Saturday, January 15, 2005

Filling in the Blanks in the Hot-Spot Map. Hotels, rental car companies and travel suppliers of all types have discovered that it costs relatively little to offer wireless Internet services to customers. By BOB TEDESCHI. [NYT > Technology] 9:58:11 PM    comment []

An Iranian Cleric Turns Blogger for Reform. A former vice president of Iran has keeps a Web log to share his views and reach out to the country's youth and others who use the Internet. By By NAZILA FATHI. [NYT > Technology] "We do not understand each other and cannot have a dialogue," he said. "As government officials, we receive a lot of confidential reports about what goes on in society. But I have felt that I learned a lot more about people and the younger generation by reading their Web logs and receiving about 40 to 50 e-mails every day. This is so different than reading about society in those bulletins from behind our desks." When he began his Web site, he declared that he was going to be "Mohammad Ali Abtahi only," without standing on ceremony as a government official. He wrote he was starting his Web log because he had taken amusing photographs of other officials with his new cellphone, equipped with a camera, and he wanted to share them with others. But he has strayed into deeply serious subjects. At a time when telling the truth can result in a prison term, Mr. Abtahi wrote recently on his Web site about what happened to journalists and bloggers who were jailed for a period in the fall. They were beaten so severely that the nose of one woman was broken, and they were put in solitary confinement for most of their detention, he wrote. Then he wrote that at a meeting with two of the released detainees, which a hard-line Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, also attended, two journalists had revealed such horrifying details that their account brought tears to the eyes of others in the room. "We had to give them water so that they could get hold of themselves and continue," wrote Mr. Abtahi, who attended the meeting as Mr. Khatami's representative. Webneveshteha.com 9:57:18 PM    comment []

UNESCO conference on freedom of. I really have to go to this UNESCO conference on Freedom of Speech in Cyberspace which will be held in UNESCO headquarters in Paris, on 3-4 February. At least to embarrass the Iranian delegation which will be arrogant enough to take part in such conference, even with its horrible record of freedom of speech in Cyberspace, and also to inform the UN and its members about the vast and heavy Net censorship in Iran. (I'm even prepared to do this trip on my own expense, if no other funding can I find.) Since my Canadian citizenship is still in the process, I have to use my invaluable Iranian passport -- again -- and to apply for a Type C Scheme Visa. But I worry issuing the VIsa takes longer than February 2nd and I miss the whole thing. So does anyone know someone who might be of help, especially in the French councilor in Toronto or in the Embassy in Ottawa? [Editor: Myself (English)] 9:55:21 PM    comment []

Social Security Enlisted to Push Its Own Revision. The Social Security Administration is preparing a campaign to convince the public that private accounts are needed. By ROBERT PEAR. [NYT > Business] 9:52:53 PM    comment []

Harvard Berkman Center panel on online communities. OhMyNews reports on the Berkman Center's 2004 Internet & Society conference that was held at Harvard University from Dec. 9 to 11. Speakers at these conferences love to rail on how simplistic early views of the Internet are, and I wonder if they understand that their antitheses to these early theses are equally simplistic? The use of the Internet, together with untethered access via mobile devices, to organize collective action has barely begun to get underway. Analysis ought to be a bit more complex than what was reported here. I suggest using Langdon Winner's notion of regimes of instrumentality. I thought it particularly interesting that Zack Exley, Internet coordinator for the Kerry campaign's incredibly lame top-down Internet effort, agreed with the Republican commentator that the Republican use of the Internet in the recent election was far more grassroots than the Democrats, who abandoned the techniques pioneered by the Dean campaign in favor of old-fashioned command-and-control. Soliciting funds from small contributors was the most "grassroots" the Kerry online effort ever got. (Thanks, Jean!) Putnam believes the Internet is a continuation of "personalized media." Online communities are divided according to their diverse areas of interest, and it's growing increasingly difficult to find points of commonality to bind them into one, he said. Going further, he believes that online cyber communication faces too many limits as a replacement of "old communications," during which people looked at one another. This is because it's hard to convey non-verbal communication such as facial expressions and body language online. Putnam points out that if the Internet has possibilities, it's the merging of online and offline. As of now, discussion of a "cyber reality" would be meaningless, and it's more constructive to think about what applicable possibilities the Internet can give to physical meetings in the real world, he says. For this reason, Putnam defines an Internet community as a merger between silicon and flesh. This means that at the point where the cyber world, represented by the semiconductor, and the physical body, that represents the real world, meet, we can find the possibilities of the Internet. Accordingly, unlike the predictions of the "futurists," the Internet is not the domain of pure digital signals called bytes, but rather is planting deeper roots in the domain of flesh and blood elements. [Smart Mobs] 12:55:54 PM    comment []