The BBC’s Nik Gowing writes an excellent piece in the Guardian on how new media is subverting traditional media’s vice grip on news and information. As Nik notes in Real-time media is changing our world, Institutional assumptions of commanding the information high ground in a crisis are from a different era. The instant scrutiny created [...]
Archive | June, 2009
Are we all writers now?
I post this in response to an interesting essay published recently on the More Intelligent Life website by the Economist group. In We are all writers now, Anne Trubek avers, Yes, we need to darken the line between what is verifiable and what is hearsay. The financial downturn and its disastrous impact on print publishing [...]
Computer models for predicting conflict outcomes
From Bill Waters came a great heads-up on a paper that informs a model to predict the outcome of conflict. Political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses rational choice theory as the basis of this tool, which I would love to see with a dataset populated with Sri Lanka’s conflict metrics. Bill also points to [...]
Google wants to make the web faster
Hurrah! Who can argue with such a noble cause? Google’s new Speed site points to tools and techniques designers and coders can use to make web services and websites more efficient and effective, especially over limited bandwidth and high latency connections. But as many agree, it’s not just the code that needs tweaking. It’s the [...]
War and war games
Great article on More Intelligent Life on why war games based on (recent) history foster so much of controversy. As I noted in response to the post, I would not be surprised if the identical game, with some new ahistorical maps based loosely on the Iraqi war theatre goes into production. The mistake seems to have [...]
The rise of Skynet?
Reuters reported this week that the US Pentagon had approved the creation of a cyber command for defending U.S. military IT systems. The rise of Skynet?! But seriously, just wish that there was equal emphasis on R&D into how ICTs could be used for peacebuilding.
Hate speech discussed at the UN in New York
On the 16th of June, the UN discussed the growth of hate speech online. This is an issue I have looked at repeatedly from international and local perspectives. I was also part of a group that attempted to draw up some basic guidelines for respectful online communications, echoing those I drew up to frame the [...]
HTC Sense and mobile phone user interfaces
My first mobile phone in 2002 was a Nokia 3310. It was a hardy beast and hands down, the most reliable mobile phone I have ever owned. I don’t remember playing the in-built games that much, but its screen was easy to read and the phone was dead simple to use. I recently bought two [...]
Nokia Siemens in Iran: Shame or all’s fair game for telcos?
Deep packet inspection is bad under any regime, no matter how benevolent. When a regime such as Iran today gets access to technology with the potential of DPI, you have a justifiable uproar on far more serious and urgent implications than delayed music downloads. Global media over the past week pointed to Nokia and Siemens [...]
Mobile phone movie competition on women in Sri Lanka
The last time someone came up with a novel idea on the use of mobile phone in Sri Lanka, it was the Inspector General of Police, who said that women could use them to video themselves getting raped. A new blog and initiative by Women and Media Collective does something less adventurous yet far more [...]
