Diane Coyle finds the tone of my critique of New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks, published by the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation “surprising and disappointing”. That’s actually a succinct encapsulation of what I feel about her report itself. I have already responded in detail to co / second […]
Tag Archives: ICTs
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 […]
Cyclone Nargis: Lessons and implications for ICTs in Humanitarian Aid
Almost a year ago, in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, myself and others at the ICT4Peace Foundation were copied to a spate of emails that included voices from inter-governmental, non-governmental, private business and commercial organisations, academia, former field level practitioners and others on how best to respond to the monumental challenges of information and […]
Cutting through crowdsourcing
Paul Currion has a very interesting post that cuts through a whole lot of codswallop on the potential of crowsourcing in disasters. His pointed post refers to two by Patrick Meier, entitled Internews, Ushahidi and communication in crisis and Ushahidi: From Croudsourcing to Crowdfeeding I consider both to be significant thought-leaders in the domains of humanitarian […]
Must be doing something right…
When in the course of a single day, you are asked to lead the development of web media strategies for a leading newspaper as well as the online avatar of a new political magazine, published by a person very closely associated with the incumbent regime yet keen to promote engaging, inclusive debates. My driving interest […]
Recommendations and ideas to strengthen best practices of Crisis Information Management at the United Nations, New York
This is an excerpt from Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities that can be downloaded in full from here. The authors strongly feel it is timely for the UN System as a whole to address, at a strategic level, issues of crisis information management and technology best practice and interoperability – to […]
Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities
Sanjana Hattotuwa and Daniel Stauffacher From October 2007 to February 2008, representatives from the ICT4Peace Foundation met informally with a number of high-level representatives at key agencies based at the United Nations in New York in preparation for a stocktaking exercise on crisis information management capacities and best practices. These meetings with heads of agencies, […]
Capturing violent conflict in Kashmir with mobile phones
The BBC runs a fascinating story today on how young people (who in the story are mostly male) are capturing violent events and processes in Kashmir using their mobile phones. The example of Kashmir suggests that the prevalence of mobile phones leads to a situation on the ground that mainstream news agencies could not have imagined even […]
Social and political change in the Arab world through new media
The European Journalism Centre (EJC) has a good write up of an event held recently in London that looked at the impact of new media, the web and Internet on polity and society in the Arab world. It notes that, Keeping up or catching up, respectively, with world standards of communication infrastructure, the Arab and […]
