The effort to make the next person to understand was there all over the human life and it is the only way to make lasting values … now efforts are under way to obfuscate the things to the next person … and it has been seen as the means to business / financial success.
Filed by Krishna at 5:57 pm under Technology
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http://www.openvotingcon/
Filed by Krishna at 11:30 pm under Governance, Technology
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,71957-0.html
Filed by Krishna at 10:31 pm under Governance
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Oscar Reyes. Nnimmo Bassey is Secretary-Director of Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth, Nigeria) and a poet. In this interview at the Global Dreams, Corporate Nightmares conference he discusses the environmental and economic impact of the oil industry in Nigeria and reads from his poem ‘Mountains of Food, Oceans of Hunger’. You can hear a recording of the full interview here or continue reading for an edited transcript.
source: redpepper
Filed by Krishna at 5:13 pm under Governance
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Graphic designer Greg Storey was horrified. Not just because the information was all right there, but by the design. It’s no wonder the information could be ignored. The document is an uninflected, grey mash of sans serif type. Might thousands have been saved if the information design had been better?
… Make it so that within seconds the President can see how serious of a threat it is.†… Storey created a redesigned brief of his own, adding a larger headline, highlighted key terms and, most prominently, a large colored number indicating the level of the threat.“… My intentions were nothing more than to rant about what I saw to be a problem with how our government works day to day,†he wrote. “I thought I would spend a few minutes in front of Photoshop to see what I could come up with.â€
Alas, President Bush does not actually read the daily briefs, the Director of Intelligence summarizes them to him out loud. Nonetheless, Storey’s redesign is a dramatic example of how information design might affect the government and the public.
But the truth is, graphic designers across the country are already hard at work collaborating with local, state and national government officials to harness the power of design in the public interest. Their work affects the lives of millions of Americans by improving public safety, promoting public health and facilitating democracy on a massive scale—often at the initiative of the designers themselves.
…
Such practices are starting to be used by other agencies as well. Launched originally by the National Cancer Institute, the Web site http://usability.gov/ is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to promote better, easier-to-use public information to improve the health of the American public. They co-sponsor the Government Services Agency’s Usability University, which hosts regular trainings for government staff by outside experts.
…
Sylvia Harris agrees. Harris and the Design Institute at the University of Minnesota are encouraging designers to apply their creativity to the voting process. Commissioned by the Institute, Harris designed a poster, “Voting by Design,†to trace the many communications exchanges between the government and the public about voting. “This is not just about ballot design,†she says, “this is about voting as a communications process.†The poster maps the stages of the American voter’s experience and identifies places for designers to get involved. The poster targets a broad range of designers, from environmental designers and architects to branding and usability experts. The Institute is sending free copies of the poster to design organizations, museums and conferences to encourage designers to take on public sector work. You can order the poster from http://design.umn.edu/go/to/di.publications.
Design for Democracy is also getting the word out. As news of their voting design project spreads, election commissioners around the country have been calling seeking guidance. In response, the group will publish its research and findings in Election Design: Models for Improvement, a manual specifically for election commissioners. Design for Democracy is also contacting local AIGA chapters seeking designers to work with officials to implement the graphic system outlined in the book. You can find out more at www.designfordemocracy.aiga.org.
So what can we do about it? We are surrounded every day by mediocrity, bad design and ineffectual policy. But if you are a designer with an idea, you have the power to make a difference. Government design is not out of reach for designers, nor is any designer above it. Your government officials may even share the same goals, but simply lack an idea of how to proceed. The first step towards solving the problem is simply taking the first step. Pick up the phone, share your talents: Make your government work for you.
Filed by Krishna at 5:12 pm under Governance, Technology, Art
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James Boyle: Public information wants to be free
The departments which produce the data often attempt to make a profit from user-fees, or at least recover their entire operating costs. It is heresy to suggest that the taxpayer has already paid for the production of this data and should not have to do so again. The other side of the Atlantic practices a benign form of information socialism. By law, any text produced by the central government is free from copyright and passes immediately into the public domain. Unoriginal compilations of fact - public or private - may not be owned. As for government data, the basic norm is that it should be available at the cost of reproduction alone. It is easy to guess which is which. Surely, the United States is the profit and property-obsessed realm, Europe the place where the state takes pride in providing data as a public service? No, actually it is the other way around.
Take weather data. The United States makes complete weather data available to anyone at the cost of reproduction. … European countries, by contrast, typically claim government copyright over weather data and often require the payment of substantial fees. Which approach is better? If I had to suggest one article on this subject it would be the magisterial study by Peter Weiss called “Borders in Cyberspace,†published by the National Academies of Science. Weiss suggests that the US approach generates far more social wealth. True, the information is initially provided for free, but a thriving private weather industry has sprung up which takes the publicly funded data as its raw material and then adds value to it. The US weather risk management industry, for example, is ten times bigger than the European one, employing more people, producing more valuable products, generating more social wealth. Another study estimates that Europe invests €9.5bn in weather data and gets approximately €68bn back in economic value - in everything from more efficient farming and construction decisions, to better holiday planning - a 7-fold multiplier. The United States, by contrast invests twice as much - €19bn - but gets back a return of €750bn, a 39-fold multiplier. Other studies suggest similar patterns in areas ranging from geo-spatial data to traffic patterns and agriculture. “Free†information flow is better at priming the pump of economic activity.
Filed by Krishna at 11:57 pm under Governance, Technology, Uncategorized
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Making the World a Better Place
We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place …
We intend to contribute significant resources to the Google Foundation, including employee time and approximately 1 percent of Google’s equity and profits in some form. We hope some day this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.
Filed by Krishna at 12:07 am under Technology, Uncategorized
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“My concern is that we run into a tragedy of the commons,” Olson said. “There is this notion of quid pro quo, but if the vendor doesn’t ship his software, he doesn’t need to show his source code. That means a bunch of innovation is being taken out. This is an important problem for us working on the new GPL to get right.”
Filed by Krishna at 10:38 pm under Governance, Technology
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Federal Agency Nixes Your Right to Privacy!
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (”NTIA”) (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/), the telecommunications and Internet arm of the Department of Commerce, has disallowed private registrations for .US domain names.
This unfortunate decision was made by the NTIA, without a hearing or an opportunity for a response by those affected — in fact; there was no due process of any kind. It’s ironic that the NTIA has taken away our first amendment rights to privacy for the one domain name (.US) that is specifically intended for Americans. These bureaucrats stripped away the privacy that you’re entitled to as an American; on the only domain name that says that you are an American.
Even while the NTIA has ruthlessly criticized ICANN in the past for lack of transparency, the NTIA itself has been evasive and untruthful about the entire process, and has yet to provide a satisfactory explanation for the move.
Anaadhi blog also talks about this
Filed by Krishna at 7:20 pm under Governance, Technology
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The U.N. thinks about tomorrow’s cyberspace | CNET News.com
But the ITU enjoys virtually no influence over the Internet. That remains the province of specialized organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN; the Internet Engineering Task Force; the World Wide Web Consortium; and regional address registries.
The ITU, a United Nations agency, would like to change that. “The whole world is looking for a better solution for Internet governance, unwilling to maintain the current situation,” Houlin Zhao, director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said last year. Zhao, a former government official in China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, has been in his current job since 1999.
Though Zhao is far too diplomatic to state it directly, the ITU’s increasing interest in the Internet could presage a power struggle between ITU, ICANN, and perhaps even the U.S. government, which retains some oversight authority over ICANN and appears content with the current structure.
Filed by Krishna at 11:06 am under Governance
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