May 15, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
As I was saying few days ago, I'll be in Trieste at the ICTP for the School and Workshop on Structure and Function of Complex Networks for the following 2 weeks. The school is free (UNESCO funded) but I'm on my budget for the accomodation and meal so I tried HospitalityClub and CouchSurfing. On Monday 9 May (evening), I searched for people offering hospitality in Trieste and sent a message to all of them (almost 20). The morning after I got several replies (all on HospitalityClub), all of them very kind offering help and one of them offering me hospitality for the entire period (16-28 May). Incredible!!! Actually as truesmile told me in one of the following emails: "no, non è incredebile che ci sia brava gente al mondo, è incredebile che non ci crediamo più!!" ("no, it is not incredible that there are decent people in the world, it is incredible that we don't believe this anymore"). So I'll stay in robby's house for the following 12 days! truesmile will lend me her bike and I will meet a lot of new "friends": rocana, alessia1305, igmaru! Sweet!
User Interface note: There are much more users on HospitalityClub than CouchSurfing and this is incredible because CS is a great site, very usable, good looking and perfect, while HC is unusable, with a poor graphics. I didn't investigate the reasons but I might guess that HC's code is written by users themselves that feel HC as a creature of them, while CS is perceived as a great (commercial) tool created by someone else: it is not so, CS's creator is a great guy and one of the CS users but maybe this is how it is perceived.
Can it be the case that, on social software sites (for non web programmers), crappy graphics and lack of usability is a feature?
Anyway, if you are a Web designer, would you like to give some advise on how to improve HC's graphics and usability?
April 30, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| PhD |
phd
|
A paper of mine got accepted for the AAAI conference (see previous post). So I need (1) to go to Pittsburgh on July 9, 2005, (2) to find an accomodation in Pittsburgh from July 9 to July 13, 2005, and (3) to pay for conference registration. Since my institute is not sailing in the gold (this is probably not an English expression, it is an Italian one, "non sta navigando nell'oro" and i liked to write it here), I'm going to ask you if you can help in some way.
I tried to enroll for the Student Scholar and Volunteer Program, some volunteering and being a student can maybe help with (1) and (3), however if you know of any grant for students for travelling from Italy to USA for example, please let me know. About (2), I'm going to check on couchsurfing and on hospitalityclub. However if you live in Pittsburg and are dying of wish to host me (again it is an Italian expression "muori dalla voglia di..."), let me know. I'll be happy to be hosted ... and I promise I'll not use Italianish expressions ![[winking face]](http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/images/smilies/wink.gif){kind=small}
UPDATE: i got a suggestion to put here a PayPal button, at first I thought it was a unreasonable suggestion but then "hey maybe it can work". Just 2 notable examples: Kottke becomed a full-time blogger and the authors of the randomly generated paper accepted for conference will give a random-presentation thanks to received donations.
So, before I spend time (sort of money, no?) in setting up a PayPal account, would you donate? ... Never thought I could write something like this. The Web is an expected socially created strange creature, isn't it?
March 13, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
Very interesting article: "The long tail of software. Millions of Markets of Dozens".
Let’s look at the Amazon example. This graph shows that Amazon sells roughly 2.3M books and that the average Barnes and Noble retail store stocks 139,000 books. So, Amazon stocks roughly 2.2M more books that Barnes and Noble.
No surprise here. That’s the benefit of an online storefront. Massive inventories housed in ultra-low-rent areas that are fronted electronically.
The astonishing figure is the percent of sales that comes from the “long tail” of books (books that Amazon carries but that Barnes and Noble doesn’t).
57%.
57% of Amazon’s sales come from books you can’t even buy at a Barnes and Noble (to be fair, there is some skepticism around this number voiced here). This runs totally counter to the traditional 80/20 rule in retailing – that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your inventory. In Amazon’s case, 57% of their book revenue comes from 0% of Barnes and Nobles inventory.
Inaccessible Tail
In the past, software’s long tail has been generally inaccessible because software has been
* Too difficult to write
* Too expensive to write and distribute
* Too brittle or expensive to customize once deployed.
It just hasn’t been economical for someone to create a custom software company to help architecture firms.
That’s why, in the software business, the traditional focus has been on dozens of markets of millions instead of millions of markets of dozens. The traditional software model is to make software have enough features and address enough of a homogeneous market that you can sell millions of copies of the same software. In the past, that’s been the only way to make money.
February 27, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Humour |
humour
|
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
This is pure genius! News from Repubblica.it (in Italian).
Serpica Naro, young anglojapanese artist and fashion-maker, was supposed to close the Milano fashion week (Settimana Della Moda) today. BUT (suspence ...) Serpica Naro does not exist!
The organizers were fouled by the creative Italian collective Chainworkers. Serpica Naro is in fact an acronym of San Precario (depicted in picture), the newest of a long list of saints but this time with a reason.
San Precario is the protector of all the atypical workers (co.co.co., co.co.pro., and in general everyone that has a job with zero labour rights). [In the last 5 years, in Italy, most of the new workers have lost all the labour rights that were conquered by previous generations].
Chainworkers activists created an interesting 'look book' of Serpica Naro and a cool official website (with fake fashion magazines reporting about Serpica) and a bunch of other sites speaking about her, and an Italian press office and an English one and a Japanese one and a fake showroom in Tokyo and in London.
More clever is the fact that the same Chainworkers started attacking Serpica Naro accusing her to exploit anti-globalizations mottos just to sell fashion. And they also spread on some homosexual mailing lists news about the fact Serpica Naro had fouled in 2001 the japanese homosexual community just in order to use it for self-promotion.
Let me close with this. I don't know if what I wrote is true: it is totally possible that Serpica Naro does exist and I have been fouled. Just remember that nothing you read/listen anywhere is necessarily true (not here, not on newspapers, not on television). You have been warned....
Some info:
The official Serpica Naro site is http://www.serpicanaro.com/
And here the biography of Serpica Naro from the site of SettimanaDellaModa: http://www.settimanadellamoda.it/serpica.htm
Biography from http://www.serpicanaro.com/
Tokyo based anglojapanese Serpica Naro has built up a strong reputation as a young designer who has consistently pushed the boundaries of fashion design.
She graduated from Bunka Fashion College and is internationally known for innovative use of high tech fabrics and unusual cutting techniques. Her experimentation in areas removed from the mainstream have included the invention of disguise clothing as well as pioneering the use of reflective fabrics and bandages in fashion collections. Her diffusion collections have included the legendary NonConform range, the indispensable work wear of the late 90's, now revered by collectors.
Inspired by the fusion of cultures in urban Tokyo and London and its distinctively varied nightlife, Serpica's following within the alternative and fashion industry remains strong.
She has recently clothed Chloe Sevigny, Steffen Westmark from The Blue Van, Dot Alison and Lady Laditron amongst others, and has been featured in Lucire, I-D, The Face, Dazed and Confused Japan, Intersection, le Monde Initiatives and many others.
Serpica stages many fashion/alternative events all over the world and is a household name in Japan, Korea and Hong Kong - as much for her lifestyle collections, which include underwear, accessories, as for her contemporary cutting edge clothing.
Serpica was the first designer to market work uniforms under her own name, and continues to be involved in such diverse projects as customising an environmentally friendly diaper for kids, and more recently, to introduce a revolutionary anti drying skin system, the DropLife System, to be launched in Japan soon.
"we are not low class, we are not high class, we are the new class"
Why save the world if you can design it?
February 16, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source by Bruce Perens: recommended! Open source and capitalism are really more similar than what you think.
It's not immediately obvious how Open Source[1] works economically. Probably the worst consequence of this lack of understanding is that many people don't understand how Open Source could be economically sustainable, and some may even feel that its potential negative effect upon the proprietary software industry is an overall economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy.
Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.
February 09, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| PhD |
phd
|
| Social Software |
social_software
|
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
During past week I hosted in my house a russian girl I didn't know before. Why? She asked hospitality through CouchSurfing. I subscribed few months ago to CouchSurfing when I was looking for free hosting in Cyprus. In the meantime I also arranged to find hospitality in Paris. And of course I was very happy to host her (Anna is her name and here is her couchsurfing profile). Feel free to contact me if you pass near Trento, Italy (here is my CouchSurfing profile and it should be easy to find my email address around).
And as an example of how much information you leave behind yourself surfing the web, here you can see a map of places Anna has logged in from.
One evening she asked me to use Internet and I saw she was typing livejournal.com, and yes, she has a blog, though it is in Russian and I cannot understand it.
[CouchSurfing can be interesting also from a research point of view, see much below in the following text]
The Hospitality Club is a web site similar to Couchsurfing, although someone told me that the network is much bigger. And there is also Servas. However Servas was founded in 1949 and it is not a initiative born because of the new possibilities offered by the web. In fact they don't exchange or publish information electronically but you have to ask for the list of a certain country (you want to go) to the local responsible and she will send it to you (by normal mail) the dead-tree list, then you can contact people offering hospitality, Everything is highly certified (the local responsible gives you a sort of Servas Identity Card that certifies you are a good person). Servas is much slower, personally it does not fit at all my requirements, since I often decide to go somewhere less than 20 days before. I tried to use it in US, Belize and Guatemala, always without success. Anyway if you want something slower but more sure and certified, Servas can be your choice.
Ok, so what is CouchSurfing (and HospitalityClub) interesting for?
From a global point of view, I really envision (or dream) a world where everyone is free to move everywhere (no more borders) and, as a first step, a place where everyone that want to travel the world and visit countries would be able to do it hosted by local people and at almost-zero cost. In this way, more and more people will come to know different people (white, black, green, red, muslims, hindis, old, young, ...[add yours]..., just different people, the one we usually fear simply because we don't know them, yes maybe we will able to just laugh when the media or the politicians try to push in our brain the idea that everyone else is a potential terrorist and we should fear her). And moving aroung the world will be possible for everyone and not just rich people as it is now. Surely it is very hard, for example, for people from African Univeristies to participates in International Conferences. And in general for people from not-rich countries to move around the world. That would produce a better world, I'm sure. A world of open houses, open cars, trains and transportation vehicles and .... of open minds.
And from a research point of view? Before hosting Anna, I asked myself questions such as "why should I host this girl I don't know? Will she steal everything I have? Will my house be safe?" (you can complete with the classic paranoid bla bla questions). Why I'm happy to host someone she asks hospitality on the web and not someone that simply stops me on the road saying she has no place to sleep for this night and asking to take advantage of my roof and warm house? Why it is different?
Well, it is just the same question such as: Why I'm happy to buy from someone on ebay and not from someone that stops me on the road saying "i'll ship you a wonderful guitar, just give me now 50 euros"?
Yes I'm going there
What makes people happy to use ebay for sending money to people they DON'T know is the fact that ebay gives "identity" to people, you can see the homepage of someone and you can see her history as a buyer and as a seller, and based on this information you can build and grow trust on her. Yes, Trust was the word I wanted to arrive to.
Basically Couchsurfing (and ebay) gives you additional informatiion based on which you can make decisions. In the real world, would you be happy to host a friend of your father? I think so, and why? Because you father trusts her and you trust your father. As simple as that. So technologies can be used to automate this process (the term "social software" is about this enabling power of ICTs). CouchSurfing collects and shows a lot of "social" information: who surfed with who, who certified who, who referenced who, ...
This goes in the same direction as enabling hitchhiking or car pooling through some trust-facilitator ICTs mechanisms as was writing some time ago in Using social software for good: car pooling. Here the same arguments apply: I might be scared to open my car to a total stranger but, if my mobile tells me that she was already hitchhiked by 1000 other people and nothing bad happened, maybe I will be a little bit more open(minded). And the same if my mobile can tell me that this total stranger was picked up already 3 times by my friend Mary and she was happy with the lift and the conversation.
Actually, some months ago I asked to Couchsurfing founder Casey Fenton if I could get access to the data collected by CS and shown on the site for my research on Trust-aware decentralized recommender systems (PDF). But after a positive reply, I didn't hear from him any news. The social data are very very interesting. I copy and paste from my email to him:
data that are really meaningful for my thesis are the social network data.
in couchsurfing this means:
- friends info (everytime an user explicitly express her "How do you
know
[the information you show for example here
http://couchsurfing.com/linksurf.html?md=2&id=72570 ]
- messages exchanged between users: i'm not interested in the messages
themselves (i assume a message is a measure of interest of sender in
receiver) but only when they occurred and between which users.
- requests to couch surf (that are a special kind of message, very
meaningful in couchsurfing context)
- referrals: who write a referral for whom (with date)
- profile views (when an user visit another user's page)
- contact lists: an user saves another user in her contact list (with date)
- "This is an interesting profile!" clicks: an user votes for another
user as "interesting profile"
- vouch: who vouched for whom (with date)
[date information is very useful as well since with it i can
reconstruct the evolution of the community in time]
all these data can be used to picture different social networks (
involving the same nodes that are users but with different directed
edges between them). it can be interesting to note which maps reflect
eachothers.
Another very interesting piece of information is the location.
There isn't too much research about location-aware recommender systems
and surely few real systems with real users (to the best of my
knowledge). i definetely think that location would be a great
information to have and to study.
In general, if possible, i would like to also have this information
about an user:
#login name (or id if you want to anonimize the dataset).
#country (with longitude and latitute)
#State/Province
#City
#Spoken languages (with levels)
#gender
#age
#Occupation:
#Ethnicity:
#Interests:
#Music, Movies, Books: (particularly important since recommender
systems recommend items such as these ones!)
#Places I have visited: (important for developping a system that
recommends countries to be visited)
#Places I have lived:
#Places I want to go to:
#groups an user belongs to (again good for recommending which group
you might find interesting)
#Couch Available (yes/no/maybe)
#Preferred Gender of surfer:
#Max Surfers Per Night:
#how many photos did the user upload.
#some degree of activity of the user such as (total number of logins,
registration date, logins in the last 30 days, in the last 90 days, ...
a more verbose output would be to log all the dates when an user login
in the system). this information can be useful to conduct studies
considering for example only active users.
# is the user verified? at which level?
# is the user vouched for? (of course i can derive this information
from previous logs)
# is the user ambassador?
# is the user certified? (this means "did he contribute financially?")
I was also asking about detected attempts to spam the network, sybil attacks and the like:
one more question, if i may
what is your experience with SP_ A MM ?
there are people that send spiam (remove the "i") messages to other users?
that write spiam profiles or link to spiam sites?
any fake profile (such as bill gates profile of john kerry profile...)?
any other abuse did you happen to see on couchsurfing?
i'm curious because the other side of social software systems is ...
trying to abuse of them and use them for your "malicious" (depending
on your point of view) interests
(such as selling your book on amazon or attracting visitors to your
spiam page or ...)
Actually I think I'm going to copy also the rest of my email to Casey, maybe you find something interesting in it as well:
Some suggestions:
#have you considered exporting personal and "friends" data of every
user in FOAF format (more info at
http://www.foaf-project.org/ or i can tell you something about it if
you like)?
#it would be great being able to "export" your profile to your blog.
the idea is that you provide some html an user can copy and paste in
her blog and this html "writes" some information from couchsurfing
about her profile such as username, place visited or location or
"Couchsurf in my house" or "surf my couch", the couchsurgging logo and
of course all this information link to couchsurfing.com (it can be
good to spread the existence of your fantastic site!)
this is something similar to "flickr" (see for example caterina blog at
http://caterina.net/ and the photos exported from flickr on her blog
on the right), or allconsuming.net (on the right of my blog
http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/ you can see "books i'm reading", they
are "written" by allconsuming using the html i copied there and pasted
it in my blog) and tribe.net. all these services allow you to show
your presence on these communities in your blog/site. [was i clear? if
not, sorry. i can try to be more clear, just let me know]
#there was something about geotagging user pages and let geo-aware
browser and application to see the map of users and browse it but the
main site about it geourl.org just went offline so i'm not sure it is
a meaningful project right now...
#you can even think some integration with flickr, every city can
become a "group photo set" on flickr or couchsurfing users can be
allowed to posts their photos on flickr...just an embryonic idea.
#you can show in the homepage the list of currently logged in users
(such as phpnuke/postnuke-powered portals often do). this could
possibly foster the sense of community.
Last words: Couchsurf the world!
February 04, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
| Trento |
trento
|
Today I received a package from Ubuntu. It contains 50 cardboard folders containing both an UbuntuLinux Install CD and an UbuntuLinux LiveCD. And Ubuntu sends it for free. This is very timely since there will be Stallman (father of GNU and Free Software Foundation, the one who started it all) in Trento on February 28, 2005 and the intention is to give away hundreds of CDs with free software (ubuntu GNU/Linux, mandrake Linux, but also free software for Windows such as theopencd and gnuwin2) and creative-commons-licenced music. Most people still don't understand that copying and giving away free software is totally legal, actually it is what people creating that software want you to do! Anyway, I want to thank Ubuntu, to invite you to order some free Ubuntu CDs as well and, if you feel like, to donate to Ubuntu.
January 15, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
From BoingBoing, I come to know that billgates consider people that believe in free culture as communists. Such a comparison is so deeply wrong, I'm almost speechless. Free culture and communism are 2 completely different topics.
"There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
Anyway I had a small glimpe of what americans on average think about communists (should I say "they don't think"?) when I was there for some months. I guess billgates'strategy is simple: call them communists, have your media broadcast the idea and let televisions-truths-swallowers get the concept and burn the communists.
Making fun of this nonsense sentence, some people have created wallpapers, t-shirts and other gadgets with this "creative commies" propaganda. Check some of them on BoingBoing.
Anyway, the arrogance of the richest man in the world, head of a global monopoly, is overwhelming and disgusting. The future he draws for us is a dark one (read the entire article on news.com). He also says (speaking of security on InternetExplorer) that "The key message we have for people is they should turn on auto update because if you turn on auto update, without you having to think about it and go through a bunch of user interface or know about this or that or the other thing...".
The reality is the opposite: users who are not aware of what is going on in their computers will never be secure, and they will also be forever forced to do whatever Sauron wants them to do (Yes, the analogy billgates=sauron is very easy, one created the rings to keep people in the dark and control them, the other created windows to keep computer users in the dark).
Are you happy with the future he draws for you? If not, start leaving Windows for GNU/Linux (or at least InternetExploder for Firefox). This could be a first step to tell the richest guy in the world, head of a global monopoly, you don't agree with him and you are taking a different way. Doing tomorrow could be too late. Do it now. If you need help in dropping Windows, I'll be happy to help you, just leave a comment or email me.
December 17, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Mozilla |
mozilla
|
| Quotations |
quotations
|
SpreadFirefox team has chosen a key phrase I terribly like: "There is an alternative". Actually, my preferred one is TIAAA (There Is Always An Alternative) as opposed to TINA (There Is No Alternative), often used by Thatcher and neoliberists in general to argue how capitalism is the only possible choice and you should be mad in trying to think and build something different. However this post is not about slogans but about the 2 full pages ad promoting Firefox in The New York Times (image). On the left page, the Firefox logo is built with all the names of the people who have contributed (PDF). Cool!
November 25, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
Tomorrow, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26 2004 IS BUY NOTHING DAY.
"For 24 hours, millions of people around the world do not participate—in the doomsday economy, the marketing mind-games, and the frantic consumer-binge that's become our culture. We pause. We make a small choice not to shop. We shrink our footprint and gain some calm. Together we say to Exxon, Nike, Coke and the rest: enough is enough. And we help build this movement to rethink our unsustainable course."
And since it is almost time, I support the Buy nothing Christmas and the xmas resistance movement. If you know me, please buy nothing for me for Christmas but stop, relax and think. Thanks!
November 11, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Songs |
songs
|
The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.. First example of creative commons cd, I hope many will follow this bright example. You can listen to the songs streaming the related WebJay compilation (once there, just click on "play page").
Songs are released under 2 creative commons licences:
Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommercial sharing and commercial sampling, but advertising uses are restricted.
Noncommercial Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommerical sharing and noncommercial sampling.
Buy Wired if you want the cd. The front cover says: "Fight for your right to copy".
UPDATE: I started reading Wired and found this great article: We pledge allegiance to the penguin, and the intellectual property regime for which he stands. One nation, under Linux, with free music and open source software for all. Welcome to Brazil!. Every day I found one more reason to move to Brazil, when I'll finish my PhD.
October 18, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
The long tail: economy is changing!
"Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.
By Chris Anderson"
June 22, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
Daypop today tells us that the most linked URL is Cory Doctorow's Microsoft Research DRM talk. Cory released it under a Creative Commons licence and people start doing creative actions with the content. In fact, you find an MP3 version and even an Italian translation on a Wiki (by Luca Lizzeri)! Fantastic!
A must read (or a must hear?!? I cannot wait to listen Cory uttering the "arrr"s you find in the text
January 27, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Wiki |
wiki
|
Since I spoke of WikiTravel, I like to mention World66. That seems a lot more advanced.
I'm wondering if my next holidays will be based on a work licenced under a Creative Commons licence. That would be great!
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Blogging |
blogging
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
Even if I'm more interested in the World Social Forum 2004 (see also on Rediff), it is worth noting that the World Economic Forum 2004 included a session on blogs!
It is good or bad that this group of people started to speak in public about blogs? We'll see but I'm very unconfident.
Read more on Whiskey Bar or read some quotes I extracted from the article (since its content is released under a Creative Commons licence, it is perfectly legal to reproduce it here and to share it):
[Joy] Rosen [the chair of the department of journalism at NYU]'s point, I think, is that communications technology may be moving in a great historical cycle. The invention of the printing press—followed by radio and then television—created a progressively more capital-intensive media industry, with an increasing division of labor among reporters, editors, printers, advertising whores, um, I mean, salesmen, etc. The invention of the Internet, however, has shifted the balance back towards the individual writer/publisher, doing his/her own thing, reporting or commenting on events they find through their own research, either on the web or off.
The difference, of course, is that what was once limited to a small literate elite in the 18th century is available to millions of people the world over in the 21st. This is a revolution by anybody's definition, and could even, in time, spell the end of the mainstream media as we know it. Or, as Rosen put it: "The age of the mass media is just that—an age. It doesn't have to last forever."
The net is capable of deciding—in a completely democratic way what topics it wants to explore. In effect, the news agenda is put to a continuous vote, with Google counting the ballots. Everyone and anyone is free to contest the results, but if the blogosphere wants to talk about, say, Dean's scream, then that will become the metaphorical equivalent of the lead story on page one—until something comes along that attracts more votes. This is what terrifies the mass media: the threat of losing control of the news agenda.
One guy from Business Week was particularly outraged about the whole thing. He waxed eloquent about the importance of the news "filter" (in my day we called it the gatekeeper function) as mankind's last best defense against the barbarian hordes. I felt like I was listening to a buggy whip manufacturer, circa 1910, talking about the growing threat of the automobile.
Actually, there was a time when I probably would have agreed with the guy—back when I was on his side of the fence and thought journalists played a valuable watchdog role. But after watching the steady deterioration of the profession over the past ten years or so, I have no patience for such self-serving crap. Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation and just plain nonsense on the web, but a mass media that gives us Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage on a regular basis, and that devotes more coverage to Michael Jackson's legal problems than the Iraq War, isn't in a position to lecture anyone about standards. The truth is that the blogs are getting better and better, and the mass media is getting worse and worse. If the credibility lines haven't crossed yet they soon will.
The more serious problem, I think, was raised by Le Meur, the French blogger, who argued that blogs have the potential to become for the news media was Napster was for the music industry.
One of the worst moments at the Davos session was when some twinkie from a New York advertising firm stood up and described how her firm has started turning first to blogs to place ads for certain products. "What I don't understand," she said, "is why the big media companies don't swoop in and buy up some of these blogs while they're still cheap."
But if the thought has occurred to her, it's probably already occurred to others. Just the fact that blogging showed up on the agenda at Davos this year is probably a bad sign. I can't shake the suspicion that the golden age of blogging is almost over—that the corporate machine is about to swallow it, digest it, and regurgitate it as bland, non-threatening pablum. Our brief Summer of Love may be nearing an end.
December 10, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
I strongly believe Christmas is all but about exchanging unuseful material things.
If you want to give me a gift, give me a call, a kiss, a thought but nothing material, please.
Or better donate to Emergency or Medici Senza Frontiere or to another organization that works for constructing peace.
You can download your Buy Nothing Day Gift Exemption Voucher at Adbusters.org
Happy non-buying Christmas to everyone in the world!
November 16, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Emergent Democracy |
emergent_democracy
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
If I look at the situation of democracy around the globe, I feel really bad. I think our last hope is Brazil and Lula and the participatory democracy adopted in Porto Alegre.
But this post is about free software.
Brazil believes that free software is an excellent tool for the democratization of knowledge, foreign currency savings, and the optimization of institutional investments and costs. The model also offers perspectives for Brazilian industries to research, create, and develop new free software programs.
Source: Brazzil (found on WorldChanging).
I hope that also Italy (my home country) will realize soon how much free software is strategic for the future, instead I notice how the Report on Digital Innovation of the Italian Government uses 4 pages (in Italian) to explain us how much our life will be improved by the Smart Dust and give no mention to Free Software.
I guess in the future I'll go to work in Brazil and I also like the idea actually.
November 07, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Peace |
peace
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President of the World Bank James D. Wolfensohn said "European cows get a subsidy of $2.50 a day. We have 3 billion people in the world who live under $2 a day. Japanese cows get $7.50 a day subsidy." Reference: James Wolfensohn: Excerpts of Christian Science Monitor Interview on Poverty and Globalization, near the end of page. Or google.
There is an international Campaign whose goal is to abolishing measures which favour dumping and in particular subsidies to export. "Dumping" is considered an incorrect practice even by economists who support free trade: it is unfair competition!
On the site campaign, you can send an email to European Commissioner for Trade, Mr. Pascal Lamy, and to italian Prime Minister Silvia Berlusconi to say "Stop dumping"
November 06, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Italia |
italia
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| Maryland |
maryland
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As I already written, Saturday night I was in New York at a party. It was an Halloween party and everyone was dressed up. I didn't have a costume but was wearing the shirt you see on the left.
I was speaking with some guy who asked me "So you're what? A communist?".
I replied "Well, kind of...".
At this moment another one came in with "So why didn't you go to study to Russia?".
It was not said with bad mood, just with simplicity. This made me wonder what this guy thinks about Russia.
We spoke a little bit about what we think communism is and capitalism is but eventually we shortly ended up drinking more beer.
So the lesson is clear: don't wear "communist costumes" at Halloween parties in US.
November 04, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Italiano |
italiano
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| Peace |
peace
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http://www.repubblica.it/news/ired/ultimora/rep_nazionale_n_522461.html
"L'assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite ha adottato una risoluzione di condanna dell'embargo deciso dagli Stati Uniti contro Cuba. E' il dodicesimo anno consecutivo che l'Onu adotta questa risoluzione."
Faccio una previsione, l'anno prossimo sara' il tredicesimo.
October 14, 2003
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Italia |
italia
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| Italiano |
italiano
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(da http://unimondo.oneworld.net/article/view/70379/1/)
Dure critiche alla Legge finanziaria 2004 da parte dell'Associazione delle ONG Italiane che in un comunicato denuncia la "scandalosa proposta di tagliare del 15% i fondi destinati alla cooperazione", mentre viene istituito un Fondo di riserva di 1.200 milioni di Euro per "provvedere ad eventuali esigenze connesse con la proroga delle missioni internazionali di pace".
E' il caso che la finanziaria incominciamo a farla dal basso
