d r a g o n f l y

Free Alan Johnston Now!

Maja — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:28:00 GMT

I have lived and worked for three years in Gaza in the 90s. It is a fascinating place, but the suffering is intolerable. It has to stop. And we need people such as Alan Johnston to tell us about the misery and the hope and the everyday lives of the people in Gaza. Free Alan Johnston now!

Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders

Maja — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:29:00 GMT

Dmitri Vitaliev and Frontline have published their manual for Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders online. The manual is available at http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/manual/en/esecman/.

The publication is "dedicated to all human rights defenders, continuing their difficult and honest work, also on the Internet. Some of these people are in prison due to their activities on the Internet. Mohammed Abbou is serving a 3,5 year prison term in Tunisia for publishing online an article that compared Tunisian prisons to Abu Ghraib."

All the software mentioned in the manual is available in the NGO in a Box - Security Edition. The software and manuals can be downloaded freely via http://security.ngoinabox.org/html/en/index.html.

Time Magazine person of the year (a different take)

Maja — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 10:15:00 GMT

From http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/1982-2006.jpg

To India

Maja — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:17:00 GMT

In a few days I will be traveling to India. I will be conducting interviews with a variety of people, software developers, representatives of organisations and volunteer 'knowledge workers'. All this to find out what understandings of knowledge people work with when they design and develop a knowledge management system, use those systems, promote knowledge sharing for development, or contribute their knowledge to a knowledge network. The organisations I am planning to visit are Oneworld South Asia, National Informatics Centre of the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai and Pillaiyarkuppam, and Village Knowledge Centres around Pondicherry. The National Informatics Centre of the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology is the developer of the OpenEnrich software, an free/open source knowledge management solution originally created for the UNESCO but now also used by the Open Knowledge Network. The Open Knowledge Network was an joint initiative of Oneworld International (London) and the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (Chennai). I think the initiative is not so 'joint' anymore but both Oneworld and the MSSRF are still very much involved in knowledge sharing. In Delhi I will visit Oneworld South Asia. They are the main hub for the Open Knowledge Network in India. I hope to visit one of the associated organisations, the Datamation Foundation which, among other things, operates a village information centre in Babool-Ulm- Madarasa in Seelampur. I visited the centre in the madrassa briefly in February. I hope this time to interview the knowledge workers there. Oneworld South Asia is involved in many knowledge sharing activities, besides the OKN, they also run a grassroots communication programme with, among others, a radio programme and produce publications. I will spent half of my time in Chennai and Pondicherry. In Chennai I hope to meet some of the developers at NatureSoft, an open source outsourcing company, who developed the first version of the OKN software. I also would like to speak with some of the people at the MSSRF who are responsible for content development in their local knowledge for local development programmes. Then I will travel to Pondicherry to meet with Dr. Thiagarajan at the MSSRF centre in Pillaiyarkuppam. I will travel with him to some of the Village Knowledge Centres that are established with help of the MSSRF and where I hope to interview some of the women knowledge workers, volunteers who work in their own communities and who collect local knowledge for further dissemination via databases and the internet. (to be continued)

Time.... no time!

Maja — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:13:00 GMT

This blog is not getting anywhere. No time these days, weeks, and months. Not even to read my email properly, let alone mailing lists. But I will give it another try. Maybe my upcoming fieldwork is a good opportunity to start writing a bit more about my research. There is also more happening here at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Oslo. As PhD students we are now getting into the habit of reading and discussing a paper every Wednesday. That is a good opportunity to get to know each other better and to read interesting papers. The Information Systems group at our institute has split up in two. Don't ask me why.... but since I 'belong' to where my supervisor Christina Mörtberg belongs, I am now with the Digital Design group. I understand that in terms of discipline, we belong to the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community (or should I say intra-action ;-) As the DD group we have lunch together on Mondays and a discussion meeting first thing Friday morning, with coffee and croissants! Slowly I start to understand the ways I might fit in ... or not.

Satellite technology for human rights

Maja — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:44:00 GMT

Satellite images obtained by AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) program provide strong evidence of Zimbabwe repression

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Satellite images captured under a pioneering program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) provide powerful evidence that the government of Zimbabwe has destroyed an entire settlement and relocated thousands of residents as part of a campaign against political opponents.

Before and after pictures:

The images, analyzed by the AAAS staff, show two views of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The first, an archived image from June 2002, shows an intact settlement with more than 850 homes and other buildings; an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived in Porta Farm at the time. The second photo, taken by satellite on 6 April this year, shows that the settlement has been leveled.

The pictures were released Wednesday 31 May as central evidence in a report compiled by the international secretariat of Amnesty International in London and Zimbabwe From: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/cp-sio053006.php

Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), based in Harare. The report, “Shattered Lives: The Case of Porta Farm,” views the destruction of the settlement and the forced relocation of its residents as emblematic of a broad campaign by the government of President Robert Mugabe to repress political opposition.

The photos of Porta Farm were collected under a new AAAS program that is exploring how satellite imagery and other cutting-edge geospatial technologies can be used to assess potential human rights violations and prevent new ones before they develop.

“We believe this technology will become a critical tool for human rights organizations worldwide,” said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science. “By using new technology to systematically analyze satellite images and geospatial data, AAAS researchers were able to help Amnesty International and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights document the destruction of Porta Farm. The satellite images show the technology has enormous potential for helping to prove broad human rights violations. And perhaps someday in the future the technology will make it possible to intervene earlier in a human rights crisis, before it’s too late.”

Otto Saki, an attorney with the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said the images collected under the AAAS geospatial technology pilot program would be important in pending legal action on behalf of those who lost their homes. (See www.zlhr.org/zw/media/cases.htm.)

"The pictures epitomize the apex of a man-made disaster, and they can be of a phenomenonal impact in redressing such absurdities, now and in the future," Saki said.

According to the Amnesty International/ZLHR report, Porta Farm was razed in late June 2005 as part of Operation Murambatsvina. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina.)

More...

A License to Know: Regulatory Tactics of a Global Network

Maja — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:44:00 GMT

This is the paper I wrote for the CATaC'06 conference in Tartu, Estonia (June 28-July 1, 2006).

Abstract: The sharing of open content using free peer-to-peer technology is a challenge in a world dominated by intellectual property laws and high profile court cases against people and organisations accused of illicit file-sharing. From a legal perspective this challenge seems insurmountable for a global network that seeks to enable the sharing of local knowledge for local development. Feenberg's work on the democratisation of technology and Lessig's work on architecture as a regulatory modality helps to understand the role of technology in both constraining and protecting knowledge sharing. This paper describes how technology and techno-legal instruments such as software and content licenses can become tactical interventions in the regulation of knowledge sharing.

Paper is available online here (pdf).

A Case for Cognitive Justice

Maja — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:31:00 GMT

As part of the requirements for a PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Bergen I need to follow a course in philosophy of science and ethics of science and write a paper which I need to present and defend for a committee of three on June 2nd, 2006. Yesterday I submitted the paper to Cathrine Holst who is responsible for the Philosophy of Science part of the PhD programme.

This was a good opportunity to finally think through the concept of cognitive justice which I use as an normative framework to study global information systems. My "task" was to defend cognitive justice against the charge of facilitating a "everything goes" relativism. I located my paper in India by using Shiv Visvanathan's conception of cognitive justice and Meera Nanda's critique on Visvanathan and his collegues of what Nanda calls "the Delhi School of Science Studies".

A copy of my paper is available in pdf. Click here. Send me your comments!

Women developing FLOSS - freedom for knowlege free from prejudice

Maja — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 11:41:00 GMT

Free/Libre and Open Source Software movement is based on three “Open” pillars: Open Source, Open Standards and Open Content. It gives users and developers the freedom to study and modify the software source code, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program. Apart from its affordability, localisation is one of the areas where FLOSS shines because of its open nature. But how does FLOSS benefit women? And why are there so few women using FLOSS and participating in existing FLOSS communities?

Sulamita Garcia, member of LinuxChix Brasil, speaks about prejudice and stereotypes in the FLOSS movement, as well as general difficulties faced by women in new technologies in this interview for GenderIT. Sulamita is a 28-year-old consultant who specialises in Unix systems and is completely enthusiastic about free and open source software. Her work with LinuxChix Brasil is geared to promoting FLOSS for women and making sure women's contributions are recognised.

Read the full interview here

Gunnar Michelsen (1960 - 2005)

Maja — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 15:39:00 GMT

Some terribly sad news. Gunnar Michelsen died during fieldwork in Senegal. I met Gunnar just after I moved to Norway. He helped me to find my way in the Norwegian research community by introducing me to people and supporting my application to the Norwegian Research Council. Gunnar was such a friendly person, committed to his work, and always helpful. This is very sad and so unfair.

Obituary by Gunnar's colleague Einar Braathen:
Gunnar Michelsen (1960 - 2005) Dr. Gunnar Guddal Michelsen died in a hospital in Dakar on December 25, 2005, only 40 years old. A researcher of the Rokkan Centre, University of Bergen, he was carrying out field work in Senegal. Gunnar was one of the founders of the Norwegian Research Network on ICT and Development. He was a great cross-institutional and cross-national network builder, a committed internationalist and an inspiring academic colleague.

Gunnar grew up in a working class district in Bergen. From his early years throughout his life he was a committed activist, struggling for a more open, inclusive and just society – locally and globally. He spent 2 years in France and obtained a DEA (‘master’) degree at the University of Bordeaux, with the late professor Jean-Francois Médard at the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire (CEAN) as supervisor. Gunnar then took a Norwegian master’s degree at the Department of Administration and Organisation Theory, University of Bergen, with a thesis on telecommunication development in Cote d’Ivoire. In 1995 Gunnar and I obtained a four-year grant from the Research Council of Norway to compare the digital revolution across Africa. For Gunnar this resulted in the doctoral thesis Institutional Legacies at Work in African Telecommunications. Since 2001 he was primus motor of a project on the role of ICT in the transformation of higher education in Africa, in the context of globalisation, commercialisation and privatisation. His main partners were Prof. Falilou Ndiaye and collegues at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, with whom he built a thriving research seminar. He also prepared a new telecommunications project with Dr. Annie Chéneau-Loquay at CEAN. He generously invited these partners to Norway and let all the participants in the Research Network on ICT and Development benefit from their visits to our conferences. Gunnar went to hospital with respiratory problems on 17 December. With the help of his friends and colleagues in Dakar, everything was ready for his evacuation to Bergen by air. However, it seems, on the basis of the information obtainable, that his insurance company denied him his right to be flown back alive and, maybe, to recover from the disease. He is survived by two daughters, 4 and 8 years old. Gunnar will be sorely missed.
By Einar Braathen (Einar.braathen@nibr.no )

Here is the link to Gunnar`s homepage.

LOBAND

Maja — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 13:56:00 GMT

I came across a new service for people with slow internet connections. I am so fortunate to work over a high speed connections at the university so I can't actually test it. But the principle is simple. loband takes away all images (including the commercial ones) and simplifies the html. What remains are text-only web pages that can be loaded faster over slow connections.

Try it yourself: http://www.loband.org

Mr. Drums

Maja — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:41:00 GMT

In my blog entry of 13 Dec. 2005 I introduced my friend Ace and his work on a content management system - Qwikzite - in Papiamentu. Today I was looking for an example of a website using Qwikzite in Papiamentu. I found the website of Mr. Drums. Great re-use of oil drums!

A New Year

Maja — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 10:41:00 GMT

Happy New Year to *A*L*L*

First day at work. Full with good thoughts about all the things I want to do this year. And yes, I need to think about this blog. Or it has to be helpful for me or I have to make it interesting enough for other people to read. Now I am writing it for myself. I don´t need another diary.

First content management system in Papiamentu

Maja — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:28:00 GMT

The Internet enables us to do many different things... but it has its disadvantages. One of them is the overwhelming dominance of English and other world languages on the Internet and on the computer programmes we use to access and use the Internet. The Internet is not as helpful and fun if you can't use it also in your own language. Some people understand this very well. One of them is Ace Suares, who lives on Curacao and who is a longtime best friend. He has translated the content managament system he has developed into Pamiamentu. Not just the programme, also the help pages, everything. This is not only important for Internet users. Papiamentu is one of the languages at risk for extinction.

Ace, gran trabow! Congratulations!

More:
News about Qwikzite in Papiamentu
Online Qwikzite manual and support pages
and more about Ace Suares

Democratic gap

Maja — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:08:00 GMT

Sami Ben Gharbia wrote some feedback on my previous message. Just in case you missed it, I have brought the link to the videoclip up here in a new post. While watching the clip I thought about the Tunesian Internet, free speech, and other human rights activists who showed so much courage in speaking out during the WSIS. With all the foreign media, delegates, and human rights watchers gone, who is looking out for them?

Sami, merci, dank je wel, for sending the link. Here it is:

Start clip: The Democratic Gap