Greenpeace has satellite images of massive oil spills coming from the offshore platforms and pipielines that were destroyed by the hurricane.
Update: The US Coast Guard reports that they are contending with “44 oil spills ranging from several hundred gallons to nearly 4 million gallons”.
A interesting tool I’ve came across today, Blogpulse, among other things gives an indication of what percentage of blog posts on a certain day contain a certain keyword.
It’s difficult to determine from the Blogpulse website exactly which blogs are indexed, however it seems to have a fairly broad range of English language blogs. Of course, the caveat about who is likely to use blogs and the according systemic bias, applies. It is still fun to play with however.
Obviously the word Katrina takes a huge spike as it approaches and hits, and now finally seems to be dropping off. In a similar pattern, at much lower frequency, do mentions of the terms climate change, and global warming occur in blogs. Clearly at least some people are bringing these things together.
It would seem logical for those in the know to use the interest in climate change that spikes with such events, to inform people more generally what climate change could mean for events like hurricanes. The various posts over at realclimate were a good start for me, there seems to be various conflicting threads of knowledge drifting about the internet, with some saying climate change (although usually ‘global warming’ is used in this context) had no effect, and others immediately blaming the people in the hummers.
The FBI now considers eco-terrorists a larger threat to US domestic security than right wing groups. This despite no one being killed by radical environmentalists who espouse violence. Compare this to the over 100 people killed by right wing militias and the radical wing of the anti-abortionist movement. Environmentalists, take note. As a result of this new designation, Internet activism will receive the scrutiny normally reserved for its physical counterparts. Any activity geared towards disruption of services, from virtual marches to denial of web services, could be construed as terrorist attacks. Use of encryption to protect the content of email will continue to be suspect.
One of the great difficulties in researching the intersection of activism and information and communications technologies (computers and the Internet) is that it goes by many different names. Here are just a few: virtual activism, virtual protests, virtual sit-ins, hacktivism, net activism, and cyberactivism. Unlike the hard sciences, so-called soft sciences such as sociology tend not to have standardized subject lists. Resources such as Google can only get you so far. Without the right name, one can miss major categories and examples of activities.
Here is a university graduate course that begins to explore the different characteristics comprising each word.
On the specific word, cyberactivism, students in an undergraduate sociology course at McMaster University have created a nice introduction to cyberactivism . A cyberactivism tutorial from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, shows how the Internet can be applied to each step of becoming an activist.
An interesting group I’ve come across in my work over the summer, Île Sans Fil is a Montreal group trying to encourage free wireless internet access across the island of montreal, primarily through providing infrastructure support for businesses and organizations who wish to join the network by providing free wireless internet.
From what I can glean, they seem to be bilingual, free (as in speech) software advocates, are almost entirely volunteer run, and in my case with the Atwater Library, very willing to go the extra mile to get things working. They have two projects: setting up conventional wireless hotspots across the island of Montreal, and to get a free rooftop to rooftop network configured, which will be run by and for the community at large.
It does raise some questions, which they may or may not have addressed (I couldn’t find answers on their website to these concerns), about who is liable for malicious usage of the service. If all it takes to get an account is a valid e-mail address, it seems like the door is wide open for all sorts of not very nice things to occur.
In addition, it also invokes a stark contrast between the haves and have nots: at my work, those with laptops can use the internet for free, while those who don’t have them have to pay a small fee, however for most of the people who use the service, this fee is by no means trivial, whereas on the other hand, I suspect most of the laptop toting visitors could easily afford it.
Still, in general seems like a worthwhile endeavour, I shall report more as I learn it.
Graham Flint is a physicist and photographer who takes mega pixel photos of the environment and other fragile places. I don’t mean 4 mega pixels but 1,000 mega pixels or giga pixel photos. These images are first taken with a very large format camera and then transferred, piece by piece into a computer.
The images of US National Parks are particularly impressive. The photo at the bottom of the page show you just how large these images are.
Since the concerts have been announced, people have been asking, can Live 8 save the world by compelling people to pressure their G8 leaders to take a stronger role combatting global poverty. That’s also the question currently being asked by bloggers posting live from the various Live 8 concerts. Watch live.
In addition to bloggers posting from the actual concerts, many news organizations are asking individuals, whether they’re at the concerts or not, to moblog their impressions.
Update: even though the artists have donated their time, this hasn’t stopped AOL and MS from plastering their advertisements all over the webcasts.
Question: is freeway blogging an example of virtual activism or physical activism? Obviously it’s both but freeway blogging provides an excellent example of (a) how virtual and physical activism are not mutually exclusive and (b) how it might be difficult to determine the effects of one compared to the other.
Little did I know that online messages or advertisements like Store Wars are examples of what is called “Flash activism”. Flash activism comes from the software, Flash, which allows you to create animations. Flash is cartoonish in appearance, and represents a trade off in simplicity of animation quality for extreme speed in animation development.
Here is an introduction to flash activism by the major player in the field, Free Range Graphics. The site contains a dozen examples of their best work.
To view the best in flash and short film activism, see the Fourth annual Media That Matters Film Festival.
Stanford had a course blog the year before we did. Here’s an interesting set of exchanges on the Iraq War and the use of the Internet.
In case you’re not paranoid enough, look at a website devoted to alerting people about the existence and potential geo-surveillance capabilities of Radio Frequency ID tags.
RFIDs are tiny specks of computer chips that are used to track items at a distance. For more information, check out the post about the use of RFIDs for automated car rental and an earlier post about how RFIDs will replace barcodes.
The website, Stop RFIDs, compiles reports of where RFIDs are being placed, “hidden”, in products you might buy at Wal-Mart, Target, CVS or Tesco.
These companies say that they want RFIDs for inventory control (when to restock the shelves) and marketing strategies (who buys what constellation of products). The website makes the all-too believable claim that they are being used to spy on people.
The site brings up the example of Gillette razors, which contain RFIDs in the packaging. The RFIDs can sense when the razors are picked up because the packaging moves away from sensors located under the store shelves:
Whenever a shopper picks up a packet of razor blades from a spy shelf, SNAP! A hidden camera secretly takes a closeup photo of the shopper’s face. (And a second photo is snapped at the cash register to make sure the product is paid for!)
(Wonderful. Now they’ll know when I have stubbly legs.)
More importantly, the use of RFIDs has implications for geodemographics, the study of the where people live by what people buy. Think Minority Report, where every passing advertisement knows who you are and what you like (in terms of products). Or “redlining”, a concept in which companies draw a virtual red line around a community and refuse to offer services there, such as mortgages (too many people in the community are defaulting) or health care (too many people buy fatty foods). Doesn’t matter what you consume because you’re defined by your geographical location.
RFIDs have implications for the war on terror as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the government didn’t start tagging religious books such as the Koran or books on radical environmentalism. If you bought such a book then the government would know it and could know, depending on the density of sensors, when and where you were carrying it.
An old story but a creative one on virtual activism to protest “advergaming”: Big Mac Attack.
The BBC has a nice report on how computer games are finding their political voice.
A Guardian article on marches taking place inside massive online player games.
Greenpeace is organizing the first virtual march to protect whales.
Thirteen thousand and six hundred people from 58 countries… have already logged on to the Greenpeace website to join the world’s first ever Virtual March by sending in personal stories and photographs of themselves expressing outrage at the prospect of resumed commercial whaling. The images collected through the Greenpeace website will ‘march’ across Ulsan, as Greenpeace projects them onto buildings to remind [International Whaling Commission] IWC delegates, especially from South Korea, that global citizens want Whales – Alive! South Korea is threatening to support Japan’s objective to return to killing whales for profit.
The Virtual March will conclude on June 19, the day before the 57th IWC meeting, June 20 to 24, in Ulsan, South Korea. Greenpeace plans to project the pictures there.
The Virtual March is here, with an impressive flash introduction.
Late update: I’ll be on CBC Radio I, talking about the subject on Monday morning. Don’t know which regions of the country, though.
Later update: Here’s the first large scale virtual march, where thousands of people were mobilized against the Iraq war to bombard the White House and senators with phone calls and e-mails.
I’ve talked about the report, The Death of Environmentalism several times (here and here) because its message has had such a traumatic effect on the movement. In a nutshell, DOE asserts that environmentalism has fixated on technical and incrementalist fixes and policy wonkery and is consequently incapable of addressing large scale environmental issues such as massive biodiversity loss and climate change. Also its authors have found an incredibly receptive community, including funders, to its nihilistic prognosis for the movement and its call for a populist to begin to address the problems of movement flacidity and environmental catastrophe.
In comes the response: The Soul of Environmentalism. To give you a sense of the trauma and the desperate need for a response felt by the authors of SOE, note the following which likens DOE to a “near-death” experience:
“We survived a virus!” cheered Michael Dorsey, a Dartmouth College professor of environmental studies and one of the new paper’s co-authors, before an audience of activists and foundation folks. “Those media guys tried to inject death into our movement. We beat back the grim reaper and those eco-necrophiliacs. We knew and we know when we look around that environmentalism is alive.”
The authors have even launched a blog to further discussion of their report and to forge new alliances among a broad array of organizations.
I have one major critique of SOE. However, let me begin by mentioning its substantive contribution: a re-engagement within the broader environmental community of the problems of environmental racism and classism. The movement has long been accused, and rightly so, of neglecting colour, class, native peoples, and urban issues as it focused largely on the interests of middle class whites–indeed, how the latter constructed nature to protect what we value (green leafy wildernesses instead of asthma free inner cities. Okay it’s polemical but it does have some truth). Robert Bullard’s ground-breaking work on environmental racism in the early 90s ignited interest in mainstream environmentalism; since then the movement collectively has backed away. After, acknowledging our role in perpetuating racism is hardly comfortable. DOE may have enraged many, but it has renewed the bonds that had been languishing.
That being said, SOE answers a question not asked in DOE and does not address the problems actually posed. I agree that DOE’s authors ignored race and class, created a singular set of environmental values where none exists, and adopted the language of the right wing in framing the environment. However, DOE has some things right. In many places, humans cannot live in harmony with nature (however it is socially constructed). Environmentalism is too in bed with traditional policy making processes. It’s too wedded to technocratic solutions such as geographic information systems (as much as I am a proponent of GIS, the advantages of its use versus other strategies such as protest has yet to be definitively proven). Outside of isms, SOE does not address the scalar problem of climate change. Indeed, by the time the peoples of the world come together in something akin the one world government inferred by SOE, there may not be much to save. I’m not saying that I like the solution proposed by DOE, either. It’s that SOE poses the problem, I hate to say it, as a kind of public relations problem, in other words, if only we could sell environmentalism better, or maybe it’s the differential impacts of environmental degradation, then more people would believe.
And who came up with this reframing of environment in SOE? It’s not all bad but some is awful. Remember that the object of reframing is to change the discourse in a direction that achieves your goals. But look at the following: “Fossil fuel use is a symptom of addiction.” Right, the public is going to adopt the discourse of addiction to stop buying SUVs. “One planet, Global community”? This sounds like world government, which to many in the US evokes images of the UN coming in with black helicopters to take over the US. “Expanding human rights to include sexual preference.” Consider that SOE represents a dialogue between the majority and minorities. Unfortunately, minorities are not unanimous in their support of issues such as gay marriage. In this, SOE has replaced one uniformity of values with another.
I’m still waiting for a adequate response for DOE, although I feel the need is less urgent than the authors of SOE do. With DOE, environmentalism has received a much-needed kick in the pants to respond to the big problems facing the world today. A manifesto, such as SOE, is not the solution. Let’s see what the environmentalists come up with.
Jaguars, which once roamed across Central America and were worshipped as gods by the Mayans, are now in serious decline. Reuters reports on a Mexican-Guatemalan project to fit jaguars with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) units so that their movements can be tracked by satellites. It is hoped that a better understanding of jaguars’ movements will help protect them and the habitat upon which they depend.
Although it is not mentioned in the Reuters article, presumably the project also will utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Individuals jaguar’s movements will be overlaid on digital geographic layers of natural and human features to determine the threat posed by shrinking jaguar habitats (using layers such as vegetation, rivers) as well as expanded human activities (layers such as roads, farms). Researchers and practitioners will then be able to look at which jaguars are encroaching on farms, need to travel across roads to eat and mate. Also, I assume they’ll be looking for instances, sadly, when the GPS units are no longer transmitting or moving.
For my more activist readers: Lest we automatically reject the importance of considering local human activity such as cattle ranching, remember that it’s the local people one has to convince in order to preserve the wild species. Conservation International, one of the lead conservation non-governmental organizations on this project, has had many successes not, I would argue, because they use lots of GIS but because they involve local people in day-to-day conservation.
A number of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have become highly critical of their boss. In an effort to express their opinions and oust the laboratory’s director, they’ve started a blog. But Los Alamos is no ordinary laboratory. It is the home of the famous and highly secretive Manhattan Project, the project that built the bomb. And it is still the place where some of the best physicists go to engage in weapons research, although Los Alamos additionally has become a major center of basic research in physics.
As the NYTimes reports, this is no ordinary blog.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, isolated in the mountains of New Mexico, has a long history of maintaining the highest level of federal secrecy. The laboratory’s very existence was once classified. Today, barbed wire rings many of its buildings, federal agents monitor its communications, and its employees are constantly reminded that loose lips sink ships.
I have mixed feelings about blogging for this kind of change. On the one hand, all possible traditional forums for change should be exhausted first. On the other hand, sometimes that’s fruitless. It also opens up the criticizer to vindictive job action. Blogs offer anonymity–in the Los Alamos case, only a fraction of the posts are signed–so they can protect the criticizer. They also can let loose a torrent of uncivil and indeed unprofessional behaviour. And, in the more general case of scientist blogs, they expose the institution’s dirty laundry when the public is already leery of funding science.
Courtesy of slashdot
Stewart Brand, famous for the Whole Earth Catalog and the Well virtual community, has just published an article called Environmental Heresies in The MIT Technology Review. He predicts that the environmental movement will have to reverse its position in the next ten years on four key issues:
Here are his arguments. Population growth is no longer a pressing problem because of global population decline. Urbanization is good because women gain more power and independence when they move to cities from villages. Moreover, empty villages mean that nature might return to those places. Genetically modified crops produce higher yields on less land area and with fewer pesticides and herbicides. He reminds the reader that the Amish, who are considered otherwise technology-adverse, have adopted GM crops. [He doesn’t mention the potential for gm crops like golden rice, which puts vitamins into food eaten by vitamin-deficient populations, although there are significant critiques of this approach.]
By far, his most controversial contention–he’s not the only one to make it–is that environmentalists will come to support nuclear power. Fossil fuel consumption must be reduced to slow global climate change. However, alternatives to fossil fuels, wind, solar, are considered incapable of supplying the energy that the world demands. Nuclear power is believed to be the only power source to meet the need.
He concludes that environmentalists have romanticized nature; whereas scientists, who have tried to promote these heretical ideas, have become the true radicals. It’s important for environmentalists to remain idealists, but it’s up to them to recognize these new realities. Don’t know whether I feel like a radical here, but I do find the latter two “realities” quite uncomfortable.
Here’s an interesting application of the open source community, not for software generation but for work on politics. According to the site:
Demos is a greenhouse for new ideas which can improve the quality of our lives. As an independent think-tank, our aim is to create an open resource of knowledge and learning that operates beyond traditional parties, identities and disciplines.
Demos connects researchers, thinkers and practitioners to an international network of people changing politics. Our ideas regularly influence government policy, but we also work with companies, NGOs, schools and professional bodies – any organisation that can make change happen. Our partners share a desire to understand a complex, globalising world, and to play an active role in shaping its future.
The open source concept relates to the reports and articles published by Demos’s staff and partners, which users can “download, save, perform or distribute … electronically or in any other format, including in foreign language translation without written permission subject to the conditions set out in the Demos open access licence.” In an interesting riff on the open source/access concept, this link doesn’t work.
Will an open access virtual think-tank work and be valued? Are there inducements for content generation by participants, for example professional advancement, as there are with physical think tanks? Can this virtual public sphere advance constructive debate about democracy?
Cell phones have become the new medium for protest and the Chinese have developed the tool to a fine art
BEIJING, April 24 – The thousands of people who poured onto the streets of China this month for the anti-Japanese protests that shook Asia were bound by nationalist anger but also by a more mundane fact: they are China’s cellphone and computer generation.
For several weeks as the protests grew larger and more unruly, China banned almost all coverage in the state media. It hardly mattered. An underground conversation was raging via e-mail, text message and instant online messaging that inflamed public opinion and served as an organizing tool for protesters.
The underground noise grew so loud that last Friday the Chinese government moved to silence it by banning the use of text messages or e-mail to organize protests. It was part of a broader curb on the anti-Japanese movement but it also seemed the Communist Party had self-interest in mind.
“They are afraid the Chinese people will think, O.K., today we protest Japan; tomorrow, Japan,” said an Asian diplomat who has watched the protests closely. “But the day after tomorrow, how about we protest against the government?”
Nondemocratic governments elsewhere are already learning that lesson. Cellphone messaging is an important communications channel in nascent democracy movements in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution used online forums and messaging to help topple a corrupt regime.