Skip to main content

Home/ opensociety/ Group items tagged Necessary

Rss Feed Group items tagged

thinkahol *

Technology: Necessary but Insufficient for Human Survival | Thinkahol's Blog - 0 views

  •  
    In the context of technology the only way out is through. Global society is dependent on artificially inflated energy resources-i.e. oil-that are directly leading us toward total collapse. Technology is being used to most efficiently maximize wealth of the largest corporate conglomerates at the expense of the social fabric and a living environment. The biosphere is in fact collapsing. The technology exists to solve our technical problems but the solutions do not seem like they will be effectively put to use. The power structures concentrating money off the status quo are too entrenched. Each human is called on to become more aware.
Parycek

Economic and Social Return on Investment in Open Archiving Federally Funded Research Ou... - 0 views

  •  
    ...to measuring the impacts of the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on returns to public investment in R&D. The aim is to define and scope the data collection requirements and further model developments necessary for a robust estimate of the likely impacts of the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate. 
thinkahol *

Psychology, Ideology, Utopia, & the Commons - 0 views

  •  
    The failure of social scientists to seriously question their own ideological and methodological assumptions contributes to the complex interrelationship between global ecological and individual psychological problems. Much of the literature on the tragedy of the commons focuses on saving the global commons through increased centralization and regulation, at the expense of the individual's autonomy and psychological sense of community. "Utopian" speculation in general and anarchist political analysis in particular are necessary correctives to misplaced attempts to merely rearrange the elements of the status quo rather than to radically alter it in a direction more in keeping with both survival and human dignity.
thinkahol *

When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution | OurFuture.org - 0 views

  •  
    "Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."- John F. KennedyThere's one thing for sure: 2008 isn't anything like politics as usual.The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s - people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we've also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation - and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that's agitating toward deep structural change.There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment. In fac
thinkahol *

Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone - 0 views

  •  
    I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of. The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following:
Johann Höchtl

Open Data: Empowering the Empowered or Effective Data Use for Everyone? « Gur... - 2 views

  • Efforts to extend access to “data” will perhaps inevitably create a “data divide” parallel to the oft-discussed “digital divide” between those who have access to data which could have significance in their daily lives and those who don’t.
  • What is necessary as well, is that those for whom access is being provided are in a position to actually make use of the now available access
  • open data” empowers those with access to the basic infrastructure and the background knowledge and skills to make use of the data for specific ends.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • An “effective use” approach to open data would thus be one that ensured that opportunities and resources for translating this open data into useful outcomes would be available (and adapted) for the widest possible range of users.
  • The newly digitized and openly accessible data allowed the well to do to take the information provided and use that as the basis for instructions to land surveyors and lawyers
  • The key difference here was the attention that was paid by the provider of the information, the CHPR to ensuring that the data could be effectively used without the need for highly skilled (and expensive) professional intermediaries.
Johann Höchtl

U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.
  • The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation.
  • But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.
Johann Höchtl

eGovernment Action Plan | ICT for Government and Public Services | Europa - Information... - 0 views

  • Empower citizens and businesses Reinforce mobility in the Single Market Enable efficiency and effectiveness Create the necessary key enablers and pre-conditions to make things happen
1 - 8 of 8
Showing 20 items per page