Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle

Amazon unpacked - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html

amazon political economy of the internet political economy of communication labour conditions

shared by Jernej Prodnik on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached

February 8, 2013 12:30 pm Amazon unpacked By Sarah O’Connor The online giant is creating thousands of UK jobs, so why are some employees less than happy?
...

Cancel
Between a sooty power station and a brown canal on the edge of a small English town, there is a building that seems as if it should be somewhere else. An enormous long blue box, it looks like a smear of summer sky on the damp industrial landscape. Inside, hundreds of people in orange vests are pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle – the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time. They might each walk between seven and 15 miles today. It is almost Christmas and the people working in this building, together with those in seven others like it across the country, are dispatching a truck filled with parcels every three minutes or so. Before they can go home at the end of their eight-hour shift, or go to the canteen for their 30-minute break, they must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything. They also walk past a life-sized cardboard image of a cheery blonde woman in an orange vest. “This is the best job I have ever had!” says a speech bubble near her head.
...

Cancel
If you could slice the world in half right here, you could read the history of this town called Rugeley in the layers. Below the ground are the shafts and tunnels of the coal mine that fed the power station and was once the local economy’s beating heart. Above the ground are the trolleys and computers of Amazon, the global online retailer that has taken its place. As online shopping explodes in Britain, helping to push traditional retailers such as HMV out of business, more and more jobs are moving from high-street shops into warehouses like this one. Under pressure from politicians and the public over its tax arrangements, Amazon has tried to stress how many jobs it is creating across the country at a time of economic malaise. The undisputed behemoth of the online retail world has invested more than £1bn in its UK operations and announced last year that it would open another three warehouses over the next two years and create 2,000 more permanent jobs. Amazon even had a quote from David Cameron, the prime minister, in its September press release. “This is great news, not only for those individuals who will find work, but for the UK economy,” he said.
...

Cancel
...10 more annotations...
Workers in Amazon’s warehouses – or “associates in Amazon’s fulfilment centres” as the company would put it – are divided into four main groups. There are the people on the “receive lines” and the “pack lines”: they either unpack, check and scan every product arriving from around the world, or they pack up customers’ orders at the other end of the process. Another group stows away suppliers’ products somewhere in the warehouse. They put things wherever there’s a free space – in Rugeley, there are inflatable palm trees next to milk frothers and protein powder next to kettles. Only Amazon’s vast computer brain knows where everything is, because the workers use their handheld computers to scan both the item they are stowing away and a barcode on the spot on the shelf where they put it. The last group, the “pickers”, push trolleys around and pick out customers’ orders from the aisles. Amazon’s software calculates the most efficient walking route to collect all the items to fill a trolley, and then simply directs the worker from one shelf space to the next via instructions on the screen of the handheld satnav device. Even with these efficient routes, there’s a lot of walking. One of the new Rugeley “pickers” lost almost half a stone in his first three shifts. “You’re sort of like a robot, but in human form,” said the Amazon manager. “It’s human automation, if you like.” Amazon recently bought a robot company, but says it still expects to keep plenty of humans around because they are so much better at coping with the vast array of differently shaped products the company sells.
...

Cancel
The unassuming efficiency of these warehouses is what enables Amazon to put parcels on customers’ doorsteps so quickly, even when it is receiving 35 orders a second. Every warehouse has its own “continuous improvement manager” who uses “kaizen” techniques pioneered by Japanese car company Toyota to improve productivity. Marc Onetto, the senior vice-president of worldwide operations, told a business school class at the University of Virginia a few years ago: “We use a bunch of Japanese guys, they are not consultants, they are insultants, they are really not nice … They’re samurais, the real last samurais, the guys from the Toyota plants.” In Rugeley, the person with the kaizen job is a friendly, bald man called Matt Pedersen, who has a “black belt” in “Six Sigma”, the Motorola-developed method of operational improvement, most famously embraced by Jack Welch at General Electric. Every day, the managers in Rugeley take a “genba walk”, which roughly means “go to the place” in Japanese, Pedersen says as he accompanies the FT on a tour of the warehouse. “We go to the associates and find out what’s stopping them from performing today, how we can make their day better.” Some people also patrol the warehouse pushing tall little desks on wheels with laptops on them – they are “mobile problem solvers” looking for any hitches that could be slowing down the operation.
...

Cancel
. . . What did the people of Rugeley make of all this? For many, it has been a culture shock. “The feedback we’re getting is it’s like being in a slave camp,” said Brian Garner, the dapper chairman of the Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club, still a popular drinking spot. One of the first complaints to spread through the town was that employees were getting blisters from the safety boots some were given to wear, which workers said were either too cheap or the wrong sizes. One former shop-floor manager, who did not want to be named, said he always told new workers to smear their bare feet with Vaseline. “Then put your socks on and your boots on, because I know for a fact these boots are going to rub and cause blisters and sores.” ©Ben RobertsAmazon workers in Rugeley process ordersOthers found the pressure intense. Several former workers said the handheld computers, which look like clunky scientific calculators with handles and big screens, gave them a real-time indication of whether they were running behind or ahead of their target and by how much. Managers could also send text messages to these devices to tell workers to speed up, they said. “People were constantly warned about talking to one another by the management, who were keen to eliminate any form of time-wasting,” one former worker added.
...

Cancel
Watson said Amazon was supposed to send the council employment data every six months, but it had not done so. “We had no idea Amazon were going to be as indifferent to these issues as they have been, it’s come as a shock to us how intransigent they are,” he said. Inside the warehouse, Amazon employees wear blue badges and the workers supplied by the agencies wear green badges. In the most basic roles they perform the same tasks as each other for the same pay of £6.20 an hour or so (the minimum adult wage is £6.19), but the Amazon workers also receive a pension and shares. A former agency worker said the prospect of winning a blue badge, “like a carrot, was dangled constantly in front of us by management in return for meeting shift targets”. Amazon’s Darwinian culture comes from the top. Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, told Forbes magazine last year (when it named him “number one CEO in America”): “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we’ll settle for intense.”
...

Cancel
Ransdtad said it supplied a number of clients with “onsite-flexible workforce solutions”. It added: “The number of workers required by these clients fluctuates in response to supply and demand. When demand for clients’ products or services is high (for example during the Christmas period) the Randstad partnership allows local people to benefit from short-term work on a temporary contract, to help supplement our clients’ permanent workforce and deliver against order requirements.” Certainly, not everyone in Rugeley is upset about Amazon. A group of workers having a pint on a picnic table outside The Colliers pub near the warehouse gates said they liked their jobs, albeit as their managers hovered nervously in the background. One young agency worker said he was earning about £220 a week, compared with the £54 he had been receiving in jobless benefits. He had bought a car and moved out of his mum’s house and into a rented flat with his girlfriend, who he had met at work. “I’m doing pretty well for myself,” he said with a shy grin. “There’s always opportunities to improve yourself there.” Across the table, an older man, wagging two fingers with a cigarette pinched between them, said slowly: “It gives you your pride back, that’s what it gives you. Your pride back.” Many in the town, however, have mixed feelings. They are grateful for the jobs Amazon has created but they are also sad and angry about the quality of them. Timothy Jones, a barrister and parish councillor, summed up the mood. “I very much want them to stay, but equally I would like some of the worst employment practices to end.”
...

Cancel
For Watson, the big question is whether these new jobs can support sustainable economic growth. In Rugeley, it is hard not to look back to the coal mine for an example of how one big employer could transform a place. . . . The Lea Hall Colliery opened officially on a soggy Tuesday in July 1960. Miners and their families huddled under marquees to eat their packed lunches and when the first coal was wound to the surface, three bands played an overture specially written for the occasion. It was the first mine planned and sunk by the Coal Board, the body set up after the second world war to run Britain’s newly nationalised coal industry, and the Central Electricity Generating Board was building a coal-fired power station right next door. It was a defiant demonstration of confidence in coal at a time of increasing competition from oil. “King Coal is not yet dead, as many would have it, but is going to be with us for many years to come,” the regional secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers told the crowd.
...

Cancel
Soon, miners from all over the country were swarming to the modern new mine. The Coal Board and the local council built housing estates and schools to cope with the exploding population. “Peartree estate was built for the Geordies, the Springfield estate was built for the Scots and the Welsh,” remembered Brian Garner, who helped to build the mine when he was 16. “It was unbelievable, it was buzzing in the town, there was that much money about then. I could leave my job at 10 o’clock in the morning and start at five past 10 on another.” On Friday and Saturday nights, the queue outside the Lea Hall Miners’ Welfare Centre and Social Club would wrap right around the building. Rugeley’s mine was soon the most productive in the country. It was a “young man’s pit” with all the latest machines and techniques, says Ken Edwards, who started there at 25 as an electrician. The work was still dirty and dangerous, though. In 1972, a local reporter took a tour. “All is silent except for the movement of conveyor belts which carry the coal and the murmur of the air pumps. The blackness is relieved only by narrow shafts of light coming from each person’s headlamp,” she wrote. It took her two days to remove the black dust from her nails, ears, nose and hair.
...

Cancel
The good times didn’t last. By the time the pit closed, four days before Christmas in 1990, a spokesman for British Coal told Reuters it was losing £300,000 a week. More than 800 people lost jobs that paid the equivalent of between £380 and £900 a week in today’s money. The town council’s chairman tried desperately to say something reassuring. “It has come as such a shock,” he told the local paper. “[But] we have got to do what many have done and look for new areas, particularly information technology and high technology. We have a lot of expertise and a wonderful geographical spot. There’s no reason why it should be the end for Rugeley.” From behind her desk in Vision estate agents, all purple paint and fairy lights, Dawn Goodwin sucks the air in through her teeth at the mention of Amazon. “We all thought it was going to be the making of the town,” she says. She expected an influx of people, including well-to-do managers, looking to buy or rent houses. But she hasn’t had any extra business at all. People are cautious because they don’t know how long their agency jobs with Amazon will last, she says. One of her tenants, a single young woman, got a job there but lost it again after she became ill halfway through a shift. She struggled to pay her rent for three months while she waited for her jobseeker’s benefits to be reinstated. “It’s leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouths,” Goodwin says with a frown. Even the little “Unit 9” café next to the Amazon warehouse hasn’t had a boost in trade. The women who run it reckon the employees don’t have enough time in their 30-minute break to get through security, come and eat something, and then go back in again.
...

Cancel
In a cramped upstairs office at the Citizens Advice Bureau, Gillian Astbury and Angela Jones have turned to statistics to try to identify Amazon’s effect on the area. They haven’t had an increase in the number of people asking about employment problems or unfair dismissal, but nor has there been any improvement in the community’s problems with debt and homelessness. Their best guess is that people haven’t had enough sustained work to make much of a difference. Astbury says employment agencies are a “necessary evil”, but stresses it is hardly ideal for people to be bouncing in and out of temporary work, particularly when a job ends abruptly and they are left with no income at all until their benefits are reinstated. Workers leaving Amazon have had a particular problem with this, prompting the parish council to submit a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Work and Pensions to find out exactly how long local people are being made to wait for their social security payments to come through.
...

Cancel
Far from the CAB’s little office in Rugeley, Britain’s economists are also puzzling over why the economy remains moribund even though more and more people are in work. There are still about half a million fewer people working as full-time employees than there were before the 2008 crash, but the number of people in some sort of employment has surpassed the previous peak. Economists think the rise in insecure temporary, self-employed and part-time work, while a testament to the British labour market’s flexibility, helps to explain why economic growth remains elusive. Angi Cooney, who runs C Residential, the biggest estate agent in Rugeley, thinks the nature of employment is changing permanently and people should stop pining for the past. It’s “bloody great” that a company like Amazon chose to come to “this little old place”, she says fiercely, looking as if she’d like to take the town by the shoulders and give it a shake. “People expect a job for life, but the world isn’t like that any more, is it?” Sarah O’Connor is the FT’s economics correspondent
...

Cancel

BBC News - Children 'must know web limits' says Wales commissioner - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...uk-wales-21333477

internet ipraktikum children bbc limits

shared by Rebeka Aščerič on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached

Adults must impose the necessary checks and balances to keep children safe online, says the children's commissioner for Wales.
...

Cancel
"All children and young people don't seem much of a distinction between their online and offline lives,"
...

Cancel
Mr Towler told BBC Radio Wales. "It's all just one thing and they get really excited by the opportunities the internet affords and sometimes parents get a little scared about that and worried about what their children are accessing." 'Crossing the road' Continue reading the main story “Start Quote They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones ” End Quote Keith Towler Children's commissioner Mr Towler said he talks to children in lots of different settings and they "still enjoy playing outside as much as they ever did". He said we need to recognise that the internet provides fantastic opportunities for education and learning and its making sure that children access that safely. He said that was a real challenge for parents and carers. "It's a bit like crossing the road, you try to teach your children the best way of crossing the road well. We need to teach our children the best way of using this fantastic resource. "I think too many parents are very very scared of the internet and because they're so scared they will say 'Oh I don't understand it'". Handheld computers The commissioner also praised Hwb, the virtual learning environment, which he said provides protection for children using the web in schools. Mr Towler said: "We've got to get parents and carers to recognise that children do operate in the digital world. They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones. "They can access whatever they want whenever they want and parents need to engage on that. " "We need to remember that children and young people are much more savvy than sometimes we think they are, and they are much more responsible than sometimes adults think they are so its not all doom and gloom. "What we need to do is put the right checks and balances in place and what children always want from parents and carers is to understand what the boundaries are, and that's our job to do that." Sangeet Bhullar, executive director of Wise Kids, added that the digital landscape was "evolving rapidly" and up-to-date data was needed on how children and young people in Wales related to it. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Web safety lessons urged for infants 05 FEBRUARY 2013, EDUCATION & FAMILY Online chat 'should be monitored' 22 JANUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Body to promote digital teaching 22 JUNE 2012, WALES $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Children's Commissioner for Wales The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this pageShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Wales stories RSS Army base shuts in defence shake-up An Army base in Pembrokeshire is to close with 600 troops transferred to St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. Soldiers' conman jailed three years Wales recall Warburton and Jones <!--
...

Cancel
...2 more annotations...
"I think too many parents are very very scared of the internet and because they're so scared they will say 'Oh I don't understand it'".
...

Cancel
"What we need to do is put the right checks and balances in place and what children always want from parents and carers is to understand what the boundaries are, and that's our job to do that."
...

Cancel

Technology and productivity: The hollow promise of the iEconomy | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...technology-and-productivity

tech ieconomy

shared by donnamariee on 02 Mar 13 - No Cached

Apple is the most creative, innovative and envied technology company of our time,
...

Cancel
spring of 2000,
...

Cancel
Cisco and its ilk as the internet transformed the economy.
...

Cancel
...7 more annotations...
If fact there is little sign in the data that machines are displacing humans any faster than usual
...

Cancel
Perhaps because of uncertainty, though that’s a poor explanation for a phenomenon occurring globally.
...

Cancel
How to put a price on the contribution of Facebook or Twitter to the Arab spring?
...

Cancel
IN THE battle between David Einhorn and Apple over the latter's $137 billion cash hoard lies a deeper lesson about the outlook for the economy. Mr Einhorn, an activist investor, says Apple clings to its money out of a “Depression mentality”. Perhaps. But the more mundane explanation is that Apple, like many of the world's big companies today, is generating more cash from its existing product line than it can usefully plough back into new projects.
...

Cancel
Today, we all know Apple’s products, and a lot of us own one. Yet it is hard to identify the impact they or any of today's social-media giants have had on productivity. I was at first delighted with the convenience and freedom to read documents, check Twitter and search the web on the iPad mini I got in December, but it occurred to me recently that this was at best an incremental improvement over doing it on my BlackBerry or laptop. It also provides me with many more ways to waste time. As Tom Toles, the Washington Post’s cartoonist, puts it:
...

Cancel
No doubt some of those YouTube videos were being watched over Apple products. Not that I blame Apple for Penney’s culture (after all, Google owns YouTube), but it is a reminder that the social-media revolution has been a mixed blessing. Yahoo at one time stood atop the Internet but the ability of its workers to do their job from anywhere may be backfiring on productivity
...

Cancel
are genuine benefits of social media and the related hardware. In its first few decades the computer/internet revolution re-engineered business processes, enabling companies to interact with each other and customers in more ways at lower cost than ever, producing measurable, bankable results. Now, it’s leading to brand-new consumer products, many of whose  benefits are unmeasured or unmeasurable.
...

Cancel

Apple and Samsung smartphone patent row set for new jury trial | Technology | guardian.... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...artphone-patent-new-jury-trial

apple samsung smartphone patent jurytrial

shared by Gabrijela Vrbnjak on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached

battle between Apple and Samsung over smartphone patents
...

Cancel
Samsung used to be Apple's biggest supplier for phone parts, and Apple its largest customer. But in 2010, Steve Jobs, then Apple's chief, vowed to go to "thermonuclear war" over what he saw as copying of iPhone features by Android phones.
...

Cancel
the jury decided that some Samsung products had copied the appearance of Apple's iPhone 3GS
...

Cancel
...4 more annotations...
is not quite over yet.
...

Cancel
Samsung meanwhile became the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, and the second most profitable behind Apple. Together, the two companies produce around half of all the smartphones shipped worldwide.
...

Cancel
Samsung has mounted a series of complaints against the jury decision
...

Cancel
Apple meanwhile is seeking to have the damages increased.
...

Cancel

Internet Marriages on Rise in Some Immigrant Communities - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ome-immigrant-communities.html

internet marriages immigrant nytimes

shared by Meta Arcon on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached

With a red embroidered veil draped over her dark hair, Punam Chowdhury held her breath last month as her fiancé said the words that would make them husband and wife. After she echoed them, they were married.
...

Cancel
Normally one of the most intimate moments two people can share, the marriage had taken place from opposite ends of the globe over the video chat program Skype
...

Cancel
These are called proxy marriages, a legal arrangement that allows a couple to wed even in the absence of one or both spouses.
...

Cancel
...2 more annotations...
Such convenience has also raised concerns that it will facilitate marriage fraud — already a challenge for immigration authorities — as well as make it easier to ensnare vulnerable women in trafficking networks.
...

Cancel
All people applying for American citizenship through marriage must first be interviewed by officials from the Homeland Security or State Department who are charged with rooting out fraud. Officials said that if the spouses were to explain they had been married thousands of miles apart over the Internet, it would quite likely raise a red flag.
...

Cancel

SXSW 2011: The internet is over | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...sxsw-2011-internet-online

sxsw future guardian trends internet over

shared by Blaž Gobec on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached

After three days he found it: the boundary between 'real life' and 'online' has disappeared
...

Cancel
If my grandchildren ever ask me where I was when I realised the internet was over – they won't, of course, because they'll be too busy playing with the teleportation console
...

Cancel
If Web 2.0 was the moment when the collaborative promise of the internet seemed finally to be realised – with ordinary users creating instead of just consuming, on sites from Flickr to Facebook to Wikipedia – Web 3.0 is the moment they forget they're doing it. When the GPS system in your phone or iPad can relay your location to any site or device you like
...

Cancel
...9 more annotations...
when Facebook uses facial recognition on photographs posted there, when your financial transactions are tracked, and when the location of your car can influence a constantly changing, sensor-driven congestion-charging scheme, all in real time, something has qualitatively changed. You're still creating the web, but without the conscious need to do so. "Our phones and cameras are being turned into eyes and ears for applications,"
...

Cancel
Videogame designers, the logic goes, have become the modern world's leading experts on how to keep users excited, engaged and committed: the success of the games industry proves that, whatever your personal opinion of Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft.
...

Cancel
Three billion person-hours a week are spent gaming. Couldn't some of that energy be productively harnessed?
...

Cancel
His take on the education system, for example, is that it is a badly designed game: students compete for good grades, but lose motivation when they fail.
...

Cancel
A good game, by contrast, never makes you feel like you've failed: you just progress more slowly. Instead of giving bad students an F, why not start all pupils with zero points and have them strive for the high score?
...

Cancel
"is an interactive technology inspired by snakes."
...

Cancel
the internet is distracting if it stops you from doing what you really want to be doing; if it doesn't, it isn't. Similarly, warnings about "internet addiction" used to sound like grandparental cautions against the evils of rock music; scoffing at the very notion was a point of pride for those who identified themselves with the future. But you can develop a problematic addiction to anything: there's no reason to exclude the internet,
...

Cancel
we come to treat ourselves, in subtle ways, like computers. We drive ourselves to cope with ever-increasing workloads by working longer hours, sucking down coffee and spurning recuperation. But "we were not meant to operate as computers do," Schwartz says. "We are meant to pulse." When it comes to managin
...

Cancel
g our own energy, he insists, we must replace a linear perspective with a cyclical one: "We live by the myth that the best way to get more work done is to work longer hours."
...

Cancel

Online privacy: Difference Engine: Nobbling the internet | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...online-privacy

privacy networking internet social social networking

shared by Anja Pirc on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached

TWO measures affecting the privacy internet users can expect in years ahead are currently under discussion on opposite sides of the globe. The first hails from a Senate committee’s determination to make America’s online privacy laws even more robust. The second concerns efforts by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, to rewrite its treaty for regulating telecommunications around the world, which dates from 1988, so as to bring the internet into its fief.
...

Cancel
The congressional measure, approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 29th, would require criminal investigators to obtain a search warrant from a judge before being able to coerce internet service providers (ISPs) to hand over a person’s e-mail. The measure would also extend this protection to the rest of a person’s online content, including videos, photographs and documents stored in the "cloud"—ie, on servers operated by ISPs, social-network sites and other online provider
...

Cancel
a warrant is needed only for unread e-mail less than six months old. If it has already been opened, or is more than six months old, all that law-enforcement officials need is a subpoena. In America, a subpoena does not need court approval and can be issued by a prosecutor. Similarly, a subpoena is sufficient to force ISPs to hand over their routing data, which can then be used to identify a sender’s various e-mails and to whom they were sent. That is how the FBI stumbled on a sex scandal involving David Petraeus, the now-ex director of the CIA, and his biographer.
...

Cancel
...7 more annotations...
No-one imagined that ISPs would one day offer gigabytes of online storage free—as Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail and other e-mail providers do today. The assumption back then was that if someone had not bothered to download and delete online messages within six months, such messages could reasonably be considered to be abandoned—and therefore not in need of strict protection.
...

Cancel
wholesale access to the internet, powerful mobile phones and ubiquitous social networking have dramatically increased the amount of private data kept online. In the process, traditional thinking about online security has been rendered obsolete. For instance, more and more people nowadays keep their e-mail messages on third-party servers elsewhere, rather than on their own hard-drives or mobile phones. Many put their personal details, contacts, photographs, locations, likes, dislikes and inner thoughts on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox and a host of other destinations. Bringing online privacy requirements into an age of cloud computing is only fit and proper, and long overdue.
...

Cancel
the international telecoms treaty that emerged focused on how telephone traffic flows across borders, the rules governing the quality of service and the means operators could adopt to bill one another for facilitating international calls. As such, the regulations applied strictly to telecoms providers, the majority of which were state owned.
...

Cancel
he goal of certain factions is to grant governments the authority to charge content providers like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter for allowing their data to flow over national borders. If enacted, such proposals would most certainly deter investment in network infrastructure, raise costs for consumers, and hinder online access for precisely those people the ITU claims it wants to help.
...

Cancel
a proposal sponsored by the United States and Canada to restrict the debate in Dubai strictly t
...

Cancel
o conventional telecoms has met with a modicum of success, despite stiff opposition from Russia plus some African and Middle-Eastern countries. Behind closed doors, the conference has agreed not to alter the ITU’s current definition of “telecommunications” and to leave the introductory text concerning the existing treaty’s scope intact.
...

Cancel
The sticking point has been what kind of organisations the treaty should apply to. Here, one word can make a huge difference. In ITU jargon, the current treaty relates only to “recognised operating agencies”—in other words, conventional telecoms operators. The ITU wants to change that to simply “operating agencies”. Were that to happen, not only would Google, Facebook and other website operators fall under the ITU’s jurisdiction, but so too would all government and business networks. It seems the stakes really are as high as the ITU’s critics have long maintained
...

Cancel

Under the regime of precarity: bring your own device | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...recarity-bring-your-own-device

mobile internet PC neoliberal economic policy precarity monopoly

shared by nensic on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached

At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time.
...

Cancel
At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time. This explains the fierce struggle going on among key market players.
...

Cancel
Today large communities use devices like smartphones, tablets, e-readers and ultrabooks to navigate this new ecosystem.
...

Cancel
...26 more annotations...
The growing dynamic of mobile internet, today accounting for 12% of all internet traffic,[ii] signals a new ecosystem where living bodies, machines, networks, code, data, territory and time interact.
...

Cancel
as a way of consolidating their strictly neoliberal economic policy.
...

Cancel
The hundreds of thousands of apps, available in just a few years, originate from the intersection of two factors:
...

Cancel
The desire and necessity to have simple, functional and fast devices able to do specific tasks on the go.
...

Cancel
the operative skills to develop apps for popular mobile platforms such as Iphone Operating System (IOS) or Google Android. 
...

Cancel
Apps galore
...

Cancel
Apple likes to play on the ambiguity in a form of propaganda that exalts the “revolutionary” spirit of technological innovation
...

Cancel
The first iPhone, in 2007, inaugurated the new phase of the cognitive era, just as the PC heralded the decline of the industrial phase. Five years later, Apple no longer has a monopoly: hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets are sold every year and the total number of these active devices will be soon 2 billion. It took the PC thirty years to reach this level of diffusion.
...

Cancel
War over the immaterial
...

Cancel
Often these machines play opposite functions: as a tool to create new forms of horizontal communication and social interaction or as bait for a capillary exploitation.
...

Cancel
A political analysis of mobile devices
...

Cancel
The PC became a liberating tool for social cooperation in the workplace of a booming third-sector.
...

Cancel
In the following phase, the spread of the first mobile devices – cellphones and laptops – provided an initial impulse for a blurring of life and work, imposing with mobile calls, emails or SMS a new type of real-time processing, regulating the rhythms of life
...

Cancel
In the new biohypermedia environment, the key change lies in the combination of miniaturizing and mobilizing these pieces of equipment, allowing them to always be within the body’s reach in any context.
...

Cancel
they augment physical reality[ix] with every kind of information – commercial, cultural, ecological – and act more and more as biomedical sets for the control, correction and support of our vital biological functions.
...

Cancel
The PC has a central function as the medium for linguistic and written processes - its typical uses often tied to the logical concatenation of thought and the priority management of sequences over time.
...

Cancel
But mobile devices concentrate complex perception of stimuli in terms of spatial organization and intervene in emotional responses. PC work in this way occupies our left hemisphere, while the continual interactions of a smartphone engage the right hemisphere.
...

Cancel
In contemporary neoliberalism, these devices become an essential means of rent and profit, through a fine capture of what we generate by living with them and using them. At one and the same time technocracy and financial oligarchies find here an ideal medium to extend their influence and their control of individuals in space and time.
...

Cancel
Marketing and communication campaigns portray these devices as commodity fetishes, characterizing a new phase of capitalism often described as cognitive because based on knowledge.
...

Cancel
In the sphere of multinational ICT[x] Corporations a war is being waged over the design and deployment of immaterial enclosures
...

Cancel
Even though all this is based on freeware and open source, they trick us into believing that the iPhone 5, Windows 8 or Jellybean[xi] are miracles that descend from Mount Olympus and for which we should be grateful as to the gods.
...

Cancel
Unlike automobiles or, to a lesser degree, PCs, the use value of new mobile devices is no longer determined merely by the initial design but can be moulded by the final user.
...

Cancel
The innumerable websites, blogs and forums in every language globally blooming and growing are a workshop for worldwide exchange where the digital means are developed that could be used to withdraw workers both from precarity and  from total submission to a life of labour.  
...

Cancel
Microsoft is no less defensive of its monopoly: with Intel and other accomplices, they introduced a new firmware to boot Windows 8 PCs that, substituting the old BIOS,[xv] makes it impossible or very complicated to install Linux or other operating systems on new laptops.
...

Cancel
Despite hesitations related to “security” problems, today companies allow or even oblige people to use their own devices
...

Cancel
So, if you were one of those many who found the latest tablet, smartphone or hybrid touch device under the tree this year, be aware that you won’t be the only one pleased: under the regime of precarity, bring your own device if you want to survive. 
...

Cancel

nensic on 05 Mar 13

"Bring your own device (BYOD) is a business policy whereby employees bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access privileged company resources such as email, file servers and databases as well as their personal applications and data."

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"Bring your own device (BYOD) is a business policy whereby employees bring personally owned mobile devices to their place of work and use them to access privileged company resources such as email, file servers and databases as well as their personal applications and data."</div>

...

Cancel

Clashes over Internet regulation during UN talks - World Politics - World - The Indepen... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...n-during-un-talks-8375841.html

internet regulation

shared by Janja Petek on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached

The head of the UN's telecommunication overseers sought Monday to quell worries about possible moves toward greater Internet controls during global talks in Dubai, but any attempts for increased Web regulations are likely to face stiff opposition from groups led by a major US delegation.
...

Cancel
he 11-day conference — seeking to update codes last reviewed when the Web was virtually unknown
...

Cancel
highlights the fundamental shift from tightly managed telecommunications networks to the borderless sweep of the Internet. 
...

Cancel
...6 more annotations...
xpanding the Internet into developing nations.
...

Cancel
Many countries will come to reaffirm their desire to see freedom of expression embedded in this conference,
...

Cancel
The gathering is also powerless to force nations to change their Internet policies, such as China's notorious "Great Firewall" and widespread blackouts of political opposition sites in places including Iran and the Gulf Arab states.
...

Cancel
That opens the door ... to content censorship
...

Cancel
t is clear that some governments have an interest in changing the rules and regulations of the Internet,"
...

Cancel
Over the decades, it has expanded to include telephone, satellite and other advances in communications.
...

Cancel

Warning over social networking 'snooping' technology - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...rking-snooping-technology.html

stalking controlling

shared by Neža Zidanič on 08 Mar 13 - No Cached

New stalking software capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behaviour using data from social networking websites has been developed, it emerged today.
...

Cancel
The sophisticated technology relies on websites such as Facebook and Twitter to build a detailed picture of people’s lives in a move that could raise concerns over breach of privacy and civil liberties.
...

Cancel
t was claimed that the technology could be transformed into a "Google for spies" and used by governments as a means of monitoring and controlling people online.
...

Cancel
...1 more annotation...
Users may be posting information that they believe will be viewed only by their friends, but instead, it is being viewed by government officials or pulled in by data collection services like the Riot search."
...

Cancel

BBC News - Clarity call for mobile and internet privacy - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...business-13522071

bbc news internet privacy

shared by alja polajžer on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached

Clarity call for mobile and internet privacy
...

Cancel
The Communications Consumer Panel said that people should have control over which information is shared.
...

Cancel
Data doubts
...

Cancel
...5 more annotations...
The panel, which was set up to advise communications regulator Ofcom about consumers' interests, wants more control for shoppers over their data.
...

Cancel
Consumers using their mobile phones can allow businesses to collect data about their location and the products and services they are interested in.
...

Cancel
the Information Commissioner raised concerns over people's awareness of data privacy.
...

Cancel
"It has never been more important to protect your personal information. Whether you are surfing the net, shopping online or signing up to social networking sites, it is crucial that people are thinking about how their information might be used," said Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner.
...

Cancel
From employers looking up potential employees on Facebook to cyber-criminals hacking into unsecured wi-fi networks, not protecting your personal information can cause serious harm and distress."
...

Cancel

Over 800,000 on waiting list for Mailbox iPhone app - News - Gadgets & Tech - The Indep... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ailbox-iphone-app-8518973.html

iPhone app email empty inbox

shared by nensic on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached

More than 800,000 people are waiting to access a new iPhone app that aims to transform their email experience by helping them achieve the elusive "inbox zero" -- a fully processed and empty inbox.
...

Cancel
The ability to "snooze" an email, which is to defer it to another time, whether later in the day, on the weekend, or until the following week, is one of the main features of the app.
...

Cancel
"We want to decide ‘do I need to reply now', ‘can I deal with this later', or ‘should I get it out of the way and never deal with it again?'"
...

Cancel
...2 more annotations...
The system outlines a rule of "do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it" to help people maintain empty inboxes.
...

Cancel
The app provides many new features over the native iPhone mail app, however it lacks the ability to multi-edit or multi-delete emails.
...

Cancel

North Korea's 3G network won't be censored for foreigners | The Verge - 1 views

www.theverge.com/...provides-uncensored-web-access

north korea 3G

shared by manca_ on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached

long maintained tight control over the flow of information within its borders
...

Cancel
foreigners
...

Cancel
unfettered mobile access to the web
...

Cancel
...7 more annotations...
thanks to new policies implemented by supreme leader Kim Jong Un
...

Cancel
that required foreigners to hand over their devices to authorities.
...

Cancel
country has finally begun opening its doors to the outside world,
...

Cancel
some 3G services, including text messaging, video calls, and subscriptions to state-run newspapers, but their mobile internet will remain tightly filtered, since North Koreans are still "governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules,"
...

Cancel
two parallel internets — one for foreigners, one for citizens
...

Cancel
visitors
...

Cancel
about $300 for the cheapest 2GB data package.
...

Cancel

Figuring out the future of online privacy - CNN.com - 1 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

future online privacy cnn

shared by Meta Arcon on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached

They may not be paying for the services directly, but customers still have a lot of power -- and companies know that they need to listen.
...

Cancel
"We can't just sit back and allow the industry to just continue to ignore a core component of the user experience online," said Alex Fowler, Mozilla's global privacy and public policy leader.
...

Cancel
The more devices that connect to the Internet, from smart cars to home thermostats, the more data there are about a person to collect.
...

Cancel
...6 more annotations...
Free versions come with ads, but for a price, people can upgrade to the ad-free experience.
...

Cancel
It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information
...

Cancel
Not everyone will want the same level of privacy,
...

Cancel
"Do not track" seems like a clear, smart option to give consumers
...

Cancel
Companies that provide free services, such as search engines or social networks, have to strike the right balance between respecting their customers' privacy concerns and serving advertisers.
...

Cancel
It's also possible that over the next five to 10 years, people's attitudes toward privacy and their data will change, and they'll be willing to share more personal information, attached to their real-world identity, in exchange for more heavily customized computing experiences.
...

Cancel

BBC News - US internet 'six strikes' anti-piracy campaign begins - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-21591696

internet bbc campaign anti-piracy

shared by sintija on 04 Mar 13 - No Cached

US internet 'six strikes' anti-piracy campaign begins
...

Cancel
Five of the country's leading internet service providers (ISPs) are taking part in the Copyright Alert System (CAS), which they say is designed to educate rather than punish users.
...

Cancel
"Over the course of the next several days... our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged peer-to-peer copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of copyright alerts to consumers,
...

Cancel
...4 more annotations...
Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will receive alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and direct them to legal alternatives. And for those consumers who believe they received alerts in error, an easy-to-use process will be in place for them to seek independent review of the alerts they received.
...

Cancel
Meanwhile the UK has favoured a proposed "three strikes" policy
...

Cancel
Under telecom regulator Ofcom's draft code, users who receive three warnings within 12 months would have anonymous information about their activities passed to copyright holders which could then seek court orders to discover their identities.
...

Cancel
The policy had been due to come into effect in March 2014, but has been delayed after a House of Lords committee queried whether the Digital Economy Act - which the code is part of - complied with Treasury rules.
...

Cancel

Fiber Optic Breakthrough to Improve Internet Security Cheaply - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...internet-security-cheaply.html

shared by nikasvajncer on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached

Scientists at Toshiba and Cambridge University have perfected a technique that offers a less expensive way to ensure the security of the high-speed fiber optic cables that are the backbone of the modern Internet.
...

Cancel
But they will also be valuable for protecting financial data and ultimately all information transmitted over the Internet.
...

Cancel
The approach is based on quantum physics, which offers the ability to exchange information in a way that the act of eavesdropping on the communication would be immediately apparent.
...

Cancel
...2 more annotations...
Modern optical data networking systems increase capacity by transmitting multiple data streams simultaneously in different colors of light. The Toshiba-Cambridge system sends the quantum information over the same fiber, but isolates it in its own frequency.
...

Cancel
“By measuring the error rate in the secret key, we can determine whether there has been any eavesdropping in the fiber and in that way directly test the secrecy of each key.”
...

Cancel

Google to be summoned over data grab 'excesses' | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...le-summoned-data-grab-excesses

shared by anonymous on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached

Google representatives are to be summoned to appear before European data protection officials over concerns about the way it collects data on web users.
...

Cancel
On Thursday, a coalition of 30 data protection officials, including Britain's information commissioner, demanded "significant progress" from Google before the summer
...

Cancel
The authorities are concerned about changes Google introduced to its privacy policies in March last year. The changes were made to "unify" how information is collected across approximately 60 products, including YouTube GoogleMail, Google has said.
...

Cancel

Does social media cause a more isolated society? - 0 views

digitaljournal.com/322982

shared by donnamariee on 17 Mar 13 - No Cached

Does social media cause a more isolated society?
...

Cancel
ocial networks “don't only change what we do, they change who we are.”
...

Cancel
As MIT professor and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle sees it, our s
...

Cancel
...9 more annotations...
our preoccupation all things virtual, over face to face communication
...

Cancel
“Connected, but alone?
...

Cancel
expect more from technology and less from each othe
...

Cancel
offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." In other words, she says, "We're getting used to a new way of being alone together
...

Cancel
ext and shop and go on Facebook during classes, during presentations, actually during all meetings
...

Cancel
in 1985, long before tweets and adding friends and social media dialect
...

Cancel
relationship with television was similar to how many relate to their Blackberry
...

Cancel
Just like the television was an expression of Eric's isolation and inability to relate emotionally, so too is the overuse or over reliance on social media in 21st century. The concept [Connected, but alone] isn't new, just the technology.
...

Cancel
With a society seeking and yearning for connection, we have an opportunity to take a risk emotionally and share ourselves with another soul willing to do the same, healing one another.
...

Cancel

donnamariee on 17 Mar 13

Essay theme article

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Essay theme article</div>

...

Cancel

Internet users unaware of illegal downloading | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...rs-unaware-illegal-downloading

internet users downloading technology

shared by metapavlin on 04 May 13 - No Cached

Nearly half of the internet users surveyed incorrectly said they thought it was legal to upload commercially produced media to a file-sharing website
...

Cancel
Internet users unaware of illegal downloading
...

Cancel
Internet users are unwittingly turning into online pirates over confusion about what constitutes illegal downloading.
...

Cancel
...2 more annotations...
As many as 44% of those who took part in an independent, online survey of 2,500 respondents in the survey commissioned by the law firm Wiggin incorrectly said they thought it was legal to upload commercially produced media to a file-sharing website, or did not know whether it was lawful or not.More than a third – 35% – inaccurately claimed it was legal to copy a film or TV show as a file from a friend, or admitted they didn't know if it was legal.
...

Cancel
However, almost two-thirds admitted they regularly use search engines such as Google to find unauthorised content. Over one in four used search engines on a daily basis to find such material.
...

Cancel

Why I'm quitting Facebook - CNN.com - 0 views