Some of the world's most popular networking services have gone dark in China, apparent victims of government censors in the days leading to a notorious anniversary.
Online users in China said Twitter, Yahoo's Flickr photo site, Microsoft's new Bing search engine and Hotmail, and other services were inaccessible on Tuesday.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square. Social media experts such as Laura Fitton suspect Chinese authorities may be blocking sites to tamp down discussions of the protest.
This is an issue I touched on recently when the Iranian government shut down Facebook ahead of its June 12 elections as reform candidates appeared to be gaining political ground through spreading word of campaign rallies and getting out messages through the social networking site Facebook.
Mobile technology and new tools to improve health outcomes, drive economic growth and foster democracy are issues that NDN is deeply involved in. As Obama Administration official Tom Kalil wrote for NDN affiliate, the New Policy Institute, in an October 2008 paper, Harnessing the Mobile Revolution:
With a few exceptions, the U.S. government is largely oblivious to the ways in which the rapid diffusion of mobile services (and other new technologies) could be used to improve the human condition. I believe that the next Administration should launch a major new initiative to harness the confluence of new technologies and innovative business models as a key component of its global development agenda. This initiative would be designed to serve as a catalyst for policy reforms in developing countries, promote an increased capacity for innovation by developing country entrepreneurs to meet local needs, and stimulate additional investments by philanthropists, foundations and companies. Such an initiative could reduce poverty, strengthen democratic institutions, and improve global health outcomes. It could also help restore some of the damage to America’s international reputation, boost America’s “soft power,” and position American businesses and workers to benefit from the growth of emerging markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This initiative would not be limited to mobile services, and might also include decentralized approaches to providing safe drinking water, new vaccines, therapies, point-of-care diagnostics, clean energy, and improved crops that are more productive, nutritious, and drought-resistant.
Kalil has joined the Obama Administration to do exactly what he advocated in his cutting-edge paper. Check back with NDN for more work on mobile technology, improved health outcomes, economic opportunities and new tools used to foster democracy.
In the meantime, read the entire Harnessing the Mobile Revolutionhere.
How often do you check your Facebook page? What if you tried to log on and Facebook was blocked?
If you live in Iran, that's exactly what has happened: the government has banned Facebook ahead of the June 12 election there. Why? Because opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, taking a page from Barack Obama's campaign playbook, has used the social networking site as well as blogs and other new media and tools to appeal to Iran's Millennial Generation.
Last October, UC Berkeley's Tom Kalil, now Associate Director for Policy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote a truly compelling paper for NDN affilate, the New Policy Institute. The paper, entitled "Harnessing the Mobile Revolution," focused on how mobile devices and technology are improving health outcomes, enabling economic growth and fostering democracy in some of the world's most underdevloped countries. In his paper, Kalil wrote that the explosive growth of mobile usage, their increased performance and functionality and the role the Internet has played in allowing greater openess on mobile devices are all factors that have led to the trends mentioned above.
The section of Kalil's paper about how mobile devices can foster democracy is fascinating and illustrates exactly why Iran's repressive government has banned Facebook. From's Kalil's paper:
There are a growing number of examples of mobile communications being used to topple governments, improve election monitoring, report on human rights abuses,strengthen civil society, and democratize the flow of information. A few of the more prominent examples are described below. Of course, the spread of the Internet and mobile technology does not automatically result in democratization and the free flow of information. As documented by the OpenNet Initiative, more than three dozen states around the world “use various mechanisms of Internet filtering, targeting a broad range of websites addressing political and social topics as well as many Internet tools and technologies.” Authoritarian governments such as China’s are able to enlist global multinationals to help them. Leading Internet search companies engage in self-censorship to block politically sensitive information, and other leading IT companies have helped built China’s “Golden Shield Project” for Internet filtering and surveillance.
Second People Power Revolution
In January 2001, Philippine President Joseph Estrada was driven from office by hundreds of thousands of angry citizens mobilized by millions of text messages and e-petitions. After 11 pro-Estrada senators voted to block evidence of the corruption in an impeachment trial of the President (Estrada was taking money from an illegal numbers racket), citizens began to circulate messages like "The 11 senators are pigs! S&@t, Estrada is acquitted! Let's do People Power! Pls. pass.” Text messaging and cell phones become powerful tools for the people organizing demonstrations in the main thoroughfare of Manila, and one carrier reported that the daily volume of text messages increased from 45 million to 70 million. Estrada called it a “coup de text.”
Orange Revolution
In October 2004, the Ukrainian state used fraud and intimidation to move 2.8 million votes in the direction of Victor Yanukovych, the presidential candidate favored by his authoritarian predecessor Leonid Kuchma. This resulted in civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes, with hundreds of thousands of orange-clad protestors gathering in the center of Kiev. Ukraine’s Supreme Court ordered a revote, and the opposition candidate Victor Yushchenko won the election. Analysts believe that the Internet and mobile phones played two important roles in the Orange Revolution. First, the Internet allowed an alternative media to flourish that was not subject to self-censorship or overt control by Kuchma and his allies. Second, prodemocracy activists were able to use mobile phones and the Internet to coordinate election monitoring and mass protests. Prior to the election, pro-democracy movements such as Pora (It’s Time) had created political networks throughout the country, including 150 groups responsible for spreading information and coordinating election monitoring, 72 regional centers, and 30,000 registered participants. This allowed Pora to mobilize protestors after widespread reports of electoral fraud.
NDN is doing more exciting work on the mobile technology front, so check back often. In the meantime, read Kalil's entire paper here, and if you're on Facebook, join NDN's Facebook page!
House Democratic Caucus Chair John Larson Offers Legislation Based on NDN Proposal to Increase Workers' Competitiveness Through Universal Access to Computer Training
Washington, DC -- U.S. Rep. John Larson (CT-01), Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, today introduced legislation that taps the resources of the nation's more than 1,200 community colleges and offers free computer training to workers and others seeking to improve their IT skills.
The typical community college computer lab is open and used by students 66.5 hours per week. These hours are highly concentrated in the daytime of weekdays, when most working people are on their jobs. Under our proposal, the federal government would provide grants to defray the costs of keeping these labs open and staffed by community college instructors an additional 30 hours each week, on evenings and weekends when these labs are generally closed or little-used. During those hours, any person would be able to walk in and receive instruction in computer-related skills, at no cost. We estimate that if two-thirds of community colleges participate, and each provides three instructors for 30 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, Congress could provide every worker in America access to IT training for about $125 million a year.
"By broadening their mission, community colleges have the potential to be a hub to train our workforce for the jobs of the future. With this legislation, we are helping them fulfill potential and boost local economies around the country," Larson said.
"Chairman Larson has again shown that he understands the need to provide America’s workers with the skills to succeed in the competitive global economy, particularly during these tough economic times," Shapiro said. "The Community College Technology Access Act is a cost-effective investment that will help workers get ahead. Tens of millions of Americans graduated high school or even attended college in the years before computers and the Internet became ubiquitous. Many of them are now entering, or are already in, what should be their most productive and highest-earning years. But without basic information technology skills, many workers are trapped in dead-end jobs, and as non-wired employment becomes obsolete, they face being locked out of the mainstream workforce entirely."
"In the globalized, interconnected, technology-dense 21st century, facility with and connectivity to the global communications network is central to the life success of any worker or child," said NDN President Simon Rosenberg. "NDN congratulates Chairman Larson for his bold leadership in making the American workforce more competitive, and looks forward to continued work on building a 21st century economic strategy that makes globalization work for all Americans."
The Shapiro proposal is a companion to a paper written by Rosenberg and Alec Ross, then with the One Economy and now a Senior Advisor on Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that would put A Laptop in Every Backpack of American sixth graders. Additionally, Tom Kalil, now Associate Director for Policy of the White House Office of Science and Technology, continued this narrative, authoring a paper entitled, "Harnessing the Mobile Revolution," for NDN’s affiliate, the New Policy Institute. This paper argued that the explosive growth of mobile communications can be a powerful tool for addressing some of the most critical economic, political, and social challenges of the 21st century.
Check out the video of the bill's introduction here:
Dan has written extensively about Twitter in his weekly Thursday New Tools feature. From talking to friends or colleagues, my sense is that you either love Twitter or you hate it. There doesn't seem to be a lot of inbetweet.
Last night, I happened upon this recent New York Times article on Twitter, "Putting Twitter's World to Use."
My first reaction to Twitter was lukewarm: I'm not so interested in a 140-character verbal tweet about what someone is eating for breakfast.
But like many new tools and media, Twitter is evolving. To wit:
According to the article:
Companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Dell can see what their customers are thinking as they use a product, and the companies can adapt their marketing accordingly. Last week in Moldova, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool while outsiders peered at their tweets to help them understand what was happening in that little-known country.
And over the weekend, Amazon.com learned how important it was to respond to the Twitter audience. After one author noticed that Amazon had reclassified books with gay and lesbian themes as “adult” and removed them from the main search and sales rankings, a protest broke out on blogs and Twitter. The company felt compelled to respond despite the Easter holiday, initially saying the problem was due to a “glitch in our system” but later blaming a “ham-fisted cataloging error” that affected more than 57,000 books dealing with health and sex.
Soon, machines could twitter as much as people. Corey Menscher, a graduate student at New York University, developed the Kickbee, an elastic band with vibration sensors that his pregnant wife wore to alert Twitter each time the baby kicked: “I kicked Mommy at 08:52 PM on Fri, Jan 2!” Mr. Menscher is now considering selling the product.
Pairing sensors with Twitter leads some to think Twitter could be used to send home security alerts or tell doctors when a patient’s blood sugar or heart rate climbs too high. In the aggregate, such real-time data streams could aid medical researchers.
Already doctors use Twitter to ask for help and share information about procedures. At Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, surgeons and residents twittered throughout a recent operation to remove a brain tumor from a 47-year-old man who has seizures.
And more:
Indeed, the news-gathering promise of Twitter was most evident during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November and when a jetliner landed in the Hudson River in January. People were twittering from the scenes before reporters arrived.
...Even small businesses find Twitter useful. For example, Mary F. Jenn, of True Massage and Wellness in San Francisco, twitters when masseuses have same-day openings in their schedules and offers discounts. The spa is often fully booked within several hours.
But Twitter’s most productive use has been for businesses that want to peer into the minds of their customers, reading their immediate reactions to a product. Dell noticed customers complaining on Twitter that the apostrophe and return keys were too close together on the Dell Mini 9 laptop. So Dell fixed the problem on the Dell Mini 10.
New technologies are fascinating often because of the way people learn to adapt them across so many situations -- twittering in Moldova to come to a protest, Facebooking to organize in Egypt, avoiding crushing fees when sending money home to another contient by doing it on a cell phone. As Simon wrote this morning, the Obama Administration is using mobile technology as it seeks to advance democracy and an open society in Cuba.
And as Tom Kalil wrote for NDN affiliate the New Policy Institute in an enormously compelling paper last year, "...the explosive growth of mobile communications can be a powerful tool for addressing some of the most critical challenges of the 21st century, such as promoting vibrant democracies, fostering inclusive economic growth, and reducing the huge inequities in life expectancy between rich and poor nations."
The New Policy Institute is excited to release a compelling new paper, Harnessing the Mobile Revolution, by Tom Kalil.
In recent years, the use of mobile phones and other mobile communications in developing countries has skyrocketed, and Tom takes a look at the power of mobile technologies in addressing some of our most pressing challenges, such as reducing the huge inequities in life expectancy between rich and poor countries, fostering inclusive economic growth, and promoting vibrant democracies.
The New Policy Institute is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) affiliate of NDN.
In the paper, which you can read in its entirety here, Tom urges the next President to promote mobile technologies as a tool to improve global health care outcomes, combat global poverty and strengthen democratic institutions.
"...the next Administration should launch a major new initiative to harness the confluence of new technologies and innovative business models as a key component of its global development agenda. This initiative would be designed to serve as a catalyst for policy reforms in developing countries, promote an increased capacity for innovation by developing country entrepreneurs to meet local needs, and stimulate additional investments by philanthropists, foundations and companies.
Such an initiative could reduce poverty, strengthen democratic institutions, and improve global health outcomes. It could also help restore some of the damage to America’s international reputation, boost America’s 'soft power,' and position American businesses and workers to benefit from the growth of emerging markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America...."
As Tom further notes in the paper:
"There is no doubt that mobile communications are having a significant impact on the way Americans live, work and communicate with each other. But the impact is no doubt more keenly felt by the African mother who can call ahead to determine whether a doctor is available to treat her sick child before traveling for hours."
Tom is a chair of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at the University of California Berkeley and a former senior Clinton Administration official. To read more about Tom, please click here.
