Communicating in a networked world
Facebook has opened up our individual Facebook profiles so that we have no way to restrict certain pieces of information, such as who our friends are, which are now publicly available.
EPIC—the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and nine other co-signing organizations have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about this problem.[1] Read what Larry Dignan says on ZDNet about this. I investigated and found that we’re all naked now… [Read more…]
I had run into GapMinder some time ago, but was reminded of it when I encountered this talk that Ola Rosling[1] gave at Gov 2.0 Summit[2] that really makes it clear how the visualization of data — especially visualizing data over time — can give us valuable insights into trends in the physical and social world(s). Their Trendalyzer software is used by Google…as you’ll see in this presentation. [Read more…]
During my lifetime I have gone from viewing stars thorough binoculars, and once through a 40-inch refracting telescope (Yerkes Observatory was just miles from my home – I viewed once as a child) to the amazing deep-space digital views provided by the orbiting Hubble Telescope. I watched Halley’s comet in 1986 from the deck of my home in San Francisco, through 10x binoculars. During my lifetime, scientists dealing with cosmology have advanced our thinking about how the universe (and possible 10^10^10^7 parallel universes — oh, sorry, must not forget I am actually a mathematician and the correct notation is 1010107) may have gotten to its current state and where it might be going. {the photo is Phil Plaitt, the “Bad Astronomer” — thanks, Phil, for pointing me to the video which you can play below}
This music video is a trippy artistic rephrasing of how two thinkers talked about the meaning and inspiration of all of this.
Please also continue reading for footnotes and a second video where Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan discuss the universe…
The Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF.ORG] has a “patent busting” activity that watches for patents that “should never have been granted” (my language) and works to invalidate them, or at least invalidate as many of their claims as possible.[1] You’d be amazed at the kinds of things that have been patented that were just plain obvious, or had clearly been invented years before by someone else. I’m particularly sensitive to this because of my long history in computer-based learning and education. As an example, EFF is focusing on busting a patent on online test-taking. This one hinges on a method for charging for the tests and splitting the revenue, but nevertheless it seems absurd that someone could obtain a patent on splitting revenues from test-taking, doesn’t it?
Please stay aware of this issue – network neutrality means that you, the Internet user, have access to all online content with the same priority. It means that the carriers — both those who provide backbone services and those who deliver content to your doorstep — must not block certain types, or certain origins, of content that is lawfully provided to you.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke about this [Wall Street Journal report] at the Brookings Institution earlier this week. He proposes that all carriers, including wireless carriers who handle data traffic, should have to carry traffic without regard to what its content is or who is providing that content. The new provision in his proposal is that wireless carriers would have to carry voice-over-IP traffic as well as other kinds of data, which brings very cheap voice communications to mobile devices – much cheaper than the rates now charged for mobile voice calls.