From the conclusion of Chopra & Dexter's (2007, p173) Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software: Jacques Ellul imagined an iron cage constructed of technology (Ellul 1967), but never the possibility that the cage could be unlocked by its prisoners. We began with a historical note on hacking: ...

What would it look like if we were to situate young people in the growing semantic web? A 2007 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) took a look at some of the data mining programs currently underway at the Department of Homeland Security. In their report, GAO offer ...

Here is a clear case of astroturfing... I noticed the following ad on HuffingtonPost yesterday (01.28.08) promoting "draftbloomberg.com." Draftbloomberg.com (formerly Unity08.com) has been setup to encourage people to petition Michael Bloomberg to run for president as an Independent. The ad states 5,237 signatures... Meanwhile the web site only lists 3,719 signatures. ...

From the wired interview: Wired: Kids sit on the steps of the Brooklyn library trying to get Wi-Fi. Why can't we solve the problem that roughly half the people in this city don't have broadband? Bloomberg: We will. That's what capitalism is all about. As there's demand, the private sector will come ...

I was just reading through the Wired article on Facebook's role in the Burma protests. The marches, organized at a lightning pace by volunteers using Facebook, show the increasing power and reach of a social-networking site originally designed to help college students find drinking buddies. An interesting theme which runs through the ...

part 1 of please forward to everyone you know was posted on 10.14.07. Obama responds to the smear campaign. From the chicago sun-times: Obama said the “swiftboating” started after he announced for president and Fox News “started saying, ‘“well this guy went to schools in madrassas.’” He revealed that his campaign ...

This screen shot is from Parents. The Anti-Drug. What I like most about this web site is the way it both 'teaches' parents what text messaging is AND it explains how this new technology can be a drug-enabling-tool for teens - our war on drugs hard at work. There are ...

A recent story by the Politico describes a smear campaign which alleges Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. This campaign is remarkably similar to one waged against John McCain, yet the medium through which the smear is being propagated has changed - this time the smear is originating in spam ...

"The line between state and society is not the perimeter of an intrinsic entity that can be thought of as a freestanding object or actor. It is a line drawn internally, within the network of institutional mechanisms through which a certain social and political order is maintained." :: sent wirelessly via ...

After reading David Pogue's review of the XO - a $200 laptop created by One Laptop Per Child (O.L.P.C.) - and spending time on O.L.P.C.'s website, I'm absolutely fixated on the mesh-networking feature of this computer (check out the "mesh demo" here). While the XO is light, durable and energy ...