ICTlogy

On March 10th I imparted a seminar entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research here in Barcelona, at the headquarters of the University.

Please find here the presentation (in Catalan). Hope I’ll find time and translate it into English (done) and/or Spanish.

Abstract:

Buzzword or not, the Internet is changing and the so-called Web 2.0 applications might mean new ways to work in the research-education-diffusion field (i.e. the University field). This presentation’s goal is raising a reflection and showing a “good” practice in difusion of research, after Ismael Peña’s experience in the area of Public policies for development and ICT4D at the Open University of Catalonia and the use of blogs, wikis and other tools in his ICT4D personal portal.

Under the generic title of Understanding the role of culture in knowledge sharing: making the invisible visible, Vol 1, No 3 of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D) is out.

• Table of contents and download of individual articles
• Full Text Download (869 Kb)
• KM4D Journal home page
• Other ICT4D journals

[via Nancy White through the Online Facilitation list]

21st Century NGO is a paper published by Sustainability after a research about the future for NGOs, how they will increasingly do business, and the challenges that their ‘markets’ increasingly present.

Surprisingly — at least for someone heavily ICT-biased as me ;) — Information and Communication Technologies are rarely treated, just when one should expect them to have an important role in the new relationship among markets and organizations.

Though I’ve not digged enough in the paper to know it by heart, I only found just two explicit references to ICTs in the section Networks, a strength shown in the SWOT analysis (page 39):

In turn, New Economy technologies — among them the internet and mobile telephones — have powerfully fuelled activism with some interviewees suggesting that in the same way that the printing press served to drive the growth of the early Protestant Church, so the internet is supporting the capacity of NGOs and civil society to network and grow. 104 As Sabine Leidig of Attac Germany put it, ‘We are the Linux model NGO.’

I guess the Internet has done — and is doing — much more than just giving a loudspeaker to NGOs. In fact, just the same concept of “network” relies on much more things than just one-to-many communication, being capacity building, exponential increase of productivity and instant and ubiquitous many-to-many communication, maybe the most important ones just to mention some of them.

I guess Sabine Leidig means by “the Linux model” the way the free software community works. I think it is quite a good example, but it can only be applied to few NGOs, being Attac one of them… but most will consider Attac not an NGO just because of its decentralization, lack of an stablished structure and budget, etc. which, in the end, was the target of the research.

ICTs are not mentioned, for example in the External Agenda, point 9, when talking about New technology:

Closely linked to trade, health and environment concerns, a number of new technologies (e.g. GM foods, human genome work, nanotechnology) will continue to spark major
controversies.

I do agree that these technologies are very important and are the debate on technology and the society — and thus, NGOs. But in the third sector, the digital divide is also the debate, fare more than in developed countries. I guess ICTs should be included in this point.

Nevertheless, besides my ICT-bias, the report is very worth reading and very rigorous :)

More info:

21st Century NGO (1.27 Mb)

“Today” I ended my research period in the Doctorate in the Information Society at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

And thus, I submited my dissertation to get my advanced studies diploma (and start the long road to the Ph.D. all along my thesis).

My dissertation deals with something I have talked before plenty of times: how can nonprofits use free software, open access content and online volunteers to set up e-learning training programmes in a free way (in the meaning of free as in free speech and in free beer.

You can see a complete abstract and download the 80 page paper here. It has also been added to my articles section.

I do welcome positive and negative feedback!

There must be zillions of posts and articles about why people should blog, but all of them the ones I’ve read only deal with the reasons on the purposes side, i.e., what to do with your blog and why: let people know about you, about what you’re doing, create a community/network of interests/apprenticeship, etc.

But what about the origin side? I mean, what has happened in the World, in technology, that pushes me to blog: what about the ideological or philosophical point of view?

Under this approach, I guess there’re three main reasons why people are blogging (and wiking):

Democratization of technology and social software

Far from the beginning of the Internet, where one had to know about HTML programming and web site administration, Internet publication has become easy, very easy, being some online blog publishing services the most visible examples of the democratization of technology. Social software does not only mean that it is a software to create social relationships, but also a software that is at (almost) everybody’s reach, overcoming costs and technological skills barriers.

e-Democracy and re-appropriation of opinion making media

Democracy does not only deal with the right to vote once each four years, but with building one’s own opinion, and to build it freely, with (quality) information, so your vote is rational and taking in consideration your principles, ideas and interests.

The concentration of mass media, and their belonging to groups of interest close to the policy makers, makes this information have an increasing lack of freedom and plurality, hence quality. The need of some to have a better information and to share good information from independent sources (or just from the sources) pushes people to publish and/or read through new means of expression and opinion making.

Free Culture

There’s the increasing belief that intellectual property rights have gone far beyond their natural boundaries, and there’s even the statement that Culture as we know it is in danger. Human progress built upon existing knowledge is being obstructed by patents and copyright, that have entered a bias where they do not serve anymore the original purposes of their implementation.

Thus, creating a space of free knowledge – of free culture – and bringing back the idea that sharing information, knowledge and doubts is the basis of more knowledge and, thus progress, is an underlying reason for this unselfish contribution.

[Three ideological reasons for blogging]

All in all it is a virtuous circle:

• Social software makes easy to publish online, for whatever reasons, being one of them show one’s opinion and read others’ directly from the source, thus avoiding the filtering of mass media.
• Free opinion leads, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, to Free Culture.
• Free Culture leads to more free/social software, because of ideological reasons, or just because there’s an increasing demand for it.
• And the (virtuous?) circle begins again.

Reading a post by Ethan Zuckerman I’ve found a terrific tool I hadn’t heard of.

The Human Development Report search tools let you build your own table by chosing the countries, data, etc. you want, crossing them they way you want and exporting them in CSV files or other spreadsheet formats. Impressive, really impressive. I wonder if I’ll ever overcome my deepest ignorance :P

Some highlights/bookmarks of the information there:

• Human Development Reports, the Human Development Report Office web site
• All data from the Human Development Report
• Searchable data and customized searches – and output!
• Other data sources from different UN agencies
• Update:
  World Bank World Development Indicators.

This finding will be very useful :) :) :)