Blog

12 Feb 2015

Community Fiber Networks: Bringing Competition and World-Class Infrastructure to American Cities

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In the following video, President Obama announced several steps his Administration is taking to encourage municipally-owned broadband networks, as well as the rationale for taking them. A few weeks after the president’s January 14 speech, the FCC announced it would be voting on a similar approach to municipal broadband at its February 26 meeting, where it will also vote on a proposal to classify broadband access as a Title II common carrier.  Since community broadband is a topic I hope to write about here in the future, and the Commission’s meeting is only two weeks away, I thought I’d share some initial […]
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12 Feb 2015

Communication, Communication, Communication: A Jet-lagged Bill Interviewed by Voices from Oxford

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During my recent visit to Oxford for an Advisory Board Meeting, and Awards Ceremony for the Oxford Internet Institute, I had the pleasure of an impromptu interview with the Director of Voices from Oxford, Dr Sung Hee Kim. You might enjoy the production, the American music, the images from Korea and Oxford, and might also want to challenge my views on the centrality of communication for students from any nation, called ‘Communication in the Modern Age’. The interview is on Voices from Oxford (VOX): Communication in the Modern Age from Voices from Oxford on Vimeo.
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12 Feb 2015

Overly Simplistic, All or Nothing Views on Disclosure and Transparency?

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Most Internet and social media users are well aware of the weaknesses of advise and consent notices on services that require you to agree to a long list of detailed terms and conditions before you can use the service. Few people read such terms and conditions, and hurriedly agree in order to get to the software or service they wish to use. So yes there is a serious problem with companies legally complying with disclosure requirements, while leaving the users in the dark, and agreeing to terms they might not fully endorse, were they understood. This does not mean that […]
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11 Feb 2015

Social Media and Social Movements: An Evolving Relationship

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I recently read an article by Hamza Shaban with the provocative title “How Social Media Can Weaken a Revolution.” The primary focus of the piece was a Journal of International Affairs paper with a more scholarly title, “Social Movements and Governments in the Digital Age: Evaluating a Complex Landscape.” The article also contained comments from the paper’s author, Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of North Carolina, and a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. As its title suggests, Tufekci’s paper examines the evolving dynamic between digitally-empowered social […]
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10 Feb 2015

Wonder What Greece’s Finance Minister is Thinking? Read His Blog.

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As someone who believes the Euro, as structured and managed today, is a deeply flawed system that has pushed Greece (and other nations) into a deep and prolonged depression, I was excited about Syriza’s recent victory and hopeful that the new Greek government could negotiate a deal with other Euro members to ease the pain of its citizens, and begin transitioning the Euro toward a fuller and healthier economic integration among its member states. But, according to this post on the Naked Capitalism blog, the latest signs are not good for this kind of positive outcome. Though I’m tempted to […]
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09 Feb 2015

Safer Internet Day – A Growing Priority for Learning and Education

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Tomorrow, 10 February, is Safer Internet Day. It might not appear to be a critical issue, but actually, one of the key initiatives over the coming years will inevitably focus on better addressing learning and education about how to use the Internet and related technologies, such as the Web and social media. We teach people how to write, but we seldom teach people how to write for and on the Internet. Issues of etiquette, safety, privacy, and more, all come together in creating a culture that respects the communicative power of the Internet, and uses it accordingly. Information about the […]
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05 Feb 2015

Re-inventing Journalism: A Report on a Conference in Switzerland

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Re-inventing Journalism by Avshalom Ginosar “Re-inventing Journalism” – this was the title of an international academic conference that took place in Winterthur, Switzerland (15 minutes from Zurich by train), on February 5th-6th. More than an hundred scholars, most of them from Europe, attended the conference. Most of the 23 different workshops and presentations addressed, in one way or another, the transition of journalism onto the online world. It seems that this issue occupies not only the industry of news which keeps looking for the successful new business model, but it is an issue of great confusion and concern for the […]
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05 Feb 2015

Please Help Me Understand What’s Wrong with Title II

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In a blog entry here yesterday I described FCC Chairman Wheeler’s Title II proposal as “replanting the roots” of communication policy in the digital age. Shortly after I posted it, the Commission released a four-page summary of the proposed “New Rules for Protecting the Open Internet.” Not surprisingly, the document triggered a barrage of public responses from a range of interested parties on both sides of the issue. After reviewing the FCC’s Fact Sheet and some of these responses, I found myself puzzled about claims regarding risks and problems associated with Title II classification. So I thought I’d invite comments […]
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04 Feb 2015

Replanting the Roots of Communication Policy

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[Update: shortly after this was written, the FCC released details about Chairman Wheeler’s “Protecting the Open Internet” proposal, which will be discussed here in later posts] With the FCC expected to classify broadband access as a Title II common carrier service, while also preempting state restrictions on municipally-owned access networks, the Commission’s February 26 meeting is poised to launch a new era in U.S. communication policy. To appreciate the significance of the Commission’s impending Title II decision, it’s useful to step back from the drama and details of today’s regulatory and market battles, and consider the agency’s upcoming vote from […]
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24 Jan 2015

ICT for Development in Agricultural Sectors, Professor Steinfield

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We had a brief interview with Professor Charles Steinfield before a seminar he presented on the role of information and communication technologies for development, focusing on their role in the agricultural context. Distilling key lessons learned from his field research with Professor Susan Wyche, he touches on the kinds of technologies being used, the implications of their use, and the barriers to further success. This brief overview conveys the substantive areas he addressed in more depth in the seminar that followed. See the short video at: https://vimeo.com/110827930 Professor Steinfield’s work is supported by USAID, which funds MSU’s Global Center for Food Systems […]
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