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Bradford Saron

Douglas Rushkoff - Blog - Steven Soderberg Describes His Own Present Shock - 0 views

  • “When there’s no linear time, how is a person supposed to figure out what’s going on? There’s no story, no narrative to explain why things are the way things are. Previously distinct causes and effects collapse into one another. There’s no time between doing something and seeing the result. Instead the results begin accumulating and influencing us before we’ve even completed an action. And there’s so much information coming in at once from so many different sources that there’s simply no way to trace the plot over time”.
Bradford Saron

Clay Shirky - 2 views

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    This is Clay Shirky's first blog post since April of last year. As the author of Here Comes Everyone and Cognitive Surplus (and a number of TED talks), he's one of the leading experts on the digital age and how its affecting society. Here, he looks at the death of the print industry. 
Bradford Saron

The Political Power of Social Media | Foreign Affairs - 0 views

  • The event marked the first time that social media had helped force out a national leader.
  • How does the ubiquity of social media affect U.S. interests, and how should U.S. policy respond to it?
  • social media have become coordinating tools for nearly all of the world's political movements, just as most of the world's authoritarian governments (and, alarmingly, an increasing number of democratic ones) are trying to limit access to it.
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  • New media conducive to fostering participation can indeed increase the freedoms Clinton outlined, just as the printing press, the postal service, the telegraph, and the telephone did before.
  • Despite this basic truth -- that communicative freedom is good for political freedom -- the instrumental mode of Internet statecraft is still problematic.
  • THE THEATER OF COLLAPSE
  • Opinions are first transmitted by the media, and then they get echoed by friends, family members, and colleagues. It is in this second, social step that political opinions are formed. This is the step in which the Internet in general, and social media in particular, can make a difference. As with the printing press, the Internet spreads not just media consumption but media production as well -- it allows people to privately and publicly articulate and debate a welter of conflicting views.
  • This condition of shared awareness -- which is increasingly evident in all modern states -- creates what is commonly called "the dictator's dilemma" but that might more accurately be described by the phrase coined by the media theorist Briggs: "the conservative dilemma," so named because it applies not only to autocrats but also to democratic governments and to religious and business leaders. The dilemma is created by new media that increase public access to speech or assembly; with the spread of such media, whether photocopiers or Web browsers, a state accustomed to having a monopoly on public speech finds itself called to account for anomalies between its view of events and the public's. The two responses to the conservative dilemma are censorship and propaganda. But neither of these is as effective a source of control as the enforced silence of the citizens. The state will censor critics or produce propaganda as it needs to, but both of those actions have higher costs than simply not having any critics to silence or reply to in the first place. But if a government were to shut down Internet access or ban cell phones, it would risk radicalizing otherwise pro-regime citizens or harming the economy.
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    The power of being digitally social, this is an example in the political arena. This is also what Clay Shirky is talking about in a Cognitive Surplus. This is the power of people collaborating and sharing without consideration of cost, distance, time, copyright, law, etc. Do we want to teach children how to ethically participate in this type of environment? Or, just let them go without any skills or discipline?
Bradford Saron

The State of the World: 10 Belated Reflections on 2011 Davos Don Tapscott : : Don Tapscott - 0 views

  • The new “wiki revolutions” are so explosive and happen so fast, that there is no clear vanguard to take power, leaving a vacuum. The vacuums that result pose significant challenges for everyone who cares about moving from oppression, dictatorship and fundamentalism to openness, democracy and 21st century governments.
  • he world is increasingly complex and interconnected, and, at the same time, experiencing an erosion of common values and principles. This undermines the public’s trust in leadership, which in turn threatens economic growth and political stability.  In the words of the WEF’s founder Klaus Schwab, we need to “concentrate on defining the new reality and discuss which shared norms are required for making global cooperation possible in this new age.”
  • There are traditional risks like nuclear war, terrorism, climate change, infectious diseases, economic crisis and failed states.  But new risks are emerging everywhere. Consider something as seemingly mundane as the global supply chain. The vast networks that provide the world with food, clothing, fuel and other necessities could handle an Iceland volcano and one other catastrophe like the failure of the Panama Canal. But according to experts, a third simultaneous disaster would collapse the system. People around the world would stop getting food and water, leading to unthinkable social unrest and even a disintegration of civilized society.
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  • we will only make growth sustainable “if we make our growth inclusive.”
  • They have been bathed in bits; computers, the internet, and interactive technologies are a fundamental part of the experience of youth. To them, technology is like the air. When young people today use digital devices, they are interacting, searching, authenticating, remembering, collaborating, composing their thoughts, and organizing information. They interact with the media and know how to inform themselves and use technology to get things done.
  • China’s disciplined command-and-control style work force could ultimately be trumped by a massive force of Indian professionals who are creative, collaborative, entrepreneurial and life- long learners.
  • The irresistible force to cut government spending is confronted with the immoveable object of essential services, entitlements, military spending and extraordinary expenditures stemming from corporate bailouts and fiscal stimulation. 
  • What’s needed is a Wikinomics approach — embracing more agile, networked structures enabled by global networks for new kinds of collaboration. Nation states would continue to play a central role but can overcome their silo thinking and behavior by sharing information more effectively, cooperating on real-time networks, and basing their decisions more deeply in the processes of multi-stakeholder networks.
  • Understandably social media, mobility and the relentless digital revolution continues to drive change and cause concern in everything from intellectual property to youth revolutions.
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    Tapscott on his continued (and insightful) reflections. 
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