Posts from — March 2007

Changing politics through digital networks: The role of ICTs in the
formation of new social and political actors and actions.

5-6 October 2007, Political Science Faculty, University of Florence, Italy

Organized by:

Department of Political Science and Sociology (DISPO), University of
Florence in collaboration with the Social Informatics Research Unit (SIRU)
based in the Department of Sociology, University of York

Sponsored by the journal: Information, Communication and Society (iCS)

Key note speakers include:

o Lance Bennett (University of Washington, USA)
o Donatella della Porta (European University Institute, Florence, Italy)
o Tim Jordan (Open University UK)
o Michele Micheletti (Karlstad University, Sweden)

It will address such questions as:

o How can ICTs be best used to facilitate the formation of social and
political identities?

o Do the ways ICTs are embedded in new social and political movements
contribute to change the sociological content of the relationships between
them, their members and their constituency?

o How can ICTs be best used to influence political processes and outcomes
at local, national and transnational levels?

Theoretical and empirical works focusing on political and
sociological aspects of such analytical dimensions as power structures,
organization, technologies, communication, individual and collective
behaviors are welcomed.

The full cfp and submission details are available on the symposium website
at: http://www.york.ac.uk/res/siru/dispo/

Links for 2007-03-09 [del.icio.us]:

• Big Brother State – an animated short by David Scharf
• fantastic animated short about government surveillance and our rights — i’m going to show this to my students.

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  Dan points toward this cool flash video explaining the nature and issues with the big brother state and mass surveillance.

Kroger responds to denied ‘morning after’ pill request – CNN.com:
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — Kroger Co. said Friday it was reiterating its drug policies to all of its pharmacists after a Georgia woman claimed she was denied the “morning after” pill at one of the company’s stores.The Cincinnati-based grocery chain said if its pharmacists object to fulfilling a request, the store must “make accommodations to have that prescription filled for our customer.”

“We believe that medication is a private patient matter,” said Meghan Glynn, a Kroger spokeswoman. “Our role as a pharmacy operator is to furnish medication in accordance with the doctor’s prescription or as requested by a patient.”

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kroger has the right policy. treat people equally and do not let your pharmacist’s bias hurt people in your name.

Dr. Dobb’s | Sun Opens Project Darkstar To Game Developers | March 6, 2007:
Sun Microsystems announced on Monday a new open-source development platform for servers designed to help massive multiplayer online game developers bring their creations to market faster.

Dubbed Project Darkstar, the Java-based software lets developers create a variety of games that can be accessed through a single-server framework. Sun has been a supporter of online and mobile gaming, chief gaming officer, Chris Melissinos said. And Project Darkstar will be an “important technology foundation in the exploding multiplayer online game marketplace.”

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this will be a great boon for educational games.

Digital Humanities: Expert Seminars:
Here is a list of podcast-seminars undertaken by the Methods Network at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities here at King’s. And don’t you just love the Internet; it means that you don’t have to attend all these seminars.
http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk/podcast/methnet-podcast.xml

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some great content on digital humanities.

unfiction.com » online tools:
online tools

this is a solid collection of tools that some of you might find useful, for instance an anagram finder and some steganography tools… along with some basic reference items and converters

Why Google’s universal library is an assault on human identity:
Why Google’s universal library is an assault on human identity. How’s that for a headline? Andrew Keen pull sno punches in this short ZDNet blog post. “John Updike put it best in his response to Kevin Kelly’s notorious 2006 New York Times magazine piece about Google’s universal library. For some of us,” Updike said. “Books are intrinsic to our human identity.” Exactly. So, by undermining the autonomy of the stand-alone book, Google’s vast database of indexed content is actually a blooming assault on human identity
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so… mr. updike believes that …. books are intrinsic to our human identity… thus it must follow that before there were books, there were no human identities?

I don’t think access to knowledge is an assault on human identity. it is an assualt on traditions and institutional forms, but that is nothing new. the book and everything behind it, is an institutionalized form of knowledge, it creates a wide variety of social disparities in relation to access to knowledge, including encouraging some of the current forms of anti-intellectualism… people have learned to dislike books and what books represent, as much as people have learned to love them. we just need to be careful when we think about these things.

E-Learning Resource Collection: Second Life:
E-LEARNING RESOURCE COLLECTION Second Life

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This is a start of a growing list of e-learning resources in second life. the other great place to look is the simteach wiki.

Museum Professionals and the Relevance of LIS Expertise:
Marty, Paul F. (2007) Museum Professionals and the Relevance of LIS Expertise.

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Paul Marty, who I met while interviewing at FSU, is cranking out some great papers in museums, museum informatics, and museum professionals in relation to library/information professionals

Sarah Davies: Intellectual Property Legislation With Human Rights:
I’m very interested in the whole notion of open content and Creative Commons licensing in the nonprofit space. Recently, I discovered Sarah Davies of FreedomforIP and after listening to her elevator pitch online from the Ignite Seattle event, I asked her for an interview. She told me, “I probably don’t have to mention this to you, but you are of course free to put this under a public domain, BY or BY-SA license.” Of course, I couldn’t imagine doing otherwise!
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i’m a sarah davies fan…. she’s on the right track.