Posts tagged technology
The Revolution will be Digitised
At the centre sits the Establishment: governments, corporations and powerful individuals who have more knowledge about us, and more power, than ever before. Circling them is a new generation of hackers, pro-democracy campaigners and internet activists who no longer accept that the Establishment should run the show.
Wasla
Wasla, the first Arabic citizen newspaper was an early indicator of the Arab Awakening; in March 2010, Gamal Eid, the executive director of Arabic Network for Human rights Information said,
We issued this newspaper knowing that trouble is ahead. We expect some to adore it and others to bitterly challenge us on it. In fact , those are the Arab bloggers . They address topics in defiance to all traditions and stereotypes. They are determined to claim their full right to expression and opinion. These are thoughts of the youth , their loud voices, assert they exist and have their own opinions , worries and stances with which we should touch base first and then debate.
Syria’s Info Wars: Branch 225
The Arab Awakening is distinguished by how information and communication technologies have contributed to precipitating change in the Arab world, and how autocratic regimes have tried to use open technologies to crush the people.
Branch 225, a unit within Syria’s intelligence services appears to coordinate the regime’s info war strategy by instructing the country’s mobile operators to block text messages, which contain terms pertaining to the Syrian Revolution.
The country’s mobile operators are using filtering technologies developed by Irish based companies, Cellusys and AdaptiveMobile to weaken the ability of the people to coordinate political activities. Bloomberg News reports:
Mosireen is a non-profit media centre in Downtown Cairo born out of the explosion of citizen journalism and cultural activism in Egypt during the revolution. Armed with mobile phones and cameras, thousands upon thousands of citizens kept the balance of truth in their country by recording events as they happened in front of them, wrong-footing censorship and empowering the voice of a street-level perspective.
Mosireen, in just three months of production, has become the most viewed non-profit YouTube channel in Egypt of all time.
(Video: Our Revolution Continues by Mosireen)
One Year Later: Wael Ghonim at Stanford University
Wael is promoting his book, ‘Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power’ across the US, and today he is speaking at Stanford University, at an event organised by TechWadi. In one of the many interviews Wael has conducted, we particularly liked this answer to a question in the Boston Globe:
Q. Given the role social media played in the Arab Spring uprisings, and in Occupy Wall Street here, is this phenomenon likely to accelerate?
A. I believe so. The power of the Internet and social media is threefold. One, it allows people of similar interests to connect - if you feel isolated, you’re less likely to take action. Two, people can work together in crowd-sourcing ideas and making decisions that way. And three, mainstream media have become decentralized. Twenty years ago, a few large TV networks were telling people what happened, in their own way. Now someone can upload a YouTube video and within a couple of days, it’s seen by 2 million people. The big challenge is how governments will deal with this.
Google & the Arab Awakening: Interview With Jared Cohen in Tunisia - Director of Google Ideas
Digital Diplomacy & the Arab Revolution with Nicolas Princen, Khaled El-Mufti, Alec Ross, Katie Stanton and Rohan Silva, chaired by Felix Marquardt
Arab Social Media Report
by the Dubai School of Government
The societal and political transformations sweeping the Arab region have empowered large segments of the region’s population. Many stereotypes have been shattered, with Arab youth, “netizens” and women becoming the main drivers for regional change. Arab women in particular have become more engaged in political and civic actions, playing a critical leading role in the rapid and historic changes that have swept the region. Meanwhile, the debate about the role of social media in these transformations has reached policy making circles at the regional and global levels.
Throughout 2011, social media usage continued to grow significantly across the Arab world, coupled with major shifts in usage trends. From merely being used as a tool for social networking and entertainment, social media now infiltrates almost every aspect of the daily lives of millions of Arabs, affecting the way they interact socially, do business, interact with government, or engage in civil society movements. By the end of 2011, Arab users’ utilization of social media had evolved to encompass civic engagement, political participation, entrepreneurial efforts, and social change.
Constitution 3.0 - Freedom and Technological Change
Technological changes are posing stark challenges to America’s core values. Basic constitutional principles find themselves under stress from stunning advances that were unimaginable even a few decades ago, much less during the Founders’ era. Policymakers and scholars must begin thinking about how constitutional principles are being tested by technological change and how to ensure that those principles can be preserved without hindering technological progress.
The arrest of Bahraini blogger Zainab Alkhawaja in the capital, Manama
(Photo Credit: http://bahrainrights.hopto.org)
Months after the first protesters arrived in Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street continues to fuel tech innovation. Several weeks ago, #OWS sympathizers created a “People’s Skype”; meanwhile, a hackathon held this weekend uncovered previously unknown parallels with the Arab Spring. These developments are just the latest in a string of new products and tools that have come out of the movement.
Instead of arresting the murderer of the blogger Khaled Said, the military imprisoned me, just before the birth of my son. The only good thing is that the protests are continuing.
ArabNet Cairo 2011
Today Cairo hosts the ArabNet conference. It’s the first time the conference has been held outside of Lebanon and brings together the region’s digerati.
The next frontier of the digital age is the Middle East and its evangelist is 28 year-old Omar Christidis. Tall, striking and dynamic, he’s a Yale grad who resisted joining the tech scene of Silicon Valley to move back to his hometown of Beirut and lead a digital revolution in the Arab world. At its current pace, Internet penetration in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is expected to match if not exceed that of the United States at nearly 300 million by 2015. Christidis founded Arabnet as a way to bring together young tech dreamers with industry leaders and he’s succeeding.
ihya
Does the Afghan War Need A CEO?
This question encapsulates a new wave of thinking that has grown in the last 10 to 15 years. It is a question that is indicative of a distinct cultural wave, shaped by Web 2.0, open innovation, the power of networks, and the new-found optimism to build a new civilisation, as a consequence of the post-industrial technological revolution.
Colonel Randy George who led Brigade Combat Team Task Force Mountain Warrior from June 2009 to June 2010, and Dante Paradiso who was the Task Force Mountain Warrior Senior Civilian Representative argue the Case for a Wartime Chief Executive Officer who would command both the military and non-military agencies that work to achieve US political objectives.
Opensource Development Economics - A Model for Technological Revolution in the Developing World?
In the city of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a group of Afghan students and tech-wizards from MIT have created a wireless network using materials that have been discarded as rubbish from around the city.
The project is called FabLab, and it is designed to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world using materials that can be found locally.
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