Undercurrent

What is it about bingo, now? Suddenly references to obscure bingo-style entertainment pops up left and right. How about Foreign Policy’s State of the Union Bingo? And then in a comment to a discussion about PowerPoint Karaoke (!), here’s Presentation Bingo:

Just as you stand up to take the stage for your presentation at a conference or whatever your colleague / friend / irritating co-worker hands you a 3×5 card with five random words. If you can smoothly integrate all five words into your presentation the players in the audience jump up and yell bingo!

Blogger Overstadig Bruseth is trying to identify all the different artists appearing in the U2 video “Window in the skies”. Help him!

The Norwegian magazine Horisont has published an article I have written about how the internet might develop in the years from now until 2015 (pdf format). Needless to say, the task was almost hopeless, but then again no one knows the “right” answer, so it wasn’t so daunting after all… Operationalizing the idea to mean “the social uses of the internet”, I settled on interviewing four people who would approach the subject from different angles: management professor Espen Andersen, librarian and blogger Erik Stattin, Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie, law professor and author of “The Wealth of Networks” Yochai Benkler. But of course I take full responsibility for the final text. Excerpts at least of the Benkler interview will appear here.

UPDATE: The article is now available in html format.

I’m glad I have just decided to change broadband provider, away from NextGenTel. Why – because now it appears that the company is blatantly violating the principle of network neutrality by limiting the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Eirik Solheim is right in recommending NextGenTel users to switch to a competitor. Canal Digital users should do the same – another operator to limit bandwidth on certain activity. ITAvisen reports that the Norwegian Consumer Council takes the development as a serious threat to network neutrality in Norway.

UPDATE: NextGenTel seem to have received the message – they now backtrack on limiting bandwidth for NRK.

Other bloggers covering the story: Alf Kåre Lefdal, Espen Andersen, Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing(!). The story also made it to Slashdot.

The graph shows the development of households with broadband internet connections in Norway, by household income in 1000 NOK (source: Statistics Norway).

By 2014, or maybe as early as 2010, all Norwegians will have superfast broadband connections “anywhere” – at home, school, work, cafes, librarian blogger Plinius predicts. Then at least the purely technical side of the digital divide will be bridged.

The development is encouraging, as the overall growth rate is increasing. But bear in mind that “broadband” is very liberally defined here, as “more than ISDN” capacity. As users want to download and view video more and more, and upload their own content, demand for capacity will grow.

There are some astonishing numbers in the material. For instance, although low-income households are lagging behind as expected, still one-third of all households with under 200000 NOK income own a laptop. And of those online (70 percent), 79 percent of unemployed have been online the last three months, 39 percent every day.

Simple and smart marketing from the Oslo Mekaniske Verksted restaurant: Short videos show potential guests the way from different other locations in the city. Not being able to read a map no longer a valid excuse for not finding your way!

Some new sightings in Undercurrent’s area of interest:

• Online communities and news websites: A Slashdot-inspired list of rules on how to build a successful community. Check out the comments as well, and some healthy opposition. For an example of how not to do it, see Aftenposten’s solution – scroll down to bottom – for readers’ comments to articles. Here it’s not even possible to go directly to the comment you want to read!
• More global voices: Interlocals.net is a new citizen media service created to enhance dialogue across language divides – see explanation of concept (via RConversation).
• Open, global collaboration in science: Initiative to share and publish data on avian influenza.

Even with some months left of 2006, the Undercurrent book of the year award can already be announced: Yochai Benkler is the winner with his exceptionally insightful “The Wealth of Networks”. Benkler uses a coherent framework to analyze the developments that have occupied many of us in theory and practice the past few years: the rise of peer production – user-generated publishing – blogging – open source software. In brief, Benkler’s book is the most forceful and comprehensive analysis so far of the impact on society of these connected phenomena.

Unsurprisingly the book is published under a Creative Commons licence, which makes it possible to download for free in the pdf format.

More about the book will be forthcoming here, but as a start, here’s an important quote from the concluding chapter:

The basic material capital requirements of information production are now in the hands of a billion people around the globe who are connected to each other more or less seamlessly. These material conditions have given individuals a new practical freedom of action. If a person or group wishes to start an information-production project for any reason, that group or person need not raise significant funds to acquire the necessary capital. In the past, the necessity to obtain funds constrained information producers to find a market-based model to sustain the investment, or to obtain government funding. The funding requirements, in turn, subordinated the producers either to the demands of markets, in particular to mass-market appeal, or to the agendas of state bureaucracies. The networked information environment has permitted the emergence to much greater significance of the nonmarket sector, the nonprofit sector, and, most radically, of individuals.

…for most of July. At least mentally. Summer in Norway doesn’t always look like that! No grid, no blogging…

The First Monday conference in Chicago this week has resulted in many papers on open source, open access, social software etc. See the full list. Most relevant in the context of this blog is probably Leonard Witt’s Constructing a Framework to Enable an Open Source Reinvention of Journalism.

Here’s an ambitious experiment from the Norwegian Finance Ministry: All citizens can contribute their views on sustainable development. The material will be used in the ministry’s further work, culminating in a new strategy to be made public next year. The public comment option is open one month, from April 24 to May 24. The initiative is accompanied by a new finance minister blog. All very well, but the launch was too soft. I just heard about it through Marion two days ago (today VamPus picked it up). Some first thoughts and suggestions for improvement:

• Feed the buzz: The initiative was launched with a formal press release. I have found no mention of it in the media or on blogs. Tip to communication department: Next time, start blogging about such initiatives before they are formally launched, if possible. At least feed the press release directly to as many bloggers as you can. Create discussion and buzz.
• Create alliances: Involve schools, libraries etc in projects where the issues are presented and discussed before people contribute.
• Help them find it: The backbone of the initiative is a lot of complex material from public reports about economics and the environment. To even find this on the government information portal Odin, you almost have to be an expert user. And once you’ve found the material, you don’t get much help in navigating through and understanding it. A subsite would have been a better idea, and there the minister’s blog could have been better integrated as well.

The more important point of all this? Digital democracy is complex and requires a lot of care and attention if it’s going to work. Usability issues are strategic, not something you add “afterwards”.

India has turned SMS crazy, according to Kamla Bhatt. Actually the dynamic she describes isn’t so different from what we have been experiencing in Scandinavia (where SMS was invented!). People text incessantly, anywhere, about anything. How about filing your tax return per SMS? No problem. Interesting similarities, given the huge differences between the societies… In another post, she discusses the topic of mobile vs PC web access in India, and mobile comes out on top. That was a recurring theme at the recent We Media conference as well, where participants from China, India and African countries all stressed the importance of the mobile phone for web access in their areas.

Salam Pax is updating from Baghdad again, and has renamed his blog The Daily Absurdity Report. The word absurdity should here be read as an understatement.

Inspired by last week’s We Media conference in London and Leonard Witt’s ideas for next year’s conference, here’s a few reactions & suggestions:

• Present new material: More than most subjects, the discussions on the future of media, journalism, blogging etc tend to be dominated by an exchange of views. Organizers can commission new research into essensial topics, and present the material for discussion at the conference (or maybe even before, so participants can have a good look at methodology and results before they arrive. This year’s opinion poll about trust in media didn’t have much impact on the conference because the questions seemed rather irrelevant). This can be both quantitative and qualitative studies. If it’s case studies, the people behind the cases should be present as well.
• Time for discussions: A mantra heard during the breaks and in blog entries this year was “there’s too much lecturing”. So all sessions should be shorter to allow more questions, answers and discussions. Many people didn’t get to ask their questions at the end of sessions. Also, allow for longer breaks, many of the best discussions take place then.
• Know more about “We”: Compile a list of participants’ blogs before the event (participants can do this themselves in a wiki or other format). Then everyone will be in a better position to know who you want to hook up with during the conference. One of the best things for me was to learn about many extremely interesting new blogs and sites.
• More global voices: Arguably the best – most informative, most surprising – sessions were those about China, India, Africa, Middle East. Just add more voices: From different European countries, from Latin America, from regions of Africa… You can’t fail. And just assume that most of the US/Brit debates are known already.

Tag: wemedia.

Sessions about China/Asia, India/South Asia and Africa here at the We Media conference. Good discussions that illustrate how variations in the way people relate to blogging and other user-controlled tools and genres can only be understood by considering the local and national contexts – such as different press and media traditions (previous post on this point). Some notes:

• China: EastSouthWestNorth. Blog written in Hong Kong that tracks and translates material from Chinese blogs and media. Rebecca MacKinnon: Web 2.0 is very Chinese, they are natural networkers. Andrew Lih: Studies Wikipedia globally. Wikipedia is blocked in China. One Chinese Wikipedia faction is open to accept censorship of “difficult” words. Several participants noted that there’s an implicit contract/compact between the Chinese authorities and the people: Politics, democracy is a no-go zone. In return you get extensive freedom in the economic and cultural sphere. But how can you really, in the long run, stop a civil society from emerging?
• India: Kamla Bhatt thought the mobile phone would be a more important platform than the PC in India (the same point was made about China). She described vividly the creative web 2.0 scene in Bangalore. Nitin Desai of the UN: Freedom of speech is seen as an absolute moral right in India. Neha Viswanathan follows Indian blogs for Global Voices.
• Middle East: Lisa Goldman directed the attention to contact between Arabic (Lebanese, Jordanian among others) and Israeli bloggers. She had been to Amman and met Jordanian bloggers there). The founder of cairolive Tarek Atia noted that people in the Middle East used to get their news from only one source, now their impulse is to check different sources.
• Africa: Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian: Although there is a big problem with connectivity in Africa, because of low costs of entry blogging is perfect for the developing world. Megan Knight: In Africa, citizen journalism connects with a long tradition for alternative media. Radio still most important medium.

Tag: wemedia

I’m proud to be one of so far 32 Norwegians in the world’s largest online stadium. The most patient crowd you’ll ever find (via Netzeitung).

Friends tell me that Rojo runs circles around my dear Bloglines as feed reading tool. So checking the red one is on the to do-list.

The “Leipzig Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media” for 2006 has been jointly awarded to Moldavian journalist Alina Anghel, Italian journalist Fabrizio Gatti and the German journalist Dr. Volker Lilienthal. The prize is 30.000 euro and is awarded by the media foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig bank (via Netzeitung). An excellent investment by the bank in the health of democracy and an example to follow for other banks and corporations.