And Shuttering One Channel of American Public Diplomacy

Paul Sonne and Steve Stecklow at the Wall Street Journal have an eye-opening feature today, and the headline says it all:  “U.S. Products Help Block Mideast Web.”

Sonne and Stecklow document how the governments of Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others, have been acquiring web-filtering software made by firms such as McAfee and Blue Coat Systems, both of California.  They report that software designed for parents to filter the web for their children  is apparently being used by officials to block local access to a variety of websites – including political opposition and human rights groups.

Graphic by the Wall Street Journal mapping Middle East nations that use US softward for web filtering (courtesy the Wall Street Journal)

In a test run by the Journal, online users in Bahrain tried to access various news and political websites via the Bahraini ISP Batelco.   Batelco uses a variety of filtering products, including McAfee’s “SmartFilter.”  The Journal  reports that “…online community forums for Shia villages and the websites of at least two human rights groups were censored” as well as other sites. Read the rest of this entry »

Libyans Sharing Stories From The Front Lines

The video is as direct as its story is powerful.

A young Libyan, Ali Salem Ali Milad Shaoud, looks directly into the camera – and, by extension, into the eyes of everyone watching him online.  He’s wearing a kafiya, a black t-shirt, a green flak vest…and a bandage wrapping his right hand and arm.

“This is from the days of the Fedeel Katiba in the Keesh area,” he says.  Shaoud is a Libyan rebel fighter, and in the recent battle against pro-Gadhafi forces in Katiba, Shaoud was armed with only a “jalateena” – a can filled with gunpowder:

“I was running with it to light it. It was like a fire in Katiba – there was a lot of smoke.   I threw the jalateena, I was hit in the hand.   I was running and still didn’t know.   Then someone said, ‘Your hand. Blood, you know?‘  I looked at my hand and saw the blood.  That was the day Katiba fell.”

Shaoud’s story didn’t grab headlines or make the international news broadcasts.  Told simply and cleanly, it’s just one moment in a complex, chaotic situation.

But Shaoud’s tale doesn’t just stand alone.  It’s part of a growing Internet archive of those of his fellow countrymen, and together they tell the story most journalists can’t – what Libyans actually think, experience, and desire in the battle for their nation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Works and Ideas of Futurist Ray Kurzweil

There’s a moment near the end of “Transcendent Man,” a new documentary about futurist Ray Kurzweil.  The camera follows Kurzweil to the lip of a seashore as he silently watches the waves churning in and out.  “What are you thinking about?” an off-camera voice asks.  “I’m thinking about computation,” he says, smiling.

Ray Kurzweil is not an easy man to understand.

And neither are his ideas regarding the future, most fully articulated in his latest book “The Singularity Is Near.” Long an innovator in the field of computer science and pattern recognition, Kurzweil has turned his attention to genetics, nano-technology and artificial intelligence and asks, ‘What comes next?’

His answers can be dazzling…and a little unnerving.  Just a few:

• “We’ll reprogram our genetics away from disease and aging.”
• “We will have blood cell-sized devices that go in your brain and allow us to merge with non-biological intelligence.”
• “In about 20 years  a computer will be able to match human intelligence and surpass it.”
• “We will merge with these machines be able to download our brains, and in effect live forever.”

All this and more…by the year 2029.  Welcome to the Singularity. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Information – Good and Bad – About Japan’s Crises

As Japan responds to multiple and worsening crises, the Internet is proving to be a helpful, but  sometimes confounding, tool.

Thousands of Japanese are dead and many more missing, following the earthquake and tsunami on March 11.  Hundreds of thousands more are homeless or in temporary shelters, and millions in Japan and around the world are desperate to make contact with loved ones.

Screen-grab of the Ushahidi map and reports on March 16

Mobile phones and the web are proving their worth, becoming something like a giant bulletin board – helping people share information about where they are, their condition and what’s most needed.  As in the Haiti disaster, such crowd-sourcing tools are proving particularly effective when local Internet access is spotty. Read the rest of this entry »

Spreading News & Offering Help Via the Internet

As quickly as the news filtering out of Japan has become more grim, millions of concerned people have taken to the Internet to learn about the unfolding tragedy.  And, like Haiti’s earthquake last year, governments, organizations and humanitarian activists are using the web as a tool to help.

Unlike the Haiti quake, there are literally hundreds of videos users have uploaded to sites like Vimeo and YouTube that captured what happened during the 8.9 magnitude temblor, and the dozens of aftershocks.  This video, uploaded from Tokyo, gives viewers a sense as to how long, powerful, and terrifying it was. Read the rest of this entry »

Reporting and Responding to a Massive Earthquake & Tsunami

Friday morning’s historic 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan, and the resulting tsunami that tore into the Japanese coastline, set the Internet into overdrive across the entire Pacific basin.

Even more than the 2004 Indian Ocean or “Boxing Day” tsunami, the first fierce waves to hit Japan Friday were heavily recorded and broadcast on video, perhaps to be expected for a nation that’s among the most wired and connected as any. Farther south, it was a different situation in Northeastern Indonesia where news was far slower and video unavailable in the early hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Video Games Being Used to Teach Non-Violent Civil Disobedience

Deborah Block    Washington

Popular social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, played a significant role in organizing the non-violent protests that led to the resignation last month of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Some in Egypt and other parts of the world have also been using other media for ideas on how to remove a dictator.  This includes watching TV documentaries on civil disobedience created by a private video company in Washington DC.   Now, that company is producing video games to teach non-violent tactics of civil disobedience. Read the rest of this entry »

“Frenemies” and the Uses, or Abuses, of Social Media

We’re currently working on an update of the roiling cyber-theater that is Anonymous vs. HBGary.  Like any great drama the story is complex, has a large cast, and requires time to fully digest.  Sadly we – like many – were a few minutes late to the curtain of this production.  Regardless, our review is coming soon.

In the meantime, there were several stories that caught our eye recently – all relating to what might be termed ‘creative’ uses of social media.   As always, no editorial validation of these stories is implied on our part, other than just being interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

How the Internet Separates As Well As Connects

The survey results should have been stunning.

Last year, the Oxygen Media Group asked women about their relationships online and in the real world.  Well over half – 57 percent – said they communicate more by Internet than face-to-face.  39 percent called themselves “Facebook addicts,” and a whopping 26 percent – one quarter of the respondents – get up in the middle of the night to check their text messages.

But these and similar findings come as no surprise to researcher Sherry Turkle.  “I think in terms of human vulnerabilities that we are very vulnerable to what technology offers.” Read the rest of this entry »