ICTlogy

My proposal for a thematic showcase for the Web2forDev – Participatory Web for Development conference has been accepted. Thus, I’d be presenting The personal research portal: web 2.0 driven individual commitment with open access for development in Rome next 25th to 27th September, 2007.

As you might have noticed, this communication is quite similar to the one I’ll be presenting in York three weeks before. But, even if the abstract applies for both presentations, the focus is quite different.

In York the focus will be on research and diffusion of research. So, the stress will be, in one hand, in scholarly networking and old and new ways of knowledge sharing and building among colleagues. On the other hand, and over all, the stress will be put in self-archiving and self-publishing as parallel ways of scientific diffusion, dealing also with old and new ways of peer review. Put short: I’ll speak about the concept over the tools.

In Rome the focus will be on open access for development. There, the stress will be on new ways to access scientific knowledge by developing countries’ researchers and, reversely, on digital identities, networking and presence on the Net by these researchers. Put short: I’ll speak about the tools over the concept.

On one hand I’m afraid I won’t be able to explain really brand new things from one conference to the other one — they’re just 20 days away one from each other. On the other hand, I believe there is so much to be explored in the field of web 2.0 and how these concept and tools can be applied to research and development (a different thing?), that the potential debate will provide what I might be lacking of, hence I expect to come back home full of new learning, ideas and interesting input.

John Palfrey, Executive Director Berkman Center of Internet and Society, presents his seminar Born Digital at UOC headquarters, organized by the University’s UNESCO Chair in e-Learning.

John introduces his speech as a trip through some reflections that arise from the fact that some people (i.e. born in the middle eighties and on) have always lived with the Internet and digital technologies. Those people live/interact on digital landscapes that do have some specific characteristics.

John Palfrey

Digital landscape

Digital identities, in two senses. One is be present on the Internet. Second, to be able to shape one’s identity at one’s will, as the Internet allow one to.

Multi-tasking: lots of windows open and things being done at the same time

Digital media: all your stuff is created in digital form (you might never ever print it) and it can be mixed, edited, changed… mashed up, and it will stand this way, digitally. And, indeed, is not only digital media, but digital platforms. And even if they are at a very early stage, there is already now a new layer above traditional http that is working as a new means of digital communication. This layer is shaped by devices like Second Life, Flickr, RSS or the Wikipedia.

From consumers to creators: Of course, this mashing up involves changes in cultures, intellectual property problems… new challenges arcane for digital immigrants, not to say analogue citizens.

New technologies/features: Google Docs, AJAX, tagging, hackability, wikis, social networks, RSS. RSS surely made Web 2.0 go from just a cool idea to a big change in the state of things.

Lightweight collaboration: multiple users on distributed workgroups where people collaborate as long and as intensively as they want to. In Yochai Benkler’s words, is a democratising innovation.

An international perspective: New contexts and new meanings. People like (and also expect) commenting others’ reflections. Tagging and geotaggin provide, again, new contexts for content. And those contexts are most of them relying on a new concept of trust, which enables strong networks… and business models.

Addressing perceived threats

Security and safety: cyberbulling

Privacy: everything on the Internet is public… anyone lost a job offer because of sensible photos on the net? unintended audience, replicability, persistence, searchability, unintentional contributions.

• Tier 1: our own profile. You got control over what you post, and you can configure your own privacy settings.
• Tier 2: your friend’s profile. Friends upload a photo of yours and you untag it, removing any liaison to you.
• Tier 3: Blogs, Flickr, social networks. Friends upload a photo and you have to ask for them to remove it.
• Tier 4: facial recognition systems. Friends upload a photo of you and tehc tags it for them with face recognition (Riya). How to undo this?

Intellectual property: people creating new things from old things is increasing (as it is increasingly easy) and the perspective is that intellectual property rights issues (i.e. lawsuits) are going to be a big issue in the nearest future (present!).

Information expectations:

• credibility: “hidden influences”, grazing, misinformation… are common on wikis and blogs
• information overload

Positive outlook

So, what’s the agenda from now on?

media literacy skills, expression/identity, empowering creators, information sharing, maintaining connections

Opportunities: creativity, media literacy, social production, semiotic democracy

Blogs and Wikis: knowledge creating, equity/democratic, participatory, empowering individuals, autonomy, cross-cultural and community building

Opportunities: Information creation, semiotic democracy, participatory, empowering individuals, access to information

John Palfrey

To end, John briefly presents digitalnative.org:

An academic research team — joining people from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland — is hosting and working on the core of this wiki, which illustrates the beginning stages of a larger research project on Digital Natives.

“Digital Natives” are those people for whom the internet and related technologies are givens, whereas “Digital Immigrants” migrated to these technologies later in life (Prensky, 2001). Digital Immigrants know how life existed in the pre-networked society, whereas Digital Natives take networked communication as the foundation of their lives.

The focus of this research is on exploring the impacts of this generational demarcation. By learning as much as we can about Digital Natives, their way of life, and their way of thinking, we can address the issues their digital practices raise, and shape our legal, educational, and social institutions in a way that supports and protects natives, while harnessing the exciting possibilities their digital fluency presents.

Questions

Challenging question by Max Senges: is it possible to live with several identities at the same time? John thinks that no and, in the end, identities seem to converge on your real one, and your blog or whatever sooner or later reflects who you really are.

An interesting circle is being created: technologists create technology based on expected market users, but the users reshape this technology by using it, and again, technologists re-reshape the technology and so on. How can this be controlled, managed, etc.

César Córcoles: digital identity (on intensive live online) will become something normal, but now it is seen as (a) geekery (b) a bad thing to do (lost of time), so what should we, as academics, do? John answers that, actually, the problem is that academics are also digital immigrants, and thus they first have to learn. Open Access might be a good way to legitimate new means of distributing content and from an academic basis or point of view. (Academic) blogging is still not very popular, but how to foster it?

Ana Zúñiga: about information overload, the problem sometimes is that there is a strong lack of digital literacy, specially informational literacy, so you know where to go to in order to get high quality information.

Cristina Girona and John (and many others) engage in a debate about not using technolgy by itself, but for final purposes, such as educational purposes. But there is a need not only to think about technology in classrooms, but also to think about teaching itself.

Emma Kiselyova excellently points the fact that digital immigrants will disappear with time and digital natives will, sooner or later, rule the world. In the meanwhile, in the impasse, what should be done? How can educational institutions make the bridge, lead the rupture that digital technologies are causing.

I point, following Emma’s line, that all in all is a matter of e-awareness, of knowing what this digital paradigm means for everyone of us. On one side we’ve got digital immigrants (DIs; I here also include digital outsiders), that as mature people as they are, they have some degree of awareness of things (of what means living, how society works, what is moral and what is ethics, etc.) but have poor knowledge of “e-” things. On the other side, there’re digital natives (DNs), that fully master the “e-” part but they need education (remember: they’re still young and “inexpert”) and a place to go (i.e. the University) in order to get some awareness. But nobody is actually crossing the line to make ends meet: DIs do not approach digital landscapes and DNs, actually, pass over traditional knowledge that brings awareness (the example of intellectual property rights infringement is crystal clear).

Silvia Bravo argues that an approach is really happening, that the academy is blogging and writing on wikis. In my opinion, even if this was true (which I honestly believe it is not, at least not with a critical mass), the problem is that individuals are not the ones who transmit values, but institutions. And, at the institutional level, the state of things is definitely distressing.

See also:

• Del.icio.us Brainfood – Educational tagging service, by Max Senges

Yesterday I took part in a round table — not that “round” as we were more than 50 people sitting there — about The US experience in the protection of intellectual property on the Internet, led by US Judge Bernice Donald and US Department of State (US Spain Embassy) representative Mr. Carl Schonander, and coordinated by Enric Enrich and professor Raquel Xalabarder.

The event was somehow — and as expected — very correct — that curse of our times — but, nevertheless, there were interesting statements and reflexions, specially from Mr. Schonander’s side.

All in all, the short summary of the meeting was: Yes, it looks like law is far behind reality and is not responding to today’s society demands, but it has always been this way, and, no matter, both law and society will change approaching each other: society following the law, the law accommodating the new aspects of (digital) life.

Carl Schonander spoke about the US President foreign policy, stressing that Intellectual Property (IP) really was an important part of his agenda. In this aspect, the far best Schonander’s quote is the following: IP is the currency of modern commerce. Thus, the importance for his President — and for most developed countries’ — of this subject.

US Foreign Policy in IP issues was even more important in countries with whom the US had strategical relations: Russia and China. After stating that governments (in general) should enforce law complying, and this should be their duty just for their own benefit, he accepted this was not that easy but, nevertheless, he had hope in this vision because China and Russia will change their minds [concerning generalized piracy] when their own industries have to rely on IP to develop their own competitiveness.

Personally, and from the point of view of a non US citizen, I think this is a more powerful argument towards following the (international) rules than many others I have heard of, mainly based in dealing with problems in the lawsuit arena. The problem is how do you tell some countries (i.e. Bangladesh, India, South Africa or Brazil) to enforce the law when this law, clearly, goes against (a) their population’s interests (b) the government itself interests (because of their unpopularity). And this raised my first question, almost in the same way as I have stated it here.

Mr. Schonander’s answer was, I must admit, witty, as he was able to turn upside down the questoin: The main incentive for poor countries to respect IP is that foreign investment won’t go to them unless it is proven that a safe environment for business exists. So, yes, you might think that prosecuting piracy is putting barriers to your country’s progress, but not doing it is closing your doors to foreign investment and, hence, also to foreign capital boosted progress. It will be most interesting to know where the balance is in whether protecting your “right” to access knowledge and your strategy to attract investors. On the other hand, Mr. Schonander also told the audience that there already was an agreement within the international treaties framework to help developing countries access medicines for public health … but not Viagra, for instance. I suspect that most developing countries are not really happy with this “exceptional” clauses, judging by news headlines.

My second question — and following the thread of countries considering whether following the law or not — was that it looked like intellectual property was not as widely accepted as “material” private property, and that one of the reasons might be some bad behaviors of big enterprises threatening — I actually said “blackmailing” — smaller enterprises, countries’ governments and users in general to cease and desist and pay not to be sued for astronomical amounts of money.

He admitted that this was a sincere concern of the US Government — and the international community in general —, specially after the increase of patent trolling cases all over the world that were harming both the industry(ies) and the (international) market(s). And, thus, everyone’s progress at large.

I’d really like to thank him for sharing his vast knowledge in the field. Even if we are at opposite ends of the spectrum, it was absolutely enlightening to listen to him.

Peter Suber points to new Definition of Free Cultural Works, that, adapting the Free Software Definition, says:

[…] works of authorship should be free, and by freedom we mean:

• the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
• the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
• the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
• the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works

Doing exactly this same exercise, I wrote back in October 2003 what I thought were The four kinds of freedom of free knowledge, namely:

• The freedom to use the knowledge, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the knowledge applies, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source information is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute knowledge so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the knowledge, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source information is a precondition for this.

Same thing with only a different approach: Benjamin Mako Hill and Erik Möller focus on content, and I do in knowledge :)

The debate of Open Access is really hot — hottest, I’d dare say — as benefits from open science, self-publishing and self-archiving become clearer and clearer and, on the other side, there are new and imaginative solutions — or, at least, attempts — to deal with the (a) inevitable (though downsizeable) costs of publishing and (b) the benefits of peer review, the quintessence of scientific publishing.

While the balance among costs and benefits is a matter of arguments in the developed countries — and this is why we still have a debate and not a clear direction to head towards —, the benefits side of open access seems to gain weight when the scales are placed on developing countries, especially when open access appears to be a perfect second best for a lacking (supposed) optimum: renowned international journals dealing with areas of knowledge that interest developing countries (and people doing science in those issues) and at an acceptable cost for their standards.

I here present a gathering — a reader? — of selected articles that should allow the reader to get a rough picture of the subject of Open Access for Development. Credit should be here paid to Peter Suber and his Open Access News, source of endless resources, information and news: most of the references here came to me through his blog.

Further information

This is an evolving selection. The up-to-date version of this list can always be consulted here: A Reader on Open Access for Development. Feel free to write back to me with proposals for inclusion in the list and/or corrections for found errors.

The Open Publishing Edition of NGO-in-a-box is a toolkit of Free and Open Source software, tutorials and guides for producing, publishing and distributing content. The Edition, produced by Tactical Tech in collaboration with iCommons, is aimed at small to medium sized non-profits, independent media organisations, free culture creators and grassroots journalists with a particular emphasis on those in developing and transition countries.

Good compilation of resources to, as said before, publish content and do it on a free/open basis. The compilation has three main sections:

• Tools, with the main free software applications to manage your content, be it text be it images, on your desktop or online, etc.
• Projects – How To…, with concrete, practical examples on how to carry on the most common tasks
• Resources, with outlinks to Tactical Tech guides for content diffusion

Besides this main navigation architecture, there’s still room for an Introduction to Open Publishing, other resources and live CDs. A very good work… and reference.