ICTlogy

Just like last year, at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya we are organising the III Congress on Internet, Law and Political Science that will be held in Barcelona (Spain) on May, 7th and 8th, 2007.

I honestly think the program is getting better each year, being one of the strong assets for this edition the effort to make it more international than ever, and having Jonathan Zittrain as keynote speaker.

The main subjects for 2007 are:

• Responsibility for content on the internet: state of the situation and new perspectives
• The fundamental right to data protection: perspectives
• Internet security
• The new frontiers of copyright
• Electronic voting
• The Law on e-Administration
• Use of technology among law professionals

Call for papers is open until April 25th, 2007.

On Saturday March 17th, 2007, some doctorate students at UOC‘s PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society met to present — expose, I’d dare say — our thesis projects, talk about them and, most of all, learn from each other on concepts, methodology, etc. The idea came to me at the First Annual ICT4D Postgraduate Symposium and tried to replicate it here, in a more closed environment and, evidently, at a minor scope and scale.

Though only three projects were presented, the session was richest and worth repeating it in forthcoming editions. As usual, here come my notes:

Las nuevas tecnologías como agente social de transformación de la masculinidad hegemónica
[New technologies as social agent of transformation of hegemonic masculinity
Paco Abril Morales

After introducing FreeMind software — which I didn’t know — Paco explained that he wanted to know whether ICTs could change or reflect another kind of masculinity besides the hegemonic one — white, occidental, heterosexual… and sports and beer driven, I would add ;)

His speech was full of references and concepts, too many to note them on time and be replicated here. Nevertheless, I catched the two groups — and five subcategories — he spoke about and that he took as main research/methodological framework:

• First thing to study was technology, from several points of view such as constructivism, Latour and his actor-network theory,
  Winner and the concept of technological somnambulism, postestructuralism, Pinchand Bijker, social shaping of technology, technology and social classes, etc.
• He then spoke about new technologies: sociotechnological changes, alternative technologies and alternative collectives
• Last (for part one) about technology and gender: sexual division of work, reproductive technology, heterosexuality, technological artifacts, co production among gender and technology, the masculinity-gender equation, gender identities, power relationships and technology
• Part II began talking about the hegemonic masculinity and Connell(1995) concept of breadwinner
• He then gave some explanations (and enormous listing) about non hegemonic masculinities: caring masculinities (work changes gender), gays/queers/by/heteros/trans, race/etnia/social class

The debate was highly interesting and I have to specially note some references to Andrew Feenberg.

Crecimiento inicial de Wikipedia: una aproximación comparativa entre etapas, temas y versiones
[The initial growth of Wikipedia: a comparative approach among stages, subjects and versions]

Enric Senabre Hidalgo

• Click here for the text of the presentation

Enric presents his research (hypotheses) according to the following equality:

Vandalism menace + meritocracy/recognition + hacker ethics = initial growth of wikipedia?

To assert this, he needs/wants to know the answer to some other questions:

• What was the role of the hybrid users (admin + contributors)? How many crated brand new entries?
• Have there been any points of inflection in exponential growth?
• Did original users created any sort of style? Examples/models?
• When and how were the five pillars set and when “good faith“?
• When the own jargon?
• What kind of user pages were there initially?
• How the first conflicts were solved?
• How did exposure to media contributed to wikipedia’s growth?

To answer these questions he proposes some different approaches/concepts:

• the concept of complex systems and emergency
• the fact that it is a self organized system
• negentropy (negative entropy)
• stigmergy as performing tasks without a central planification (i.e. ants and pheromone tracks)

And a couple of very interesting links the provided us with:

• Modelling wikipedia’s growth
• Wikipedia Statistics English
• Wikipedia Page History Statistics

Pelando las capas de la brecha digital: umbrales y relaciones entre categorías en índices compuestos
[Unpeeling the layers of the digital divide: category thresholds and relationships within composite indices]
Ismael Peña-López

I imparted the same presentation I did for the Annual ICT4D Symposium, but somehow updated — the material support being the same one, though in Spanish, but the speech a little bit different one. The new version can be downloaded here.

Back in 2001, Benjamin M. Compaine edited a book entitled The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth?, composed by previously published articles — including the difficult to find Forrester report The Truth about the Digital Divide by Walsh, Gazala & Ham — and a brand new concluding chapter on his own: Declare the war won.

The whole book combines good research results with an almost global and non hidden aim to advocate for non State intervention, in other words, that there is no need for the Government to foster any Information Society at all because things are just doing their own evolution. In some articles this advice for non intervention comes clear from the facts and figures presented. In some other articles is more a matter of taste and how do you read the stats. In most of the remaining cases, and specially in the closing chapter, in my opinion there is absolutely no close relationship among what’s presented and what is deduced, with existing concept leaps that, again in my opinion, are not logic compliant.

Compaine’s objections to any kind of expenditure to i.e. subsidize computers relies on the true facts that personal computers have cut down costs while increasing power in a much shorter path than, say, the television evolution. Thus, computer and Internet adoption or penetration has increased quite quickly and will keep on doing it at the same rate because of two main reasons: the already said decrease in costs and the increasing ease of use of computers (due to better graphic user interfaces, etc.). In his own words:

• The United States has seen an unprecedented rapid adoption of the Internet and email between 1994 and 2000 among all strata of the population.
• Many other similar technology-inspired products achieved near universal adoption without massive government or even private programs: radio, television sets, and VCRs among them.
• Prices for computers and similar devices have been falling constantly and substantially, to levels equal to a decent color television set.
• Though services such as telephony and cable have tended to lag behind in adoption rates due to ongoing fees, free Internet access is available using a broadcast TV and radio model in territories that include most of the population.
• Current rates of adoption for those groups variously included on the unwired side of the early divide are greater than for the population as a whole.
• As a result, some gaps have already disappeared. For example, from 1994 to 1998 there was high visibility of the gender gap: Initially more than two-thirds of Internet users were male. By 1999 that was history. It simply reflected that early users carne from computer science and engineering disciplines that were more heavily male.
• Among those who do have access to computers and the Internet, patterns of use are similar across income, gender, and ethnic lines.

to which I add a couple of quotations of his, which summarize his conclusions from the preceding assertions:

• But surveys have found that services such as chat rooms (sex is popular), sports, and game playing top the list of activities, from where he infers that i.e. there is no more democracy with the Internet (more information, more participation) because people just use it for entertainment
• A society that has more important issues, such as feeding and housing its people, providing for safety and security, and creating general well-being would place access to entertainment and information well down on the list of priorities

My criticism to these two statement is radical:

• Comparing the evolution of TV with computer science is shocking to me: while TV sets have only had two main improvements for decades (color and the remote control) until the 20th century eighties or nineties, the personal computer (let aside big computing monsters) has changed his own definition from one year to the next one: there’s more difference among two computers in 2 years lapse, than among two TV sets among 20 years lapse.
• One important conclusion from the preceding statement is that obsolescence of old equipments makes expenditure on computers much higher compared to television: a family would buy one TV set each i.e. 10 years vs. several PCs for the same period.
• The second important conclusion is that new personal computer features — including power, but also the kind of software you run it with and the increasing networking issues — make of the machine not an entertainment device, but capital in the economic sense of the word: the PC is a productive machine, not a stupid box.
• Taking ICTs not as media or entertainment, but as capital, the next statement is evident: capital requires human capital, capacity building, training. Even if the machine itself penetrates with ease, is its use that we must measure, specially its intelligent and productive use.
• And, indeed, computers are not just machines: technological literacy, related to the “ease of use” and the nice “graphic user interfaces” is just a part — and a small one — of digital literacy, which has the biggest barrier in informational literacy: the concept of digital immigrants is absolutely not related to having a machine at home, but to digital behaviour and understanding
• Thus, when people choose not to buy a computer or go online, it is highly likely not to be a matter of choice — as Compaine states, hence we can forget about this rational decision takers — but a matter of ignorance: I might never ever admit negative taxes on my enrollment fees, but I wouldn’t reject a grant to pay my degree.
• And yes, feeding is far more important than entertainment. But if ICTs are not entertainment but a means to get food in a more effective and efficient way, it might well be worth giving them a chance. Actually, all you cannot eat can be interpreted as a barrier to food: roads, schools and governments included.
• Last, but not least: even if some technology adoption is fast, it could be highly desirable to make it even faster, specially under the capacity building perspective and the fastest path of change of ICTs we started with some lines ago. You can either buy a TV set this year or let the decision be taken the next one. Would you not invest — in your country, in your enterprise, in your own education — this year and let it (or not) for another day?

By the way: the framework of both Compaine and my criticism is based on the digital divide inside the United States of America. If this debate is placed in any developing country, the scope and scale change dramatically… to worse, of course.

Next March 21st, 22nd and 23rd I’m at Sevilla (Spain) to attend to e-STAS 2007: Symposium de las Tecnologías para la Acción Social [Symposium on Technologies for Social Action]

Besides just attending — the programme is worth the trip — I’ve been asked by the organization to take part in an expert group on ICTs for nonprofits:

The expert group is a multidisciplinary panel of professionals coming from the private sector, the public sector, the university, the media and the third sector, invited by Fundación Cibervoluntarios with the goal of generating discussion groups aimed to obtaining a multisectorial Decalogue for the building of social projects by means of the New Technologies, as well as generating social networking among the attendants.

Please, feel free to suggest any points that this Decalogue should include. Some days ago, Jaume Albaigès published in his excellent blog, tecnolONGgia, the report Las políticas públicas en materia de nuevas tecnologías, las ONG de acción social y los colectivos desfavorecidos (, 171 Kb) [Public policies about new technologies, social action nonprofits and underserved communities] and, in my opinion, it makes a perfect starting point.

Here come other resources about ICTs and nonprofits that I also wrote in Jaume Albaigès’s post comments:

• Acevedo, M. (2006). La integración de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación: Asignatura pendiente de la cooperación.
  http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=517
• Franco, C. (Coord.) (2002). ¿Conectadas? Las ONG Españolas en la red.
  http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=26
• Fundación Bip-Bip. (2005). Estudio de diagnóstico sobre el nivel de utilización de las TIC en las entidades no lucrativas de acción social que trabajan en pro de la inserción laboral en España
  http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=544
• Fundació Pere Tarrés. (2000). ONG e Internet: Matrimonio de Conveniencia?
  http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=141

Working with Information Society / Digital Divide indicators is a tricky thing to do, as definitions (along with technology) change in short periods of time. Some months ago, Tim Kelly asked me what did I consider “broadband”, as it was one of the hottest issues that researchers, in general, and the ITU, specially, had to deal with. Let’s see an example.

Broadband is defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), in their recommendation I.113, as transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) at 1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second (Mbits). On the other hand, the OECD gives its own definition of broadband stating that for a service to be considered broadband, [the threshold] in respect to downstream access [should be up] to 256 Kbps. The fact is that, as the OECD itself admits, Network operators widely advertise DSL and cable modem services to users starting at 256 Kbps as being
‘broadband’. Actually, the Core ICT Indicators, promoted by the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development — partnered by the ITU — also defines broadband as technologies that provide speeds of at least 256 kbit/s, where this speed is the combined upstream and downstream capacity.

Summarizing, all of these are technical definitions, based on the fact of transmitting more than one data stream in the same wire by using different frequencies or channels. But for the not-technical user, broadband is strictly tied to “effective” speed, or, in other words, “subjective” speed: if your 1 Mbps is the slowest in town, it is no more broadband. This was Tim Kelly’s point last time we met.

Thus said — and leaving technical issues behind to focus in this “subjective” broadband perception — my proposal is to build a basket of tasks the way economists use to calculate changes in inflation based on a basket of products. Of course, this basket of tasks is also likely to evolve with time, but what is crystal clear is that the technical definition of broadband (the one about channels) is no more useful, and the decision to state that i.e. 256 Kbps is broadband should lean on objective basis more than “network operators advertisments”.

Proposal of a basket of tasks for a broadband definition

• Work in online, synchronous collaborative environments with rich media: VoIP, videoconference, screencasting, presentations/drawings…
• Work intensively/exclusively with online, asynchronous desktop/office applications: word processors, spreadsheets, math/scientific calculators…
• Usually access online applications with richest graphical content: SIGs and mapping tools, 2D and 3D simulators and environments
• Have online environments as primary communication and information channel: e-mail, instant messaging, browser and desktop widgets. It includes software downloads and updates.
• Manage a website: upload files, install applications, change configuration/setup. It does not include writing on a weblog/wiki and other low-tech “webmastering”
• Work with remote computers or in grid computing, including intensive use of P2P networks

This basket of tasks and the minimum speed required to perform them correctly/comfortably should help in setting the threshold of what we could call broadband. As those tasks will evolve dynamically along time, same will happen with the broadband threshold. As an example, some years ago you needed a then-so-called-broadband to check the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection when looking for geographical information, as most maps are some hundreds of Kb weight, being the heaviest up to some Mb. Nowadays, you would browse Google Maps, for which a today-so-called-broadband is required, maybe more than the “official” 256 Kbps to browse at ease.

Proposals, corrections, comments gratefully welcome.

Further reading

• Birth of Broadband – Frequently Asked Questions

Held at the IN3 headquarters in Castelldefels, Spain, on Friday March 9th, 2007, this open workshop of the MODINIS project, Breaking Barriers to eGovernment, will focus on ways in which innovation can be and has been achieved in eGovernment to improve governance in the information age. How can the widespread diffusion of the Internet and Web enable governments to transform not only the delivery of public services but also approaches to governance? The project has already identified 7 key categories of barriers to the development of eGovernment across Europe. This workshop turns attention to approaches for overcoming these barriers to stimulate innovation. These approaches span at least four key categories: legislative, technological, citizen-centric and organizational solutions.

Here come my notes for the fourth part of the workshop.

Data Protection. Best Practices in e-Government: Real Experiences
Francisco J. López Carmona, Data Protection Agency of the Community of Madrid, Spain

Francisco J. López Carmona

e-PRODAT is a European project aimed at promoting the exchange of knowledge and experiences between Agencies and other public bodies concerning the protection of personal data in Governments and Public Administrations, specially those related to e-Government, focusing in best practices in the sense of real world practices.

Public bodies must follow the law but also be cost-effective and act according to data protection while being realistic, practical.

Best practices areas: raise overall awareness among the citizenship, improve public information while providing public services, data needs minimization (optimization of data needs and managing, avoiding having to ask for more data each and each time, but also avoiding asking for more data on a “just in case” basis), ease the citizenship to execute his rights (in the field of personal data), let inclusiveness be an issue (data protection and digital divide).

Best practices identifies in e-Government and Data Protection: consent management infrastructures, privacy friendly identity management, data management, online services to citizens.

López Carmona briefly introduces dataprotectionreview.eu, a review whose name says it all ;)

Summary and Synthesis: Theory and Reality
Bill Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute (OII), University of Oxford, UK

Bill Dutton

A first issue: e-Government should be a means, not a goal, but the matter is that due to e-Government we’re having data security concerns, hence e-Government debate is becoming a goal.

A second issue: noone can keep up with technologycal change. Passports were and have been unique IDs for years. Now, i.e. RFID based IDs will be obsolete long before they are even implanted. If technologies do not ease the way you’re doing things, what’s the sense in technology?

We’ve been talking about standards… but we cannot have one standard for each and every different service or public sector branch. This is not really one standard.

Change is right, but the economies of the public sector are not the economies of the private sector. So, efficiency should be though under this light, not under the competitive market light. And same applies when talking about ownership rights (i.e. of data).

Governments are due to provide (public) information to the citizenship, but the population does not go to governments but to “Google”, and this is a big concern in many ways: identification, trust…