Now that I’ve hung up my hat at the Open Rights Group, I actually have time to read stuff for pleasure again. And it has been with great pleasure that I’ve read the two pieces listed below. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’re writing about – the quality of your prose sings through. In the [...]
Categories: business, censorship, copyright, freeculture, law, media, networks, open source, politics
This week’s column at the New Statesman is a reaction to all the silly season stories calling for a complete ban of Facebook/YouTube/the internet.
Some people are so quick to judge. At the beginning of August, the national treasure that is Sir Elton John was reported, albeit by that other great national treasure, the Sun newspaper, [...]
Categories: media, networks, newstatesman, openrightsgroup, politics
After James showed me the web is us/ing us video, I wrote about it for my latest openDemocracy piece. It’s the first time I’ve been able to join up my interest in linguistcs with my interest in the information age, and I’m quite proud of the result.
After the Sandinista government took power in Nicaragua in [...]
Categories: freeculture, media, networks, opendemocracy, politics
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the web is us/ing us. Its good short film about the way the machine learns. Not sure if we need to rethink all the things listed, but still good.
Categories: networks
Yesterday was my first day working with the Open Rights Group. It’s going to take me a while to gain pace with the rest of the team, and the bevvy of projects they’re working on both in terms of campaigns (e-voting, more IP stuff, and the European Television without Frontiers legislation are all under the [...]
Categories: advertising, blogging, business, censorship, freeculture, law, music, networks, politics
Last Friday, Open Business, in collaboration with Bookmooch and Magnatune, held the inaugural MiniBar, a geek social meant to rival SF’s CC Salon. It was a whole lot cooler than most techie meets, being hosted in a warehouse bar off Bricklane and having actual DJs and everything.
Here I am with Open Business Hannah – you [...]
Categories: business, freeculture, networks
It had to happen. After months waiting for my Second Life contact to get around to writing a piece for openDemocracy on theories of innovation in virtual worlds, I have been forced to rehash his thesis in the New Statesman:
“Those who have not yet heard about Second Life, the online virtual world, can’t have read [...]
Categories: business, design, games, networks, newstatesman
Speaking of ideas-in-progress, Prof Jonathan Zittrain gave a lecture at the LSE last Friday entitled: “What would you put on the one laptop per child?”. It was basically an introduction for development types to his generativity theory, via the $100 laptop initiative, but he tested a few interesting ideas during the lecture, which are worth [...]
Categories: development, freeculture, law, networks
This week’s column in the New Statesman stretches a metaphor. After Tony Neate, director of GetSafeOnline advised UK web surfers to “treat their PC like their car” and maintain it with regular updates, lock it away safely behind a firewall, etc, I go on to suggest that, if we want our PCs to remain open [...]
Categories: design, law, networks, newstatesman
openDemocracy’s Deputy Editor, David Hayes, points me to this excellent article from The Nation, which predicts that media megacorps will use the new web 2.0 environment to pollute our mental space in ways we cannot yet imagine:
“Advertisers are harnessing technology that targets and follows Internet users on their journeys through cyberspace, collecting data and tracking [...]
Categories: advertising, business, media, networks