Tim Callington lives in Cambridge UK and works in London for Edelman Public Relations. The views posted here are his and his alone. He can be contacted at tim dot callington at bt internet dot com
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The whole idea of location as a platform makes sense to me and points to the way that t'internet is humanising technology - the experience starts with who and where you are, not what you use.
It also plays to the idea of blended reality that Alan Moore talks about in Communities Dominate Brands - that our online and offline experience merge and play an equal role shaping our lives and perceptions of the world. Or at least that's my rough'n ready take on it. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_geolocation_services_are_exciting_for_poets.php#more“Facebook dominates UK mobile use”
Gordon sorts out the economy..."just like that".
Courtesy of today's Times.
The Guardian announced its three "beatbloggers" today. They'll be gathering local stories in Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh.
I think this is a smart move and I hope that they're the first of many. The local blogger approach gives a means to engage with communities and get under their skin in a way that the tradionally structured media organisation, I think, would find harder to manage. I want to know what's making the news across the country, but I also want to know what's happening where I live. The personal perspectives the beatbloggers will hopefully offer make finding out what's going on all the more entertaining, not to mention informative. It also plays nicely to the location aware Internet we're seeing evolve. If the movement grows and can maybe help inspire a greater sense of community spirit, then that would be great to see. http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2010/jan/28/guardian-local-beatbloggers-recruitedThis week we (as in Edelman) released our 2010 Trust Barometer results. Trust in business and government has stabilised, but it's still fragile. See what Mr E himslef has to say about it.
Good post from Broadstuff on the implications of social media for the Dunbar Number
We have all got to stop believing in the Monkey Myth of the Internet and Democracy, according to Evgeny Morozov, speaking at Polis. By this he means that the current wishful thinking is that the Internet works like the monkey and the typewriter. Leave it alone to bash away and probability theory says that eventually it will write out the complete works of Shakespeare.
Evgeny was talking primarily about how digital optimists think that somehow, naturally, inevitably, the Internet will bring democracy to authoritarian regimes like China, Iran and Russia. But his argument can also apply to hopes for E-Democracy in liberal states, too.
Evgeny is certainly not against either the Internet or Democracy, he just doesn’t see much real evidence of one leading to the other. In fact he shows how those in power in places like Tehran and Beijing use the Internet as a very efficient way to track and then crush dissent.
As he points out, places like Russia often have less Net censorship than the UK. Yet it hasn’t lead to a thriving plural political system or blossoming civil society. Many regimes are happy to provide loads of free online entertainment as a way of pacifying or distracting populations. But his unerlying point is that politics is driven by material circumstances not Internet discussion groups.
He’s not saying that we shouldn’t try to use new technologies to promote political change, either. Although he has some great examples of where it has backfired. When western activists sought to bring down Iranian government online communications they ended up taking out the protestors platforms, too, for example.
Evgeny says that it might be simpler to stick to the neutral Do No Harm principle online and work for political change in more concrete ways. And if we are going to use the Internet, then we need to think through what effect it might have, if any. The ‘tragedy’ of net activism, he says, is that it so often fails to convert online activity into any meaningful action in the real world.
We will have the full text of Evgeny’s talk up later - meanwhile you can read his recent article in Prospect and a response from Clay Shirky.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Democracy, Development, Freedom of expression, Iran, Polis Events, Reporting politics, governance and journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This piece from the Polis blog reminds me of the argument over whether technology is socially constructed or projects certain characteristics and qualities on to society - do we shape it or does it shape us?
Personally, I think it's a bit of both. But, hell, what do I know? I'm just some PR monkey mucking about on the Interwebs. And speaking of which, take a look at the post, it's worth a look.
Digital ones that is from us folks at Edelman. Have a read and please discuss, debate, agree or disagree at your leisure.
That's the fun part about predictions.
Serves him right for trying to launch a carbon copy of Barack Obama's campaign in the UK. Show some imagination next time Dave!
The word "company" is derived from the Latin words "cum" and "pane" - meaning "breaking bread together".
Or so says The Economist. For anyone working in a company - and there's a lot of us let's face it - we'd probably benefit a great deal by remembering that.
