We the People now have power to express ourselves and to aggregate our expression through the net. This is an awesome power. Aggregation is driven by Shannon’s Surprise.
Monthly Archive for July, 2005
I had an opportunity to describe and explain the work I have been doing in Jamaica to the Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Summer Program in Beijing. This is the best explanation I’ve managed to date of the character, strategy, and trajectory of our Jamaica voice.
– – Amplifying Jamaica’s Voice – –
The SSET logo was done by Jasmine Ma, a student at Harvard in the Education School and fellow in the PTIF Program.
An earlier Jamaica post links to several significant background documents.
Hear this voice on Jamaica:
“War occupies a prominent place in the Jamaican imagination, but when people talk of war, they more frequently refer to the ghetto-blasting gun-battles that routinely erupt in downtown Kingston. Since the 1970s, Jamaica has been in a state of perpetual war. The noxious combination of U.S. cold-war and drug-war policy, the American arms-industry, and “misguided” leadership has militarized the pork-barrel politics that splits the city into warring garrisons.”
That’s Wayne, the dubble dubble you, Wayne&Wax, who teaches music in our SSET CyberSchool. He speaks about Jamaica in both music and text with knowledge, art and passion.
Travels with Ben and Charlie: Listen to a passionate Chinese blogger who writes love poetry to his distant lover.
– –love_like_tea_like_music– –
Ben Walker’s my producer. He’s been looking for a format with which to project my voice. He sets me up and lets me go. He likes the mix on mix and loves the bridge of cultures. Global Voices. Thank you Rebecca and Ethan. Our time in Beijing has been one of breaking ground before us in methods of connecting as we draw diagrams on white boards in Liang’s black pen. Bokee. 300 employees up from one last year filtering chinese blogs to a daily top ten, a sharing service to organize translation. yes there is a model here.
The process i went through was simple cut and paste with the feeling of playing with time as you tell a story. There is tempo in the music of the sounds, surprise in new way to sing.
Ben and I went to a club last night to see a film. Posters for the event read African Boots of Beijing underlined with chinese logograms. Met Jeremy Goldkorn from South Africa and Luke Mines who had made this film about Afrika United, a football team of Africans in Beijing, a charming film shot for US$100 cash outlay. The star to my mind is the coach from Etheopia with picture of Haille Selassie big in white against the black of his well filled T-shirt. His father worked for Haille Selassie. The film shows a photograph of him as a boy of maybe four peeking out from his father’s knee as his father and Haille Selassie speak. With slightly more fluid technology at hand i would show you a bit of it, at least the photo, but alas. The club is pretty cool, an ex-pat place that could have been in Brooklyn for all you could tell being inside. The showing of the film was to raise money for the club, which brings together in an inviting way all of Africa in a manner that invites their friendship for Beijing. The stories are of young men who came to Beijing and found connection. The story itself is one which could engage the imagination of Africans and Chinese people all over the world. Twenty airplane tickets and hospitality on the other side would take them on a tour to spread this word of Chinese friendship. Credibility, second only in importance to identity, of which it is a part. The music is African-Jamaican-Chinese, love like tea.
I never got to use the Willie Nelson -Countryman Album with the marijuana leaf prominent on its cover. Here’s the mix i made on it, smokin palm.
– –SMOKINPALM– –
At lunch today I had an opportunity to talk about Intellectual Property to a distinguished group including Guo Liang, Chinese host for Bill Dutton’s Oxford program which brings me here. Guoliang is a philospher who discovered internet early on and has led in China’s understanding of it. So drawn to internet he does not own a television set. And He Dequan, a smiling man who represents Confucius. He welcomed us in the morning when our meeting began and sat next to me at lunch. I spoke of the growing conflict between China and America on the issue of copyright protection and of exploring together a technological strategy for easing it. I offered the Library of All Born Digital as a promising path. The building we were in was magnificent, bottom to top, starting with an Emperor’s Chair in the entrance grand and gold flanked by a gleaming red Porche roadster. Judging by the paper quality of the materials passed out along with cards I was at the State Council Information Office, People’s Republic of China at the China International Culture Exchange Center at a Workshop for Information Society & IT Governance. The food was great. I’m getting better with the slippery sticks. :
On July 4 I was in Umbria, Italy, with Fern, Leila and Sebastian, listening to one recording while recording another. Here’s freedom.mix.
This is the front of the room at the Oxford Institute Summer Program. These guys, the three on the right, were heroes. They laid out the argument for governments to use free software clear and cold. Bill Dutton, the guy on the left, put up a noble scholarly defense, urging that detachment and devotion to data should not be lost amidst their passion for their cause.
Earlier in the day I had my first opportunity to talk with the group. We started with each of them stating their name and thesis. Then I told them a bit about myself and tried to offer them a trajectory with and arc that goes back a ways under the title, “the future of the internet”. Not mine to describe, nor were there other bloggers in the room, unless I can get Ben Walker to speak up. He was there, and can you believe, not recording!
I arrived yesterday, ten hours from Paris in a middle seat made okay by Etienne, age fourteen from a town near Marseilles, who struggled artfully with English and played games exceedingly well on the little screen in the seat-back in front of me. Jie Liang met me at the airport in his elegant Audi sedan and talked with me about internet in China on the way to my hotel. Jie works for a New York investors group at IPO level but is more interested himself in ventures. He is chairman of a start-up that promotes artists and makes money through ring-tones. He describes the internet innovation environment as alive, with ventures now focused realistically on financial return, no longer blinded by click-counts. Quick shower and short walk to the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Progam at which I am to speak. Twenty-seven Ph.D students in a room with mics at every seat. Vicki, organizer, introduces a panel of journalism speakers. Ollie speaks, China correspondent for London Times, Ollie August, a handsome man who puts me in mind of the English hearthrob whose name I can’t bring to mind at the moment (Nottingham Hill), that little head-down crinkled smile, speaks about how internet has changed the practice of foreign journalism in China, freed him from sitting by city news feeds, now allowing him to move around the country. Ollie could use a moderator, but ideas are big. Censorship seen in a politically neutral frame of the PRC doing very well. Short nap. Julie Liu is showing video shot by a farmer showing thugs beating people to drive them off land a state-run power company wants in order to expand. Six farmers and a thug die. What is the story? She goes to the village to follow up. This becomes a break-out news story in China’s mass media. Elements for a young female Beijing journalist to break a polically sensitive news story into mass media news are brought to life, getting assigned to the story by your boss, getting access to the location often denied by local police, part of cover-up under local authority, getting exciting video. All this happened here because a farmer thought to record digital evidence of the outrage and persuaded others in the village that collecting and protecting evidence is an effective path to follow in appeal to Beijing justice, plus the internet on which the video circulated. Last goes Andrew Lih, comparing China-US: on mobile to Internet ratio, China way ahead , 3.6:1, the US way behind, 0.9:1; free internet connection here, hassle there; integration of mobile/internet here, separate spaces there. Yes, the message made clear to me by Jie here affirmed and expanded by Andrew, China is on a cutting edge.
I arrived yesterday, ten hours from Paris in a middle seat made okay by Etienne, age fourteen for a town near Marseilles, who struggled artfully with English and played games exceedingly well on the little screen in the seat-back in front of me. Jie Liang met me at the airport in his Audi sedan and talked with me about internet in China on the way in to my hotel. Jie works for a New York investors group at IPO level but is more interested himself in ventures. He describes the environment as alive, with internet ventures now focused realistically on financial return, no longer blinded by click-counts. Quick shower and short walk to the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Progam at which I am to speak. Twenty-seven Ph.D students in a room with mics at every seat. Vicki, organizer, introduces a panel of journalism speakers. Ollie speaks, China correspondent for London Times, a handsome man who puts me in mind of the English hearthrob whose name I can’t bring to mind at the moment (Nottingham Hill), speaks about how internet has changed the practice of journalism, freed his kind of journalist to move around the country. Ollie could use a moderator, but ideas are big. Censorship seen in frame of PRC doing very well. Short nap. Julia is showing video shot by a farmer showing thugs beating people to drive them off land a state-run power company wants in order to expand. Six farmers and a thug die. What is the story? She goes to the village to follow up. This becomes a news story in China’s mass media. Elements for a young female Beijing journalist to break a polically sensitive news story into mass media news are brought to life, getting assigned to the story by your boss, getting access to the location often denied by local police, part of cover-up under local authority, getting exciting video. All this happened here because a farmer thought to record digital evidence of the outrage and persuaded others in the village that collecting and protecting evidence is an effective path to follow in appeal to Beijing justice. Last goes Andrew Lih, comparing China-US on mobile to Internet ratio, China way ahead, 3.6:1, the US way behind, 0.9:1; free internet connection here, hassle there; integration of mobile/internet here, separate spaces there. Yes, the message made clear to me by Jie here affirmed and expanded by Andrew, China is on a cutting edge.
From: eric saltzman
Subject: Re: Open Access
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 11:53:43 -0400
To: Charles Nesson
Charlie and all:
I do like it. I think the effort to recruit students to commit themselves as the next generation of researchers and writers is best organized as an independent project mindful of CC and built on top of CC licenses as a standard. Like the Lone Ranger, CC can say in modesty, “Our work here is done”, and look on in admiration.
Thanks,
Eric
***
On Jun 28, 2005, at 10:34 AM, Charles Nesson wrote:
After John Wilbanks’ Science Commons presentation I mentioned to Eric a proposal he thought it might be usefully passed on to you to encourage the international student movement for Open Access. Here’s both my audio statement of it and the effort of Berkman intern Gabriela Ruiz Begue to describe it.