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morph: Media, Technology & Repression – Any Questions?: “At The Media Center we try to focus on enabling a better-informed society, and to seek trends, insights and opportunities hidden within the remarkable chaos we’re witnessing at the intersection of media, technology and society. Technology is enabling a level of individual empowerment that’s unprecedented in human history – a capacity not only to access the world’s information but to create, share and apply it, what we call We Media.

The power to connect cuts across all sectors of society, not just media companies or institutions in the traditional sense. My language, my reference points, maybe even the name of my organization, probably do an injustice to the sweeping changes empowering individuals, businesses, non-profits and governments to communicate directly with each other, to be media rather than use it.

Technorati Tags: wemedia

I am an irrational optimist, my hope springs eternal – I believe our collective futures will depend on our ability to share information and ideas like never before – certainly faster and in greater volume, and far exceeding the capabilities or impact of traditional journalism, traditional marketing, traditional anything based on control of information. The communications technologies and ideas we see emerging will enable an unprecedented scale of sharing.

But to what end? Where is all this sharing and collaboration leading us?” [more]

Rhizome.org: Info–About Us: “Rhizome.org is an online platform for the global new media art community. Our programs support the creation, presentation, discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. We foster innovation and inclusiveness in everything we do.”

Mobilcast from Melodeo is being touted as the first solution marrying podcasting to cell phones. Apparently the company never heard of SmartFeed or Skookum (the artist formerly known as iPodderSP). Regardless, this is the ghost of podcasting yet to come. As soon as the price comes down on phones like the Nokia N91 with multi-GB hard drives, the distinction between cell phone and iPod will become blurred. Posted by Jake

Katrina Information Map
convergence of natural disaster with google maps API with volunteer coders with info to be shared.

These are the early days of video blogging. Most of the postings on the Web are rough and tedious — little more than home movies. But the success of Rocketboom and a few sites like it underscore the potential of video blogs. Cheaper video recorders mean just about anyone can make videos, while the spread of speedy Net service means almost anybody can watch clips posted online. The result? The Internet is coming alive with a mix of video, from the polished parody of Rocketboom to the raw interviews of reporters. As these videos flow into the living room, they will reshape what we think of as television. “TV will be transformed,” says Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corp. (IBM ) and now an investor in Participatory Culture, an online video startup. “People will look at it as historically quaint that you had to watch something that others chose for you.”

Community Media – Cambridge University Press: “Combining original research with comparative and theoretical analysis, Kevin Howley examines a number of different community media such as radio, television, and print media, and looks at the way they impact on the lives of those who produce and consume them. He also addresses broader theoretical and philosophical issues such as the part community media can play in promoting participatory democracy and giving the socially and economically disadvantaged access to the public sphere.”

Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth: Using iTunes to Get My Podcasts and Videos

Subscribing for Mac users | Subcribing for PC users

If you publish your own video blog or podcast, you can add a link like this to your site as well. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Go to Mefeedia.com and add your RSS feed.

Step 2: Mefeedia will then bring you to a page with several links on it. One of them will invite you to get an iTunes 1-click subscribe button on your blog. Click the link.

Step 3: Mefeedia will show you some HTML code. Add it to your website, tweaking it if you like.

And that’s that.

a demonstration of Andy Carvin’s use of MeFeedia video archiving tools.

The following interview with Gar Alperovitz serves this sector with a major challenge. Alperovitz believes that the ground we have lost in recent years with regard to our social contract provisions should alert us to the need for a broad new strategy. This strategy draws from previous eras in which a new form of social contract is experimented with before it is parried at a national level. In this case, Alperovitz focuses on the concept of ownership and wealth development, posing a more collective model against an individual model of ownership. Clearly, this kind of social experimentation is entirely native to us and in our imaginings, such activity could conceivably address and link many problems of social exclusion. But is this the way to go? To give us some additional perspective we have asked Rick Cohen, a veteran of community building work to comment; and to help make Alperovitz’s ideas a little more concrete, we have asked Bob Agres, of the Hawai‘i Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development (HACBED) to discuss a strategy they have pursued at both local and state levels.

ICT4D – Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Self-Paced Learning Materials Developed by Barbara Fillip
great thoughts, readings, and resources about ICT4D