Group items tagged

This is a newsletter about the virtual education movement as it confronts state politics, as chronicled in the "Liberating Learning Wiki Project." According to one report, NJ has been approved for two virtual H.S. in the next two years.

In one of the videos we watched last week, Wesch mentioned how students can look at the discussion page for any article on Wikipedia to get a sense of how information is being interactively constructed and contested. This article discusses the issue of self-governance in online communities with a focus on how Wikipedia is edited and the community politics behind it. I think this article makes a really useful contribution to a discussion about authority and knowledge production on the Internet. There is also a related article about the relationship between Wikipedia contributions and identity construction here.

I read (part of) an ethnography of Wikipedia last semester that was really interesting. http://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/ Good Faith Collaboration by Joseph Reagle "Wikipedia's style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the century-old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia's historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy. "

Without accusing certain authors in the field of elitism, I think that Wikipedia works as it should, by serving the needs of people in the way they want it. If someone needs to look up the habits of Pokemon or William Shatner's favorite food, who are we to question their information needs?

Another article found in my search for information about the "global digital divide." According to the article, last week, the United Nations released a report that "argued that disconnecting individuals from the Internet is a violation of human rights and goes against international law" and that all States should seek to ensure there is "as little restriction to online content as possible." The Atlantic points out, following Wired's Threat Level blog, that the UN report came "the same day that a monitoring firm found two-thirds of Syria's Internet access has been shut down without notice." While access isn't the only factor in the digital divide on a global or a national scale (disparities in information or new media literacy is also a huge factor, for example), I agree that the availability of unfettered access as a matter of government policy is the bare minimum.

It confuses me that it can be considered a basic human right if, for a portion of the population, it's hard to access and at times, can be unreachable. Even though I know it's more what Tom said about it being a negative right, the phrasing just doesn't sit right. Either way, this is a great thing and I'm surprised it didn;t happen sooner.

I had come across this article as well in our group project research, Maggie, and I think that the UN is taking steps to bring the conversation on the right to freedom of opinion and expression into the digital age, as Tom mentions. Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, in place since 1948, states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." So in the context of the recent shutdown of ISPs by Syria, more generally the use of the Internet as a means of civic and political dissidence, and even the debate around net neutrality in this country, I agree with Maggie that the UN's approach seems to clarify and reiterate unfettered access to information.

This is an article about Anonymous, a group that stemmed from the website 4chan, and how they went from posting silly cat videos to organizing scientology protests and taking down sites that refused to support WikiLeaks after last year's scandal.  It also looks at power and authority structures within the nameless group