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October 31, 2005
Calling All WSIS Bloggers
Hi everyone... I've spent a couple hours today updating the WSISBlogs.org website, which I originally set up last February. The site is a digest of blogs and photos from bloggers attending the World Summit on the Information Society. I'm aggregating blogs from around the world that are covering WSIS, along with relevant photos posted to Flickr.com. So if you're a blogger and you wish to contribute content to the site, send me an email with your RSS file, which I'll need to add your blog to the aggregator.
To make it easier for people to contribute to the blog, I've also set up a WSIS community blog on the TakingITGlobal (TIG) website. Anyone who's a member of TIG can post a blog entry to it. If you're not a TIG member, go to TakingITGlobal and sign up. Once you're registered, post a new blog entry, selecting the WSIS group blog listed under your "post to" menu. It'll then be added automatically to the community blog, as well as to the WSISBlogs site. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:31 PM | TrackBack
October 28, 2005
Text of the Dhaka Declaration
The text of the so-called Dhaka Declaration from this week's WSIS conference in Bangladesh has been published. Here's a copy of it for your convenience. -andy
DHAKA DECLARATIONWe, the ICT stakeholders representing Governments, Private Sector, Academicia and the Civil Society, having come from six continents of the world, assembled in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 23 to 25 October 2005 in an International Workshop entitled "Building an Information Society : Road 2 Tunis", organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology, Government of Bangladesh in collaboration with UNDP Bangladesh and in association with World Summit Award (WSA), Austria;
after extensive deliberations on the issues of e-governance, transparency & accountability, public and private sector partnership, internet governance, security vis-à-vis privacy, e-content & creativity, holistic ICT education & training for all, rural & universal ICT access, ICT4D leading to poverty alleviation and inclusion of women, children, the underprivileged & people with disabilities as well as the financing aspects of the solidarity fund;
hereby declare our common desire and commitment to build a free multi-stakeholder, people-centric, inclusive and development-oriented knowledge based Information Society in the world at large :
emphasizing that a primary aim of the Information Society must be to provide basic information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to people to facilitate full utilization of ICT at all levels in society including the grass roots and hence enable the sharing of social and economic benefits by all by means of ubiquitous access to information networks, while preserving cultural diversity and heritage of humankind all over the world;
endorsing the important role that ICT can play in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which describe a fundamental set of principles and guidelines for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and gender inequality;
recognizing that the concept of a knowledge-based Information Society is one in which affordable access to information & communication technology through content in accessible language and formats can help people achieve their full potential, promote sustainable economic and social development, facilitate participatory decision-making processes in sustaining democracy and good governance and improving quality of life for all;
appreciating the efforts of the UN in convening the WSIS and of the ITU in implementing the summit in two phases, Geneva 2003 - Tunis 2005 and
committing ourselves to the Declared Principles and Plan of Action at the Geneva Phase of the Summit and leading to the Tunis Phase of WSIS.
This Dhaka Declaration adopted at the conclusion of the International Workshop entitled "Building an Information Society : Road 2 Tunis" 23-25 October 2005, Dhaka, Bangladesh and is submitted as input to the Second Phase of the WSIS in Tunis during 16-18 November 2005 through the Secretary General of the ITU and will also be disseminated through governments, civil society, private sector, NGOs and the media.
Dhaka 25 October 2005
The Workshop deliberations and views expressed shall be made available to all ICT stakeholders on the website http://www.mosict.gov.bd/road2tunis.
Posted by acarvin at 9:47 AM | TrackBack
October 26, 2005
Dubai Layover
It's just before 7am in Dubai... Arrived here from Bangladesh around midnight; Emirates airlines gave me a room at a hotel, where I think I got four or so hours of sleep. If all goes well I'll be home in less than 24 hours... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:59 PM | TrackBack
Departing (and Pronouncing) Dhaka
My final podcast from Bangladesh. I talk about the close of the conference, shopping for souvenirs and learning the right way to pronounce Dhaka. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:19 AM | TrackBack
Scenes from a Bangladeshi Telecentre
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Video montage of a telecentre based at a girls school in Comilla, Bangladesh. The telecentre is run by Relief International's Schools Online program, which coordinates 20 telecentres across the country. |
Posted by acarvin at 5:12 AM | TrackBack
Aarong: Shopping for Economic Development
Over the course of the last week, several people including my friend Osama Manzar had suggested I go shopping at a place called Aarong. They'd commented on the high quality of clothing and handicrafts available there, saying that the store even had a fashionable outpost in London.
During the iftar on the last day of the conference, Shahiduddin Akbar suggested we go to Aarong after dinner. He was planning to go with a friend, and wanted to know if I'd like to come along. Word soon spread around the table, and my colleagues Josie and Milton expressed interest in coming along. So the five of us said our goodbyes to everyone at the banquet and jumped in Shahid's pickup truck for the ride to the store, located in Dhaka's Gulshan neighborhood.
Arriving at Aarong, we passed a group of security guards before entering. Inside, literally hundreds of Bangladeshis were shopping at a furious pace. It's tradition to shop at night during Ramadan, purchasing clothes and other items for Eid, the holiday immediately following the month of fasting. The store was a cross between the fair trade handicrafts store Ten Thousand Villages and Filene's Basement in Boston: aisle after aisle of clothes and handmade goods, with shoppers creating heaps of their Eid booty.
We decided to fan out and regroup by the entrance in 30 minutes, then re-evaluate whether we needed more time. I headed straight for the men's clothes department, where I thumbed through several hundred shirts. The t-shirt selection was excellent, while the button-down shirts were the Bangladeshi equivalent of Hawaiian shirts, featuring elaborate, colorful prints. I eventually settled on five shirts averaging around four dollars each before moving on to the handicrafts section, where I purchased a 12-piece set of hand-woven table settings, costing another four dollars. The bargains here seemed bottomless.
As I stood in the checkout line, I noticed various signs referencing BRAC, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. BRAC is an enormous NGO focusing on economic development and women's empowerment at the village level. I asked Shahid if Aarong was affiliated with BRAC; it turns out the store is one of their biggest projects. Rural villagers craft all of the goods available at the store, receiving a fair wage while generating revenue for BRAC's economic development work. I'd been to similar handicraft stores in other parts of the world, but none of them had the crowds and the vibrancy seen here.
The prices at Aarong may be a little higher than your average Bangladeshi shop, but spending the extra takas was well worth it. Nothing like buying souvenirs to help lift people out of poverty. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:09 AM | TrackBack
Experiencing Iftar in Bangladesh
One of the pleasures of being in Bangladesh this time of year is that I've gotten to experience my first Ramadan, or Ramzan as it's known here. Most Americans simply associate Ramadan with fasting: Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset for an entire month, avoiding even water or swallowing one's own saliva. But the flip side of this is Ramadan at night, when Dhaka and other predominantly Muslim cities really come alive.
Each day of the conference, we've ended the proceedings in time for everyone to make it to iftar, the traditional meal served at sunset to break the daily fast. The conference attendees gather in a banquet hall, sitting at tables that have been pre-set with plates of assorted foods. Then, everyone waits, until the muezzin makes the sunset call to prayer. The moment you hear him singing, everyone in the room simultaneously reaches to their plate, picking up a morsel to break the fast. Following iftar, a full dinner is served, so the foods included in the iftar plate are generally light in nature - unless you manage to go for seconds, of course.
I've experienced three formal iftars this week. There's been some variation of what's served on each plate, but generally the foods are similar. In each case, at least half a dozen foods are served together, including dates, chickpea fritters and grilled meat patties. For those with a sweet tooth, there's the Bangladeshi equivalent of jalabi, a syrupy fried sugar treat shaped similarly to a German pretzel. But one of my favorite parts of iftar was feasting on gram, a nutty legume similar to a chickpea, but smaller, darker and crunchier. The gram are served in a spicy sauce, reminiscent to Indian chana masala. But there's an added twist: at each table there's a large bowl of puffed rice for mixing in with the gram. Yes, it's just like Rice Crispies, but without any sugar added. It seems like a bizarre combination, but the tactile sensation of crunchy puffed rice exploding in your mouth as you savor a nice curry will be one of my most pleasurable memories of Bangladesh.
During my final iftar at the conference, we went to the Sheraton hotel for a banquet sponsored by Microsoft. Our van from the Pan Pacific hotel ran a little late, so by the time we got to the Sheraton, all the tables in the hall were taken up by journalists covering the release of the Dhaka Declaration, which had been drafted at the end of the conference. So around a dozen of us went down the hall to have our iftar in the main restaurant.
We sat in a row of booths along the side of the restaurant. As I sat down and began eating, Belgian Internet Society president Rudi Vansnick turned to me and said, "Do you see the men praying?" I looked around the room and saw lots of men standing at the buffet stations or finishing their iftar plates, but no one praying. He then pointed towards the wall. Somehow I had managed not to notice that the wall was mostly glass, and on the opposite side of the wall were rows of men in Islamic skullcaps kneeling in prayer. They were facing Mecca, of course, but the direction of Mecca just happened to be our table.
For a while I felt somewhat awkward about the situation; I had always regarded praying towards Mecca as a highly personal, intimate moment, and felt that stuffing my face just a couple of meters away from these men was invading their privacy. But I looked up and down the row of booths, many of which were full of Bangladeshis eating and talking and laughing, paying no attention to the men behind the screen. After a few minutes I got used to it, eventually forgetting about them.
Near the end of our meal, my friend Shahiduddin Akbar arrived, after finishing iftar with his family at home. As we left the restaurant to return to the main banquet hall, I turned to him and commented on the large number of men praying on the opposite side of the window. Shahid laughed and insisted it was perfectly normal: restaurants hosting iftar typically make a space available for people to pray prior to their meal - the Ramadan equivalent of saying grace before dinner. Suddenly it made perfect sense. I imagine that similar prayer rooms must have been set up at the two previous iftars, but since I wasn't seated by a glass wall in those cases, the prayers went unnoticed.
Tonight I leave for the airport at 6pm; iftar at the hotel takes place just before 5:30pm. Maybe I'll have one last iftar before I leave. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:00 AM | TrackBack
October 25, 2005
Drafting of the Dhaka Declaration
Right now here in Dhaka, Bangladeshi ICT minister Abdul Moyeen Khan is moderating a plenary drafting session for the "Dhaka Declaration" that will be published at the conclusion of this week's WSIS forum hosted by the Bangladeshi government and UNDP Bangladesh. The current draft of the document is very brief, just one page long, though it is possible that there will be appendices summarizing the results of each panel from the last three days. The ICT minister is encouraging the drafting group to make the document as succint as possible.
We are currently going through a series of interventions. Zahid Jamil of Pakistan requested that the document make reference to multi-stakeholder partnerships as key to bridging the digital divide, while removing the word "appropriate" from the phrase "appropriate content," so there nothing in the document that could be perceived as being counter to freedom of expression. I seconded both of his interventions, as well as requesting the inclusion of the phrase "people with disabilities" when discussion the notion of creating an inclusive information society, along with women, children and the underprivileged, as originally drafted. These interventions were all adopted by the drafting group. Meanwhile, Josie Cacdac of the Philippines has just proposed the inclusion of the concept, "Holistic ICT education and training for all," which was adopted unanimously.
Once the final version is complete, I will post a link to it. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:55 AM | TrackBack
Shahiduddin Akbar Discusses the Bangladesh Digital Divide
Earlier this morning I sat down with Shahiduddin Akbar of Katalyst to record a three-minute podcast. I interviewed him about the digital divide in Bangladesh, the role civil society can play in bridging the divide, and his expectations for the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:50 AM | TrackBack
Dhaka Police Station
This morning I went to the local police station here in Dhaka to file a police report regarding the theft of my Treo and my digital camera. In general I prefer to avoid having to deal with police, but there was no way getting around it. Fortunately, I had an official from the ICT ministry accompany me, which helped make the visit a three-minute stop rather than an all-day affair. They accepted my affidavit, signed a copy of it and stamped it as an official document submitted to the Dhaka police. And yes, I recorded a podcast to document the experience - and for my own protection, just in case. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:39 AM | TrackBack
Bangladeshi Beggars
One of the most difficult things for first-time visitors to South Asia to experience is the number of beggars who wander in city traffic, rapping on the window or reaching into the car demanding alms. It's a fact of life in cities like Dhaka, where traffic lights are slow; you often have to wait for five or 10 minutes at a traffic stop as one or more beggars, often children or the disabled, stand by your window until you're able to drive away. Your instinct is to give them alms, but this causes two problems. First, it's seen by other beggars, who then swarm your car and start banging for their share. Second, many beggars actually work for syndicates in which the money is kicked up to local criminals, who often use the money to bribe the police. So in general the only way to leave with a clear conscience is to make a donation to a legitimate charity, which I do every time I visit the region.
It's a troubling experience sitting in a car while a beggar does this. I made this 30-second recording documenting what it's like. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:31 AM | TrackBack
October 24, 2005
Q&A: How I Record Podcasts and Video
Yesterday my old friend Larry Anderson from the National Center for Technology Planning emailed me about the podcasts and videos I've been posting from Bangladesh. He asked me some questions about the setup I use for creating the content, saying it would be useful to share with my friends and colleagues. So here are some details about my setup, responding to Larry's specific questions.
1. What are you using to record your audio?
I have several ways of recording audio. If I'm just sitting in my hotel recording a podcast that doesn't require much audio mixing, I use the internal microphone on my laptop, using the open source audio editing tool Audacity. Audacity allows you to save your files as MP3s and compress them as well. Meanwhile, if I'm moving around while recording my podcast, I use a handheld digital recorder - specifically, an Olympus WS-200S. With 128 megs of RAM, it holds almost six hours of high-quality audio in Windows Media format. I then use the open source tool Easy WMA to convert it into an MP3 and compress it. I wrote a review of the WS-200S when I first bought it.
Some of the podcasts I've recorded have had Bangladeshi music. To mix the music with my voice, I generally prefer the video editing software Final Cut Pro, since I've used it a long time. It's not designed for audio editing per se, but I'm a lot faster at doing it with FCP rather than Audacity, which has a somewhat more technical interface.
2. What are you using to capture your video?
Until yesterday, I was using two cameras: my old two megapixel Canon A60, and my new eight megapixel Konica Minolta Dimage A-200. The A60 (before it was stolen, at least) shoots AVI format video at 15 frames per second, while the Konica shoots Quicktime video at 30 frames. The Konica lets you use the zoom lens while shooting, but its audio is much poorer than the A60. So generally I shoot more often with the older camera; all the videos I've posted so far were recorded with the A60.
3. Are you editing the video in Final Cut or something similar (or iMovie, etc.)?
I use Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. I've been using FCP for about five years and absolutely love it. First time video bloggers often use iMovie, which is really easy to use. But I prefer FCP because I can do more complex edits and compress it to my own specifications.
4. How are you getting those rather large files hosted in such fine style?
My blog is hosted by ibiblio.org. They provide free, unlimited hosting for websites that are created for the public interest. I've been with them since the late 90s and am grateful for their generosity. Other video bloggers also use sites like ourmedia.org for free hosting, which I highly recommend.
5. How are you mixing the audio? Do you use GarageBand or Final Cut or something to lay down multiple tracks, then mix those down to a final output?
See my response to question 1.
Lastly, I'll just add a few thoughts on compression. For video, I use a compression codec called 3ivx. It's accessible when I use Final Cut Pro as File/Export/As Quicktime Compression option in the drop-down menu. I click the options button and make a variety of adjustments, setting the codec to 3ivx, lowering the audio quality somewhat (since I often have content that's not CD quality anyway) and setting the frame rate to 15 frames per second.
So that's a quick overview of how I'm recording my podcasts and videos. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 11:57 PM | TrackBack
Shopping in Dhaka
Podcasting while strolling through the busy market streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:30 PM | TrackBack
Robbed
A very bitter podcast from me after having my Treo and one of my digital cameras stolen at the conference today. Meanwhile, as I was recording the podcast, Alexander Felsenberg came by my room and told me his passport and credit card were stolen. Oh, and I talk about visiting a nuclear reactor and staring at the glowing blue uranium rods. Overall, a day I'd like to forget. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Josie Cacdac's Keynote on Gender and ICTs
Here's a podcast of Josie Cacdac's keynote on gender and technology. I had to compress the file so I could upload it from here, so please pardon the audio quality. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 12:03 AM | TrackBack
October 23, 2005
WSA Reunion
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Impromptu self-portrait I took yesterday with World Summit Awards colleagues Osama Manzar, Alexander Felsenberg and M.D. Akteruzzaman. |
Posted by acarvin at 11:51 PM | TrackBack
Bangladesh Podcast: Monday Morning
A six-minute podcast from my hotel room prior to heading back to the conference. I talk about yesterday's sessions, including my dead battery problems and a minor India-Bangladesh development statistics kerfuffle in the afternoon plenary. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:51 PM | TrackBack
Debating Development Statistics as Phones Ring Off the Hook
Right now, Shady Shadrach of One World South Asia is giving a blunt assessment of Bangladesh's progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Using data from the UN Development Program, he's describing the state of literacy, school enrollment, child mortality, and other factors. Very few of the statistics are particularly complimentary. Meanwhile, the chairman of the session, Dr. Quazi Mesbahuddin Ahmed of the Bangladesh Planning Commission, is clearly upset. In the middle of the presentation, Dr. Ahmed interrupted Shadrach, saying he disagreed with "most" of his data. Shady, meanwhile, replied that the data comes directly from the UN Development Program. Dr. Ahmed appeared to wish to challenge him further, but conference organizers encouraged him to wait and let Shady have his say first.
Shady's now giving an overview of India's Mission 2007 initiative, which hopes to create a knowledge center in every rural village by August 2007. Meanwhile, mobile phones continue to go off in the audience every few minutes, despite pleas from the organizers for people to shut them off. Seems like people are so proud of their ring tones they want to share them with all of us. It's beginning to give me a headache. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:51 AM | TrackBack
My Job Is Done, But No Audio to Prove It
It's just before 4pm here in Dhaka, and we've wrapped up our panel session on content and the digital divide. Before coming to Dhaka, I bought a pack of AAA batteries in Dubai so that I would have plenty of power to record the session and post it as a podcast. Or, at least that's what I intended.
Unfortunately, the battery I put in my digital recorder was a runt. At some point during the panel session the battery died, and the recorder lost the entire presentation because of it. So alas, I have no podcast to share with you. At least I wrote some notes for my presentation, which I'll post below. -andy
Internet has fundamentally changed how content is producedPreviously required money, broadcast license, skills, POWER
Now any person with Internet access can blog, podcast, create online videos
20-30 million bloggers; more than half of them under age 20
Participatory media: Web 2.0, "We" Media
Digital Divide: Access, Basic Skills, Content.
You can't bridge the divide without bridging all threeChildren's Partnership Four Content Obstacles to Bridging the Divide
- Literacy. Much of the content is produced for the educated. Literate. Producers rarely take into account the skill levels of the public.- Language. As much as 2/3rds of Internet content in English. Producers must address local language needs.
- Localization. Lots of content created for national/intl audiences. The more local you get, the harder it is to have a critical mass of content producers. More content for New York or New Delhi than a village. The public must get involved.
- Culture. Content generally produced for educated, affluent audience, doesn't always address cultural diversity.
- Fifth: Accessibility. People with disabilities at a severe disadvantage accessing websites that are over-designed.
Professional, commercial content producers rarely address all of these challenges well. It makes it even more important for the general public to have the skills and access to become content producers in their own right.
USA and WSA
Global Schoolhouse Community Cyber Fair: student content
OurMedia.org: website that anyone can use for uploading infinite amounts of content
Enlace Quiche: Guatemalan Mayan project to produce local content by community members
Posted by acarvin at 5:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
ICTs, Transparency and Accountability
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Dr. Abdul Moyeen Khan |
Dr. Khan noted the power of ICTs to improve transparency and accountability among government officials. As a simple example, he described the process of parliament members publicly answering the questions of constituents. He said it's common for 100 questions to be submitted in any given week, yet at best, he is only given enough time to address one question from the parliament floor. But because of the Internet, he is able to get around this. Noting his email "is in the public domain," any of his constituents may email him directly; each night he spends time going through the questions and providing direct and immediate responses. You could sense he was very proud of being able to connect with his constituents this way. It'd be interesting, though, if he also created his own blog; imagine if all of these questions and answers were catalogued online for the public to access, either on the Web or through his RSS feed. Government transparency courtesy of Blogger. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 2:08 AM | TrackBack
Bhutan's ICT Minister
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Bhutan's ICT minister discussing "gross national happiness" and bridging the digital divide. |
Posted by acarvin at 1:44 AM | TrackBack
The Bhasani Novo Theatre
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View of the Bhasani Novo Theatre and Planetarium, venue of the Bangladesh WSIS conference. |
Posted by acarvin at 1:36 AM | TrackBack
Start of the Bangladesh WSIS Conference
It's just before 11:30am here in Dhaka and the Bangladesh WSIS conference, the Road to Tunis, has just begun. The room is packed with people - several hundred Bangladeshis and overseas guests squeezed into every chair and along the aisles.
Bangladeshi ICT Minister Dr. Abdul Moyeen Khan is currently on stage with the ICT Minister of Bhutan and other distinguished guests. Meanwhile, I'm pleasantly surprised to find free wi-fi in the conference hall. I'll certainly do my buest to take advantage of it over the next three days; I just need to get here early enough to sit in a place strategically close to an AC outlet, since my crummy laptop battery only lasts around 75 minutes a charge.
More later.... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:20 AM | TrackBack
Bangladesh Podcast: Sunday Morning
Sunday morning podcast from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Posted by acarvin at 12:18 AM | TrackBack
October 22, 2005
Rickshaw Traffic
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Video of bicycle rickshaw traffic in Comilla, Bangladesh. |
Posted by acarvin at 7:50 AM | TrackBack
Tank Fishing
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Video of men fishing in a 500-year-old artificial lake, or tank, in Bangladesh's Chittagong District. |
Posted by acarvin at 7:46 AM | TrackBack
Comilla Beat
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Video of rickshaws passing through Comilla, Bangladesh, as smiths hammer on anvils in the background. |
Posted by acarvin at 7:31 AM | TrackBack
October 21, 2005
Dhaka Diary: Exhausted
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Video diary recorded upon arrival at my hotel in Dhaka, Bangladesh, nearly 40 hours after I departed Boston. |
Posted by acarvin at 2:12 AM | TrackBack
October 19, 2005
And Bangladesh Makes 50
This afternoon, I'm catching a train to New York and heading to JFK airport, where I'll fly to Dhaka, Bangladesh, by way of Dubai. I'll be in Bangladesh for six days to deliver a keynote at a forum hosted by the technology minister in relation to the World Summit on the Information Society. This will be my first visit to Bangladesh; and if my math is correct, Bangladesh will be the 50th country I've visited. (For those of you who are interested, my list includes Albania, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana , Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Mauritius, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Oman, Palestine, Peru, Russia, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vatican City.) Technically, I've been to a few other countries as well (Bahamas, Nigeria, Portugal and Singapore), but since I just visited the airports, I don't count them on my life list, if you will.
Anyway, it should be an exciting adventure, apart from the fact I've got a nasty cold. Hopefully I'll be able to shake it by the time I get to Bangladesh. I've got plenty of time - from the time I leave my apartment to the time I arrive at my hotel in Dhaka, around 40 hours will have passed. Then again, maybe I'll just get sicker. We'll have to wait and see. But assuming I'm not too ill, I'll do my best to blog from the conference - assuming they have Internet access in the venue - and perhaps some video blogs and podcasts as well. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 15, 2005
Requiem for C. Delores Tucker: Civil Rights Unplugged
In one of her last commentaries before her death at age 78 this week, civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker authored an essay about broadband "red-lining" - the practice of telecom companies purposely avoiding the deployment of high-speed Internet services in low-income, marginalized communities. She calls to task SBC and Verizon for their redlining practices, arguing that this intentional widening of the digital divide must be treated as civil rights issue. Here's a sample of what she wrote. -andy
Picture for a minute a major financial institution petitioning Congress for special rules to allow it to provide loans only in certain communities throughout the country. "The cities are off limits!" says this fictional creditor, "and the moderate, middle-income communities . . . forget about it! They're not high-end enough."Were such a corporate actor to step into the political arena, civil rights and political leaders would be quick with their denunciations, attacking the proposal as the kind of odious bigotry seen in a bygone era. Yet this is exactly what the Bell telecommunications monopolies -- Verizon and SBC -- are proposing to Congress and to legislators in California, New Jersey and other places around the country. They are insisting that lawmakers bless their proposal to roll out new digital television and advanced broadband services only to the more affluent....
...The telephone companies' proposal is made precisely for the purpose of allowing them to invest less, and in fewer communities -- rather than more, as the current rules require. And as for their perennial promises of more investment in exchange for legislative favors: Legislators around the country have derided SBC and Verizon for never fulfilling such pledges.
Don't get me wrong. I support Verizon and SBC's entrance into the video services market, and I believe that consumers will benefit from it. But these potential benefits should not transform our elected officials into marionettes for two monopolies that want to trample our civil rights traditions.
Posted by acarvin at 9:29 AM | TrackBack
October 14, 2005
Celebrating 11 Years of Blogging - Sort Of
Eleven years ago today, I launched my first website, EdWeb: Exploring Technology and School Reform. The site was the result of a post-graduate fellowship from Northwestern University's Annenberg-Washington Program. I'd spent the summer of 1994 working at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting researching the impact on telecommunications reform on K-12 education. Because I was just a lowly grad student, they weren't willing to publish my findings in an official capacity, so instead I learned HTML, set up a Web server on my old Mac Classic, and launched EdWeb myself. It was one of the very first websites examining the role of the Web in education, and it propelled me into the work on the digital divide that I'm doing 11 years later.
Meanwhile, as part of EdWeb, I set up a personal homepage for myself called Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth. As you can see from this archival copy of my homepage from around eight years ago, the page was organized with my latest news updates at the top, with older information further down the page. Over time, I eventually stopped coding the page by hand and switched to various blogger tools, including Blogger and Movable Type.
Today, of course, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth is my primary way of saying whatever it is I want to say online. So in a way, I'm able to celebrate the 11th anniversary of my blog today. Perhaps not a blog in function that whole time, but certainly a blog in spirit. (grin) -andy
Posted by acarvin at 4:04 PM | TrackBack
October 12, 2005
Blog Anonymity vs. Credibility, Continued
Jon Garfunkel has posted an in-depth analysis about the Deleware Supreme Court case last week that affirmed a blogger's right to anonymity while questioning the fundamental credibility of blogs. I previously posted my own analysis, which you can find here.
Meanwhile, I received an email this morning from Julia Cahill, one of the principals in the case. She and her husband were the people targeted by "Proud Citizen" in his attacks posted to the website in question. I thought it was important to share her perspective, and she's kindly given me permission to post it here:
Andy, my name is Julia Cahill, of the Cahill V Doe case. I think the Jsutice's decision to DISMISS our case is just horrific. The Does 2-4 called me a whore, and such unspeakable terms I am humiliated to repeat them. We also have proof that Mayor Schaeffer, our next door neighbor who had us both arrested for harassment on Thursday, is John Doe. We posted signs on our front lawn saying 'John Doe->' and he had US arrested. just thought I'd let you know there's a human side here as well. With my best regards JuliaThe right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
-- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas
-andy
Posted by acarvin at 1:27 PM | TrackBack
October 10, 2005
Introducing the South Asia Quake Help Blog
The team that created the TsunamiHelp blog last December has now launched a new blog focused on this weekend's disastrous earthquake in Pakistan and India. It's called the South Asia Quake Help Blog. Those of us contributing to the site are using it to relay donation requests, news alerts and other pertinent information related to the quake. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:42 AM | TrackBack
October 6, 2005
Citizen Journalism: All in the Family?
My brother Eric, news editor of AP's asap news service, just published an essay about his experiences at yesterday's We Media conference. He ponders the irony of bloggers spending too much time blogging at a blogging conference. His case in point: me.
I wondered whether the people who were most deeply dedicated to the blogosphere were too busy blogging to absorb much of anything that was said -- about blogging. And podcasting. And whatever else can give any ordinary person (with a computer and a reliable Internet connection and some time on their hands) a voice in the marketplace of ideas.This particularly intrigued me because one of the rapid-fire bloggers was my brother, Andy Carvin, the director of a global community of Internet activists called the Digital Divide Network. Within 10 minutes of the start of the conference, he had posted a photo on http://www.andycarvin.com . Within thirty minutes, a podcast. An hour after that, a video clip.
Is my sibling out of his mind?
"I was juggling four different types of blogging at once," he told me later. "I was text blogging, photo blogging, podcasting and video blogging. And I was determined to get examples of all four online before lunch."
Way before lunch.
So, then, the question: Was he too busy keeping up with these tasks to absorb anything that was going on?
"I would argue that a good blogger, when covering an event, is paying meticulous attention to what's being said, and sometimes what's not being said," my brother said.
(snip)
...I couldn't help but feel, at times, like these advocates for greater involvement in the media were rather uninvolved with the goings-on at the conference. Sure, blogging and the like are forms of communication, but where's the warmth, the intimacy between speaker and listener? Must all conversation pass through the keyboard, the iPod, the Blackberry, the cell phone keypad?
But wait -- a ray of hope. The man to my right pulled out a pen, scribbled something on a note pad and handed it across me to my brother. Could it be? A moment of microchip-free, 18th-century communication? Quill and parchment coming together to establish a human connection?
As the pad went by, I read the note.
"Where are you blogging? What's the URL?"
I loved his byline at the bottom of the article, too: asap news editor Eric Carvin can be seen on his brother's blog in a photo with Al Gore. One of them was once vice president.
Indeed.
Posted by acarvin at 8:17 PM | TrackBack
Online Anonymity at the Expense of Blog Credibility?
While several hundred of us were confabbing at the We Media conference yesterday, the Delaware Supreme Court published its ruling on a case centering on two issues that are at the heart of participatory media: the right to online anonymity and the credibility of blogs.
The case in question, John Doe No. 1 v. Patrick Cahill and Julia Cahill (PDF), began with a series of messages posted to a site referred to by the court as the Smyrna/Clayton Issues Blog. On September 18, 2004, an anonymous participant using the pseudonym "Proud Citizen" posted a message critical of local city councilman Patrick Cahill (emphasis added by the Delaware Supreme Court):
If only Councilman Cahill was able to display the same leadership skills, energy and enthusiasm toward the revitalization and growth of the fine town of Smyrna as Mayor Schaeffer has demonstrated! While Mayor Schaeffer has made great strides toward improving the livelihood of Smyrna's citizens, Cahill has devoted all of his energy to being a divisive impediment to any kind of cooperative movement. Anyone who has spent any amount of time with Cahill would be keenly aware of such character flaws, not to mention an obvious mental deterioration. Cahill is a prime example of failed leadership - his eventual ousting is exactly what Smyrna needs in order to move forward and establish a community that is able to thrive on its own economic stability and common pride in its town.
The next day, Proud Citizen posted another statement:
Gahill [sic] is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is. The mayor needs support from his citizens and protections from unfounded attacks....
These statements infuriated Cahill, who felt he had been defamed. Cahill and his wife decided to sue Proud Citizen, but first they had to find out who he was. Their lawyers conducted a deposition of Independent Newspapers, owner of the online forum. They revealed Proud Citizen's IP address - the numerical address that can be traced back to his computer's Internet connection. Armed with this information, they soon determined that Comcast owned that IP address, so the Cahills obtained a court order to force Comcast to reveal Proud Citizen's identity. When Comcast received the court order, they informed Proud Citizen, who promptly filed an emergency motion for a protective order to protect his anonymity.
When the case was heard before a judge, the judge ruled that Proud Citizen had defamed Cahill, so it was reasonable to force Proud Citizen to reveal his identity. Proud Citizen appealed the decision all the way to the Delaware Supreme Court, which yesterday ruled in his favor and against the Cahills.
In the court's ruling, Chief Justice Steele laid out their thinking on the matter. Like so many Internet-related cases before it, the ruling took great pains to note the unique nature of the Internet:
The internet is a unique democratizing medium unlike anything that has come before. The advent of the internet dramatically changed the nature of public discourse by allowing more and diverse people to engage in public debate. Unlike thirty years ago, when "many citizens [were] barred from meaningful participation in public discourse by financial or status inequalities and a relatively small number of powerful speakers [could] dominate the marketplace of ideas" the internet now allows anyone with a phone line to "become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox." Through the internet, speakers can bypass mainstream media to speak directly to "an audience larger and more diverse than any the Framers could have imagined." Moreover, speakers on internet chat rooms and blogs can speak directly to other people with similar interests. A person in Alaska can have a conversation with a person in Japan about beekeeping in Bangladesh, just as easily as several Smyrna residents can have a conversation about Smyrna politics.
Among the various attributes of Internet publishing, Steele said, is the commonness of anonymity:
Internet speech is often anonymous. "Many participants in cyberspace discussions employ pseudonymous identities, and, even when a speaker chooses to reveal her real name, she may still be anonymous for all practical purposes."For better or worse, then, "the audience must evaluate [a] speaker's ideas based on her words alone." This unique feature of [the internet] promises to make public debate in cyberspace less hierarchical and discriminatory" than in the real world because it disguises status indicators such as race, class, and age.
Moreover, previous cases have set a clear precedent about the right to online free expression, harkening back to the golden age of colonial pamphleteering:
It is clear that speech over the internet is entitled to First Amendment protection. This protection extends to anonymous internet speech. Anonymous internet speech in blogs or chat rooms in some instances can become the modern equivalent of political pamphleteering. As the United States Supreme Court recently noted, "anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and dissent. The United States Supreme Court continued, "[t]he right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."
"It also is clear," Justice Steele added, "that the First Amendment does not protect defamatory speech." The challenge, therefore, is setting the bar at a reasonable level to allow people to seek redress when they've been defamed, while at the same time not creating a chilling effect that tears away the right of anonymity, effectively preventing the public from speaking its mind. "[W]e must adopt a standard that appropriately balances one person's right to speak anonymously against another person's right to protect his reputation," Steele writes.
We are concerned that setting the standard too low will chill potential posters from exercising their First Amendment right to speak anonymously. The possibility of losing anonymity in a future lawsuit could intimidate anonymous posters into self-censoring their comments or simply not commenting at all. A defamation plaintiff, particularly a public figure, obtains a very important form of relief by unmasking the identity of his anonymous critics. The revelation of identity of an anonymous speaker "may subject [that speaker] to ostracism for expressing unpopular ideas, invite retaliation from those who oppose her ideas or from those whom she criticizes, or simply give unwanted exposure to her mental processes."Plaintiffs can often initially plead sufficient facts to meet the good faith test applied by the Superior Court, even if the defamation claim is not very strong, or worse, if they do not intend to pursue the defamation action to a final decision. After obtaining the identity of an anonymous critic through the compulsory discovery process, a defamation plaintiff who either loses on the merits or fails to pursue a lawsuit is still free to engage in extra-judicial self-help remedies; more bluntly, the plaintiff can simply seek revenge or retribution.Indeed, there is reason to believe that many defamation plaintiffs bring suit merely to unmask the identities of anonymous critics. As one commentator has noted, "[t]he sudden surge in John Doe suits stems from the fact that many defamation actions are not really about money."
"The goals of this new breed libel action are largely symbolic, the primary goal being to silence John Doe and others like him."This "sue first, ask questions later" approach, coupled with standard only minimally protective of the anonymity of defendants, will discourage debate on important issues of public concern as more and more anonymous posters censor their online statements in response to the likelihood of being unmasked.
Justice Steele then goes on to describe the spectrum of content available over the Internet. In the process of doing so, he stakes much of the Delaware Supreme Court's final decision on a principle that would have stirred quite a debate at yesterday's conference: that blog content should be taken less seriously than content produced by mainstream media. To wit (emphasis added):
While as a form of communication the internet is not legally distinct and warrants no special protection above and beyond what traditional forms of communication receive, it is worth noting that certain factual and contextual issues relevant to chat rooms and blogs are particularly important in analyzing the defamation claim itself. Ranked in terms of reliability, there is a spectrum of sources on the internet. For example, chat rooms and blogs are generally not as reliable as the Wall Street Journal Online. Blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for the expression of opinions; by their very nature, they are not a source of facts or data upon which a reasonable person would rely.
Steele goes on to cite several cases in which courts questioned the reliability of online content produced by the general public. One case, Rocker Mgmt., LLC v. John Does 1 through 20, noted that
the messages tended to be "replete with grammar and spelling errors; most posters do not even use capital letters. Many of the messages are vulgar and offensive, and are filled with hyperbole." The court continued, "in this context, readers are unlikely to view messages posted anonymously as assertions of fact."
Another cased he cites states the following:
"[u]nlike…traditional media, there are no controls on the postings. Literally anyone who has access to the internet has access to the chatrooms."Moreover, "the statements were posted in the general cacophony of an internet chat-room in which about 1,000 messages a week are posted….Importantly, the postings are full of hyperbole, invective, short-hand phrases and language not generally found in fact-based documents….To put it mildly, these postings…lack the formality and polish typically found in documents in which a reader would expect to find fact. "The court concluded that the general tone, context, style and content of the postings "strongly suggest that they are the opinions of the posters."Accordingly, the "reasonable reader, looking at the hundreds and thousands of postings about the company from a wide variety of posters, would not expect that [the defendant] was airing anything other than his personal views...."
"Apart from the editorial page," he continues, "a reasonable person reading a newspaper in print or online, for example, can assume that the statements are factually based and researched. This is not the case when the statements are made on blogs or in chat rooms." Justice Steele then quotes from Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky's Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace:
"When one views…allegedly defamatory statements in context - both the immediate context and the broader social context - it becomes apparent that many of the allegedly defamatory statements cannot be interpreted as stating actual facts, but instead are either ‘subjective speculation' or ‘merely rhetorical hyperbole.'"
So based on the presumption that blogs and online forums are platforms solely for opinions rather than facts, the court sides with Proud Citizen, aka John Doe (once again, with added emphasis):
Given the context, no reasonable person could have interpreted these statements as being anything other than opinion. The guidelines at the top of the blog specifically state that the forum is dedicated to opinions about issues in Smyrna. If more evidence of that were needed, another contribution to the blog responded to Doe's second posting as follows: "Proud Citizen, you asked for support, I don't think you are going to get it here. Just by reading both sides, your tone and choice of words is [that of] a type of person that couldn't convince me. You sound like the person with all the anger and hate…" At least one reader of the blog quickly reached the conclusion that Doe's comments were no more than unfounded and unconvincing opinion.Given the context of the statement and the normally (and inherently) unreliable nature of assertions posted in chat rooms and on blogs, this is the only supportable conclusion. Read in the context of an internet blog, these statements did not imply any assertions of underlying objective facts. Accordingly, we hold that as a matter of law a reasonable person would not interpret Doe's statements as stating facts about Cahill. The statements are, therefore, incapable of a defamatory meaning.
Thus, in the state of Delaware, it would appear that bloggers, including anonymous ones, need not fear speaking their mind against public officials. The downside, though, is that as far as the courts are concerned, they shouldn't be taken seriously either. What's even more puzzling about all of this is that website in question isn't even a blog. Almost any netizen who's spent more than five minutes participating in online discussions would immediately recognize the site is a bulletin board and not a blog. (The site's hosts even categorize it as a public issues forum rather than a blog.) How and why the courts ended up deciding that bulletin boards and blogs are the same species is beyond me; the same phylum perhaps, but not the same species.
The justices' decision to lump them together does disservice to the thousands and thousands of bloggers who take their blogging very seriously. No doubt, millions of blogs are little more than personal billboards or exercises in navel gazing, while countless others exist solely for the purpose of spreading opinion rather than "facts." But that doesn't mean you should dismiss the work of thousands of bloggers playing the important role of citizen journalists? Even those blogs that are opinion-oriented often have well-constructed, thoughtful opinions. Does that make them less "credible"? Less credible than the newspaper editorials held in such high regard by the court? In the state of Delaware, at least, the answer is apparently yes.
Online Anonymity 1, Blog Credibility, 0. Case dismissed.
tag: We Media