Fighters for Internet freedom

Wikipedia's homepage on the day it blacked itself in protest

As part of it's Battle for the Internet series The Guardian has published a list (with short bios) of the top 20 "fighters for Internet freedom." The list includes obvious people like Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, plus more controversial figures like Julian Assange, ex-hacker and editor of WikiLeaks, and the hacktivist collective Anonymous. My Favourite person included on their list is Lady Ada Lovelace, who died in 1852, over a century before the Internet was even invented. Check the Guardian's list out and suggest anyone you think they've overlooked. 

Battle for the Internet

The Guardian newspaper is running a week long special into the future of the Internet. They have opened with an interview with Google co-founder Sergey Brin who describes a range of threats to openness from government censorship to Apple and Facebook's walled gardens.
    The week will feature special reports on cyberwar, intellectual property and copyright, walled gardens, hacktivism, digital democracy and privacy. You can get involved through the "Comments" section on each story.

Will Facebook & Twitter fade away?

At breakfast today whilst reading the Guardian I read a blog piece called Time to cut the Facebook and Twitter clutter, says AOL's 'digital prophet'. The basic premise of this piece is that we are being overwhelmed by digital messages from Facebook, Twitter and any other social media we use (along with news media) and that we need to declutter our digital lifes by unfriending and unfollowing people. David Shing, AOL's digital prophet predicts Facebook and Twitter will wither away like MySpace is.
    The reader comments section was full of the predictable "who'd listen to AOL's digital prophet" jokes and comments by people who say Facebook and Twitter suck and comments that say the converse. I think, as becomes obvious if you read just a few of the comments, that people use Facebook and Twitter in different ways and for different reasons. For some Facebook is a place for online communication between people they know and meet f2f. For others a way of keeping in touch with similar people whom they've never met and never will. For some Twitter is a way of keeping up with the minutia of what friends are doing, for some it's for following their idols (e.g., Steven Fry). For me Twitter is about getting a weird interesting newsfeed suggested by a group of people most of whom I don't know but who seem to have similar interests. It's rather random hence its benefit - it surprises often. Facebook I use just to keep in touch with real friends (I have about 35).
   There's no single use for any of these services and that's their strength. I don't see them going away anytime soon. MySpace is declining because it never really was about friends. It didn't really provide a social network; it was more an ego thing: "look at me," "listen to my band," "watch my fab video," "aren't I cool and wonderful." Great for bands to publicise themselves to their fans, but not so useful to keep in touch with a good friend who has moved to a different city. Facebook and Twitter if you want to use them that way excel at this.

Not everything computers do is good

I've tended to post a rosy view of the impact of computers on society, yet we all know that people can do bad things with computers: design bombs, hack into private data, steal credit cards, even organise atrocities. I'm not unaware of this and my book's penultimate chapter will focus on the darkside of computing: hacking, spam and cyberwar.
The recent shocking events in Norway possibly illustrate how people can become isolated and dangerously deranged through their use of the web. This excellent article in the Guardian newspaper discusses how online anonymity and the effect of the filter bubble can serve to exacerbate a person's tendency towards extreme beliefs. We all hope few people act on these beliefs.

The 100 greatest non-fiction books

The Guardian has compiled a list of the 100 greatest non-fiction books. Like any such list it's intended to spark debate not be definitive. I did like the comment on the blog from someone who wondered if books on "religion" should be on a "non-fiction" list!

World Cup & RoboCup

There's been almost a viral posting about RoboCup doing the rounds since obviously the World Cup is under way and the slightly lesser know RoboCup 2010 competition is under way in Singapore.
The article, which originated in the Guardian,  refers to Prof. Manuela Veloso as "he". Manuela who has been very influential in Robocup for years though is a lady. The cynical may of course think "oh of course, the reporter assumes all computer science Professors must be male". Hopefully not from a liberal newspaper like the Guardian.
Unfortunately all the reposts, blogs reports and tweets of this continue to spread the error.