Radio Netherlands Worldwide: “Surprised when demonstrators from all over the world took to Twitter as a protest tool? Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath, member of Twitter’s founding team, was not. Rather, he sees it as a return to its roots: Inspired by protest coordination tools like TXTMob, and shaped by the values and backgrounds of Twitter’s founders, he believes activist potential was built into the service from the start.
It took a few revolutions before Twitter was taken seriously. Critics claimed that its 140-character limit only provided space for the most trivial thoughts: neat for keeping track of Ashton Kutcher’s lunch choices, but not much else. It made the transition from Silicon Valley toy into Middle East protest tool seem all the more astonishing.
Unless, Twitter co-founder Evan Henshaw-Plath argues, you know the story of how Twitter came to be. Evan Henshaw-Plath was the lead developer at Odeo, the company that started and eventually became Twitter. TXTMob, an activist tool deployed during the 2004 Republican National Convention in the US to coordinate protest efforts via SMS was, says Henshaw-Plath, a direct inspiration for Twitter.
Protest 1.0
In 2004, while Henshaw-Plath was working at Odeo, he and a few other colleagues found a fun side-project in working on TXTMob, an initiative by what he describes as a “group of academic artist/prankster/hacker/makers” that operated under the ostensibly serious moniker of Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA). Earlier IAA projects included small graffiti robots on wheels that spray painted slogans on pavements during demonstrations, and a pudgy talking robot with big puppy eyes made to distribute subversive literature to people who ignored less-cute human pamphleteers.
TXTMob was a more serious endeavor than these earlier projects: a tactical protest coordination tool. With TXTMob, users could quickly exchange text messages with large groups of other users about protest locations and police crackdowns….”
The Multistakeholder Model in Global Technology Governance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
New APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper by Nanette S. Levinson: “This paper examines two key but often overlooked analytic dimensions related to global technology governance: the roles of culture and cross-cultural communication processes and the broader framework of Multistakeholderism. Each of these dimensions has a growing tradition of research/conceptual frameworks that can inform the analysis of Internet governance and related complex and power-related processes that may be present in a multistakeholder setting. The use of the term ‘multistakeholder’ itself has grown exponentially in discussing Internet governance and related governance domains; yet there are few rigorous studies within Internet governance that treat actual multistakeholder processes, especially from a cross-cultural and comparative perspective.
Using research on cross-cultural communication and related factors (at small group, occupational, organizational, interorganizational or cross- sector, national, regional levels), this paper provides and uses an analytic framework, especially for the 2012 WCIT and 2013 WSIS 10 and World Telecommunications Policy Forum that goes beyond the rhetoric of ‘multistakeholder’ as a term. It includes an examination of variables found to be important in studies from environmental governance, public administration, and private sector partnership domains including trust, absorptive capacity, and power in knowledge transfer processes. “
AeroSee: Crowdsourcing Rescue using Drones
“The AeroSee experiment is an exciting new project where you can become a virtual mountain rescue assistant from the comfort of your own home, simply by using your computer. Every year Patterdale Mountain Rescue assist hundreds of injured and missing persons from around the Ullswater area in the North of the Lake District. The average search takes several hours and can require a large team of volunteers to set out in often poor weather conditions. This experiment is to see how the use of UAV (or ‘Drone’) technology, together with your ‘crowd-sourced’ help can reduce the time taken to locate and rescue a person in distress.
Civilian Use of UAVs
Here at UCLan we are interested in investigating the civilian applications of unmanned systems. They offer a rich and exciting source of educational and research material for our students and research staff. As regulations for their use are being developed and matured by aviation authorities, it is important that research is conducted to maximise their benefits to society.
Our Partners
We are working with e-Migs, a light-UAV operator who are providing and operating the aircraft during the search.
How aeroSee Works
Upon receiving a rescue call the Mountain Rescue services plan their search area and we dispatch our unmanned remotely piloted aircraft to begin a search for the missing persons. Using a real time video link, the aircraft transmits pictures of terrain to our website where you can help by viewing the images and tagging the photos if you spot something that the Mountain Rescue services need to investigate, such as a possible sighting of an injured party. We use some computer algorithms to process the tagged data that we receive and pass this processed data onto the Mountain Rescue Control Centre for a final opinion and dispatch of search teams.
We believe this approach can reduce time and save lives and we need your help to prove it. Once you are signed up, you can practice using the site by choosing ‘Practice Mission’ from the menubar. Fancy yourself as a Virtual Search agent? If have not already done so, sign up here:
Get Started!“
Re3 StoryHack
re3 – A hackathon for storytellers with a conscience. October 4-6, NYC: :Crucial stories deserve top talent. We know you are really busy. We know you are really talented. We know you (might) find the typical hackathon a bit chaotic …
React to the world around you. Rethink the way important issues are communicated. Resolve confusion about some of today’s greatest challenges.The Re3 StoryHack is an experiment, but damn, it’s an important one. It’s time to expand the boundaries of justice-focused persuasive storytelling.
We’re asking changemakers to propose specific stories relating to complex issues like economic fairness, climate change, educational opportunity, and many more.
We’re offering creative storytellers the chance to choose one of ten selected stories and work with top-notch teammates. Over the Re3 StoryHack weekend, we will innovate new ways of thinking and communicating these stories in language; written, visualized, performed, coded and more.
An interactive exhibit? Excellent. Flash mob? Sure. App? Why not. Sculpture? Perfect. Print piece? Absolutely. There is absolutely no limitation of medium for the teams’ final outputs as long as they tell captivating, powerful stories.
If you want a bit more clarity about what this is all about, check out our FAQ and these sample stories we’ve put together.
Changemakers and creative storytellers with a conscience, start your engines.”
Weather Channel Now Also Forecasts What You'll Buy
Katie Rosman int the Wall Street Journal: “The Weather Channel knows the chance for rain in St. Louis on Friday, what the heat index could reach in Santa Fe on Saturday and how humid Baltimore may get on Sunday.
It also knows when you’re most likely to buy bug spray.
The enterprise is transforming from a cable network viewers flip to during hurricane season into an operation that forecasts consumer behavior by analyzing when, where and how often people check the weather. Last fall the Weather Channel Cos. renamed itself the Weather Co. to reflect the growth of its digital-data business.
![[D]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/PJ-BP965A_WEATH_D_20130814193013.jpg)
The Atlanta-based company has amassed more than 75 years’ worth of information: temperatures, dew points, cloud-cover percentages and much more, across North America and elsewhere.
The company supplies information for many major smartphone weather apps and has invested in data-crunching algorithms. It uses this analysis to appeal to advertisers who want to fine-tune their pitches to consumers….
Weather Co. researchers are now diving into weather-sentiment analysis—how local weather makes people feel, and then act—in different regions of the country. To cull this data, Mr. Walsh’s weather-analytics team directly polls visitors to the Weather.com website, asking them about their moods and purchases on specifics days.
In a series of polls conducted between June 3 and Nov. 4 last year, residents of the Northeast region responded to the question, “Yesterday, what was your mood for most of the day?”
Big Data and Disease Prevention: From Quantified Self to Quantified Communities
New Paper by Meredith A. Barrett, Olivier Humblet, Robert A. Hiatt, and Nancy E. Adler: “Big data is often discussed in the context of improving medical care, but it also has a less appreciated but equally important role to play in preventing disease. Big data can facilitate action on the modifiable risk factors that contribute to a large fraction of the chronic disease burden, such as physical activity, diet, tobacco use, and exposure to pollution. It can do so by facilitating the discovery of risk factors for disease at population, subpopulation, and individual levels, and by improving the effectiveness of interventions to help people achieve healthier behaviors in healthier environments. In this article, we describe new sources of big data in population health, explore their applications, and present two case studies illustrating how big data can be leveraged for prevention. We also discuss the many implementation obstacles that must be overcome before this vision can become a reality.”
A promising phenomenon of open data: A case study of the Chicago open data project
Paper by Maxat Kassen in Government Information Quarterly: “This article presents a case study of the open data project in the Chicago area. The main purpose of the research is to explore empowering potential of an open data phenomenon at the local level as a platform useful for promotion of civic engagement projects and provide a framework for future research and hypothesis testing. Today the main challenge in realization of any e-government projects is a traditional top–down administrative mechanism of their realization itself practically without any input from members of the civil society. In this respect, the author of the article argues that the open data concept realized at the local level may provide a real platform for promotion of proactive civic engagement. By harnessing collective wisdom of the local communities, their knowledge and visions of the local challenges, governments could react and meet citizens’ needs in a more productive and cost-efficient manner. Open data-driven projects that focused on visualization of environmental issues, mapping of utility management, evaluating of political lobbying, social benefits, closing digital divide, etc. are only some examples of such perspectives. These projects are perhaps harbingers of a new political reality where interactions among citizens at the local level will play an more important role than communication between civil society and government due to the empowering potential of the open data concept.”
Public Policies, Made to Fit People
Richard Thaler in the New York Times: “I HAVE written here before about the potential gains to government from involving social and behavioral scientists in designing public policies. My enthusiasm comes in part from my experiences as an academic adviser to the Behavioral Insights Team created in Britain by Prime Minister David Cameron.
Thus I was pleased to hear reports that the White House is building a similar initiative here in the United States. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist and senior policy adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is coordinating this cross-agency group, called the Social and Behavioral Science Team; it is part of a larger effort to use evidence and innovation to promote government performance and efficiency. I am among a number of academics who have shared ideas with the administration about how research findings in social and behavioral science can improve policy.
It makes sense for social scientists to become more involved in policy, because many of society’s most challenging problems are, in essence, behavioral. Using social scientists’ findings to create plausible interventions, then testing their efficacy with randomized controlled trials, can improve — and sometimes save — people’s lives, all while reducing the need for more government spending to fix problems later.
Here are three examples of social science issues that have attracted the team’s attention…
THE 30-MILLION-WORD GAP One of society’s thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness. By the age of 3, children from affluent families have vocabularies that are roughly double those of children from poor families, according to research published in 1995….
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE The team will primarily lend support and expertise to federal agency initiatives. One example concerns the effort to reduce domestic violence, a problem for which there is no quick fix….
HEALTH COMPLIANCE One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen….”
How X Prize Contestants Will Hunt Down The Health Sensors Of The Future
Ariel Schwartz in Co.Exist: “The $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize asks entrants to perform an incredibly difficult feat: accurately diagnose 15 diseases in 30 patients in three days using only a mobile platform. To do that, competing teams need to have access to sophisticated sensors and related software.
Some of those sensors may be found among the finalists of the $2.25 million Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, a set of two consecutive competitions that challenges teams to advance sensing technology for gathering data about human health and the environment. The finalists for the first challenge, announced in early August, are diverse, though they do share one common trait: They’re all lab-on-a-chip technologies. “They’re small enough to be body wearable and programmable, but they use different methods,” says Mark Winter, senior director of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE.”
Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
Book review by José Luis Cordeiro: Eric Drexler, popularly known as “the founding father of nanotechnology,” introduced the concept in his seminal 1981 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.This paper established fundamental principles of molecular engineering and outlined development paths to advanced nanotechnologies.
He popularized the idea of nanotechnology in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, where he introduced a broad audience to a fundamental technology objective: using machines that work at the molecular scale to structure matter from the bottom up.
He went on to continue his PhD thesis at MIT, under the guidance of AI-pioneer Marvin Minsky, and published it in a modified form as a book in 1992 as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation.
Drexler’s new book, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, tells the story of nanotechnology from its small beginnings, then moves quickly towards a big future, explaining what it is and what it is not, and enlightening about what we can do with it for the benefit of humanity.
In his pioneering 1986 book, Engines of Creation, he defined nanotechnology as a potential technology with these features: “manufacturing using machinery based on nanoscale devices, and products built with atomic precision.”
In his 2013 sequel, Radical Abundance, Drexler expands on his prior thinking, corrects many of the misconceptions about nanotechnology, and dismisses fears of dystopian futures replete with malevolent nanobots and gray goo…
His new book clearly identifies nanotechnology with atomically precise manufacturing (APM)…Drexler makes many comparisons between the information revolution and what he now calls the “APM revolution.” What the first did with bits, the second will do with atoms: “Image files today will be joined by product files tomorrow. Today one can produce an image of the Mona Lisa without being able to draw a good circle; tomorrow one will be able to produce a display screen without knowing how to manufacture a wire.”
Civilization, he says, is advancing from a world of scarcity toward a world of abundance — indeed, radical abundance.”