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Weiye Loh

The internet: is it changing the way we think? | Technology | The Observer - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...rnet-brain-neuroscience-debate

Internet Polarisation

shared by Weiye Loh on 15 Aug 10 - Cached
  • American magazine the Atlantic lobs an intellectual grenade into our culture. In the summer of 1945, for example, it published an essay by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineer Vannevar Bush entitled "As We May Think". It turned out to be the blueprint for what eventually emerged as the world wide web. Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?".
  • Carr wrote, "I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going – so far as I can tell – but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I'm reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
  • Carr's target was not really the world's leading search engine, but the impact that ubiquitous, always-on networking is having on our cognitive processes. His argument was that our deepening dependence on networking technology is indeed changing not only the way we think, but also the structure of our brains.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Carr's article touched a nerve and has provoked a lively, ongoing debate on the net and in print (he has now expanded it into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains). This is partly because he's an engaging writer who has vividly articulated the unease that many adults feel about the way their modi operandi have changed in response to ubiquitous networking.
  • Who bothers to write down or memorise detailed information any more, for example, when they know that Google will always retrieve it if it's needed again? The web has become, in a way, a global prosthesis for our collective memory.
  • easy to dismiss Carr's concern as just the latest episode of the moral panic that always accompanies the arrival of a new communications technology. People fretted about printing, photography, the telephone and television in analogous ways. It even bothered Plato, who argued that the technology of writing would destroy the art of remembering.
  • many commentators who accept the thrust of his argument seem not only untroubled by its far-reaching implications but are positively enthusiastic about them. When the Pew Research Centre's Internet & American Life project asked its panel of more than 370 internet experts for their reaction, 81% of them agreed with the proposition that "people's use of the internet has enhanced human intelligence".
  • As a writer, thinker, researcher and teacher, what I can attest to is that the internet is changing our habits of thinking, which isn't the same thing as changing our brains. The brain is like any other muscle – if you don't stretch it, it gets both stiff and flabby. But if you exercise it regularly, and cross-train, your brain will be flexible, quick, strong and versatile.
  • he internet is analogous to a weight-training machine for the brain, as compared with the free weights provided by libraries and books. Each method has its advantage, but used properly one works you harder. Weight machines are directive and enabling: they encourage you to think you've worked hard without necessarily challenging yourself. The internet can be the same: it often tells us what we think we know, spreading misinformation and nonsense while it's at it. It can substitute surface for depth, imitation for originality, and its passion for recycling would surpass the most committed environmentalist.
  • I've seen students' thinking habits change dramatically: if information is not immediately available via a Google search, students are often stymied. But of course what a Google search provides is not the best, wisest or most accurate answer, but the most popular one.
  • But knowledge is not the same thing as information, and there is no question to my mind that the access to raw information provided by the internet is unparalleled and democratising. Admittance to elite private university libraries and archives is no longer required, as they increasingly digitise their archives. We've all read the jeremiads that the internet sounds the death knell of reading, but people read online constantly – we just call it surfing now. What they are reading is changing, often for the worse; but it is also true that the internet increasingly provides a treasure trove of rare books, documents and images, and as long as we have free access to it, then the internet can certainly be a force for education and wisdom, and not just for lies, damned lies, and false statistics.
  • In the end, the medium is not the message, and the internet is just a medium, a repository and an archive. Its greatest virtue is also its greatest weakness: it is unselective. This means that it is undiscriminating, in both senses of the word. It is indiscriminate in its principles of inclusion: anything at all can get into it. But it also – at least so far – doesn't discriminate against anyone with access to it. This is changing rapidly, of course, as corporations and governments seek to exert control over it. Knowledge may not be the same thing as power, but it is unquestionably a means to power. The question is, will we use the internet's power for good, or for evil? The jury is very much out. The internet itself is disinterested: but what we use it for is not.
  • Weiye Loh on 15 Aug 10
     
    The internet: is it changing the way we think? American writer Nicholas Carr's claim that the internet is not only shaping our lives but physically altering our brains has sparked a lively and ongoing debate, says John Naughton. Below, a selection of writers and experts offer their opinion
Weiye Loh

Measuring the Unmeasurable (Internet) and Why It Matters « Gurstein's Communi... - 0 views

gurstein.wordpress.com/...le-internet-and-why-it-matters

Internet Economics Accounting Statistics Measurement

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • it appears that there is a quite significant hole in the National Accounting (and thus the GDP statistics) around Internet related activities since most of this accounting is concerned with measuring the production and distribution of tangible products and the associated services. For the most part the available numbers don’t include many Internet (or “social capital” e.g. in health and education) related activities as they are linked to intangible outputs. The significance of not including social capital components in the GDP has been widely discussed elsewhere. The significance (and potential remediation) of the absence of much of the Internet related activities was the subject of the workshop.
  • there had been a series of critiques of GDP statistics from Civil Society (CS) over the last few years—each associated with a CS “movements—the Woman’s Movement and the absence of measurement of “women’s (and particularly domestic) work”; the Environmental Movement and the absence of the longer term and environmental costs of the production of the goods that the GDP so blithely counts as a measure of national economic well-being; and most recently with the Sustainability Movement, and the absence of measures reflective of the longer term negative effects/costs of resource depletion and environmental degradation. What I didn’t see anywhere apart from the background discussions to the OECD workshop itself were critiques reflecting issues related to the Internet or ICTs.
  • the implications of the limitations in the Internet accounting went beyond a simple technical glitch and had potentially quite profound implications from a national policy and particularly a CS and community based development perspective. The possible distortions in economic measurement arising from the absence of Internet associated numbers in the SNA (there may be some $750 BILLION a year in “value’ being generated by Internet based search alone!) lead to the very real possibility that macro-economic analysis and related policy making may be operating on the basis of inadequate and even fallacious assumptions.
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  • perhaps of greatest significance from the perspective of Civil Society and of communities is the overall absence of measurement and thus inclusion in the economic accounting of the value of the contributions provided to, through and on the Internet of various voluntary and not-for-profit initiatives and activities. Thus for example, the millions of hours of labour contributed to Wikipedia, or to the development of Free or Open Source software, or to providing support for public Internet access and training is not included as a net contribution or benefit to the economy (as measured through the GDP). Rather, this is measured as a negative effect since, as some would argue, those who are making this contribution could be using their time and talents in more “productive” (and “economically measurable”) activities. Thus for example, a region or country that chooses to go with free or open source software as the basis for its in-school computing is not only “not contributing to ‘economic well being’” it is “statistically” a “cost” to the economy since it is not allowing for expenditures on, for example, suites of Microsoft products.
  • there appears to have been no systematic attention paid to the relationship of the activities and growth of voluntary contributions to the Internet and the volume, range and depth of Internet activity, digital literacy and economic value being derived from the use of the Internet.
Weiye Loh

Why Are the Rich So Good at the Internet? | Fast Company - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...e-rich-so-good-at-the-internet

Internet Income Inequality Social Divide

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • It even suggests the existence of a tipping point, where Internet use takes off at a certain income level.
  • even among groups that own the necessary technology, less wealth equates to less (and less varied) Internet usage.
  • The report, an umbrella analysis of three Pew surveys conducted in 2009 and 2010, compares Internet use among American households in four different income brackets: less than $30,000 a year; $30,000-50,000; $50,000-75,000; and greater than $75,000. Respondents--more than 3,000 people participated--were asked a variety of questions about how often they used the Internet, and what sorts of services they took advantage of (such as email, online news, booking travel online, or health research).
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  • As might be expected, the wealthier used the Internet more.
  • Almost 90% of the wealthiest respondents reported broadband access at home. Of those in the under-$30,000 households, that figure was only 40%. "I would expect some type of correlation," says Jansen. "But we controlled for community type--urban, rural, suburban--educational attainment, race, ethnicity, gender, and age." None was nearly so strongly correlated as income.
  • Age did have some effect, and rural regions were a good deal less wired
  • Once a modestly middle-class family buys a computer and Internet access, why is it that they spend less time researching products online than their wealthier counterparts, given that they have a tighter budget than the ultra-wealthy?
  • Jansen notes that for many questions Pew asked about Internet use, there appeared to be a tipping point somewhere in the $30,000-$50,000 range. Consider, for instance, the data on those who researched products online. Only 67% of lowest-income Internet users research products online. Make it over the hump into the $30,000-$50,000 bracket, though, and all of a sudden 81% of internet users do so--a jump of 14 points. But then as you climb the income ladder, the change in behavior begins to level out, just climbing a few percentage points with each bracket
  • "It would be interesting to look at what is going on at that particular income level," says Jansen, suggesting a potential tack for further research, "that seems to indicate a fairly robust use of technology and interest."
  • Jansen, like any careful researcher, cautions against confusing correlation with causation. It may be that people are using the web to make their fortunes, and not using their fortunes to surf the web.
  • Weiye Loh on 25 Nov 10
     
    Pew Internet has released a report finding that income is the strongest predictor of whether, how often, and in what ways Americans use the web.
Weiye Loh

Does "Inclusion" Matter for Open Government? (The Answer Is, Very Much Indeed... - 0 views

gurstein.wordpress.com/...the-answer-is-very-much-indeed

Internet New Media Income Inequality Open Government Open Open Information Power

shared by Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • But in the context of the Open Government Partnership and the 70 or so countries that have already committed themselves to this or are in the process I’m not sure that the world can afford to wait to see whether this correlation is direct, indirect or spurious especially if we can recognize that in the world of OGP, the currency of accumulation and concentration is not raw economic wealth but rather raw political power.
  • in the same way as there appears to be an association between the rise of the Internet and increasing concentrations of wealth one might anticipate that the rise of Internet enabled structures of government might be associated with the increasing concentration of political power in fewer and fewer hands and particularly the hands of those most adept at manipulating the artifacts and symbols of the new Internet age.
  • I am struck by the fact that while the OGP over and over talks about the importance and value and need for Open Government there is no similar or even partial call for Inclusive Government.  I’ve argued elsewhere how “Open”, in the absence of attention being paid to ensuring that the pre-conditions for the broadest base of participation will almost inevitably lead to the empowerment of the powerful. What I fear with the OGP is that by not paying even a modicum of attention to the issue of inclusion or inclusive development and participation that all of the idealism and energy that is displayed today in Brasilia is being directed towards the creation of the Governance equivalents of the Internet billionaires whatever that might look like.
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  • crowd sourced public policy
  • Weiye Loh on 18 Apr 12
     
    alongside the rise of the Internet and the empowerment of the Internet generation has emerged the greatest inequalities of wealth and privilege that any of the increasingly Internet enabled economies/societies have experienced at least since the great Depression and perhaps since the beginnings of systematic economic record keeping.  The association between the rise of inequality and the rise of the Internet has not yet been explained and if may simply be a coincidence but somehow I'm doubtful and we await a newer generation of rather more critical and less dewey economists to give us the models and explanations for this co-evolution.
qiyi liao

Online Censorship: Obama urged to fine firms for aiding censors - 3 views

Internet activists are urging Barack Obama to pass legislation that would make it illegal for technology companies to collaborate with authoritarian countries that censor the internet. -The Guardi...

started by qiyi liao on 02 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Basqueresearch.com: News - PhD thesis warns of risk of delegating to just a few teacher... - 0 views

www.basqueresearch.com/berria_irakurri.asp

Education Technology

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • the incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies into Primary Education brought with it positive changes in the role of the teacher and the student. Teachers and students stopped being mere transmitters and receptors, respectively. The first became mediators of information and the second opted for learning through investigating, discovering and presenting ideas to classmates and teachers. In this way they have, at the same time, the opportunity of getting to know the work of other students, too. Thus, the use of Internet and ICTs reinforce participation and collaboration in the school. According to Dr Altuna, it also helps to boost learning models that are more constructivist, socio-constructivist and even connectivist.
  • Despite its educational possibilities the researcher warns that there are numerous factors that limit the incorporation of Internet into the teaching of the curricular subject in question. These involve aspects such as the time dedicated weekly, technological and computer facilities, accessibility and connection to Internet, the school curriculum and, above all, the knowledge, training and involvement of the teaching staff.
  • the thesis observed a tendency to delegate responsibility for ICT in the school to those teachers who were considered to be “computer experts”. Dr Altuna warns of the risks that this practice runs, as thereby the rest of the staff continues to be untrained and unable to apply ICT and Internet in activities undertaken within their curricular subject. It has to be stressed, therefore, that all should be responsible for the educational measures to be taken so that students acquire digital skills. Also observed was the need for a pedagogic approach to ICT which advises the teaching staff on knowledge about and putting into practice activities in educational innovation.
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  • Dr Altuna not only includes the lack of involvement of teaching staff amongst the limitations for incorporating ICT, but also that of the involvement of the families. It was explained that families showed interest in the use of Internet and ICTs as educational tools for their children, but that these, too, excessively delegate to the schools. The researcher stressed that the families also need guidance, as they are concerned about the use by their children of Internet but do not know the best way to go about the problem.
  • Educational psychologist Dr Jon Altuna has carried out a thorough study of the phenomenon of the school 2.0. Concretely, he has looked into the use and level of incorporation of Internet and of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into the third cycle of Primary Education, observing at the same time the attitudes of the teaching staff, and of the students and the families of the children in this regard. His PhD, defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), is entitled, Incorporation of Internet into the teaching of the subject Knowledge of the Environment during the third cycle of Primary Education: possibilities and analysis of the situation of a school. Dr Altuna’s research is based on a study of cases undertaken over eight years at a school where new activities involving ICT had been introduced into the curricular subject of Knowledge of the Environment, taught in the fifth and sixth year of Primary Education. The researcher gathered data from 837 students, 134 teachers and 190 families of this school. This study was completed with the experiences of ICT teachers from 21 schools.
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Mar 11
     
    Despite its educational possibilities the researcher warns that there are numerous factors that limit the incorporation of Internet into the teaching of the curricular subject in question. These involve aspects such as the time dedicated weekly, technological and computer facilities, accessibility and connection to Internet, the school curriculum and, above all, the knowledge, training and involvement of the teaching staff.
Weiye Loh

Can We Kill Off This Myth That The Internet Is A Wild West That Needs To Be Tamed? | Te... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...t-that-needs-to-be-tamed.shtml

Internet Censorship Regulation

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 May 11 - No Cached
  • The latest version of this, is a horrible, dangerous and ridiculous editorial from Martin Kettle, at The Guardian, who insists that it's time to bring the internet "under control." Yet whatever one's qualms about Sarkozy and his plan, he is surely on to something that should not be so sweepingly dismissed. Looking at British politics this week, it is hard to make an intellectually serious case that internet regulation issues should not be raised. Not only has the balance between parliament, the courts and the media been made to look irrelevant over superinjunctions by the twitterati, but almost the first act of the new Scottish government on Thursday was to promise a clampdown on internet sectarian hate postings. The fact that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg also popped up this week with the casual suggestion that children under 13 should be able to use social networking sites dramatically underlines the argument that there are issues of importance to discuss here.
  • on the issue of the superinjunction, it suggests the exact opposite of what Kettle is arguing. It's pointing out the ridiculousness of analog-era regulations in a digital age. That's not a case for controls. It's a case for removing controls.
  • issue of hate speech is another one where people overreact emotionally. The best way to counter hate speech (which is almost always ignorance) is with more speech. "Clamping down" only convinces those who hate that they're "onto something" and that they're being persecuted.
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  • Zuckerberg's claim -- which he's already pointed out involved taking his words out of context -- was just that there could be socially useful reasons why younger people might be helped if they could have accounts, but over aggressive internet controls prevent that. Again, that seems to argue against control, not for it.
  • The internet does not exist as untouchable. Morality and the rule of law do apply to the actions people do there. The question is whether those laws are appropriate. In many cases, it appears they're not.
  • the fallacy is not that these laws are obsolete because they're difficult to enforce. It's that they're obsolete because many of them don't make any sense, such as these injunctions that seek to merely protect the rich and famous from having their own embarrassing actions discussed.
  • ome of these laws aren't "difficult" to enforce, they're impossible to enforce. And it's not because the internet is some "wild west," but because it's a very different platform of communication -- a many to many platform, which the world has not had before. We've had one-to-one and one-to-many forms of communication, but a many-to-many platform really does change some important fundamentals when it comes to speech. Far more important are the questions of internet access to unsuitable material, especially but not solely by children, as well as the danger to children from inadequately policed social media. Merely to write such a sentence is to invite outrage in some quarters, but these issues are all too easy for a society to ignore until they return to haunt us. And the proper response, if there is "unsuitable" (unsuitable to whom, by the way?) content is to go after those who produced and distributed it. Not to seek to block access and sweep it under the rug. That's denial. Let's live in reality.
  • Kettle talks about spam and pornography. Yet, I almost never see spam any more. Why? Because technologists came in and built filters. I never see pornography either. And not because of any laws or filters, but because the websites I surf don't display any, and contrary to the myth makers, it's pretty difficult to "accidentally" run into porn. I do a lot of surfing and can't recall ever accidentally coming across any.
Weiye Loh

China calls out US human rights abuses: laptop searches, 'Net porn - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...s-laptop-searches-net-porn.ars

Human Rights China United States

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • The report makes no real attempt to provide context to a huge selection of news articles about bad things happening in the US, piled up one against each other in almost random fashion.
  • As the UK's Guardian paper noted, "While some of the data cited in the report is derived from official or authoritative sources, other sections are composed from a mishmash of online material. One figure on crime rates is attributed to '10 Facts About Crime in the United States that Will Blow Your Mind, Beforitsnews.com'." The opening emphasis on US crime is especially odd; crime rates in the US are the lowest they have been in decades; the drop-off has been so dramatic that books have been written in attempts to explain it.
  • But the report does provide an interesting perspective on the US, especially when it comes to technology, and it's not all off base. China points to US laptop border searches as a problem (and they are): According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on September 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The policies were claimed to leave no limit on how long the DHS can keep a traveler's devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied, or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision. When Colombian journalist Hollman Morris sought a US student visa so he could take a fellowship for journalists at Harvard University, his application was denied on July 17, 2010, as he was ineligible under the "terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act. An Arab American named Yasir Afifi, living in California, found the FBI attached an electronic GPS tracking device near the right rear wheel of his car.
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  • China also sees hypocrisy in American discussions of Internet freedom. China comes in regularly for criticism over its "Great Firewall," but it suggests that the US government also restricts the Internet. While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website. The United States applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted "Internet freedom" in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the United States to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its territory. An article on BBC on February 16, 2011 noted the US government wants to boost Internet freedom to give voices to citizens living in societies regarded as "closed" and questions those governments' control over information flow, although within its borders the US government tries to create a legal frame to fight the challenge posed by WikiLeaks. The US government might be sensitive to the impact of the free flow of electronic information on its territory for which it advocates, but it wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks. (The cyberspace bill never became law, and a revised version is still pending in Congress.)
  • Finally, there's pornography, which China bans. Pornographic content is rampant on the Internet and severely harms American children. Statistics show that seven in 10 children have accidentally accessed pornography on the Internet and one in three has done so intentionally. And the average age of exposure is 11 years old - some start at eight years old (The Washington Times, June 16, 2010). According to a survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20 percent of American teens have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves. (www.co.jefferson.co.us, March 23, 2010). At least 500 profit-oriented nude chat websites were set up by teens in the United States, involving tens of thousands of pornographic pictures.
  • Weiye Loh on 13 Apr 11
     
    Upset over the US State Department's annual human rights report, China publishes a report of its own on various US ills. This year, it calls attention to America's border laptop searches, its attitude toward WikiLeaks, and the prevalence of online pornography. In case the report's purpose wasn't clear, China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said this weekend, "We advise the US side to reflect on its own human rights issue, stop acting as a preacher of human rights as well as interfering in other countries' internal affairs by various means including issuing human rights reports."
Weiye Loh

Net-Neutrality: The First Amendment of the Internet | LSE Media Policy Project - 0 views

blogs.lse.ac.uk/...irst-amendment-of-the-internet

Net Neutrality

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • debates about the nature, the architecture and the governing principles of the internet are not merely technical or economic discussions.  Above all, these debates have deep political, social, and cultural implications and become a matter of public, national and global interest.
  • In many ways, net neutrality could be considered the first amendment of the internet; no pun intended here. However, just as with freedom of speech the principle of net neutrality cannot be approached as absolute or as a fetish. Even in a democracy we cannot say everything applies all the time in all contexts. Limiting the core principle of freedom of speech in a democracy is only possible in very specific circumstances, such as harm, racism or in view of the public interest. Along the same lines, compromising on the principle of net neutrality should be for very specific and clearly defined reasons that are transparent and do not serve commercial private interests, but rather public interests or are implemented in view of guaranteeing an excellent quality of service for all.
  • One of the only really convincing arguments of those challenging net neutrality is that due to the dramatic increases in streaming activity and data-exchange through peer-to-peer networks, the overall quality of service risks being compromised if we stick to data being treated on a first come first serve basis. We are being told that popular content will need to be stored closer to the consumer, which evidently comes at an extra cost.
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  • Implicitly two separate debates are being collapsed here and I would argue that we need to separate both. The first one relates to the stability of the internet as an information and communication infrastructure because of the way we collectively use that infrastructure. The second debate is whether ISPs and telecommunication companies should be allowed to differentiate in their pricing between different levels of quality of access, both towards consumers and content providers.
  • Just as with freedom of speech, circumstances can be found in which the principle while still cherished and upheld, can be adapted and constrained to some extent. To paraphrase Tim Wu (2008), the aspiration should still be ‘to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally’, but maybe some forms of content should be treated more equally than others in order to guarantee an excellent quality of service for all. However, the societal and political implications of this need to be thought through in detail and as with freedom of speech itself, it will, I believe, require strict regulation and conditions.
  • In regards to the first debate on internet stability, a case can be made for allowing internet operators to differentiate between different types of data with different needs – if for any reason the quality of service of the internet as a whole cannot be guaranteed anymore. 
  • Concerning the second debate on differential pricing, it is fair to say that from a public interest and civic liberty perspective the consolidation and institutionalization of a commercially driven two-tiered internet is not acceptable and impossible to legitimate. As is allowing operators to differentiate in the quality of provision of certain kind of content above others.  A core principle such as net neutrality should never be relinquished for the sake of private interests and profit-making strategies – on behalf of industry or for others. If we need to compromise on net neutrality it would always have to be partial, to be circumscribed and only to improve the quality of service for all, not just for the few who can afford it.
  • Separating these two debates exposes the crux of the current net-neutrality debate. In essence, we are being urged to give up on the principle of net-neutrality to guarantee a good quality of service.  However, this argument is actually a pre-text for the telecom industry to make content-providers pay for the facilitation of access to their audiences – the internet subscribers. And this again can be linked to another debate being waged amongst content providers: how do we make internet users pay for the content they access online? I won’t open that can of worms here, but I will make my point clear.  Telecommunication industry efforts to make content providers pay for access to their audiences do not offer legitimate reasons to suspend the first amendment of the internet.
Meenatchi

Top Internet Threats: Censorship to Warrantless Surveillance - 4 views

Article Summary: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/wireds-top-inte/ The article talks about several Internet threats comprising government surveillance and the loss of users' privacy throu...

Surveillance privacy DPI behavioral advertising

started by Meenatchi on 08 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
joanne ye

Democracy Project to Fill Gap in Online Politics - 3 views

Reference: Democracy Project to Fill Gap in Online Politics (2000, June 8). PR Newswire. Retrieved 23 September, 2009, from Factiva. (Article can be found at bottom of the post) Summary: The D...

human rights digital freedom democracy

started by joanne ye on 24 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Why the Net Matters; The Net Delusion: reviews - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...-The-Net-Delusion-reviews.html

Internet Liberation Democracy Effects Social Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The Net Delusion is a stinging rebuke to the power of the internet. Born in Belarus and now working in Washington, 26 year-old Evgeny Morozov reminds us that the web will not make us free.
  • He makes plain the difference between our hopes of what the internet can be and the reality of what it does. He shows us that the enemies of freedom are just as smart as the rest of us in using the internet for their own ends. Thus China encourages blogging in order to monitor the activities of dissidents; dictators are happy for their citizens to watch YouTube, because most people are more likely to watch Lady Gaga than foment revolution. In the most powerful chapter of the book, he convincingly proves that the uprising following the 2009 elections in Iran had very little to do with social media. The book is a wake-up call to those who think that the internet is the solution to all our problems.
  • However, because Morozov completed it before the WikiLeaks controversy, the website only gets a passing reference. This is a serious omission.
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  • Since the arrest of Julian Assange in December, the US government that protested against the censorship policies of rogue states has now called for similar acts for its own protection. If anything, this proves that while the political uses of the internet are in question, so is the definition of freedom that underpins it. The internet proves that you can’t have it both ways.
  • In contrast, while David Eagleman’s Why the Net Matters might sometimes suffer from what Morozov calls “cyber-utopianism”
  • The content is organised so that it can be navigated in any number of ways, and each page is accompanied by impressive images and graphics, sometimes with little connection to the text.
  • This new work, an enhanced app available only in digital form, is not quite a book – more an essay with added features. It is one of the first enhanced ebooks to come from a mainstream British publisher and offers some insight into what the future book might look like.
  • Looking at six different ways the internet might save us from disaster, Eagleman buys into the Clinton doctrine without question. He shows how the internet will help us to combat epidemics, preserve knowledge and respond to natural disasters with websites such as www.ushahidi.com, which came into its own after the Haiti earthquake, and allowed aid workers on the ground to pinpoint in real time, using email, Twitter and SMS, where help was most needed.
  • What these two books prove is that we still don’t know what the internet is and what it is for. This is no bad thing. The web is a tool that may liberate the future, if not quite delivering the type of freedom that Eagleman proposes. It is at its best when it grows from grass roots and responds to immediate concerns.
Weiye Loh

BBC News - Web creator's net neutrality fear - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...technology-13126777

Net Neutrality Internet

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed. He has been asked by the UK government to negotiate an agreement on an open internet between service providers and content firms like the BBC and Skype. Sir Tim would prefer self-regulation by the internet industry, but progress has been slow. "If it fails the government has to be absolutely ready to legislate," he said. "It may be that the openness of the internet, we should just put into law." Net neutrality, the idea that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally, has been a controversial issue in the United States and is now moving up the political agenda in the UK.
  • Internet Service Providers have claimed that they need to be able to control the growing traffic online, and content creators fear that the result could be a two-speed internet. Sir Tim said that he understands the need for traffic management but any move to discriminate between different content businesses would be a step too far.
  • "What you lose when you do that is you lose the open market," he said. "What the companies gain is that they get complete control of you." But Professor William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute warned that enshrining net neutrality in law had its dangers. "Once you allow the state in, you open the door to all sorts of regulation of the internet controls on content creation," he said.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Sir Tim, who was speaking at the opening of the World Wide Web Consortium's UK offices in Oxford, said that internet access was now becoming a human right. At the same time it was also a very powerful tool for either a government or a large company to get to control of. He warned that this could lead to users being blocked from visiting sites that were not politically correct, or religiously correct, or commercially correct.
Weiye Loh

The U.N. Declares Internet Access a Human Right - Technology - The Atlantic Wire - 0 views

www.theatlanticwire.com/...38526

United Nations Internet Human Rights

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 06 Jun 11
     
    The United Nations counts internet access as a basic human right in a report that bears implications both to on-going events in the Arab Spring and to the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers. Acting as special rapporteur, a human rights watchdog role appointed by the UN Secretary General, Frank La Rue takes a hard line on the importance of the internet as "an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress." Presented to the General Assembly on Friday, La Rue's report comes as the capstone of a year's worth of meetings held between La Rue and local human rights organizations around the world, from Cairo to Bangkok. The report's introduction points to the impact of online collaboration in the Arab Spring and says that "facilitating access to the Internet for all individuals, with as little restriction to online content as possible, should be a priority for all States."
Weiye Loh

So you still think the internet is free... - 0 views

yuxiyou.net/open

Censorship Internet Infographic

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • 01. Who Is Censoring The Internet? Most countries that are connected to the internet conducts some level of internet censorship.Learn more from OpenNet Initiative's Research.
  • 02. What Is Being Censored On The Internet? Some of the most commonly censored contents include Pornopraphy, Social Networks, Wikipedia, Wikileaks, Political Blogs, Religious Websites and Video Streaming.
  • 03. How Is The Internet Being Censored? The governments have developed a subtle and sophisticated system to establish borders of control within the international cyberspace.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 04. Why Are They Censoring The Internet? The countries listed here are those that best represent the three major motives behind internet censorshop.
Meenatchi

Online Defamation - 0 views

www.koreatimes.co.kr/...202_43363.html

online defamation ethical law responsibility

shared by Meenatchi on 18 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Meenatchi on 18 Aug 09
     
    Interesting Case In summary, the article discusses the court ruling of an online defamation case that took place in Korea. It involves Kim, the victim, who experienced the spread of false articles and defamatory comments that blamed him for his ex-girlfriend's suicide. The final verdict held Internet portals liable for the damages caused by the articles they displayed on their website. This is despite the articles having been provided by external media outlets. The Supreme Court ordered four of the major portals involved in the case to pay a combined 30 million ($22,500) as compensation to Kim. Ethical Question I feel there are a few ethical issues that are at play in this case. One would be if it is ethical to publish sensitive information about an individual without his/her permission on the Internet. This is of more importance when the credibility of the information is dubious. Another ethical question would be if Internet Service Providers can be held responsible for information they did not create. Is it fair to charge them on the basis that they have failed to regulate the content displayed on their sites? Problem The problem with the first ethical question is that it creates a question of individual privacy rights against the freedom of speech for another. Publishing sensitive information that might not even be true about an individual infringes his/her privacy rights. However, it is the right of the publisher to have the freedom of speech to state what he/she thinks. The issue with the second ethical question is that the Internet Service Providers merely provide a platform for people to express their views. They should not be held liable for comments posted by individuals using the website. However, the opposing view would expect the ISPs to be responsible for the content they allow to be displayed on their site. They have to regulate the content to ensure that sensitive or controversial information that would cause irrevocable damage to others
Olivia Chang

Internet campaigning gets a vote of confidence - 3 views

URL: http://en.mercopress.com/2009/09/16/lula-da-silva-supports-unrestricted-political-campaigning-in-internet The article talks about the use of the internet in political campaigns. Brazilian Pre...

online campaign democracy

started by Olivia Chang on 16 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Join Us | Save the Internet - 0 views

www.savetheinternet.com/about

Net Neutrality Internet Law Capitalism

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is two million everyday people who have banded together with thousands of nonprofit organizations, businesses and bloggers to protect Internet freedom. The Coalition believes that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth, civic engagement and free speech. We're working together to preserve Net Neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet, which ensures that the Internet remains open to new ideas, innovation and voices. Because of Net Neutrality, the Internet has always been a level playing field. People everywhere can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions, of others online. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition wants our leaders in Washington to pass strong Net Neutrality protections. We're calling on the president, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to stand with the public and keep the Internet open.
Weiye Loh

Congress told that Internet data caps will discourage piracy - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...caps-can-discourage-piracy.ars

Data Cap Capitalism Pricing Internet

shared by Weiye Loh on 16 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • While usage-based billing and data caps are often talked about in terms of their ability to curb congestion, it's rarely suggested that making Internet access more expensive is a positive move for the content industries. But Castro has a whole host of such suggestions, drawn largely verbatim from his 2009 report (PDF) on the subject.
  • Should the US government actually fund antipiracy research? Sure. Should the US government “enlist” Internet providers to block entire websites? Sure. Should copyright holders suggest to the government which sites should go on the blocklist? Sure. Should ad networks and payment processors be forced to cut ties to such sites, even if those sites are legal in the countries where they operate? Sure.
  • Castro's original 2009 paper goes further, suggesting that deep packet inspection (DPI) be routinely deployed by ISPs in order to scan subscriber traffic for potential copyright infringements. Sound like wiretapping? Yes, though Castro has a solution if courts do crack down on the practice: "the law should be changed." After all, "piracy mitigation with DPI deals with a set of issues virtually identical to the largely noncontroversial question of virus detection and mitigation."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • If you think that some of these approaches to antipiracy enforcement have problems, Castro knows why; he told Congress yesterday that critics of such ideas "assume that piracy is the bedrock of the Internet economy" and don't want to disrupt it, a statement patently absurd on its face.
  • Weiye Loh on 16 Mar 11
     
    Internet data caps aren't just good at stopping congestion; they can also be useful tools for curtailing piracy. That was one of the points made by Daniel Castro, an analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) think tank in Washington DC. Castro testified (PDF) yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee about the problem of "parasite" websites, saying that usage-based billing and monthly data caps were both good ways to discourage piracy, and that the government shouldn't do anything to stand in their way. The government should allow "pricing structures and usage caps that discourage online piracy," he wrote, which comes pretty close to suggesting that heavy data use implies piracy and should be limited.
Weiye Loh

Chinese City Builds Censorship-Free Internet Zone … For Foreigners | The Utop... - 0 views

utopianist.com/...e-internet-zone-for-foreigners

Censorship Internet China Capitalism Democracy

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The state-of-the-art data centers, meant to make Chongqing a big player in the cloud computing game, might attract business, but the locals certainly aren’t too happy about it [via IT World]: That has sparked an uproar among some Chinese Internet users, because the unfiltered Web access will be available only to foreign companies, according to the reports. People commenting on social-networking sites have slammed the zone as a throwback to the days of “No dogs and no Chinese allowed,”a reference to how local Chinese were prohibited in the early 20th century from entering certain foreigner communities
  • Weiye Loh on 30 Jun 11
     
    people keep assuming that the forces of globalization and capitalism will somehow politically transform China into a democracy. Surely the need for foreign businesses to work in China would force the Chinese government to do away with things like internet censorship? Hmm, not so much. The city of Chongqing has gotten around this problem by building a development zone with unrestricted internet access-for foreign businesses, that is.
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