Are economically poor information poor? Does the digital divide affect the homeless and access to information?

To begin, digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to information (“information haves”) and those who do not (information have nots). Digital divide causes great concerns regarding individual’s and family’s access to information. Much focus from the Government has been placed on providing internet to public school and libraries to limit the digital divide and provide access to digital information for all. According to the author, the literature on digital divide focuses on who has and who doesn’t have access to the Internet, as well as what libraries can do to lessen the divide. However, further research, such as addressing lack of Internet access at home, is needed to focus on digital divide specifically.<br> By gathering information through interviews and participant observation from six family shelters in Indianapolis, five in Seattle, and one family shelter in Greensboro the research focuses on how valuable and useful of an information seeking tool the Internet would be in everyday lives of homeless families This qualitative approach was “undertaken to gather data to answer research questions concerning everyday life information needs,” and “information poverty (p.242).” Twenty-five in depth interviews of homeless parents living in shelters were also conducted to answer the posed research questions. Majority of residents interviewed did not find internet as a major source of information. In fact, most reported that the most useful way to communicate was face to face and then get the information in writing. Overall the information gathered was from social service agencies and clergy, or friends and family. Even though majority of respondents lacked basic computer skills they did not think they were information poor. Most information about resources was shared informally between shelter residents, especially if person sharing did not need that resource for themselves. According to the article, because resources are limited and non-profits fear being overrun with those in need, they keep a lot of their information off the web. Even social service agents found some resource information from other staff members as opposed to online. The study explains six propositions introduced by Chatman’s (1996) research on information insiders and outsiders. Information insiders are those who have been homeless before and understand how to navigate the system, information outsiders are those who are first time homeless. Based on the research, six propositions were suggested as to why people fail to gather information. Proposition 1: Lack of resources rather than lack of information was the issue. Proposition 2: information poverty is partially associated with class distinction and outsiders withhold privileged access to information. Proposition 3: Self-protective behavior affects the information shared. Not everyone wants to share their personal info with resource staff or with other residents. Proposition 4: Secrecy and deception as part of self-protecting can affect information sharing especially with those providing resources. Deception was common when trying to gain access to resources for which informant may not be eligible.

Proposition 5: At times, individuals are more likely to share personal information such as substance abuse or domestic with resource providers because the need for resource assistance outweighed the concern over possible negative consequences (p.246).

Proposition 6: New knowledge will be selectively introduced into the information world of poor people. Shelter residents were more likely to say they are suffering from information overload than lack of information. The study explains that these findings are limited and not generalizable but can be transferable. Further research is needed to determine if shelters provide information access and if they do not, why not. The homeless lack sufficient economic resources such as stable housing but they do not feel that they lack information or access to information. In fact, most feel that they receive more information than necessary and are “tired of people thinking just because we’re poor we ain’t got nothing (p.247).” It will be interesting to see how digital divide and information access changes as new generations, such as children of parents interviewed emerge into more Internet dependent society. For now, the lack of access to digital information does not seem to negatively affect the everyday life of homeless parents. Surprisingly this paper was written in 2013 so a lot more emphasis on Internet would’ve been expected. As the information states, Government has already attempted to address the digital divide by providing Internet access as publicly as possible. The other issue is that some information is withheld from the web due to large need that agencies cannot fulfill. Social Construction Theory indicates that homeless are considered deserving part of the population so these services are provided to them, especially families seeking basic needs such as housing, employment and health resources. There are Government agencies in place that address these needs but not nearly at capacities at which the need exists. Clearly we see the complexity of Social Construction Theory; since homeless are low on power scale, and borderline between deserving and undeserving it’ difficult to provide for them but also as difficult not to provide for them.

Datta, Dayadhvam, and Damyata come from a Hindu fable of thunder. The three are meant to evoke the sound of thunder, and mean Giving, Compassion, and Control.

In the poem, Dayadhvam (Compassion) says that "We think of the key, each in his prison/Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison." What is this "key" that Elliot talks about? It might be sort of an unattainable goal, a pipe-dream that alienates a person in trying to achieve it. By searching for a "key" to unlock something in one's life, one is admitting to feeling trapped, as in in a prison.

Coriolanus was a Roman general who was exiled from Rome after proving an unpopular leader and later rallied an army to enact vengeance upon his former city.

A possible relationship between Coriolanus and the "Key" may have to do with him being largely motivated by personal pride and the belief that he was a more suitable leader for Rome, rather than leave the decision to a popular vote. His ego left him "trapped" in his own prison, and his conquest for revenge was an attempt to find the key.

What is the connection then between exile, pride, and Dayadhvam (Compassion)? Coriolanus in his pursuit of power obviously lacked “compassion,” and this led to his exile, his downfall. A similar instance of self-centered alienation appears in the Part I of the poem: “The Burial of the Dead,” where the speaker says “A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many/….And each man fixed his eyes before his feet./Flowed up the hill and down King William Street.” King William Street is a main financial district in London. These men “fix[ing] their eyes before [their] feet” could reflect those people fixated only on their careers and becoming disconnected from each other. The speaker calls out one of these men named Stetson, making an allusion to the Battle of Mylae which was fought between Rome and Carthage, also referring back to the Roman Coriolanus. The speaker asks Stetson: “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,/Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” One could think that the speaker is asking if the Roman’s victory at Mylae was “worth it” after all, if the “corpse” that Stetson “planted” will ever “bloom” or grow into anything substantial. Given that corpses don’t do anything except rot in the ground, Stetson and the rest of the crowd can be seen as men pursuing empty goals and becoming exiled from their humanity in the process. The need for Dayadhvam becomes more apparent as they are each “confim[ing] [their] own prison[s]”

These lines again convey the fragmented, ruined aspect of them poem. Eliot uses a fragmented, incoherent form—as well as portraying a fragmented reality—in order to symbolize the crumbling of society. The line, “these fragments I have shored against my ruins” is used at the very end of the poem as a sort of verbal sigh—as if to say, “I will carry on through the rubble and ruins”. Within the poem, Eliot speaks of redemption and rising above the desolation and destruction society will experience, but in the end he tells us that life is inherently fragmented, and suggests that we must accept this.

The line, “Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe,” is in reference to “The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronymo is Mad Again,” an Elizabethan tragedy by Thomas Kyd (written between 1582 and 1592). In this play, Hieronymo is driven near madness after the murder of his son, and he decides to take revenge by killing the murderers. This is made possible when the murderers ask him to supply a play for the court, and he takes this as an opportunity to kill them. He says, “why then ile fit you,” which means that he will accommodate their wishes. Though, he also means to kill his son’s murderers.

The reference to this play may suggest that the speaker in The Waste Land sees himself in the role of Hieronymo, driven to madness over the loss of a senseless death. In Eliot’s case, perhaps it is the loss of humanity that drives him near madness. And perhaps these losses themselves are solitary fragmented moments in the characters’ lives—awful things happen, and we cannot make sense of them, which has a profoundly uncomfortable affect on us. Like Eliot’s use of multiple fragmented languages in The Waste Land (often leaving the reader questioning why he chooses to do so), Hieronymo conducts his play in various languages, leaving the actors puzzled. Eliot may believe that fragments are essential for understanding the essence of the whole—we cannot necessarily connect the fragments of life together in a coherent pattern, but we can experience them all in a random sequence. Even the three lines in this annotation don’t clearly connect to one another—they are fragments, references to various notions and various pieces of literature.

“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.” means, “give, sympathize, control.” This line in “What The Thunder Said,” is taken from a Hindu fable in the Brihadaranyaka Upianshad, called The Fable of the Meaning of Thunder/The Voice of Thunder. According to the story, thunder makes “Da” sounds, and these three words in Sanskrit are supposed to represent this sound of thunder. One theory proposes that Eliot suggests that the thunder will give us the rainwater we need to help replenish our dead wasteland of a world. “Give, Sympathize, Control,” may be Eliot’s final messages/commands/lessons to his readers. He has shown us through many fragments the ailments of man and suggests a change needs to be made.

Perhaps, Eliot ends this dismal poem with a chance of hope, telling us that no matter how much death and destruction the world faces there is always a chance at redemption. Or, perhaps these fragmented last lines—that possibly have no connection to each other—cannot be taken as a true “ending” to the poem. If we think of the entire poem as many fragments, can there be an "ending" an all? Perhaps it is just another fragment, another instance of intertextuality. Hieronymo definitely takes control, but does he show sympathy? Are we left with his “madness,” a feeling of despair, and the meaninglessness of life, yet a possible redemption? Do we even need to make a connection between these last three lines, or is that the point of the fragmentation—we cannot connect everything, but we can gather many separate meanings. We may simply take away a general tone or just an overall reading experience. These three lines don’t seem connected to each other, but they do share a similar fragmented “vibe,” it seems.

Eliot’s many instances of intertextuality, fragments, stories that don’t connect, relate to the overall idea of a land laid to waste, an apocalyptic, destroyed world where only bits and pieces remain. The fragments might also relate to a sort of dialogism—though the instances of intertextuality aren’t directly connected, Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism says, in a very basic form, that every text is affected by the texts that came before it, and also every text in the future affects all texts from the past. Perhaps this jumbled, fragmented mess of a poem, in part, plays with the idea that although things do not seem connected everything matters. We can never read the same text the same way twice, and our reading of The Waste Land will affect how we view the texts that it references. So despite the disconnected fragments, there is a way that the various fragmented pieces affect one another.

Song: Maithreem Bhajat (Song meaning: Wiki)

The three D's (Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata), in Sanskrit, mean giving, compassion, and self-control. The title of this section is "What the Thunder Said." The thunder is telling the reader something, perhaps it is this: follow the guidelines of the three D's and redemption will come. These commanded virtues, juxtaposed with the rain that will surely come once the thunder has said what it came to say, seem to offer reprieve from the harshness of the previous sections of the poem. Either it's the calm before the storm or Eliot is giving the reader a chance at peace. In fact, shanti, in Indian, means bliss or peace, so perhaps it is bliss that will come. Either way, ending the poem in this way, using non-English, non-European language is very interesting. Eliot is giving voice to the other, yet it is still un-translated. Is there a reason why Eliot chose to not translate or elaborate these phrases from Hinduism? Indra is the Hindu thunder deity, he is an amalgam of Eastern and Western traditions, as he is modeled from Western gods, like Thor. In the same breath, Eliot is giving us what the thunder is saying, but deeper context still. After all, the sound of thunder only precedes the wash of rains.

So, to end the poem, Eliot gives three more Hindi prayers: Peace, Peace, Peace. And like that, whether soldiers from The Great War or survivors in its wake, beauty may come and bliss may be found. I think at this point, perhaps Eliot has renounced Christian faith or is open to others. This is shown throughout the poem, but in particular, lines 386-7, "Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel/There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home." There is nothing in it for him, only graves to remind him of tragedy. Eliot may not only be giving voice to the other, but also becoming the other. We see right from the beginning, with the Greek, Latin, other languages throughout the poem, that Eliot is not translating these words, but he is heralding his own otherness by bringing these words to light. He's made them important. By ending the poem this way, I think Eliot is asserting these prayers seriously, with strictness and belief. Bliss transcends awareness.

In just the opening five words to Part III, “The Fire Sermon,” the speaker shatters at once our natural inclination to romanticize waterways as self-sustaining and enduring ecosystems.

(The River Thames has a rich history of being depicted this way in literature. For example, in the lines that end this portion Eliot recites the line “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song” from “Prothalamion,” by Edmund Spenser; another example that comes to mind is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in which Marlow finds great peace and serenity while on the same river.)

With bitter and mournful nostalgia, such portrayals of the river are juxtaposed, as we are given a dose of sad reality when reminded of the river’s impermanence: for in “tent” we think of portable and temporary shelter or canopy. With “broken,” we gain an understanding that the once brimming with life ecosystem in and around the river is now at death’s door, that life is not unfolding as it should and as it once did. Life itself, not just the “last finger of leaf,” is wilting. In this way, the river will soon be just another causality of “The Wasteland.”

What follows in “the last fingers of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank” further suggests that these are the last vestiges of green, lush, leafy life. With the sense that the canopy is fading fast overhead, we then zoom out to see an even more barren and lifeless landscape then first imagined: “The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.” This paints a picture of a cold and desolate place with little to no sign of life: there is no-one to hear the wind, not even the nymphs. Young, beautiful, and full of life, the departure of these divine spirits suggests that the magic of past literary eras has been forced out as well. However, perhaps this truth is intimated as apropos for a world post WWI -- the ornate literary conventions of the past will no longer suffice for a world in tatters. Such literary traditions will fail to get at the bitter truths. In another context in another poem, “departed” may entail a leave of absence. But not here — the nymphs are dead, rotting away in “The Wasteland.”

I think this kind of speaks to the multi-sited idea of horizontal forms of learning. It's not that you move from A to B and then you're done, it's not so "planned." You may move from A to G to B back to A and then to J and on and on.

Being is all of Life, Conscious Being is the subjective experience of Being.

It is not easy to stay in Conscious Being because it is not a head trip. It requires trust of what you theoretically know.

With trust you will be able to let go of control - to allow. A shift happens when you are able to do this and you will be seeing from the Center of your Being.

This seems to be a crucial piece of multi-sited work. I think this could apply to the case of the non-drinking alcoholics, because there is so much to this identity and the community of practice that occurs as activity systems outside of their "safe space" in AA meetings. Although maybe not as visible as the activity in AA meetings, daily activities, interactions, motivations are all linked to and inform the identity practice of being a non-drinking alcoholic

This passage really spoke to me because it frames how learning works in a really powerful way.

Too often, we think of learning as transmission - I need to pass on my worldview/values to the next generation, otherwise my culture may not survive - but what the authors here (and all of the readings this semester) seem to be getting at is a more complex view of how people learn through participation and experience. An educator can't tell someone what to learn, they need to learn it for themselves. It's the educator's job to guide the learning, but ultimately real learning only happens when the learner sees the relevance for him/herself and their own life.

Showing that there are other ways that we experience learning in the world, besides the framework of vertical acquisition, is really inspiring and motivating for me.

Human life can be lost due to misinterpretation. Today’s police officers are responding to calls based on little amounts of information which may cause them to respond more quickly before accessing the situation and options available.

Here we can see that police officers can determine to use deadly force when they see fit with no clear regulation. I think many individuals believe that an individual can be stopped without being terminated and warnings should be given. If this is how they are trained and trained to kill then they need to be trained to save that individuals life as well in case of misinterpretation.

rvc#190

I like this point and connection you made on how the reason why relationships rule our lives is because our biological purpose and function is to reproduce. But not only do we reproduce, we do several other things that make relationships messy, as you said. Not only does the scene with the Grandparents mean multiple things are bound to occur but this moves the book forward and keeps us guessing on what is going to happen next. Asking the question, does love outweigh the outfall of relations we have with people and I think it all depends on the person you ask and how important those relationships are to that specific person.

I think this concept of a text "resisting" the reader or "yielding" to the reader is quite interesting. I wonder if we think that reading a book with what is characterized here as non-trivial effort (eyes moving across page, turning page) is inherent to the medium or trained behavior. In other words, do we find reading a codex to be trivial effort and traversing a hypertext fiction non-trivial effort because one really is easier to do than the other, or because we have been trained throughout our lifetimes on how to approach print codex?

I am leaning towards the latter; I think of young children and babies who can figure out how to use iPhones before they can learn to read. I also think that as the "norm" shifts, and more and more kids grow up experience narrative and storytelling thru video games and hypertext fictions, our notions of what constitutes non-trivial and trivial will change. The singular focus and dedication needed to read a codex may likely become a struggle for a generation that grows up experiencing digital media, rather than print media, as the norm.

blah blah blah?

UGH! I ain't gonna read his dang reasons.

What are they talking about? Explain please.

The first claim is certainly not very controversial -- the idea that the poses, gestures, and physicality of visitors shapes the "social" component of meaning making. I think what is far more interesting is the assertion that it affects the "psychological processes on the intramental plane" -- that is, these poses affect how we construct meaning individually.

Reminds me of when Jasmine spoke to one of my classes last semester, and there was some discussion about teaching kids math when they are sitting still in a classroom. I could be remembering this wrong, but she made the point that no matter what, your body was always doing something, even if that something was sitting. She emphasized that we couldn't simply discount what the body of a learner was doing. Seems that Steier is making that precise point.

I think that the digital media is becoming over powering and controlling. Newspapers as we know it may complete become to an end in the future.

I think more often than not, we misinterpret situations based on how one person behaves or acts and completely disregard the circumstances leading up to it. I realized this when we were trying to sort out the entanglement of all the events and people in the first six chapters of Dawn. When you isolate an event, it may look one way, but when you dissect it and think about what caused that to happen, and what happened as a result of the main event, it is clear that a single snapshot is not enough to explain anything.

I think that you really made such an interesting point in this post. You found a way to comment on the human, and pointed something out that I have never really thought of. I did realize that The Will doesn’t seem entirely bad, but I have never thought about how we tend to place people in large separate boxes. But it makes me think of another potential example of this. People tend to categorize each other as Republican or Democrat, and if the person is in opposition to your own viewpoint, you automatically put them in a separate box clumped with their party. However, there are people who may be a member of a certain party and not necessarily agree with all of that party’s viewpoints.

Overall I think this is a good thing. However there can be negative consequences. Many times we are amused and entertained by memes for their humor, artwork, etc but not always the message behind them. When using memes for political or social movements we need to make sure that the message behind the meme is something we agree with and not just the overall appeal of the meme.

Overall I think this is a good thing. However there can be negative consequences. Many times we are amused and entertained by memes for their humor, artwork, etc but not always the message behind them. When using memes for political or social movements we need to make sure that the message behind the meme is something we agree with and not just the overall appeal of the meme.

Hospitable databases may, in fact, precondition narratives. Pretend with me for a moment. When we think about narratives, there is no single narrative that exists as "empirical" proof of the existence of God. However, when we think about database, the sheer number of "God" narratives that exist are a type of empirical "proof" of God's existence.

Well the definition of e-lit is quite determined in this sentence. - However in order to get used to this saavy app (hypothesis platform) I'm going to descrive with my own words what I got from this definition-

Apparently e-lit has to do with the literary aspects and connections made between several interactions of liteature and technology (for what I get, standard books may also apply here) where sometimes it may ne regaldless of human intervention.

Also, I think this has to do with the "computing" devices, within mechanisms and systems that may be also the way we as humans construct reallity and other things though language and literature. This reminds me of some Foucault's theory about how a single word may be considered as a discoursive device in a complex mechanism interacting with several systems in a society o so...

What's really interesting is that the human intervention may not be required after all to consider the creation and acknowledgment of a literary work.

I really like this idea, it's very hopeful I think!

Root of the problem...

I know this is a largely highlighted portion of the opinion but I think it is all leading to the same point and would like someone to clarify for me what it says. Do these two passages say that it is not right for the State of Maryland to tax the federal government (a federal bank) because it is just one state in the Union and that doing so gives too much power over the government that it holds allegiance too in regards to representation of the entire Union/people? Or do these passages suggest that the power to tax the federal government enables the ability to weaken or destroy the federal government and is therefore an abuse of power the states should not have?

I think we may have to coin a new term to disambiguate literature such as books and stories in digital form from lit that depends on digital creation and propagation, i.e., cannot be created or propagated wihtout electronic devices.

Movement during meditation is okay...

We may still be in that transition, but it sounds like it’s felt more as a set of opportunities than as a crisis. At least by some actors. Can’t help but think about digital writing, as a longterm transition. Most authors now write digitally, one might assume, but few are fully cognizant of what this shift implies.

Algernon comes in using Jack's pseudonym and takes him off guard and its funny seeing the tables turned on him

Internet Commons

European Parliament conference on “Internet as a Commons: Public Space in the Digital Age”, organised in cooperation with Commons Network and Heinrich Böll Foundation. Discussing how to re-decentralize and reclaim the Internet for all.

[ Prologue ]

The Internet as a whole has become an important part of our global public sphere. Internet provides access to a wealth of information and knowledge, and the possibility to participate, create and communicate. This public space made up of internet infrastructures is increasingly threatened from two sides; by the centralization and commercialization through the dominant positions held by giant telecom and Internet companies, as well as by an increasing trend in state regulation and censorship of the net. This poses important questions about how we choose to organize and regulate our digital societies, and how Internet governance models can be developed and implemented to ensure fair and democratic participation.

When it comes to the future of the Internet, a key discussion is one of infrastructures; who owns, runs and controls them. The question of regulation, and who oversees the regulators, is made complicated by the transnational nature of the net.

As much as people expect a broadly and equitably accessible Internet open to diversity, we are, slowly but surely, moving away from it. Monopolization of Internet infrastructures and services by companies such as Facebook and Google has gone hand in hand with privacy intrusions, surveillance and the unbounded use of personal data for commercial gain. As we all interact in these centralized commercial platforms that monetize our actions we see an effective enclosure and manipulation of our public spaces. Decentralization and democratization of the Internet infrastructure and activities is essential to keep a free, open and democratic Internet for all to enjoy equitably. But can the “small is beautiful”-idea be compatible with the building of state-of-the-art successful infrastructure in the future?

The debates around net neutrality, infrastructure neutrality and Internet monopolies reflect the important choices that are to be made. It is essential the EU formulates a comprehensive vision on the internet that addresses the protection of civil liberties such as free speech and privacy, but also the growing commercialization of our digital public spaces and the commodification of personal data with the effect of the market encroaching on all aspects of our daily lives. Only then can it make relevant interventions regarding the Internet and its governance.

Let´s discuss how to re-decentralize and reclaim the Internet for all.

[ Introduction ]

Opening remarks from Benkler & Bloemen:

2:16 Yochai Benkler (Harvard Professor)

The two major challenges of 21st Century Capitalism are the result of the impact of increasing well-being and welfare throughout the globe. The impact on the natural environment and the social environment.

And while the last forty years has seen a steady struggle to increase understanding of the threat to the natural environment. We've actually seen over the last forty years a retreat in the understanding of the impact on the social environment.

Throughout the industrialised world in particular, we've seen increased inequality and a series of ideas around Neoliberalism, initially finding root in the United States and the United Kingdom, then expanding to liberalisation in Europe and ultimately translating into the Washington consensus as a core development policy.

These were anchored in a set of ideas, we largely think of as Neoliberalism, that argued that uncertainty and complexity makes centralised economic planning impossible, and so prices and decentralised decisions in markets by individuals will produce good information.

They modelled universal rationality as self-interested, self-maximising human behaviour. They understood collective behaviour as always failing, always corrupting into illegitimate power. And that then meant that deregulation and freeing of markets from social and legal controls were the way to increase both welfare and liberty.

What we've seen in the last twenty-five years is that the idea of the Commons is beginning to offer a framework, to respond to these deeply corrosive ideas, and begin to allow us to create frameworks that teach us how we can increase human welfare, improve the human condition, but without undermining the social relations in the way that has been so corrosive for the last forty years.

Three schools of the Commons: The work that came out Elinor Ostrom's work and the Ostrom School, the Global Commons work coming out of the environmental movement, and what's most relevant to us here in today's meeting, is the Internet Commons.

The thing that became clear with the Internet Commons, is that even at the heart of the most advanced economies, at the cutting edge of technology and in the areas of greatest economic growth and innovation, commons are at the very heart.

From the very Internet engineering task force that created the internet protocols, through the World Wide Web, to core infrastructure like spectrum commons like WiFi or software, all the way to this great knowledge facility of Wikipedia.

We've seen commons work, we've seen how they work, we've seen their limitations, we've been able to learn how to make them operate and we continue to learn about them. But from the mentally, they offer existence proof that there is another way.

The past quarter century of commons, both on and offline, has taught us that people can affectively act collectively to govern their own utilisation of resources. They've taught us with many details that people respond to diverse motivations and that economic utility is valuable, but it's only part of a range of social emotional and rational ethical commitments.

Property and markets vs State planning and ownership, don't exhaust the capabilities, we live with a much more diverse set of ways of organising economic production, and in particular voluntaristic actions in commons, can support growth, can support innovation, can be more efficient, while at the same time being sustainable and socially more integrated.

At a higher level of abstraction we have come to understand that production and resource management are socially embedded activities, social embededness is not something from which we need to free markets, it instead something we need to achieve.

Freedom is self-governance, individual and collective, not free choice in the market, and property based market as we saw in copyright and patents, as we saw in a variety of our other areas, can actually undermine freedom in both of these senses.

So what are we to do?

Our experience of Internet Commons tells us, that three major shifts needs to happen before the 21st century capitalism challenge can be answered in a socially sustainable way.

We need to increase our use of peer cooperativism. Taking the experience we've garnered over the last fifteen years with commons based peer production and translating into a way that expanded to ever larger propositions of provisioning, so that it can provide a practical anchor and a normative anchor to material production in the market.

We also cannot give up on socially embedded market production, there is no one right path to market production, there is genuine room for ethical choice, not only on the environmental side, not only on the rights side in terms of human rights, but also on the side of economic equality and social sustainability.

And finally, we need to turn our political understanding to one that has peer pragmatism, that understands the limitations of the traditional State, while it also understands the limitations of the Market. That builds on our experience in self-governing communities like Wikipedia, with the overlapping and nested relationship, with the distinct continued ethical commitment of Citizens to their practices. With continuous challenging, but also with distribution of power to much more local bases, to form a new political theory- based in our commons based practices, of our relations as Citizens and the State.

So however important a particular part of the Internet Commons may be from a practical level, at the level of ideas, our experience in Internet Commons over the last quarter of the century, is beginning to teach us how to shape Capitalism for the 21st Century, so that is not only sustainable from the natural environment perspective, but that it is also embedded and supportive of it's social environment.

9:25 Sophie Bloemen (Commons Network)

The Commons is a perspective that looks at stewardship, equitable access and sustainability, and it looks at the collective good beyond individual rights exclusively. So instead of conceiving of Society as a collection of atomised individuals, principally living as consumers, Commons points to the reality of people's lives being deeply embedded in social relationships- communities, histories, traditions.

So this perspective is very helpful when conceiving of the Internet as a public space, as a common good, and how we might want to organise this public space. What kind of infrastructure is provided and who controls the infrastructure. This is what it insists on, on the protection of the Internet as a public space, accessible to everyone. So just like a bridge or street, it's an infrastructure, and it must be controlled and managed in the interests of Citizens.

The central issue of the debate on net neutrality, has also been will it be continue to be managed as a mixed use of commons, or will discriminatory tiers of service transform the internet to a predominately commercial system, for production and distribution.

So the key questions are: Who controls the infrastructure? What are the terms and conditions under which the public gets access? and this has far reaching implications for our society.

The domination of the Internet by several large actors raises important policy questions, about how to manage it. The thwarting of net neutrality rules in Europe just suggests just how vulnerable the open internet really is and it's therefore necessary for policy makers to have a real vision that acknowledges the gravity of these issues.

It was reading professor Benkler's book 'Wealth of Networks' years ago, that give me enlightened research, key insights, why we are and how we are living in a time of deep economic change, change of the modes of production, due to digital technologies, and what the role of social peer production can be, might be.

But also, that it's not a given in which direction we will go. It's not pre-determined, we have to give it a certain shape.

What he also alluded to now is that, our institutional frameworks to a certain extent, reflect outdated conceptions of human agency. The idea of the rational individual who is just out there to increase his material gain through rational calculation. We create and we share because of curiosity, because of social connectedness, because of psychological well-being, there is an element of cooperation and human reciprocity there as well.

So this human capability has really been shown or has really been brought out by the Internet, by digital technology, but it's also taking place, these forms of cooperation and collective action, are also taking shape offline; lots of commoning initiatives, community gardening, co-housing, ethical financing.

So to go back to these institutional frameworks, how can we as professor Benkler said, he named these three things, how can we increase the use of peer cooperativism, and how can we make sure there's a shift towards socially embedded market productions where there's self-governance as well, which is community based. The third point he made is to enhance the political understanding of these commons based practices that are beyond the Market and beyond the State, and I guess that's partly what we're doing here, enhancing this political understanding.

So how do we need to tweak the institutional frameworks, what do we have to take away, what do we have to add? and that's also why in the analysis in our paper 'A Commons Perspective on European Knowledge Policy' we discuss this and we talk about copyright legislation and net neutrality and european positions at the world intellectual property organisation, which are all relevant to this.

What kind of sharing economy do we want, do we want a democratised one where we empower everyone to be a producer, or are most of us still consumers in this economy. Are we producers just in the sense that we share our data, and all our actions online and offline are commodified, we pay with our privacy to be part of it.

So in order to get a good grip on where we should go, how to go ahead, we should take a step back. Take a step back and see what kind of society we would like.

And a key question is: How can we create a structural environment that enables society to fully reap the benefits of knowledge sharing and collaborative production, in a way that's also socially sustainable?

And what could the role of EU be? At this moment, the European parliament is considering a new copyright framework, there's a digital single market strategy, there's the data regulations, lots of things going on. So the next panels will set out some big ideas, and will also give some very practical examples of people engaging with building these peer to peer networks or other initiatives, that will make more concrete what we are talking about.

I don't know how to feel about the internet knowing everything I search for and every website I go on. At first when it started happening I thought it was pretty cool, but then as time went on and more and more websites had advertisements from my recent online shopping spree, I started to get a little creeped out. How does Google even know where we're located? It's kind of scary to to think that everything you do can be traced, even if you're logged out.

The way we use street names now is more so for cognitive mapping rather than using the name to remember the value it holds or what it represents. I think this is very true, that we rarely think of a street name and wonder why it is so, it is usually just a part of an intinerary. e.g. subway stops

Steps to heroism

from Becker's point of view there may be no curriculum - or we could think of it as a "learning curriculum," in the way Lave & Wenger describe

During this whole poem, Barbauld is referencing many different divinities from many different cultures as well as many different references to the solar system. In this particular part of the poem, Barbauld is talking about an embryo system and unkindled suns. She is referencing to stars that have not been born yet within the solar system. When thinking about that, she can then think about how there may be an embryo God within herself that has not been born yet. She has a divine, unborn spirit inside of her that she hasn't found yet. However, once she enters these types of thoughts, she forces herself to take a step back. She has realized that her meditation has possibly gone too far. God is divine, and we maybe shouldn't be thinking about such divine figures within ourselves.

I really like that you choose to point this out. So often older generations or some clickbait article wants to point out how we don't talk with each other as much and that we're turning away from meeting in person and just talking. People will always be stuck in their way of doing things and when something comes and changes the paradigm, they're up in arms. When the printing press was created, were people in an uproar that we'd rather stick our head in a book than talk to someone else? I think that we have to look at what the internet, specifically, allows us to do. It allows the dissemination of knowledge at an unrivaled rate throughout history, it allows collaboration on a unmatched scale, and it allows us to be in a million different places around the world without physically being there. Like you said, our electronics are extensions of us, they do not define us (yet), and they certainly aren't who we are. Great post and great job showing both sides of the argument.

In this paragraph Jackson is saying that although they are taking away the Indian's land, because they bought the land the Indians and America can stay on good terms. its also saying that the Indians can stay in the states if they want but they are not part of the government and that America sees no reason to make them apart of the government. In the second paragraph Jackson is telling the Americans to let the Indians know that this is for their own good. In truth this passage shows that Jackson is a liar and even though he saying that its for the Indians own good and that they can stay if they want he is really just kicking them out and gaining the help of the Americans to make the Indians lives harder until they leave.

I think your intro is great. It is very original and captivating. However, intros are best kept a little bit shorter. You could consider combining these sentences, which are saying similar things, in order to shorten your intro.

I like Andrew's use of quotes around public, because it isn't truly the public who is making these decisions. It is specialized interest groups and policy makers driven by either ideology and/or special interest groups (see Walker, Wisconsin). In this light, I think we need to ask what needs does it serve for those who are in decision making positions. Given that many of them make their decisions for financial gain, I would argue that these definitions of literacy probably serve their financial gain – Pearson loved the unrolling of the new CCLS it wiped clean and re-opened for profiteering an entire textbook market (print and online) that had previously been saturated. I think they would be strong advocates for this change in the definition of minimum literacy.

At the same, and possibly contradictory, time, given the polarization, fragmentation and siloing of discourse because of online communication modes, we legitimately need new definitions of literacy. Definitions that address the unique needs of these new modes, as well as the universal needs of human communication and societal needs for functional cohesion. I think that the CCLS push towards argument tries to address some of these needs. In new modes of communication where the loudest, most media savvy voices gain followings and power, critical judgment of argument and evidentiary reasoning are desperately needed.

How do we reconcile these ideas? Why does the public seem to support these definitions of literacy? See Myers last chapter about parental resistance to literacy practices. (298-9)

"There appear to be social class differences..."

What do we make of the fact that we have now entered a social class discrepancy greater than any other time in the history of the U.S.?

A similar push towards a more regressive model happened at the turn of the 20th century when "Cubberly won out," and Haley, the "first national organizer of the newly established American Federation of Teachers, warned that creating schools structured like factories could shift expertise in teaching away from teachers, where it was anchored during recitation literacy, to the new administrators and the nonteaching bureaucrats of Cubberly's model of schooling" (85). This has amazing parallels to what we have seen over the last 15 years. The question I have is why did Cubberly win out?

I think that David Bartholomae's argument may have relevance in some of our current experiences – the publishing industry benefits from the analytic/decoding model's notions of "objectivity." It is much easier for the publishing industry to produce texts and assessments that cleave to the appearance of 'objectivity' without having to deal with social-political questions. It is easier to sell books and tests when you aren't dealing with topics and questions of "the riots in African American communities in the 1960s" (92) or in 2015.

We also see Hirsch's ideas about composition at play in this. Testing companies prefer definitions of literacy that allow for easily assessable writing. "Our results to date suggest that an assessor can accurately score relative readability after a few days of practice" (94). If students are taught to write in ways that rely on implied meaning, silences, and spaces of ambiguity, College Board is going to have a hell of a time scoring their essays. They, and other testing companies (I'm looking at you Pearson), aren't going to let these complications get in the way of their profits without a fight (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-18/not-for-profit-college-board-getting-rich-as-fees-hit-students). My apologies to my friends at College Board and Pearson.

, or the complexities of meaning and interpretation that are part of the critical/transformational model. Anything that strongly benefits the publishing industry is going to automatically become educationally beneficial in the eyes of the people making educational policy decisions.

Vannevar's humanitarian optimism carried forward through Licklider, Engelbart, and others for a generation beyond him - why has it faded from attention in today's computing world?

See Wikipedia article on the speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We're still trying to standardize information and concepts so we can do this comprehensively. It is conceptually simple but difficult in practice, at least with current technologies.

Particularly in the modern age of sensors. Sorry "girls".

Google glass?

Did not imagine digital but other predictions are not bad.

This is something we have to keep in mind when developing technology, particularly in academia. It's not just the technology, but whether it can be put into production in a cost effective and useful manner. And just because the time is not right now, doesn't mean that as capacities change, it can't be done eventually.

It kind of blows me mind that the end of WWII is the context for these early dreams of the Internet. Is it the hope experienced in patriotic collaboration toward technological innovation? That's what Bush seems to acknowledge explicitly. It's a techno-militaristic union that haunts us to this day (#prism). But I wonder too if it's the precarious of knowledge, or perhaps the destructiveness of knowledge, that also inspires Bush...

It's the blazing of these "associative trails" that for me is the great potential of hypothes.is. But the cairns need to be better discoverable. If it weren't for Twitter I would never have returned to this document today. Hypothesis needs to have its own amplification systems. #letmefollowthispage

But assuming we can tell what is inconsequential and what is significant without the passage of time is a little arrogant.

And in 2015, they are now another generation older. Or is it two? But now we are in a position to do something about it. FORCE11 Manifesto

But now we really are bogged down by specialization. Honest. But somehow we progress anyway.

But perhaps the current "war" on disease does require them to leave the old paths.

Who will perform those computations? Those in power presumably?

Who would, or who should? Who gets to decide how we reshape humanity? The masters of war?

So it's not just limited to the individual, but you can see other people's trails. It is social. This seems like a key insight as well.

Not a bad user story, all things considered.

Isn't the association a type of index though, really?

The use of logic here is also interesting. Is knowledge actually grounded in logic? Didn't Wittgenstein free us of this delusion?

It's very strange how humans, or "girls" are essentially made part of the machine here.

This distinction seems particularly significant.

Dude, stop it already!

Ouch. C'mon Vannevar!

Some people do this now, but they seem to be a minority.

So true.

Is it even possible to think what this factor is for today's digital storage technologies?

It would be, and is!

Valuable ideas often appear before they are viable. But they must be discoverable when the environment changes in ways that make the idea more tractable.

This makes me wonder if that's where we still are. Connecting documents/information with people when they need it is still a huge challenge. Although being able to go to Google to ask a question on your phone is a huge advantage for those who have questions that are amenable and the device to ask it.

The now familiar information overload.

the atomic bomb, among others.

This line seems to suggest there is a helplessness in information. Like watching the news, what is the point of knowing there there are terrible things happening in other parts of the world, as we sit on our butts watching on our flat screen TV? Is it beneficial to be informed? The speaker suggests that nay-sayers may not think so, and that these are the same people who do not value libraries or see the value in knowledge.

"Truth statements" are what we call in rhetoric "common places." Common places are great to springboard a discussion because they give us common ground to start from while questioning the notion of common ground from the start. Think of common places as things we might be inclined to accept without explanation (e.g. "common sense," etc.)

I think that Alyssa makes a good point here. I agree that Spider seems to be the least religious person and that his name is very contradictory. I also think that the fact that Spider Jerusalem is the way he is could be to serve as a representation of our society today. Spider’s character could symbolize the kind of people we are becoming. The author maybe exaggerated Spider’s crude and vulgar tendencies to show the readers what we may become in the future if we continue to simply dress up at Jesus and pretend to be kind people but continue to sin. This idea may be a stretch but Alyssa’s analysis made me think that Spider’s character may have a bigger meaning.

If we apply this to the classroom, we could think of different content spaces as subjects, however when we think in terms of how people interact with the space, those processes may seem similar despite content area.

I do not think a single person I know who has read any amount of critical theory or even agreed with it would really think that people would ascribe universal values onto words and not understand that value systems are historically and socially inflected. They might, as do Adorno and Horkheimer, consider the holocaust to be an absolute moral evil, but if that's something that Lyotard is here supposed to free us from, I don't quite know what we gain.

I agree with the conclusion that hierarchies and letting users put things in places is good, but I want to posit a more nuanced explanation than "we are set in our ways".

I think sometimes we don't remember what exactly it is we're looking for. We may not have a word, or a name, or date. But if we put it some place in particular we can find it spatially rather than linguistically.

This is why I think labels are superior to hierarchies. When we transcend the limitations of physical space would should not throw out space, but we should throw away the constraints of 3D space with its contiguous, volumetric forms. Labels let you put things in as many places as you like. Labels can, too, be hierarchical.

The problem with the current crop of systems that eschew hierarchy is that they replace it with a text box.

One could make the argument that smart indexing is just automatic labeling, but I think there's a memory function in having created the labels oneself.

I'd like to see systems that experiment with more ways to fold space. Shortcuts are like wormholes. Maybe we should have common actions for creating bi-directional ones. On mobile devices I think we should take more advantage of zooming and z-planes.

it is important to think about why words are spelt the way they are.

This is why I think it is important for full participation, regardless of your own role in the organization, as we all bring different skill sets, areas of focus, interests, and so forth.

It is a trick of the language to think of humankind as a unitary "we." We are not one. We are diverse groups of people attempting to build different sorts of communities, on Earth and off. Pilgrims left for America and founded a nation that changed how state and religion interacted. Likewise, groups from earth may leave certain problems behind, even as they encounter others.

It's true, though! Annotation (as much as hyperlinking) is part of what shaped the metaphor of "the Web" for the Internet. As Vannevar Bush wrote in "As We May Think" in 1945:

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

This assumes humans are not organized to maximize and seek out different affordances and tools. Maybe the assemblage that emerges is the most logical.

I refer then of course to verbocentric definitions of reading as Leander & Rowe put reading in quotes. I do think you can read any encoded text. I draw a line there between universal sign systems and what we read in nature versus texts encoded through human activity.

What is "the essence of an education"?

Accidental Data Recognitions

@KenNeumiester suggested in this tweet:

@dbarthjones intentional re-identification is different from accidental re-identification. accidents frequent. intention is hard.

— Ken Neumeister (@KenNeumeister) March 29, 2015

<script async="" src="//&lt;a href=" http:="" <a="" href="http://platform.twitter.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">platform.twitter.com="" widgets.js"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

that accidental data re-identifications occur frequently. His comment was surprising to me because I've never experienced an accidental or "spontaneous" data re-identification in 25 years of working on health data de-identification. Our twitter exchange about this was interesting and I learned that his take on this may differ from mine because he apparently works in a different data domain than I do, but it started me thinking.

Part of the reason for my having never encountered a single spontaneous re-identification in over two decades of opportunity for this to happen might be that I'd ended my experience providing patient care in a clinical setting before I began working in the area of data de-identification. I don't doubt that spontaneous health data re-identifications might occasionally occur for clinicians who work with de-identified data for patients that they've personally seen (or maybe even with their recognizing patients that have been treated in the units/offices where they work).

A couple of points are probably worth mentioning though about such spontaneous clinical environment data "re-identifications". First, if they occur, they would typically only impact a single person and certainly not any large numbers of persons. In any large healthcare data set this should presumably constitute a very small re-identification risk among the total number of persons at risk of re-identification. Secondly, and more importantly, I not really sure we should consider such spontaneous events as "re-identifications". I'd propose that "spontaneous data recognitions" would be a more illuminating name for such events.

Why does the distinction I'm making matter? Well, because it speaks to both the real source of potential privacy concern and the likelihood of privacy harms resulting from such an event. The de-identified data isn't the source of the critical information needed to enable possible privacy concerns here. The knowledge of a patient's details enabling a spontaneous recognition of the patient within a de-identified data set hasn't come from the data set -- it comes from external information that the data viewer already possessed independent of the data.

Sure, on occasion we might suppose that the data "recognizer" might also learn something new about the patient from the data which wasn't already known to them. But with respect to the possibility of resulting privacy harms from such events, we need to remind ourselves that the likelihood of the newly revealed information being of great sensitivity or otherwise capable of producing possible privacy harms for the patient will likely be a comparatively rare occurrence.This is because it will have most likely have been the case that the patient was recognizable primarily due to their having some atypical / rare characteristics enabling their spontaneous recognition. There might be additional info within the data that the recognizer didn't already know, but initial recognitions will be rare events, and additional revelations resulting in privacy harms will be rarer still. This is basic probabilistic reasoning (in spite of the problem that even very smart people will sometimes avoid "doing the math" if they've been poked with a scary scenario first). See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2014/11/21/the-antidote-for-anecdata-a-little-science-can-separate-data-privacy-facts-from-folklore/

But the probabilistic reality remains that the result of a final outcome B stemming from an initial rare event A, which then can lead to yet another rare event (or even moderately frequent) event B, yields only rarer still occurrences of event B.

We can add to this probabilistic assurance that because, in general (at least for this context of spontaneous health data recognitions) having sufficiently detailed knowledge that a person has atypical characteristics (or a rare medical condition) which could enable their spontaneous recognition usually comes from having already been placed in a general position of trust with respect to the participating in the patient's care, or otherwise having already had some sort of trusted relationship with the patient.

So in the same way the we generally trust doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers to with our personal health information, the same trust - and ethics that enable such trust - should be rightly expected to be in place for sensitive information revealed through spontaneous medical care data recognition events.

The very same reasoning also generally applies even for the context of non-medically trained personnel.(statisticians, data analysts, etc.) accessing de-identified medical data. With properly de-identified data, spontaneous data recognitions are only likely to occur extremely rarely for those cases where there isn't already some sort of existing relationship with the person being recognized that enabled the detailed knowledge required to realize the recognition.

Yes, on extremely rare occasions, statisticians and data analysts, might spontaneously recognize their family members, neighbors, or workplace friends/ acquaintances or even themselves within properly de-identified health data, but the number of people for they will know sufficient details to allow this to occur will be very small in any large and properly de-identified data set. And when this does rarely occur, resultant privacy harms will likely also be rare because, in general, the knowledge of the details through which a spontaneous re-identification could occur will be have been obtained through having an existing relationship with the individual who has been recognized. Put in statistical terms, we are helped in this specific context of spontaneous recognitions by the fact that knowledge of our intimate details that are needed to enable such recognitions is typically correlated with having some sort of trust relationship with us.

I'd further argue though that we should also be supplementing these inherently probabilistic protections by consistently providing ethical training and mentorship to all personnel who access de-identified medical data. In my training as an HIV epidemiologist, I received plenty of meaningful mentorship about privacy ethics, but had admittedly little course-based training on these issues. This is an area where we can and should do more.

However, I think it's helpful to recognize that although accidental or spontaneous re-identification might occur on occasion, there's good reason to understand that they are likely to be quite rare and when they do occur, they most often will be unlikely to pose an influential source of privacy harms.

israel pushes and succeeds in attempt to be apart of the scud hunters club....dude we are sooo in they think we are cool

Holy ghost

Comment BY 'Dan Whaley' ON '2014-09-03T17:29:21' 'I think the handling of versions should be done by the underlying CMS, whether that's WP, github, gdocs, or whatever. We exist as a layer above that, but can interact with it if integrated. Not all CMSs handle versioning, and so therefore, an integrated experience may differ considerably based on the CMS or document store being used. We have notions eventually to support memento style queries for time stamped versions of a document-- and being able to go back to the version of a page at the point that an an annotation is created. I think the notion of "resolving" is potentially the right way to think about things. All annotations are always preserved (in the same way that all track changes in word are). There may be a few kinds of affordances that track changes gives you that a CMS+annotation approach do not, but this combination may allow a fair amount of functionality. Experiment and iterate.'

Starting to recover my attention and release my ire, because it's evident now that the author may not be defending advertising as not manipulative, but actually trying to articulate the mechanisms more thoughtfully.

Definitely sounds like what we're doing here.

Selection by association, rather than indexing.

With the advent of Google Docs we're finally moving away from the archaic indexing mentioned here. The filesystem metaphor was simple and dominated how everyone manages their data-- which extended into how we developed web content, as well.

The declaration that Hierarchical File Systems are Dead has led to better systems of tagging and search, but we're still far from where we need to be since there is still a heavy focus on the document as a whole instead of also the content within the document.

The linearity of printed books is even more treacherously entrenched in our minds than the classification systems used by libraries to store those books.

One day maybe we'll liberate every piece of content from every layer of its concentric cages: artificial systems of indexing, books, web pages, paragraphs, even sentences and words themselves. Only then will we be able to re-dress those thoughts automatically into those familiar and comforting forms that keep our thoughts caged.

The essential feature of the memex is its ability of association; tying two items together.

The first reference to Wikipedia?! :)

I love this early UX imagining of the linking/annotation process by Vannevar. What's notable here of course is that he suggested that creating links between things was a function that something visitors (trailblazers) could do. In a sense, to him the notion of a hypertext link, and a clickable annotation w/ two targets were mutually interchangeable ideas. Today, these are distinct. The idea that a visitor can do this, is only possible within the emerging idea of Open Annotation as we understand it now. It's why those of us exploring it are so excited about its potential.

Annotations are at the Web’s core.

The key here is the notion of a format as a container. Lots of content is moving towards that notion-- that a "file" is really an opaque (to the OS filesystem) directory or container of some sort and some other program understands the format of the "file" as a container to know how to open it to access the files inside.

I think the context and the environment are essential for understanding both the rationality of the decision maker as well as the structure and functioning of the system itself. We may run into the same boundary drawing problem here, because some might say that the decision makers within a system have their own rationality, while others might say that the system itself has a rationality built into it, and that this rationality emerged in part from the environment in which the system developed.

Who is Vannevar Bush? See [Wikipedia article on V. Bush(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush)

Sophist critics don't seem to believe that the mind can be trained...so rhetoricians are scam artists

Anger (emotion) in relation to image/success in philosophy. People only feels anger if what has been said about them is something they are unsure of (insecure). Anger thus may be a cue for someone's insecurities or uncertainties.

But if men tend toward the truth and speakers can convince men to the contrary, isn't rhetoric more hurtful that useful?

Socrates himself seems to be a master of persuasion via making the opinions of his opponents sound an awful lot like his own.