Skip to main content

Home/ ThoughtVectors2014/ Group items tagged debate

Rss Feed Group items tagged

gerellmalazarte

Report says 3D 'bioprinting' will spark debate on ethics | News | TechRadar - 0 views

  •  
    - Bioprinting will create major ethical debate in 2016. - Market for 3D printed non-living medical devices will book in 2015. - Questions are raised. - 3D printing will continue to grow especially in areas of weak economic standing and conflict. - Three reasons why it will succeed.
abdulrahmanabdo

Stem Cell Research at the Crossroads of Religion and Politics | Pew Research Center's R... - 0 views

  • For patients and their families, embryonic stem cell research offers the hope of cures for chronic and debilitating conditions, such as juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries and blindness. For scientists, it represents a revolutionary path to discovering the causes and cures for many more human maladies. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, that is, they have the unique ability to develop into any of the 220 cell types in the human body. In addition to their versatility, embryonic stem cells are easier to grow in the laboratory than adult stem cells.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Very interesting perspectives and can to used to either bolster or discredit an argument about stem cell research in America.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Very interesting perspectives and can to used to either bolster or discredit an argument about stem cell research in America.
  • But many opponents, including some religious leaders, believe that stem cell research raises the same moral issues as abortion. Furthermore, opponents maintain that scientists have other promising ways of reaching the same goals, including non-controversial adult stem cell research.
  • But many opponents, including some religious leaders, believe that stem cell research raises the same moral issues as abortion. Furthermore, opponents maintain that scientists have other promising ways of reaching the same goals, including non-controversial adult stem cell research.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      The other side of the argument to stem cell research in America. This still contains a substantial part of the population in America and is useful in an argumentative inquiry research paper.  
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      The other side of the argument to stem cell research in America. This still contains a substantial part of the population in America and is useful in an argumentative inquiry research paper.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • For the Catholic Church and many other Christian groups, life begins at conception, making the research tantamount to homicide because it results in the destruction of human embryos. “Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and are subjects with rights; their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence,” the late Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Interesting outlook on stem cell research and since the majority of Americans today identify as christian. This should be accounted for when writing an argumentative research inquiry paper.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Interesting outlook on stem cell research and since the majority of Americans today identify as christian. This should be accounted for when writing an argumentative research inquiry paper.
  • National polls indicate that a slim majority of Americans support the research. According to a 2007 national poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 51 percent say it is more important to conduct stem cell research that could result in new medical cures than to avoid destroying the potential life of human embryos. The same poll found that 35 percent say it is more important not to destroy embryos.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This is very important data about Americans support of stem cell research. The previous highlighted region in this article said that many Christians aren't in favor of stem cell research, yet the national polls indicate otherwise. So it can be inferred that some Christians are in favor of stem cell research, to the point of where there is a slim majority of Americans in support of the research. This may proof to be a definite curve ball in an argumentative research inquiry paper.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This is very important data about Americans support of stem cell research. The previous highlighted region in this article said that many Christians aren't in favor of stem cell research, yet the national polls indicate otherwise. So it can be inferred that some Christians are in favor of stem cell research, to the point of where there is a slim majority of Americans in support of the research. This may proof to be a definite curve ball in an argumentative research inquiry paper.
  • As the pace of the cutting-edge research quickens and the prospect for cures moves closer to reality, advocates on both sides of the debate see the possibility that, within a few years, scientists will find a way to harvest stem cells without destroying embryos.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Very interesting and may provide some sort of middle ground in which everyone is satisfied, and an happy ending does occur for everyone.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      Very interesting and may provide some sort of middle ground in which everyone is satisfied, and an happy ending does occur for everyone.
  • History of the Debate
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This can provide useful history and background on this heavily debated discussion that has been with Americans for quite some time now.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This can provide useful history and background on this heavily debated discussion that has been with Americans for quite some time now.
  • While these states have taken action to move forward on stem cell research, the issue is unsettled in much of the country. Because the U.S. government allows the research as long as no federal money is spent, state universities and private, nonprofit and corporate laboratories are free to pursue it, except in states that prohibit it.
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This presents yet another interesting perspective to use in the argumentative research inquiry paper, and perfectly describes the stand of the American government politically has on this issue and can be incorporated into the argumentative research inquiry paper.  
    • abdulrahmanabdo
       
      This presents yet another interesting perspective to use in the argumentative research inquiry paper, and perfectly describes the stand of the American government politically has on this issue and can be incorporated into the argumentative research inquiry paper.
  •  
    Very good article that will help me pave the way for a good argumentative research inquiry paper, in my opinion.
  •  
    Very good article that will help me pave the way for a good argumentative research inquiry paper, in my opinion.
Will Sullivan

The Radio as New Technology: Blessing or Curse? A 1929 Debate » - 0 views

  • Accommodated as we are to mass media, we must work to imagine the impact of commercial radio broadcasting in its early years. From the late 1800s, new electronic devices had been expanding the realm of shared human experience — people conversed on telephones, sent news through telegrams, played records on phonographs, and enjoyed films in local theaters. But until the radio, nothing offered such widely shared simultaneous mass experience. By turning on your radio set, you could listen to a jazz band, baseball game, religious service, even a president’s speech, live, along with millions of fellow listeners.
  •  
    An excerpt from an old criticism of the radio in the 1920s. Sound familiar?
George Neff

The Netflix effect: how binge watching is changing television | News | TechRadar - 0 views

  • The bold new era of content distribution and technological efficiency has served up entire, original award-winning series series like Netflix' House of Cards and Orange is the New Black for consumption in one sitting, if the viewer desires.
  • Quite frankly, we've never had it so good.
  • empowered the consumer.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • We spoke to television scholars and media psychologists on whether marathon viewing is really enhancing our experience, beyond the buffet. If we can have everything, does everything mean anything?
  • "Even a single episode has so many highs and lows that by the end of it you're so beaten up, you're less receptive to the emotional and intellectual ideas being put forth. Yet still we click and watch another one."
  • Netflix says it's more organic that way – it also means that if you don't do anything the episodes will just keep on coming.
  • With more traditional distribution models there is arguably more of an opportunity to let the experience sink in, find an appreciation and look forward to the next part of the journey.
  • "Breaking Bad has become the greatest example of the perfect show for binge viewing, he tells us. "Not only is it okay to binge view a series like that, but it is a better way to watch it.
  • you can understand the inner workings of these stories if you view them in more concentrated chunks
  • binge watching is the antithesis to how TV traditionally works.
  • Now, thanks to the advent of high-speed internet and the connected services they've enabled, technology has surpassed the content.
  • Ironically enough, the week-to-week format we enjoyed/endured during our last hours with Jesse and Walt proved to be an anomaly for millions who latched on to the growing buzz and raced through the previous five-and-half-seasons during the 12-month pre-climax hiatus – the binge before the episodic storm.
  • "I think Breaking Bad is probably as close as we're going to come to such a universal, cultural televisual event again," said film and television historian and associate professor at UCLA Jonathan Kuntz.
  • Breaking Bad, as it turned out, bridged the two eras perfectly, offering a stunning paradox of each distribution model's merits.
  • "The generation coming up now, all they're going to know is on demand. What pleasure they derive from anything will come from that,"
  • Another factor to consider in the great binge debate is that feeling of withdrawal when we run out of new episodes.
  • "The [binge viewing] experience is so good that you feel physically sad that it's over. That sense you had is more attached to it being a great artistic experience,"
  • The strength of our desire for gratification plays into a debate the psychologists call Connoisseur vs Addict. The former loves to be present in the moment, can savour the engagement and sees how everything ties into a beautiful package. The latter just needs a fix.
  • "An addict is working on a two-pronged schema, which is aspiration and completion. Aspiration is thedopamine-fuelled desire to recapture a feeling," he told TechRadar."When you get the completion, it's not about the rush, but ultimately about achieving the aspiration of the completion. When things are that accessible, what happens to the value of the product?"
Mirna Shaban

New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring | UW Today - 0 views

    • Mirna Shaban
       
      Yellow highlighting= Information about role of social media in the Arab Spring. Pink highlighting= Statistical information Blue highlighting= Possibility of link to more information. 
  • After analyzing more than 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.
  • “Our evidence suggests that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising,” said Philip Howard, the project lead and an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington.  “People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • During the week before Egyptian president Hosni Mubaraks resignation, for example, the total rate of tweets from Egypt — and around the world — about political change in that country ballooned from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. 
  • Data for the UW project came directly from immense digital archives the team built over the course of several months.
  • the team located data about technology use and political opinion from before the revolutions. 
  • The Project on Information Technology and Political Islam assembled data about blogging in Tunisia one month prior to the crisis in that country, and had special data on the link structure of Egyptian political parties one month prior to the crisis there.
  • Political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion in both Tunisia and Egypt.  In Tunisia, conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on blogs and on Twitter often immediately preceded mass protests. 
  • Twenty percent of blogs were evaluating Ben Alis leadership the day he resigned from office (Jan. 14), up from just 5 percent the month before.  Subsequently, the primary topic for Tunisian blogs was “revolution” until a public rally of at least 100,000 people eventually forced the old regimes remaining leaders to relinquish power.
  • In the two weeks after Mubaraks resignation, there was an average of 2,400 tweets a day from people in neighboring countries about the political situation in Egypt. In Tunisia after Ben Alis resignation, there were about 2,200 tweets a day.
  • Ironically, government efforts to crack down on social media may have incited more public activism, especially in Egypt. People who were isolated by efforts to shut down the Internet, mostly middle-class Egyptians, may have gone to the streets when they could no longer follow the unrest through social media, Howard said.
linaibrahim1

Hip Hop Matters - 0 views

  •  
    From its humble beginnings in the Bronx to its transformation into a multibillion-dollar global industry, hip hop has stirred constant and contentious debate. Avoiding the simple caricatures that either celebrate or condemn this powerful movement, S.
bdm1chael

Why Nearly Every Sport Except Long-Distance Running Is Fundamentally Absurd - 0 views

  •  
    "At first glance the annual Man vs. Horse Marathon, set for June 9 in Wales, seems like a joke sport brought to us by the same brilliant minds behind dwarf tossing and gravy wrestling. It was, after all, the product of a pints-fueled debate in a Welsh pub, and for..."
kahn_artist

Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically? | July 2009 | Communications of the ACM - 1 views

  • Home/Magazine Archive/July 2009 (Vol. 52, No. 7)/Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically?/Full Text News Are We Losing Our Ability to Think Critically? By Samuel Greengard Communications of the ACM, Vol. 52 No. 7, Pages 18-19 10.1145/1538788.1538796 Comments (3) View as: Print ACM Digital Library Full Text (PDF) In the Digital Edition Share: Send by email Share on reddit Share on StumbleUpon Share on Tweeter Share on Facebook More Sharing ServicesShare Society has long cherished the ability to think beyond the ordinary. In a world where knowledge is revered and innovation equals progress, those able to bring forth greater insight and understanding are destined to make their mark and blaze a trail to greater enlightenment. "Critical thinking as an attitude is embedded in Western culture. There is a belief that argument is the way to finding truth," observes Adrian West, research director at the Edward de Bono Foundation U.K., and a former computer science lecturer at the University of Manchester. "Developing our abilities to think more clearly, richly, fully—individually and collectively—is absolutely crucial [to solving world problems]." To be sure, history is filled with tales of remarkable thinkers who have defined and redefined our world views: Sir Isaac Newton discovering gravity; Voltaire altering perceptions about society and religious dogma; and Albert Einstein redefining the view of the universe. But in an age of computers, video games, and the Internet, there's a growing question about how technology is changing critical thinking and whether society benefits from it. Although there's little debate that computer technology complements—and often enhances—the human mind in the quest to store information and process an ever-growing tangle of bits and bytes, there's increasing concern that the same technology is changing the way we approach complex problems and conundrums, and making it more difficult to really think. "We're exposed to [greater amounts of] poor yet charismatic thinking, the fads of intellectual fashion, opinion, and mere assertion," says West. "The wealth of communications and information can easily overwhelm our reasoning abilities." What's more, it's ironic that ever-growing piles of data and information do not equate to greater knowledge and better decision-making. What's remarkable, West says, is just "how little this has affected the quality of our thinking." According to the National Endowment for the Arts, literary reading declined 10 percentage points from 1982 to 2002 and the rate of decline is accelerating. Many, including Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, believe that a greater focus on visual media exacts a toll. "A drop-off in reading has possibly contributed to a decline in critical thinking," she says. "There is a greater emphasis on real-time media and multitasking rather than focusing on a single thing." Nevertheless, the verdict isn't in and a definitive answer about how technology affects critical thinking is not yet available. Instead, critical thinking lands in a mushy swamp somewhere between perception and reality; measurable and incomprehensible. It's largely a product of our own invention—and a subjective one at that. And although technology alters the way we see, hear, and assimilate our world—the act of thinking remains decidedly human. Back to Top Rethinking Thinking Arriving at a clear definition for critical thinking is a bit tricky. Wikipedia describes it as "purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments." Overlay technology and that's where things get complex. "We can do the same critical-reasoning operations without technology as we can with it—just at different speeds and with different ease," West says. What's more, while it's tempting to view computers, video games, and the Internet in a monolithic good or bad way, the reality is that they may be both good and bad, and different technologies, systems, and uses yield entirely different results. For example, a computer game may promote critical thinking or diminish it. Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one's ability to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may undercut deeper thought.
  • Reading on the Internet may ratchet up one's ability to analyze while chasing an endless array of hyperlinks may undercut deeper thought.
    • kahn_artist
       
      The highlighted text is particularly funny to me considering I am advocating Hyperlink chasing as a valuable form of research.
  •  
    How does technology affect our ability to think critically?
morganaletarg

The Dynamics of Fandom: Exploring Fan Communities in Online Spaces | Myc Wiatrowski - A... - 3 views

    • morganaletarg
       
      "not unreal" tell my mom that
  • A thoroughknowledge of the community is required to be able to understand the group, as well asunderstand the individual’s place in the whole. This knowledge allows a group to build asocially imagined concept of communal belief. It creates a method for demarcating who is and isnot an insider, and allows the group to come to terms with their shared ‘canonical’ text(s).
    • morganaletarg
       
      e.g. "my feels"
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Often fans are recognized within the American cultural  zeitgeist  in just this way: fanatical, out of control, frantic and frenzied. In point of fact, fangroups are frequently ‘Othered’ by the dominant culture at large as being significantly differentfrom the mainstream norm.
    • morganaletarg
       
      perhaps this may be WHY THEY'RE ON THE INTERNET HMMM
  • we can say that fans are a group that consumes a text (or texts) enmasse , that in turn uses that consumption as a basis for creating something new that is tailored totheir specific concerns. In short, a fandom can be defined by its consumption of a text and itssubsequent cultural productions of and about that text.
  • we must turn our attention to the productions of the insider community. That is to say we must recognize that the urtext  , if it can be so described, does notmeet the needs of the group, so new material is produced by the community to fill the void.
    • morganaletarg
       
      ~*FANFICTION*~
  • “fans of a popular television series[and/or film] may sample dialogue, summarize episodes, debate subtexts, create original fanfiction, record their own soundtracks, make their own movies – and distribute all of thisworldwide via the internet”
  • In creating new artifacts for the group, thus theoretically fillingthe needs of the cyber-fandom as a whole, the group is further able to fashion both an ideologicaland consumable concept of Browncoat-ness and further contribute to the re-visioning and re-drawing of their community.
  • At a very base level these available narrative strains that existwithin the community function as a group rhetoric that ultimately reflects the fictional“Browncoats” of the program’s universe.
    • morganaletarg
       
      are people fans of people like themselves, or do people make their fans want to be more like them?
  • Each party in a struggle over hegemonic power exercises their leverage from time to time, creating an almost ever present struggle in fancommunities between themselves and the producers of their canon.
  • Fans attack and criticize media producers whom they feel threaten their meta-textual interests, but producers also respond to these challenges, protecting their  privilege by defusing and marginalizing fan activism. As fans negotiate positionsof production and consumption, antagonistic corporate discourse toils to managethat discursive power, disciplining productive fandom so it can continue to becultivated as a consumer base.
  • There is a delicate balance between fans and media producers suggested by Johnson. Fansnegotiate their power in virtual spaces, both consuming and producing texts, yet corporate mediaentities struggle to both restrict fan activity, thus allowing them further opportunity to exploitthem capitalistically, while concurrently attempting to cultivate fan production to a degree so asnot to alienate the consumer base all together.
  • Building a complex, onlinecommunity constructed of both a social imaginary and an empirical reality allows the group tonot only form a space wherein they can participate but where they can assert their control over culturally significant texts.
  • n moving to online spaces fandoms remain able to function as traditional communitieswould be expected to. But the mediated interface and its ability to allow communities tocongregate in greater numbers regardless of spatial or temporal limitations, also permits cyber-fandoms to amplify their voice, giving them greater power in space as Foucault would have it.Exercising their power from self-created points in a virtual space allow the community greater    Wiatrowski control over both the texts upon which they’ve created a group and over their imagined sense of the community. In the end, the move to online spaces allows the group to exist both as it oncehad and in ways that are new and more powerful than they had perhaps previously imagined.
Mirna Shaban

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted - 1 views

  • Much of the organization and mobilization occurred through the Internet, particularly on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But social media also played a vital role as a democratic model. Its inclusive space indirectly taught lessons in democracy to a wide sector of Egyptian youth that was not necessarily politically inclined. When the right moment arrived, they were ready to join the revolt.
  • What happened in January 2011 in Egypt did not start in January 2011. It began at least ten years earlier, and it’s not over yet
  • The main catalyst for the January 25 revolution was the Internet, so it may be accurate to describe this as an Internet-based revolution. Not that the Internet was the only factor involved, or that Internet users were the only ones protesting. But the Internet was the tool that showed every dissident voice in Egypt that he or she is not alone, and is indeed joined by at least hundreds of thousands who seek change.
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • Facebook did not go to Tahrir Square. The people did. Twitter did not go to Al-Qaied Ibrahim Square. The people did.
  • More than one-third of Egypt’s population of eighty million remains illiterate, and just 25 percent of Egyptians use the Internet. However, Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in organizing, motivating, and directing these crowds as to where to go and what to do. Egypt’s revolution was created as an event on Facebook eleven days in advance. People clicked “I’m attending.” Certainly, this was a people’s revolution, yet one based on and accelerated in many ways by the Internet. What happened in Tahrir and every square in Egypt was the accumulation of years and years of activism, including Internet activism. Social media prepared Egyptians for the revolution and enabled them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came.
  • The Internet, by definition, is a democratic medium, at least in the sense that anyone with Internet access is a potential publisher of information.
  • The mere presence of the Internet as a source of information helps open up a freer space for public debate, and makes it much more difficult for governments to censor information.
  • Internet activism started in Egypt with the appearance of Web 2.0 technology in the country around 2003
  • Blogging was the first valuable brainchild of Web 2.0 technologies.
  • The phenomenon exploded in the Arab world, with Egyptian bloggers pioneering and leading the scene. Blogger numbers in the region approached half a million by the beginning of 2009, the great majority of them coming from Egypt.
  • Political blogging in particular became more popular, as users felt that they could remain anonymous if they so wished
  • Nevertheless, most Egyptian political bloggers choose to blog under their real names, which frequently got them in trouble with the regime. The state security crackdown on bloggers was testimony to their potential impact.
  • Undoubtedly, blogging created a space for the voiceless in Egypt.
  • It was the first time individuals felt they could make themselves heard. That in itself was important, whether or not the content was political, and whether or not anyone was reading the blogs. The phenomenon created a venting space for people who had long gone unheard.
  • Early on, Alaa Abdel Fattah and Manal Hassan were awarded the Special Award from Reporters Without Borders in the international Deutsche Welle’s 2005 Weblog Awards (Best of Blogs) contest, where their blog was cited as an instrumental information source for the country’s human rights and democratic reform movement. The husband-and-wife team had created one of Egypt’s earliest blogs, “Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket,” where they documented their off-line activism and posted credible information on protests and political movements, election monitoring and rigging, and police brutality.
  • Another award-winning blogger was Wael Abbas. He received several honors, including the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award of the International Center for Journalists for “raising the standards of media excellence” in his country. This was the first time that a blogger, rather than a traditional journalist, won the prestigious journalism award, a testament to the important work such bloggers were doing. In the same year, CNN named Abbas Middle East Person of the Year. He has been instrumental in bringing to light videos of police brutality in Egypt, a topic that was taboo before he and other bloggers ventured into it. As a result of these efforts, the Egyptian government at one point brought three police officers to justice on charges of police brutality for the first time in Egypt’s history; they were convicted and sentenced to three years in jail.
  • As blogging was becoming a phenomenon in Egypt, some political movements started having a strong on-line presence, and taking to the streets based on their on-line organization. The most important was probably the Kefaya movement, whose formal name is The Egyptian Movement for Change. The movement was established in 2004 by a coalition of political forces, and became better known by its Arabic slogan. The word kefaya is Arabic for ‘enough,’ and as the name implies, the movement called for an end to the decades-old Mubarak regime, and for guarantees that his son would not succeed him as president. Kefaya was instrumental in taking people to the streets, thus bridging the gap between the on-line and the off-line worlds. Many of its supporters were bloggers, and many of the street protesters started blogging. So, increasingly, reports on the demonstrations found their way into blogs and were provided media coverage even when the traditional media ignored them or were afraid to cover them. One result was that many more Egyptians gained the courage to write blogs that openly criticized the authoritarian system and crossed the ‘red line’ of challenging their president.
  • nternet applications such as the video-sharing platform YouTube, which appeared in 2005, took blogging to a higher level.
  • hey were also capable of videotaping street protests and uploading the clips on YouTube. Watching people chanting “Down with Hosni Mubarak” in the mid-2000s was a totally new, riveting experience, which led many other brave Egyptians to join these demonstrations. Internet activists and blogger stars such as Wael Abbas, Alaa Abdel Fattah, Manal Hassan, Hossam El-Hamalawy, Malek Mostafa, and others uploaded hundreds of videos of police brutality, election rigging, and different violations of human and civic rights.
  • media, the platforms that allow for wider user discussions and user-generated content such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter
  • he next important development came with the introduction of what is typically known as social
  • The structure of social media taught Egyptians that space exists that you can call your own, your space, where you can speak your mind. To many in the West, this is probably no big deal. There are countless venues where they can express their opinions relatively freely. But for people in Egypt, and in the Arab world in general, this was a new phenomenon, and one I believe to be of profound importance.
  • horizontal communication.’ Before social networks, Egyptian youth were accustomed to being talked at, rather than talked to or spoken with. Communication was mostly vertical, coming from the regime down to everyone else
  • Authoritarian patterns of communication do not allow for much horizontal interaction. But social networks do, and eventually their existence on the Internet taught Egyptian youths a few lessons in democratic communication, even if the essence of the conversations carried out was not necessarily political in nature.
  • The bulk of those that I believe were affected by these lessons in democratic expression were clusters of the population that were not previously politically oriented. These form a good sector of those who took to the streets on January 25, and were joined by millions who held their ground in Tahrir Square and in every square in Egypt until Mubarak was toppled. The majority of these millions, including myself, were people who had never participated in a demonstration before. They were not political activists before January 25, but they saw or heard the call for action, and it touched a nerve as they found safety in numbers
  • another function that social networks served: making you realize that you’re not alone.
  • Perhaps the first time Egyptians learned about the power of social networks was on April 6, 2008. Workers in the Egyptian city of Al-Mahalla Al-Kobra planned a demonstration to demand higher wages. Esraa Abdel Fattah, an activist then twenty eight years old, felt for the workers and wanted to help them. She formed a group on Facebook and called it ‘April 6 Strike’ to rally support for the workers.
  • he knew it was too much to ask people to join in the protest, so she simply asked them to participate in spirit by staying home that day, not going to work, and not engaging in any monetary transactions such as buying or selling. The group was brought to the attention of the traditional media and was featured on one of Egypt’s popular talk shows, thus getting more exposure. What ensued surpassed all expectations. To Abdel Fattah’s own surprise (and everyone else’s), the Facebook group immediately attracted some seventy three thousand members. Many of these, and others who got the message through traditional media, decided to stay home in solidarity with the workers. Others were encouraged to stay home by a bad sandstorm that swept across parts of Egypt that day, and yet others stayed home for fear of the strong police presence on the streets.
  • The overall outcome made political activists realize that social networks could be a vital tool in generating support for a political cause, and in encouraging people to join a call for action.
  • The April 6 event was meaningful because it provided a sense that people were actually willing to take an action, to do something beyond clicking a mouse
  • three months before the January 25 revolution, Malcolm Gladwell argued in a much-discussed article in The New Yorker under the title “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted” that social media can’t provide what social change has always required. He said that social media is good when you’re asking people for small-scale, low-risk action, but not for anything more. “Facebook activism succeeds,” he wrote, “not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” He explained that this is because high-risk activism is a “strong-tie phenomenon,” meaning that those who carry out such acts of activism have to personally know each other well and develop strong personal ties before they would risk their lives for each other or for a common cause. Since Facebook and Twitter provide mostly “weak-tie” connections, since users typically have a strong off-line social tie with only a small percentage of their ‘friends’ or ‘followers,’ these social networks were therefore not capable of motivating people for a high-risk cause. He therefore concluded that a social network “makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”
  • nowing that you are in the company of many who share your utter belief in the same cause. That is something that social networks delivered
  • ne of the Facebook pages that played a major role in this regard was the Khaled Said page. Khaled Said was a young Egyptian who was brutally beaten to death by police informants outside an Internet café in Alexandria in June 2010. He had an innocent face that everyone could identify with. He could be anyone, and anyone could’ve been him. The Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” appeared shortly thereafter. It started asking its members, whose numbers increased steadily, to go out on silent standing protests in black shirts with their back to the streets. The demonstrations started in Alexandria and soon spread to every governorate in Egypt. Numbers increased with every protest. More and more people gained a little more courage and tasted the freedom of dissent.
  • One of the main advantages of the Khaled Said page was how well organized the events were. Protesters were provided with exact times and locations, and given exact instructions on what to wear, what to do, as well as who to contact in the case of any problems with security forces.
  • t was the Khaled Said page that eventually posted the ‘event’ for a massive demonstration on January 25, Egypt’s Police Day.
  • The administrators usually polled their users, asking them to vote for their place or time of preference for the next protest. The responses would be in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, and the administrators would read them all, and give a breakdown, with exact numbers and percentages, of the votes.
  • The January 25 demonstration was motivated and aided by an important intervening variable, the revolt in Tunisia. When Tunisian protesters succeeded in ousting President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, Egyptians felt that toppling a dictator through demonstrations was finally possible.
  • he Khaled Said page, which by then had about six hundred thousand followers, demonstrated its strong ability to organize. They listed all the major squares in every Egyptian governorate where they expected people to gather, and again gave specific instructions on what to wear, what to take with you, and who to contact in times of trouble. They then alerted the users that the listed venues for demonstration would change at midnight on January 24 to give police forces a lesser chance of mobilizing against them the next day. On the morning of January 25, there were close to half a million people who had clicked “I’m attending” the revolution. Today, the Khaled Said page has more than 1.7 million users, by far more than any other Egyptian Facebook page.
  • nd indeed that was what happened. We witnessed another key moment illustrating the power of the interaction between social media, traditional media, and interpersonal communication. Newspapers, broadcasters, and on-line outlets had been discussing the potential ‘Facebook demonstration’ for a few days prior to January 25. As groups of demonstrators marched through the streets enroute to main squares chanting “Ya ahalina endamo lina,” (“Friends and family, come join us”), people watching from their balconies and windows heeded the calls and enabled the protests to snowball to unprecedented numbers. People were galvanized by the sight. The core activists, who attended every demonstration for years, were suddenly seeing new faces on January 25, mostly mobilized by the Internet. They came by the thousands, and then by the hundreds of thousands, numbers larger than anyone had expected.
  • Twitter played an important though slightly different role. Crucial messages relayed in short bursts of one hundred and forty characters or less made protesters ‘cut to the chase.’ Most activists tweeted events live rather than posting them on Facebook. Twitter was mainly used to let people know what was happening on the ground, and alert them to any potential danger. It usually was ahead of Facebook in such efforts. Twitter also enabled activists to keep an eye on each other. Some managed to tweet ‘arrested’ or ‘taken by police’ before their mobile phones were confiscated. Those words were incredibly important in determining what happened to them and in trying to help them. Most activists are, to this day, in the habit of tweeting their whereabouts constantly, even before they go to sleep, because they know that fellow activists worry if they disappear from the Twittersphere.
  • When the Egyptian regime belatedly realized on January 25 how dangerous social networks could be to its survival, the first thing it did was block Twitter. Internet censorship is a ridiculously ineffective strategy, though. Users were tech-savvy enough to find their way onto proxy servers within minutes, and to post on Facebook how to gain access to Twitter and how to remain on Facebook if the regime blocks it, which indeed happened later. The government felt it didn’t have any other option but to block all Internet access in the country for five days starting January 27 (as well as mobile telephone communications for one day). By then it was too late. People had already found their way to Tahrir and nearly every square in Egypt. Ironically, some were partly motivated by the Internet and communication blockage to take to the streets to find out what was happening and be part of it. And they were joined by workers’ movements in many governorates that expanded the protester numbers into the millions. The major squares of Egypt were full of people of every age, gender, religion, creed, and socio-economic status
  • Gladwell, it turned out, was wrong. These people didn’t know each other personally, but the “weak” personal ties had not proved a barrier to high-risk activism. Egyptians discovered the strong tie of belonging to the common cause of ousting a dictator
  • ocial network users were not the only ones revolting, and social networks were not the only reason or motivation for revolt. However, the role that social media have played over the years in indirectly preparing sectors of Egyptian youths for this moment, and in enabling them to capitalize on an opportunity for change when the time came, cannot be understated.  It can also be said that the role of social networks in Egypt has hardly ended. The revolution is not yet complete. 
anonymous

Augmented Revolution » Cyborgology - 0 views

  • The Egyptian resistance used web tools as well as physical space, and most importantly, they did so by looking at the intersection of both. They used the web to inform people how to behave in physical space, e.g., what to do with tear gas containers, who should stand in front of the crowds and how the crowds should move about the city. It makes little sense to argue about whether these are social media revolutions or not. Instead, we should recognize them as augmented revolutions. Only then can we debate just how and how much of a role the digital aspect played.
  •  
    Thinking about how augmented reality impacts physical reality.
1 - 11 of 11
Showing 20 items per page