Digital divide during UK riots?

Wanted to share a thought that occured to me while reading a report by Pew on the demographics of social media users in the US.

The #UKriots i also made some comments on may fit one conclusion of the report. In the conlusion the report states (and i quote):
We did find that people who are already likely to have large overall social networks – those with more years of education – gravitate to specific SNS platforms, such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
When looking at the use of social media and Blackberries in the #UKriots i already noticed that the rioters used blackberries to organise, while the cleanup was organised mostly through Twitter. Maybe this is because of the social status the different groups have; the rioters underclass, lower middleclass, the cleanup preppry academics with good education (or singing in some majorselling stadiumfilling band)

 

So, if this is true, there is not only a digital divide in age, which is closing looking at the pewreport. There is also another divide amongst social media users themselves. Maybe the UK riots where a glimpse into this divide. Interesting times.

 

 

Free calls home from Gmail for military

Google’s gmail allows soldiers to use the call option for free! Great stuff for the soldier trying to keep in touch with the homefront while abroad.

And it is relatively safe: A phonecall is mostly between two people, facebook is one talking to many. (one to one communication vs many to many communication).  Great feature from Google for the soldier abroad, and safe for anyone scared that stuff might leak.

At first i got overenthousiastic, thinking about some kind of next step in the use of social media by the military. But on second thought: not to self: lets be realistic.  It is just a traditional call, only done trough internet. The main advantage is the call being free of charge. for google, its good publicity. Nothing less, but nothing more as well.

 

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/free-calls-home-from-gmail-for-all-us.html

Lybia rebel takover unveils social media monitoring

The fall of the Ghadaffi regime (for now, he has not been caught yet) gives a unique insight into the world of online monitoring by autoritharian regimes. As i wrote in earlier posts and what mr. Evgeny Morozov has explained in great detail in his book ‘The Net Delusion’ (BUY IT!) the internet gives ample opportunities to regimes to spy on their own people. For regimes such as  Ghadaffi’s a very interesting tool to maintain in power.

Some findings include that the regime knew about a lot, and by a lot, i mean A LOT. Another finding is chilling, yet not suprising. There was help from abroad: French, South African, Chinese systems where used and manuals where found. So you have ‘democratic’ regimes building systems for such dictators to oppress its own people. It is one thing building a one off unique electric fiat 500, like the one shown below, but helping the Lybian Stasi to collect date which can lead to arrests (and a treatment that does not exactly involve polite interrogation)? Someone start an ethical discussion, please.

I shows again that the internet was percieved as safe, but turned out to be just as dangerous to gather as the local coffeebar crammed with listeningdevices and secretagents with cheap cigarettes observing your every move through holes in a newspaper..

In this there is a awkward paradox: The the last resort for the opposition was the internet, where they used westernbuild social media networking sites to organise themselves, while at the same time this last dark alleyway in the digital realm of Lybia was flooded with the cybersearchlights of monitoringsoftware made partly in the West as well.
How paradoxal, how cynical.

 

 source fiat pic: http://gigapica.geenstijl.nl/2011/08/bye_bye_ghadaffi.html

E-mail birthday

 From my friends at Next Web: Today is the 29th birthday of the word ‘email’.  Not going to steal the article, you can find it here, just wanted to join the party.

So, there you go! pie and punch anyone? mojito’s at the swimmingpool, balloons and confetti everywhere, bunnies from a hat, clowns in the yard, strippers in the cake. Or i’ll just sent an email..:)

To give some insight into the development of the now common communicationtool, here’s a great infographic! 

By the way, the infographic is found on the website of mr. ‘i am a Cybergod’ Vashiva, found here. Dont know who it is? Well, he’s the guy who actually registered the name email for the first time.  Must confess i did’nt know him either, so shame on us.

 

 

 

Benefits, dangers of social media

Just wanted to share some online and old media attention for the new US army social media handbook. Good thing that attention is given to this subject in traditional media as well. In order to work well and spread awereness about the pro’s and cons of social media in a warzone, this type of attention is a must.

Click here for more

UK internet shutdown talks ‘constructive’.

The talks between British Government and Twitter/Facebook and Blackberry representatives are called ‘constructive’.

Lets hope that both parties find a way that balances the freedom of speech and the freedom of internet with the need for some sort of control by a third party, such as the UK government. It is not clear yet what is ment with ‘criminal behaviour’ , or ‘working together to keep people safe’ and ‘reacting firmly’  What does it all mean? In China the government is very ‘firm’, mr. Assad is very firm… Ofcourse a bit of a cynical comparison, but i think that the people drafting the policies must think out their plans carefully and make clear definitions of all those terminology. The line between a government arresting people for saying stuff they dont like or dont find appropriate  and arresting people for  really saying nasty hatebreeding stuff is a thin one in some cases.

Small tip from modest me: Set clear rules as a government, this will help social media users. If the rules are clear, people will be free to use internet within those boundaries. If the rules are unclear, people will stay away from the borders, you never know when you will cross the line. People not expressing themselves because they are rather safe than sorry should not be the outcome.

Second tip: dont make the rules to strict, this will help the government, but thats besides the point. Intern regulation should be about the people using internet in a way thats free, but with some clear guidelines. Just as people using the road, or the bus.

Very curious how this is going to work out in the near future.

 

US Army releases new social media handbook 2011

Great! The US army has released its new and updated social media handbook.

Their reason: Social media evolves, so does the handbook.

Simple, handy, thorough. And whats really neat is that is open and easily accesible to everybody interested. Even better: they tip you that its updated. It shows that the US military is way ahead in the harnassing of social media as a tool for themselves. And that they understand that the power of social media lies in openess and communication.

Props!

Fear and blogging in the Arab world.

A piece in the Jerusalem Post about arab bloggers being threatened. I am not suprised: Like i said before: overemphasizing social media as a dicatorkiller is not exactly helping the internet becoming a tool for change in countries ruled by such leaders. It will entrench sitting autorities and only attracts more attention to the medium in the same way that the bloggers in the JP article tell about. Like one anaylst said in another article on the Jerusalem Post: in Egypt the internet went down for a couple of days, but the protests kept going. I see the same in Lybia.

But the same Harvard scholar quoted in the other article also says that there is only one option for leaders to suppress protests: force. It looks like mr. Assad of Syria is a quick learner when it comes to effectively cracking down on protesters.

Everbody tweets and youtubes their asses of, but Assad? He aint goin nowhere.  Ahmedinedjad: same.  Their motto: No guns, no glory.

Bloggers and Twitizens are not as powerfull as they may seem at first glance. They can only act as a cataclyst to rally existing hopes and fears into demonstrations on the streets. And by constantly heralding them as freedomfighters in western media the governments will be even more motivated to silence them. 

 

Schrapnel

Last april photohrapher Tim Chivers recorded the accidental death of a rebel fighter (Advice: GRAPHIC), caused by schrapnel that hit him. The schrapnel was released after inexperienced fighters fired a recoilless rifle (i would say, BIGASSgun) at very short distance, while the weapon was ment to hit tanks far away. Schrapnel flying around hit the man, causing a fatal injury. He bled to death.

As i wrote in an earlier post, the rebels are a group of disorganised  and untrained fighters, only bound together by the common goal of removing Colonel Ghadaffi from office.  They have learned some hard lessons on the way, like not firing such weapons in small crammed areas.
And hard lessons are ahead: People already say that if Lybia wants democracy, it will need to learn some hard lessons on the way to becoming it. Democracy is an ongoing project, it spans many years.

But if the common goal of removing the enemy from office is achieved, which has more or less happened at this moment, then whats next? How will those lessons crystalize into democracy?

Historically the rebels face a big challenge. Lybia is a tribal country, lots of differences: East en West, Nationalist vs Islamist, tribal disputes within those groups….It is not certain that all those differences will dissappear once the smoke has cleared over Ghadaffi’s compound.

To keep the fatal mistake on that april 24th in Misrata as a metaphor: Lybians must understand that the power thats currently in their hands can cause some nasty collateral damage.I hope that those hard lessons that the transitional government has to learn will not result  people dying because the schrapnel of history hits them in the back..

Time will tell.

571st Air Force Band goes viral on YouTu

571st Air Force Band goes viral on YouTube – This video by members of the 571st Air Force Band has gone viral on the… http://ow.ly/1enm8j