Sky’s Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation — Spreading the word in a networked world

I spent a really interesting and entertaining four hours in line at the Apple Store in Palo Alto (California, USA) last Friday morning, waiting to purchase an Apple iPhone “3G.” I had a great four-hour conversation with the guy in line behind me [see footnote Social Behaviors, below. And then I bought my iPhone.

And like most of the fanboys and fangirrls who have their phone already (it’s my first 48 hours) I am just really pleased with this communication device. And it has given me its own set of challenges as well. (more…)

I’m going to start a series of articles (and references) on how our governments are watching us.

I’ll start with China, which is of course very much in the news right now for repressive measures it takes against its citizens. Many of you will know already that China monitors and censors Internet (particularly web) users, but may not be aware how widely it monitors its citizens.

This article China’s All-Seeing Eye by Naomi Klein in Rolling Stone, should get you started. Her subtitle is With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

China is notable because what we in the U.S. might regard as fundamental freedoms, like the right to free speech and dissent, seem to be viewed as hindrances to social and economic development.

Rob Paterson writes (today on the FASTForward blog) about The Power of the Personal - Voice? He visualizes this with an Alexa Internet chart/data showing how quickly the recent web sites that allow individuals to broadcast their personal voice have risen.

Most particularly, the data show that Wikipedia rose from zero to “Daily Traffic Rank” of about “10″ in about four years, and YouTube rose to “10″ in about a year and a half. (Making them among the top sites on the web.)

You’d have to attribute this to the fact that these sites are created by, or at least “formed” in some way by, their users. That belies the suspicion that people are couch potatoes and won’t lift a finger to create their own media entertainment, other than to channel-surf. Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of channel-surfing going on at YouTube, but there’s also lots of participation, even if 90% of it is deadheaded talking-head responses. And Wikipedia is certainly a creation of its readers (even though there’s a core group that does a huge percentage of the heavy lifting).

So, I want to know if this phenomenon only gives “voice” to those with broad Internet connections, or whether it can be used by those with only occasional access to the net. Can conversation take place offline and then be put online in the form of blog postings, or wikipedia entries or online video? (more…)

I don’t know how I ran across this thing that Robert Scoble is now doing - but here he is interviewing people at Davos using a cellphone camera (actually two at the same time) - and questions coming in in real-time. I’ll just point you at his interview of Danah Boyd on QIK.COM (more about her later because she’s important to what I do in real life). Check Danah at her blog “Apophenia :: making connections where none existed before.”