection of abstracts for each paper in progress, because these folks are going to have to present with speed and fury, and it's going to be difficult to absorb, analyze, blog, and/or respond to any of it.

Philip Napoli, Fordham, is covering media ownership. Guiding principles:

Assessment of the media system not in relation to the past, but in relation to its contemporary potential
The media ownership policy process should be as values-drive as it is an empirical process, with a focus on "First Amendment, democratic theory principles"
The goal should be anti-protectionist for incumbent (I love this point)
Number of channels is irrelevant. The focus should be on the distribution of resources for the production of content. Philip says this is a point the Mark Cooper has been making for some time. It's a well articulated response to the cant that says "but there are so many choices." We'll have to work on the language a little for mobilization purposes, but that's ok.
The burden of proof should be equally distributed between the assessment of benefits and harms.
Demands for rigorous data analysis must be accompanied and supported by rigorous data collection

Next Up, Len Baynes of St. John's University on the problems in media for minorities. Lack of coverage (Katrina and aftermath), lack of representation (central roles), Imus-level hate speech are the major.

On media ownership: it's clear that minority ownership has dropped. Recommendations:

It's a little late for the FCC to just now be rolling out non-discrimination policies.
Remedy the structural discrimination in access to capital, advertising. We can use race-based criteria to remedy these.
Tax certificate program "was the most effective program the FCC had to" increase minority ownership before Congress killed it off. There are bills in Congress by Rush and Rangel that Len supports.
Amend the indecency statute so that "racially abusive language would come within the purview of the statute."

NCMR08 1: Academic Symposium

2008-06-05T09:57:00.000-04:00

NCMR08 is up and running, and I am at the academic symposium part of the conference today.

The first panel, a discussion with the Future of American Communications Working Group (FACT), is the main reason I chose this pre-conference from the dense menu of advertised pre-conferences and other meetings. FACT is a project supported by the Media and Democracy Fund that is pulling together some top brains to present a "new vision for communication policy in America for the 21st century for the new administration that will be entering the White House in January" (Amit Schejter, Director).

Depending on how this project works out, the groups I work from will likely be pulling heavily from this project, and this is the first unveiling of the direction the project is taking.

Wall Street Journal Covers Net Neutrality, Misses Point

2008-04-14T11:27:00.000-04:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120795829804109371.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

One shouldn't be surprised, but this is how WSJ opined concerning the recent Comcast/BitTorrent kurfuffle:

The good news is that while politicians and MoveOn were busy exploiting the episode to push a pro-regulatory agenda, Comcast and BitTorrent were fleshing out a new network
management plan. It will allow file-sharers to use Comcast's network without slowing service for everyone else. And it shows that the private sector is perfectly capable of handling these issues on its own... Maybe someone should tell the FCC's Mr. Martin that markets work. (emphasis mine).

This should be so obvious so as not to require wasted pixels, but briefly:

1) An agreement between 2 companies does not a neutral Internet make. If anything it demonstrates the need for a universal policy of Internet freedom. Can you imagine the aggregate legal costs if every new Internet service, business or nonprofit, had to meet with Comcasts (and AT&T's and Verizon's) legal teams?

2) This agreement was only reached because this case was politicized and used as a point of popular mobilization by Network Neutrality advocates and organizers.

3) Ergo, this is not a case of the magic of markets at work, but of corporations tweaking behaviors that sacrifice a public good (a free and open Internet) only under the scrutiny of the government and the people and in an attempt to slow down the trend towards a national policy of Internet freedom.

The FCC is holding a hearing on "Network Management Practices" (i.e. Net Neutrality) this week in Palo Alto, where they will hear again from a public that rightfully distrusts the small group of companies that control their access to the Internet.

Thanks to BW for point out the WSJ's op-ed.

Rootscamp 2008, part 2

2008-04-12T12:39:00.000-04:00

Online Communication & New Media for your Organization by Tracy Russo from Edwards for America

First laugh: "The Internet is not an ATM."

Tracy says that the work a web manager has to do to develop buy in internally is often equal to the work they do in their public facing efforts.

Q&A:

Q: What are the stats we can use to develop that buy in?

A: Demographics of the blogosphere: progressive bloggers are 46-54 years old, with a median income of $80k, college educated or better, in other words - voters.

Q: How do you reach out to bloggers? "I'm used to traditional press outreach."

A: Tracy gives some pretty standard advice here:

- Read blogs & know who writes about what
(side note: Bloggers don't open attachments from campaigns?)
- Always source your material, traceable. Bloggers can't afford Lexis/Nexis.
- "Don't tell me what to write." Make gentle suggestions about what they might be interested in.
- Be honest.
- Schwag, rewards, incentives?: be careful, bloggers don't want to come off as bought.
- give them things they can use: pictures, videos
- Think about the wide world of blogs. Send policy stories to policy blogs.

Now that I've gone to enough of these kinds of meetings, I can see that, even though the Web and e-politics are still new, a set of best standards and practices is clearly emerging.

Q: What's the cool new technology?

A: Text messaging, with caveats.

Q: What about blogging on behalf of the organization?

A: 1) Your blog record should be clear. 2) Don't cause problems.

Rootscamp 08, part 1

2008-04-12T10:37:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, I thought "I wonder if I should attend that Rootscamp thing? It's probably too late to register." Not long after, HJS sent me an IM that read "I saw you were attending that Rootscamp thing - that's rad." Indeed - there I was, listed on the conference's wiki attendees list. Apparently, I had enthusiastically signed up very early on and promptly forgot about it. Sure it was on my calendar, but I thought I had just left myself a marker. So, here I am.

This is my first "unconference." We'll see how it goes.

The conference is starting, with Lola Elfman and Zack Exley from NOI. In case you were wondering, Lola is indeed Danny Elfman's daughter. I met her last summer at an online fund raising workshop.

Dee Dee Halleck, Participatory Media & Social Activism: A Talk at American University

2008-04-04T09:25:00.000-04:00

(I composed this post last night)

As I arrive, Dee Dee is talking about Full Spectrum Warrior, a military recruiting video game developed by USC on a $2 million DoD grant. "USC is completely in the pocket of the Department of Defense."

"Of course, we shouldn't leave out the girl's games... the boys are getting sent to Iraq, and the girls are getting sent to the mall... THere are peaceful video games." She shows us a game "that's a little lame" because it didn't get a $2 million DoD grant. It's a game about the budget of the DoD.

Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be a wi-fi signal here at American University's Center for Social Media. I'm taking this down in AbiWord and will post to the blog shortly.

"Because of the availability... of these wonderful tools [community media] is very important around the world... There are all kinds of organizations around the world that are doing community media."

Dee Dee was involved in the (marginalized) civil society work at the World Summit on Information Society, where her group projected a Negativland film on Disney's restrictive IP practices on the side of the WIPO headquarters.

She also mentions Petri's (Prometheus Radio Project) work setting up radio stations in Tanzania.

Q&A

I ask Dee Dee how we can connect the people, the facilitites and other resources, and most importantly the traditions and values of community media to the generation of kids obviously excited about the personal media they can make, but don't seem to understand the deep power of media.

Because I was finishing my question, I missed the exact quote, but Dee Dee makes the point that these centers can be a place where people connect to make media., which is so different than using a webcam to film one's pet. It's about communities getting to know each other "and they can see the work that people do."

Dee Dee plugged my work with Reclaim the Media around the November FCC hearing! Thanks, Dee Dee.

One of the audience members, with experience in film and who is just learning about PEG, suggested sending "one of you guys" to university film programs. She made a really good point about engaging students in PEG who would tell their friends to watch, building a new constituency.

Dee Dee: "Part of the problem with public access is what I call the Wayne's World [stigma]... They want people to think of public access as a couple of guys wanking off in their mom's basement...." It's so much more important as a civic tool, for youth education, etc.

F2C, part 6

2008-04-01T16:21:00.000-04:00

Clay Shirky, author Here Comes Everybody

"Every inefficiency you can find is someone's top line profit."

The book's thesis is "Group action just got a lot easier."

"Bill Watson was pushing flash mobs as a critique of hipster culture." Now Clay's talking about how flash mobs were incorporated into political protest in Belarus, and making a great point that in relatively free societies, new coordinating technologies get used frivolously but can be "profoundly political" in another environment.

"William James maintained that thinking is for doing... increasingly, publishing is for acting... it creates the possibility of a platform for coordination."

"Nothing says 'dictatorship' more than pictures of police arresting people for eating ice cream."

"The principle danger to this freedom to act is principally a regulatory one... Law isn't internal to itself... [it] grows up with the structure of the society... Up until recently, all speech regulation in this country [has been] an iterated game of Prisoner's Dilemma... The one thing I tell [my students] is... prior to the mid-90s, if you had something to say in public, you couldn't. You had to get permission to say something in public..." The domain name system is the best place for centralization and professional management of censorship on the Net (wikilinks, ratemycop, etc)."

Q&A

Micah Sifry: Can you talk about future shock and backlash?

A: The really interesting example is where 40,000 LA students walked out to protest an immigration bill, organized using SMS, etc. "The thing that worries me most... is that punishments might become extreme.." to raise the threat level.

F2C, part 5

2008-04-01T15:11:00.000-04:00

Carbon Negative Internet, 2

Robin Chase, Zipcar: "...in these moments of history, would I have been heroic?"

"We have 2-3 years to get the probabilities [of averting catastrophe] in an interesting range... Cap and trade isn't going to do anything in that time frame."

Robin's new company: Go Loco.

F2C, part 4

2008-04-01T13:00:00.000-04:00

Carbon negative Internet

(This is cool: http://electricsheep.org/)

The global communications infrastructure contributes 2% of greenhouse gases.

Kathy Brown, Verizon: Networks and ICT is not part of the climate change policy dialog, but should be. The high-speed Internet saves energy.

Telecommuting: 600M Tons
Teleconferencing: 199.8M Tons
E-conservation: 67.2M Tons
E-commerce: 206.3 M Tons

Equals: 1b Tons

Not sure of the time scale (annually?) and if it's actual or projected.

Teleconferencing: First generation was jerky, so people walked away, but now Cisco has a good product, though it's expensive. "Every time I don't go to India, the amount of jet fuels I am saving allows me to use my teleconferencing technology twice a week for the whole year."

E-conservation: Downloading music, books, etc. Even shipping has better carbon footprint than a drive to the mall.

"But there is so much more": "By mapping out routes UPS saves 28.8 millions miles annuall ywhich results in roughly 3 million gallons of gas an Co2 emissions reductions of 31, 00 metric tons." -New York Times Apparently, the point was to avoid having UPS drivers from ever making a left turn. Also, look at Dash.

F2C, part 3

2008-03-31T15:40:00.001-04:00

Open Wireless

Rich Miner, Google: Talking about Android, an open development platform for mobile application. "There is a stifling on innovation in the mobile space... because the ecosystem is a closed one. If you're trying to invent... applications... openness by just publishing APIs is not very open.... The level of control that these platforms maintain prevents [actors] from innovating."

More back channel chatter:

Frank P.	herrding cats is one thing, controlling the speed is something else
Russ N.	When is the next squeaker?
Brett G.	We're gonna need a litterbox.
Iz W.	shameless client promotion: electric sheep on android http://draves.org/blog/archives/000549.html
Frank P.	every android's dream
Russ N.	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
alex i.	this is all cool stuff but I feel I know most of it already

Back to Rich: They expect to ship phones by the second half of this year, after which they will release the code under a license. Since announcing Android, the message of openness is resonating through the industry, and, to a certain degree, other players are trying to compete on openness. "Google feels comforted that the message of openness... is going to take root, and it will be difficult to dislodge it.

Michael Calabrese, New America Foundation: NAF has been working on a concept of wireless Carterphone.

About the 700 MHz auction:

- AT&T & Verizon won 90% of the spectrum. In a consolidating, oligopoly, auctions can actually hinder new entrants.
- Verizon started up it's open network rhetoric, qualifying them to be a big winner in the auction.

"In the early 1920s, hundreds of organizations attempted to share the airwaves... but obviously the technology was not ready... [Now] what's scarce is government licenses, not spectrum. 90% of spectrum is not being used most of the time." What we need are "smart radios and a light-touch licensing regime.

This article looks like a good read on the new model NAF is proposing. Also, these:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/feb07/4892
http://www.radioscape.com/
http://meraki.com/

Tim Wu couldn't be here (bummer), so David is inviting a few "lightning talks" from innovators in attendance.

Rochard Wright, Google: "I can't say anything about whether Google is happy about the auction results until Thursday at 6:01 pm... However, someone has called Google a 'happy loser...' Michael did a great job giving the overview, [but I can add] That Chairman Martin, to his credit, have been supporting this effort... to create some momentum for these unlicensed spectrum band."

I always thought Republicans should get into this, because it is less "Big Government" regulation. Too bad they (and many Dems) are such sellouts to the NAB.

Brent Glass, Lariat.net: www.brettglass.com/F2C.

F2C, part 2

2008-03-31T13:07:00.000-04:00

Open Fiber

Dirk van der Woude, John St. Julien, Adam Peake, Tim Nulty, moderated by Jim Baller

Dirk, Amsterdam Broadband: "Yes, we can." Amsterdam's telecoms are owned 40% US, 30% UK, other non-Dutch firms 16%.

Look out for Fraudband.

In France, the law says that cities are explicitly allowed to roll out fiber networks. Cologne has 2 parallel fiber networks.

Taking a break from the very techy, accented presentation that is overly reliant on a slide show that nobody can read, I'd like to mention that the back channel here is really juvenile. I'm probably one of the youngest 5 people in the room, but to read this thing, you'd think it was packed with 19 year old boys with a chemical dependency on Red Bull. For example:

alex i.	dirk dirk
Frank P.	farms in berkeley?
Mike W.	But wait Dirk, TomTom is impossible. Only Garmin produces GPS
Brad T.	Moooooo
Tree S.	i think i have this genetic thing going on where i can't really hear anything he's saying and i'm looking over my shoulders for the dogs
Richard B.	I want my MTV.
Gregory M.	who let the dogs out?
Tree S.	sorry. just thinking outloud.

Such a weird contradcition between a hardy comprehensible presentation and a painfully comprehensible back channel. Just saying. Not to mention, Dirk went on way too long.

Adam on the Japanese broadband "miracle."

1) Traced back to the 1996 Telecoms Act.
2) Incumbent who bought into the idea the IP networks were good.
3) The open network model can work, if the conditions are right.

What are the conditions?

1) We don't have a cable industry
2) The legal system is not litigious, NTT didn't spend it's resources and time in court fighting
3) Regulator stuck to its policy
4) There was a national policy of ubiquitous information or network society
5) Japan doesn't have a good broadcasting industry; programming is poor; limited pay-per-view market. Opportunities for people who want to invest, in IP video distribution (I guess), is great.

What is the Japanese view of network neutrality?

1) IP networks should be accessible with ready access to applications and content
2) Support E2E
3) Users should have access equality

Tim on Burlington, VT fiber network: Broke grown in '05, first customer '06, being profitable in '09, four years after initial funding was received with 5000 customers. Muni telecom can be profitable for cities.

1) Universal - it's like water. The economics work much better if you do it that way from the beginning.
2) Open Access: The government should offer retail, but be prepared to make the resource available on a non-discriminatory basis.
3) Financially self-sufficient
4) Future-proofing: forget DSL, cable modems. Build something that will last for a long time, at the fundamental investment, but also upgradeable.

Now, Tim is taking the model across Vermont. Can you do fiber to the home in rural areas that meets the above stated goal? The biggest problem is that no rural town is big enough, so look to working together as an assembly of 20-30 township. It's an organizational problem, and a problem convincing financiers that this inter-organizational entities can handle it.

The measure to move forward are receiving 100% votes, in one township it dipped to 80%.

In the interim, there is a lively discussion about how we've reached our broadband capacity. Within minutes someone pipes up "I have IDed the perpetrators IP address!"

John, Lafayette Project : "I'm of 2 minds. The Geek/Wonk says there has got to be a way to get this machine to work. The Historian/Activist is more interested in the root of these things, expects contingent outcomes that are hard to maintain and require constant democratic work." We'll be hearing from the Historian/Activist.

"The real problem is that we are not being treated with respect... not like citizens of the Net." He says we're more like serfs, with the providers acting like the lord of the land. "Look at [your service aggreements] and this is roughly your condition... They can kick you off for any reason...They don't have to follow their own rules consistently." While, the Geeks and the Wonks want a technical solution, but we want to be citizens.

To solve the feudal system "We had the Enlightenment, then we had a Revolution."

"Lafayette is one of the most conservative cities in one of the most conservative states in thsi corporate-beholden country... and it happened there."

How did it happen? First, the geeks convinced the financial leadership to put in a fiber link, just for wholesale, government, big business use. The deepest malcontents were already saying they should provide retail to the home, and they lost, until a few people who remembered the argument but forgot who said it. The malcontents organized a grassroots campaign. The assumption was that the old boys club would run the show, but the opposition was so virulent, that they faded from the playing field and left it to the grassroots, and they won, 2-1.

"We are going to get a network that is going to be one huge intranet." Citizen-citizen speeds of 100 mb, offering the basic tier at a 20% discount to the incumbents, with a wi-fi network on top that won't have to be meshed. "We're exploring... the digital divide issue... The current plan is to put, in every cable box, internet access as well... The end result of that everyone on the system in a huge swath of the town who never had that kind of connectivity before."

Q&A:

Q: Japan is facing big problems with their system - pollution, viruses. Policy makers are proposing a closed fiber, next generation, IPv6 solution that might close out all the retailers.

Adam: We always move through phases of new problems and solutions.

Mary Beth, NATOA: "We in Portland are trying to build an open-access community network. How do we build the momentum in the "glassroots? How do you educate populace & electeds to make this happen?"

Tim: You have to address "Who's going to pay for it, and if you [can say] 'not you. It will be a financial investment that will be paid back from the services'" then you will win.

Other resources:

http://www.benkler.org/SharingNicely.html
http://gordoncook.net/wp/
http://www.carlotaperez.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_capital vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_capital

Freedom to Connect (F2C), part 1

2008-03-31T11:05:00.000-04:00

I arrive in time to hear from Donna Edwards, formerly of the Arca Foundation and current candidate for the US House of Representatives from Maryland.

Where Donna lives in MD, she only has access to dial-up! Her talk is about access inequity. "When I think about public policy... we can't just hope that the... service providers will do right... we actually have to legislate and mandate this stuff. It's not efficient for some companies to reach out to some communities.... How do we develop technology policy that works for our most vulnerable communities? "

Q&A:

From David I: "There is a representative of the McCain technology policy team in the room, Jim Baller."

Jim: "I am not involved in any way with John McCain... What David's referring to is an article I wrote evaluating the candidate's positions on broadband policy." Jim ranks the candidates like this: Obama, Clinton, McCain. The paper is here.

Micah Sifry is talking about a dialog that Durbin held on a conservative blog. It sounds like overall, the conservatives on the blog understood broadband as a target for government investment. The ones who came on just to insult Durbin were routed to a separate thread."

Sifry: "We don't have good tools yet for mass deliberation... The process is broken. No one seems happy about it. What would do that would be different? The Obama platform talks about wikis and other tools? What would that look like in practice?

Alec Ross (Obama technology policy consultant): "Some of the Obama campaign's talk about how it would use... social networking tools.. etc. Technology tools are used to keep dialog in the pen... What's nice is that... within the Obama campaign... that's often where the policy people engage... people are actually dipping into the blogosphere... on myobama.com... [they're saying] last night I spend an hour [looking online] and these were good ideas. In terms of how this would work [in governance]... you have to turn to the people developing policy is to say "part of your ob is to get in there and see what people say. it is a qustion of attitude more than what's the best widget."

Donna 'I've been connected to technology for 30 years... Technology is just a tool. It's not a substitute for real engagement..."

Matt Stoller: "I come from a position of relative privilege and power... As we think about technology and deployment of technology through governance... I haven't seen much help from technologists in the political process... How are you going to devolve power to people who don't have it... Not just technology- it's about literacy; it's about nutrition."

Alec: Clinton pulled the Connect America plan after Art Brodsky took it apart and Mat Stoller blogged about it.

Q&A

A different David Isenberg: What can Congress do to incorporate or at least solicit the stuff that is available outside of the government, since NGOs are doing a better job creating transparency?

Alec: The candidate is not talking about the government directly empowering the grassroots. "...third parties are likely the folks who are going to get the information and do something with it. Part of what a President Obama would do is put data and information out there..." for these actors to work with. "By giving the information to the grassroots, they will have the means to use their power more effectively."

Micah: The OMB contacted OMB Watch, usually its adversary, about licensing fedspending.org for $600, saving the taxpayers something like $13 million.

Charles Benton: "Donna is the godmother of the Media and Democracy Coalition... That was a great contribution... We are most thankful for making that happen... Alec, I read this weekend Obama's technology platform. A major section of this paper says, 'employing technology and innovation to solve the nation's most pressing problems' This is the heart of this document... What can we do between now and the next administration to really develop the case studies, the facts, to make this connection between the technology and the needs it can meet to serve the values of equality and excellence, and to save us money?"

Alec: "What's been interesting to me is to learn what makes campaigns care about things.... It's remarkably simple. There is a lot of blogging and communications power in this room, and it gets noticed... When [sombody} digs into something and the community shares it, it gets noticed... [Campaigners] need good information, distilled down. If there's good research, sharing it with the campaign matters."

Donna: "Candidates care about things people say in their communities. [When I was campaigning and walking the neighborhoods] I remember only one person at one door who asked me about Net Neutrality, but people asked me why there kids don't have better access to technology, business people asked me about how to jump start their business into the 21st century." The way we talk about technology isn't necessarily how people experience it.

Matt: "Be precise about how you talk about power. For instance, it wasn't Congress who gutted the Office of Technology Assessment, it was Newt Gingrich. Don't grant presumptions of goodwill to political actors who don't deserve it."

Tom Mandle, entrepreneur: "What the hell is the matter with the word 'entitlement." The kids in that school are entitled to that technology. That said, governments are not founded on trust."

In the back channel, people decided that the Strange Bedfellows Coalition would be a great organization name. Apparently, www.strangebedfellows.org is available.

Some other resources that came up:

punchclockmap.sunlightprojects.org
http://www.customizegoogle.com/

LMDJ, part 4

2008-03-29T18:23:00.000-04:00

Internet Equality

Christina Gagnier is talking about Net Neutrality.

"Net neutrality advocates haven't done a good job framing the debate" in terms of digital inclusion.

Christina works with Mobilize.org.

"Comcast has decided to stop its traffic shaping practices with BitTorrent" in the past 3 days. "I met with Richard Clark of AT&T.... his argument was that net neutrality will hamper innovation and crush the provider industry."

Christina mentioned the Save the Internet Coalition, and how net neutrality brings together pro-choice groups and the Christian Coalition.

A participant told us that her provider, I think she said it was Charter, has been offering her faster bit rates for $5/month. Of course, Time Warner has already moved in the direction of tiered internet access.

Tracy Rosenberg, Media Alliance: There is a FCC hearing on Internet equality coming up soon at Stanford, and we have 900 seats to fill. Information about the Stanford hearing is available here.

"When we are talking about the word 'equal,'" we have to talk about access and the digital divide. "Digital inclusion" is how we talk about what we are doing about the digital divide.

2 models to consider:

1) Content creation/empowerment programs/citizen media/DIY media. Unfortunately, we have a distribution problem.

2) Neighborhood technology centers: "Are these programs meeting a need for social justice."

"How do we in sure a neutral playing field... how do we get to a sustainable Internet reality that sustains social justice?"

Some possibilities:

Getting high speed Internet access into more people hands: "We should have a conversation where this is a public infrastructure."
Muni wi-fi: but we have problems with the model of relying on companies. There's not much money to be made, as in public utilities. We have seen some successes. Check out One East Palo Alto, but it has been funded by Hewlett Packard.

Also (my note), look at this map of muni wifi projects. Be warned- it's flawed, but helpful.

"Part of what we have to do is.. take on the responsibility to create little pockets of infrastructure... If there's a little armada of community tech infrastructure projects, then maybe we really do have an alternative media movement that can compete for hearts and minds."

"Sometimes the reality on the ground gets ahead of public policy stuff." For example, pirate radio created the opportunities that led to Low Power FM radio.

Q&A:

Christina mentioned the flawed Broadband for All? report issued by the Public Policy Institute of California.

There's a lively discussion about the rising (I'd say rhetorical) tension between Net Neutrality and intellectual property. On this subject I'd submit David Byrne's recent Wired article for emerging musicians navigating these new complications. Other resources: Larry Lessig, Creative Commons, the Future of Music Coalition, and the Independent Online Distribution Alliance.

LMDJ, part 3

2008-03-29T17:51:00.001-04:00

Rep Solis said that if Martin and the FCC won't convene a media diversity committee "maybe the Congress is going to have to take a swipe at it."

Q: Is there a way to protect net neutrality and intellectual property?

Jon: Publishers get licensing fee. Every ISP should pay a licensing fee, $2-3/subscriber.

LMDJ, part 2

2008-03-29T16:55:00.000-04:00

First panel: Have the media undermined our democracy?

Moderator: Tracy Westen, University of Southern California.

Rep. Hilda Solis
Kevin Uhrich, Pasadena Weekly
Brad Friedman, bradblog.com
Alex Nogales, National Hispanic Media Coalition
Jonathan Taplin, University of Southern California

Rep. Solis: "We have a long way to go to making access available..." especially for communities of color. "I am very concerned about the DTV transition... I still ahve not seen a coupon that is in different languages that explains when and how to use it." Solis' constituents approach her for clarification, and they are badly misinformed about the transition.

I never would have guessed that Congresswoman Solis would be someone who says "By golly," but she is.

Kevin: "I want to talk about... the bloody revolution that is occurring right now in the world of daily newspapers.... There is a flipside to this." Alternative weekly papers are making money. Check out aan.org and www.altweeklies.com. "This is where I think that women and people of color have really found a voice.... Is the media destroying democracy? Maybe a little bit, but the media is doing a good job destroying itself."

Brad: "The polite conversation we have here, in Congress... I'm here to say it has not worked... I have been called one of the Paul Reveres of the election integrity movement... If I had [a horse] I would ride it down these stairs crying out 'corporate media has failed... corporate media has failed!' And if the corporate media were here, they would probably take a picture of that... The bad guys have figured out how to game [all of our tactics]... They have figured out that they can go to certain academics who will say whatever needs to be said." Brad is naming names: Jeffrey Milyo University of Missouri is, apparently, a hack who says that when the MSM covers Iraq that Democrats are getting their issues covered and that photo IDs for voting. What a broad range of expertise! "There is a truth, and we need to start reporting it."

Alex: "The media tells us who we are, what we are, and what we are worth." This is not working out very well for Latinos. "the FBI has reported that hate crimes against Latinos is up 25%... and it starts with hate speech.... unless we curb these excesses, this country is not going to live up to its potential... Right now our biggest push this year is to mitigate the excesses of these hate groups."

Jon Taplin: "You are in a world of a broadband duopoly." Taplin thinks it's a waste to have municipalities creating a third wire into the home. We should just be subsidizing access.

Universal Service Fund goes to fund the private jets of providers in Montana.

He also thinks we should restore the Fairness Doctrine, restore "true" public access and fight AT&T, and make Net Neutrality a critical issue, as well as privacy. "The rich will have access to an on demand, private walled garden and the poor will be bombarded" with personally targeted advertising.

This is a great and energetic crowd.

Local Media, Democracy, & Justice: A Southern California Regional Summit (LMDJ)

2008-03-29T16:05:00.000-04:00

Here I am at conference 2 of 3 in 5 or 6 days. Jon Bartholomew of Common Cause is giving the introduction.

Jonathan Adelstein is giving the keynote. He started in with a pretty good joke: "I flew for 5 hours, and it's only 5 degrees warmer here than in DC. I thought I'd get a better bump than that."

"This is the center for creative..they're is a special understanding about these issues." "People are consuming 8 hours of media a day... [media] produces 1/6 of the economy."

"When you look at critics of our movement...they say 'there is so much diversity, the Internet, 300 cable channels'... Broadcast radio and television... is still the dominant channel of news and information."

"Real breaking news is being replaced with breaking gossip...." One study showed that local civic affairs coverage makes up only 1 percent of offerings. In reference to how many ab-buster infomercials we get instead: "We may be getting tigheter abs, but we're getting a flabby democracy."

He brings up a rule change I wasn't aware of. In 1995 the FCC repealed the 25 year old Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or fin-syn, rules that forbid the big networks from owning the programming they played during prime-time, which created the vibrant independent television studio sector that is more or less decimated now.

In recognition of the importance of local activists: "We really feel the wind at our back from people like you."

Q&A

Kathy from Common Cause: What are the 3 things we can do after this meeting?

Congressional resolution of disapproval of the lifting of the TV-print cross-ownership ban - help us move it forward
We need to form an independent media diversity committee
Create real public interest obligations for the digital age

(Side note- NAB is suing the FCC over enhanced disclosure)

Q: How do you foresee the change in the administration changing the FCC?

A: In the event that McCain wins, he has overseen the FCC in Congress, but has a deregulatory bend, but he has supported the minority ownership tax credit; he has a thoughtful communications policy team. More hopefully, both Democratic candidates support the resolution of disapproval, Obama supports a diversity committee. It's important that we get the right FCC in to interpret the public interest provisions of the new cross-ownership rules.

You can call Adelstein's office at 202 418 2300, ask for Rudy Brioche.

A Link List to Media Policy Resouces, Amazing Community Media Projects

2008-03-28T18:02:00.001-04:00

Hoping to supply Media Re:Public attendees with some starter resources on important question of public interest media policy work and vibrant community media projects that should be supported, I submit this link list:

The Media and Democracy Coalition

Media Re:Public, part 8

2008-03-28T17:22:00.000-04:00

It's 2013: Do you know where your news is?

Paul Steiger, ProPublica. Doing investigation, especially focusing on the abuse of power. In 2013, news will be delivered principally electronically. The beauty of our organizations is that we are funded with the expectations that we will take advertising money.

Jonathan Taplin, USC Annenberg: we will be struggling over commercial overload & personal meta-data making each of us a target. There will be a 2 worlds, one for the rich, personal walled gardens, that is ad-free. The other world that advertising will be so pervasive, you will be accepting a 15 second ad before a phone call.

Jennifer Ferro, KCRW: Devices will come together. For public radio, we need to look at our content differently.

Zittrain: So, will your license to broadcast be irrelevant?

Ferro: Not irrelevant, just deemphasized.

Media Re:Public, part 7

2008-03-28T16:14:00.000-04:00

Media Re:public is hosting this back channel. I got into this conversation with Sasha Costanza-Chock.

Nathan: For Ron C: how can cable access centers reach out to, connect, and collaborate with the world of new media and user generated content? There's a tradition there that needs to connect!
schock: Check out Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and Denver Open Access. They are great examples of public access connecting to new media.
Nathan: Absolutely! But why are MNN, etc the exception? How can we port those models to PEG/access more universally?
schock: Well there's one thing the funders might think about :) Support extending those models around the country.

Media Re:Public, part 6

2008-03-28T15:02:00.000-04:00

Understanding the Media Ecology

Michael Smolens, dotSUB, is making crowdsourced video translations available globally.

Example:

Pangea Day, a 2006 TED Prize winner

"Language is not an impenetrable barrier."

Richard Vega, Yahoo News: "How do we incorporate [Yahoo's holdings- Flickr, del.icio.us, etc] into Yahoo's 2008 election coverage?"

Torey Malatia, :Vocalo: A hyper-local social networking site that incorporates a radio station, 89.5 FM in Northwest Indiana and Chicago. This is an exciting model and one that LPFM and other community radio stations should look at. As I understand it, they webstream user-generated content all the time, and offer a number of shows on air that curate from the online offerings a collection of content that contrast differing perspectives on issues.

Lokman Tsui, Anneberg Upenn & Ivan Sigal, USIP:

How are NGOs becoming a new player in the information supply chain? In less developed markets, news organizations had underdeveloped staffs, so they were already using a citizen journalist model for news gathering.

Ron Cooper, Access Sacramento! Yay, PEG! Ron is an ambassador, asking the Media Re:public to engage in the AT&T U-Verse fight.

Media Re:Public, part 5

2008-03-28T14:22:00.000-04:00

John Kelly, Parsing the Political Blogosphere.

John is involved with Morningside Analytics, which I will look into further.

Some beginning comments of interest:

Blogs are a key to the networked public sphere
Communications research needs overhaul, our current methods misunderstand society: society doesn't fall into variables. Kelly uses network analysis
we've always been a networked society; now we know it (Thank you!)

"If you don't like colorful dots, don't invite me to speak at your conference."

"There is an elite structure in political blogging that isn't demagogues yelling at each other." They blog on law and policy.

Q&A:

Taplin: Talk about how communications research needs to change?

Kelly: Comms research studies the poles of human communication (mass vs interpesonal), but it's the intervening levels, which has been the province of sociology, especially social network analysis.

Q: Why does linking behavior matters? How do they correlate to real social relationships?

Kelly: Historically, in SNA, we were looking at formal structures like families or clans. The relationships between what you represent and the social phenomena are more fluid now, and there are decades of work ahead of us to work that out.

Media Re:Public, part 4

2008-03-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

Q&A:

Q: How do we reconcile the new world of abundance and the experience of the commodification of freedom, which would seem to rely on a world of scarcity?

Castells: Business is in the business of free communication. There is a dialectical relationship between making money on freeing communication and the undermining of systems of control.

Weinberger: Uncomfortable with the word "commodity" applied here.

Suro: There's no dichotomy between abundance and control or oligopoly.

Media Re:Public, part 3

2008-03-28T13:12:00.000-04:00

David Weinberger, Berkman Center:

Teaches "The Web Difference" course, co-wrote the "Cluetrain Manifesto", Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Everything is Miscellaneous.

Metaphors:

The Web is an ecosystem: It's too comfortable, "Everything works out."

The Web is pro-am: uses money as the distinguishing mark. It's really about quality, not money.

The Web/media is information flow: The fundamental role of news is not information.

The Web is abundant: Control doesn't scale.

In the age of abundance the struggle is over the metadata- what matters and how it matters.

I have to say I'm having a hard time following Weinberger's argument.

Media Re:Public, part 2

2008-03-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

Roberto Suro, USC Annenberg:

Is making the point that we should decouple journalism as a social act and as an enterprise. Also, he wants to discuss the terminology, making a distinction between participatory journalism and the journalism of participation. Participatory journalism "networks of people and institutions collaborating..." in the exercise of journalism. The journalism of participation"is the forms of journalism that foster participation in a civic space."

"We must ask what are the outcomes... We must look for outcomes beyond simple participation..." Does it make participation more representative or not, government more effective or not?

Media Re:Public, part 1

2008-03-28T12:25:00.000-04:00

Framing the discussion: Manuel Castells, USC Annenberg; Roberto Suro, USC Annenberg; David Weinberger, Berkman Center.

Castells: Democracy is a derivative of power relationships, which are the foundational elements of all societies. "Whoever prevails in the field of power relationships defines what society is." Power is related through coercion and/or the construction of meaning in mind.

If the construction of meaning is a key source of power, then communication is key as the source of meaning construction.

(I'm excited that I am hearing Castells in person for the first time and also that nothing he is saying is new to me).

"Social movements act on the mind more than on politics... They act on the way we think."

In emphasizing the construction of meaning, how much does Castells diminish coercion as a force of domination? There has to be a way to think about, and maybe measure, the distribution of vulnerability to power mechanisms, so that we can learn the degree to which power relationship vectors such as poverty/wealth, male/female/other, etc. change the ratio of vulnerability of any given individual. I would argue that if one is affluent, educated, and otherwise empowered, the coercive power of large institutions (state, military, policy, market, church) is diminished, while if one is poor and vulnerable, one's exposure to these coercive forces can make vulnerability to meaning construction besides the point, in proportional relation to one's disenfranchisement. The point, in other words, is to resist a determinist idealism in the intersection communications and political theories as expressed by thinkers like Castells, but I still love Castells.

"Politics is media politics... Media are the field of construction of power relationships. It is essential to transform everything in... the media, especially mass media."

"The infrastructure... is also owned by the corporate world." Thank, you Manuel Castells, for making my job later today much easier.

"The key thing... is you have to transform freedom into a commodity, and that's where the business... Hackers and entrepreneurs... create more and new communications networks."

'The key political function of this [model] is to distribute access to the network."

John Palfrey from Berkman just called Castell's talk "hypnotic" and called for an unpacking of the idea of the commodification of freedom.

Angelinos for Equitable Accesss to Technology

2008-03-27T16:03:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I met with Davis Park and Daniel Mayeda, who organize together under the banner of Angelinos for Equitable Accesss to Technology (AEA2T). AEA2T was involved in fighting for the public interest in the California state franchising process.

Currently, they are proposing to city and county officials that LA use a portion the PEG funding that the California state franchising law provides to build 30 Community Media Access Centers (CMACs) to create community content for public access cable and Web distribution sites. They are proposing a model of smaller, cheaper, more nimble facilities that respond to the particular needs of populations of smaller geographical areas than the standard PEG access center model which typically provides one (sometimes) large facility for each service area. They offer a San Francisco facility as a model: http://communitymediacenter.net/.

Davis also told me about Little Tokyo Community Wireless, a service of the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), that provides free hot spots all over Little Tokyo. LTSC has a number of low and mixed-income buildings in the area and use a fiber line running into one of these buildings as their wi-fi network's access point to the Internet.

NetSquared Announces Mashup Contest Winners

2008-03-27T15:48:00.000-04:00

You can see the winners here.

Unfortunately, none of media activists community proposals got in the top 20 (actually 21, because of a tie). There are some great proposals among the winners. Thanks to everyone who got online to vote for our community's proposals!

Radioactive Gavin Testifies in Oly

2008-03-23T22:31:00.000-04:00

PT pal, Radioactive Gavin, wants you to check out his January 30th testimony before the Washington House Technology, Energy, and Communications committee.

Netsquared Contest, again

2008-03-20T09:33:00.000-04:00

Josh Bretibart's roundup of essential proposals to vote for:

http://breitbart.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/vote-for-the-dei-mashup/

Update: MDC's Entries in the Netsquared Mashup Contest

2008-03-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

As I wrote earlier this week, MDC has entered a "mashup" contest at netsquared.org, and we need your help to win and create a new tool that everyone working to make a better media system can benefit from. Please register at netsquared.org and cast your votes by Friday, 3/21! The whole process shouldn't take much longer than 10 minutes.

First off, thanks to those of you who have already gone to the site to vote, but please read on to make your vote count!

A couple of key things:

1) This is a great contest, but Netsquared hasn't made some of the rules clear, including the rule that everyone must vote for a minimum of 5 proposals and up to a maximum of 10. After you identify the 5-10 proposals you want to vote for, you must then hit the "cast your ballot" button and "submit your ballot" on the next page that comes up. I dug through the site to find the rules for voting, which you can read below.

To vote for the Coalition's proposal, go to http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mapping-media-change-movement

2) Since you have to vote for 5, you should also definitely vote for a number of proposals coming from MDC-allied groups:

"Human Side of the Digital Divide" proposal submitted by Josh Breitbart of the Peoples Production House in NYC.

"Community Based DigiMapping" submitted by Eloise-Rose Lee at Media Alliance

"YourMediaWorld" submitted by Aliza Dichter's team at the Center for International Media Action

"Planning for the People" from Lauren-Glenn Davitian and CCTV Center for Media and Democracy

And if you need help choosing your next 5 votes, check these out:

http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mapping-money-and-politics-maplight-org
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mykaroo
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/mashup-social-actions
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/knowmore-org-firefox-extension
http://www.netsquared.org/2008/conference/projects/opencongress-org-track-congress-social-data

So, join the Coalition voting block on netsquared.org! We believe that this project, which will let you put yourself and your organization "on the map," will help us all see our growing strength and address critical gaps as we build a movement that empowers people to participate in the media system that impacts their lives every day!

If you follow through, please send me a note (njames AT media-democracy.net), to let me know!

On the Road: LA

2008-03-18T17:52:00.000-04:00

Next week, I'm hitting the road again. I'm heading to the City of Angels for a very interesting week. Some previews:

- Because of a contact I made at We Media in Miami, I was invited by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law to an event at Annenberg USC, Media Re:public, Participatory Media - Surveying the Field in 2008to join a discussion called "Supporting the Emerging Media Ecology." They still haven't put me on the agenda, but I'm one of the "discussants." They're going for something more interactive than a panel/presenter model.

- I'm sitting on the final panel, "Taking Back the Media: Challenges and Solutions," at Local Media, Democracy, and Justice: a Southern California Regional Summit.

- And finally, but actually firstly, I'm sitting down with some members of Angelenos for Equitable Access to Technology (AEA2T) to learn about their grassroots organizing work.

You can look forward to some nifty notes and impressions from LA soon.

MDC Submits a Mashup proposal to NetSquared

2008-03-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

When the people I work with get excited about Web 2.0 stuff, I spring into action.

Case in point: last night we decided to beat the deadline today for a competition Netsquared is holding to support the development of new advocacy mashups, so with some help from Beth, Aliza D, Martha W, and Josh B, I turned this proposal out today: http://www.netsquared.org/node/7632

Check it out, give some feedback and VOTE for it!

Wired Magazine Maps US Municipal Wi-Fi

2008-03-07T14:19:00.000-05:00

http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/st_atlas_1603

Wired.com uses a Google map on the web page, but the print edition has a much slicker design aesthetic that you might want to check out.

While I'm very happy that Wired has challenged the "Muni Wi-Fi is dead" myth to their large audience, there seems to be a flaw in their analysis and presentation. The main example I can pull out is that they have designated the Philadelphia network as "in operation." As we know from the New America Foundation's report on Wireless Philly, the truth of the matter is not quite as clear. This point calls the the entire presentation into question and makes it less useful as a potential education piece than it might otherwise be.

I would love to see a letter to the editor from a Philly or other Wi-Fi stakeholder praising the coverage and responding to this oversimplification. LTEs can be submitted here.

If anyone who catches this note submits an LTE, I would love to know about it. Thanks!

We Media, part nine

2008-02-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

"Networked Economics" session, contiuned (note scare quotes).

Wow, there is somebody from Consumer Reports here.

To continue the thread from my earlier post, there isn't a single economist or network theorist on this panel (insert yawn here). Nic Fulton is the "chief scientist" for Reuters. He's got a PhD in Physics, but sounds like his work is more technologist than what I would consider a scientist.

Wikipedia has a so-so set of articles on network economies here and here.

Contrary to popular opinion among our vaunted media experts, everyone is not on Facebook. Again on the politics on shallow, glitzy business discourse, I am concerned about the easy use of the word "everyone." Let's talk about what we're talking about: "Everyone that matters to me; everyone that I think is important and can offer lucrative opportunities to me."

We Media, part eight

2008-02-28T11:57:00.000-05:00

I didn't see a transition happening, so I walked in late to the Networked Economics session.

Someone is talking about "barriers to exit." These companies "can't simply be switched off. They have to morph or be modified." I think that his name is Nic Fulton from Reuters Media.

I missed the introduction, but I don't hear anything really addressing network economies. Rather, the focus is on interaction, pro-am, disruption, etc. While these trends are consequences of network economies, they shouldn't be conflated. Last night, a conference buddy was railing against the rampant jargon flood in this scene. Of course, I was being contrary and laid out the sensible reasons for the problem (the incentive to be a jargon coiner), he really had a point. The one thing I probably will always find so boring about business culture is the shallow, glitzy discourse and the sloppy juggling of sexy new terms at the expense of specificity, rigor, and depth. I experienced it at Microsoft, and I am certainly experiencing it here, at this confab of Web content, application, and services players.

We Media, part seven

2008-02-27T17:08:00.000-05:00

Social Experiences in Business session:

Moderator Susan Mernit begins with a comment on how the concept of community is moving from "real life" to business.

"What have you observed about wellness and well-beingin community?"

Isaac Prilletkensky, Dean of U of Miami School of Education: "Well being flourishes through relationships."

Elisa Hamlin, Blogher. "Where are the women [political] bloggers?" I notice that they had Jenn Pozner of WIMN at their 07 conference.

Maria Gallagher, Fleishman Hillard. Works in unconferencing. "Face time is much higher bandwidth."

We Media, part six

2008-02-27T16:49:00.000-05:00

Innovations in the activist world session, continued:

Matisse Bustos Hawkes, WITNESS. Using media to advance human rights. WITNESS is launching a new tool, The HUB (not to be confused with SSRC's Hub), a "YouTube for human rights," but oriented to action on the ground.

Q&A:

Who is Bucketworks constituency?

1) Teens 14-18
2) 27-37, trying to do what they love with work & family
3) Boomers

"But we target everybody, which everybody tells me is insane." He says that intergenerational communication is a surprise result.

Deron is now talking about "ego-altruism." "If you can make it entertaining, with an edtirorial voice, and make it easy for people to step in the way it works for them, it works."

We've moved into a conversation fetishizing the Boomer generation's common cause in activism, in reference to the "cynicism of this generation toward traditional activism." This is really bothersome to me how a flat view of history enables a weak analysis of current political trends. "The Boomers" were far from unified (hippies were not Yippies were not Panthers were not MLK-style civil rights activists were not the founders of 2nd wave feminism, etc), and it's not like everyone or even most people were involved with any of these romanticized, famous movements.

I wonder how much this narrative of "the disengaged young generation" drives the development of these new approaches and to what effect.

I also wonder about the ethics and etiquette of blogging about someone sitting right next to me.

We Media, part five

2008-02-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

Innovations in the activist world session:

Deron Triff, Changents: "story telling platform for extradorinary change makers in their 20s and 30s... It's about these individuals who have put it on the line to do something about these issues, using a rock star- fan model." They want to connect diverse skills and resources to change angents. Deron something strange about the "edginess" of his "changents," that they don't use the language of "activism, movements, etc." I'm not sure how this is significant. Apparently, his audience is cynical about the traditional, organizational mode of social change making. If you are post-activist, does that make you cooler, more of a rock star? Doesn't it divorce from the history of struggle, and the lessons we've learned? I don't know. I'm deeply familiar with the frustrations with many flawed legacies we have inherited from that history of struggle. Maybe this warrants further investigation. Perhaps it's just caffeine-free, activism lite.

James Carlson, Bucketworks: Bucketworks is a "health club for the brain" in Milwaukee, accessible for $40/year. They have never had a grant, never done traditional fundraising. He says his system is "way better, but we probably will ask foundation for money." It looks like a fun, hyperactive community center.

Joan Peckolick, Selfchec.org. Selfchec promotes cancer prevention.

We Media, part four

2008-02-27T15:51:00.000-05:00

We Media Nonprofit Journalism panel, continued...

I'm hoping that this session goes interactive shortly. So far, it's been a showcase for, admittedly vital, projects (see previous post).

Ok, we are "opening it up."

John Bracken: Ellen is finding that Sunlight's audience is not the "ordinary citizens," but rather "engaged citizens."

Ellen: "We all are interested in engaging citizens, but how many people are going to go to a site called opencongress.org?" They are looking at ways to link people with common policy interests.

Sunlight is doing some crowdsourcing research projects, including one to discover how many Congress people have hired spouses for government jobs. They had 5o participants, 12 serious ones, and it was completed over a holiday weekend. One participant wrote to say "I loved this. It was like a game. I always wanted to be an investigative journalist." This participant has returned to school to do just that.

We Media, my delicious links

2008-02-27T15:36:00.000-05:00

http://del.icio.us/james.nathaniel/wemedia08

We Media, part three

2008-02-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in the National Burger King Franchisees room at the University of Miami Business School, where the We Media Nonprofit Journalism panel is getting started, facilitated by John Bracken.

3 types of nonprofits that do journalism:

1) Groups that do journalism per se (NPR, CPI).
2) Advocacy organizations (Human Rights Watch, World Votes, Brave New Films)
3) Citizen, participatory media

Ellen from the Sunlight Foundation's opening remarks: "It's remarkable, both the diversity and the success of what's happening."

Sunlight projects:

Minnpost.com is a site for laid off journalists.

Someone asked about the how the Wikileaks situation affects her work. Ellen says that she has human curators vetting the material before it is published.

John Sawyer, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is talking about Pulitzer's response to media consolidation and the shrinkage in the professional journalists pool, as well as the decline of readership.

We Media, part two

2008-02-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

I'll be live blogging the next session here.

We Media, part one

2008-02-27T10:21:00.000-05:00

I'm at a conference, cheerfully named We Media. The attendees are largely coming from the journalism industry, both the incumbent side and new entrants. I'm here on a fellowship that I got after writing this (from my application essay):

As a representative of 25 organizations and, more generally, a popular movement dedicated to insuring that our media future liberates us and further democratizes society, I can help to connect We Media technology innovators to the issues, ideas, and people that are shaping the future in which their visions will develop. It's clear that We Media is about making the world a better place through communication technology; the many innovators listed on the schedule are a testament to that value. However, the impact of communications technologies on the the world is often decided in the policy domain, and I don't see many technology and communications policy actors represented thus far in the conference programming. The results of current debates over radio spectrum management for wireless networking, network neutrality, broadband deployment and digital inclusion will direct, expand, and limit the capacity of new technologies to bring positive change. Technology innovators have a stake in these debates, and I hope I can offer my knowledge and experience in the policy domain in exchange for the education that We Media would offer to me.

So, far there has been a lot of enthusiastic talk about how new communication technologies and models (pro-am, for instance) can make the world a better place. I'll be doing some official live-blogging for them later, amounting to minute taking, so I wanted to do some personal blogging as well.

I'm excited about a number of the people who are here. Right now, in their first session, we are listening to reps from OneVoice and the Hip Hop Caucaus. It's a strange mix, though, as they are sitting with the executive editor of the Washington Post, who, if I heard correctly, admitted that positive social change is not a primary goal of the Post.

Also on the panel is Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active, a group encouraging the use of mobile technologies for social mobilization. "It's a tool for organizing and mobilization." Ihope to ask her about the NARAL-Verizon case.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. of the Hip Hop Caucus, who has registered over 1 million people to vote, is given the last opportunity to speak. He is asked "How do you motivate people through media to take action on ideas?" "Media is really life and death...it has the ability to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent... when you are oppressed...then you have to create a mechanism to tell the story... The revolution may not be televised, but it will be uploaded. If the media does not make the injustice visible, then people can actually die." "When I was on Capitol Hill, I was beaten." It took the independent media to push the mainstream media to cover the story. In their Katrina work, "We have been using mix tapes, CDs." Placing messages in between the music tracks. I'm pretty sure the suit types sitting next to me don't like the Reverend's comments.

2008 on the Web

2007-04-21T17:28:00.000-04:00

The Center for American Progress is doing a great job tracking the 2008 presidential eCampaigns. Check out this page. One the most helpful pieces is the profiling of each major party candidate's online presence, including a link to each campaign's official profile on third party web communities such as Facebook and Myspace. This is especially important, because the open design of many of these sites allows for an explosion of profiles that are not managed by the campaign, which could easily lead to confusion or worse as the election cycle progresses.

Their page includes an index that shows the extent of each candidate's online presence, so readers can see how extensively a candidate is using third party resources. The index is sortable by category. If you sort by party, one pattern is clear: Democrats are engaging the social Web, and Republicans really aren't, beyond managing their own official Web site.

As far as I can see, this discrepancy leads to three possible conclusions. First and easiest is the possibility that Rightwingers are somehow hopelessly out of touch. Second, one can assume that there has been at least some investment from the right wing power structure in analyzing political opportunities on the Web, and some group of consultants have convinced the leadership that the Web belongs to the Left, that their base may use the Web for information gathering, but not to collaborate and organize, as is becoming common of the Left.

The third conclusion is a little more alarming. Is it possible that after considerable research and analysis, the consultocracy of the right has quietly determined that the Net will not pay a major role in determining the outcome of the 2008 election, despite the buzz that the Web will have an important impact? If this is the case, the leadership will continue to direct their capital towards the traditional brew of TV (and probably Web) ads, direct mail, phone banking and door-to-door canvassing. If this is the case, should organizers on the Left pause in their enthusiasm to rethink their own investments in the Web and social media, at least briefly?

All of this is speculative and sets aside important considerations, such as the lack of a powerhouse candidate for the GOP. I'll keep thinking about it, and if anyone is reading and has any perspective or resource that may help to answer these questions, please chime in.

theyrule.net

2007-03-14T16:44:00.000-04:00

You must see theyrule.net! It is a site that allows you to see how the directors of the top companies and US institutions relate to each through their membership in the boards that, well, rule a lot of what happens in this country. It's an interactive social network analysis tool that's easy and fun to use.

This is a powerful tool for activists and policy researchers , analysts and advocates, not to mention stockholders and citizens. That means you! Go check it out!

a critical mass of easily influenced people

2007-02-21T03:59:00.000-05:00

In an update on his recent research on simulated influence networks, Duncan Watts challenges a model of influence popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point which tells us that the rapid, cascading social changes (fads, crime epidemics, etc.) are largely initiated by a small number of highly influential folks with attributes that make them exceptional social connectors, persuaders, and knowledge brokers. Watts and his partner Peter Dodds ran thousands of simulations of behavioral change across networks of agents, testing a range of variables related to influence. They found that, in most cases, "global cascades" of behavioral change did not rely on the characteristics of the small number of influentials populating their models, but rather on "the availability and connectedness of easily influenced people."
In other words the propagation of influence depends more on the structure of relationships between "ordinary folks" than on the special characteristics of an expert or charismatic few.
One the one hand, this is encouraging. "If the network permits global cascades because it has the right concentration and configuration of adopters, virtually anyone can start one." Apparently, there's hope for the little guy after all, as long as there are a great enough number of other little guys nearby, paying enough attention.
On the other hand, Watts' article dismisses the kind of influence that celebrities like Oprah Winfrey wield as an "exception..a function of media, not interpersonal influence." Sure, new media, Web 2.0, etc. are initiating enormous changes in the cultural environment, but they enter an established environment structured on broadcasting principles that amplify the power of a small number of voices, and these voices are as constant a presence in many people's daily lives as those of their neighbors, family, and friends. New media is amazing, but most people still get their news from TV.
The final question is: what is a potential influencer supposed to do with Watts' insight? If your thing is selling soda or electing politicians, it so much easier to invent an inventory of attributes that define an "influential" and then reach out to folks with those attributes. But if what you really need is a "critical mass of easily influenced people" where do you get some and what do you do with them? At the close of the article, Watts briskly invokes "Web-based social networking tools" (read: Web 2.0), but the phrase "critical mass of easily influenced people" makes me think of television, not YouTube or MySpace.

when Web 2.0 doesn't (net)work

2007-02-21T01:56:00.000-05:00

When software and services move from the desktop to the browser (network as platform), what happens when the network disconnects?

Consider: I am sitting here trying to surf, research, and interact with del.icio.us, on which I have come to rely heavily in a very short time frame. I click to tag a page. I receive:

"del.icio.us
Temporarily Down for Maintenance

We are performing scheduled maintenance. We should be back online shortly."

There is no IT or support desk to call, no fix or hack to look up on Google. I simply have to wait.

Reflection: Well, I'm glad the maintenance was on somebody's schedule, because it wasn't on mine. What happens when essential processes migrate to the network-as-platform?

del.icio.us has come back online, but I am still waiting for an answer to the bigger questions.