Max Senges

A hippocratic Oath for Techies & Policymakers

2012-07-02T15:49:00.000+02:00

Acknowledegements & Context

When Rick Whitt and I were working on a paper on a framework for internet policy that brings together complexity theory, endogenous economics and common pool resource governance, I pondered once again about a proposal to write and promote a hippocratic oath for internet techies and policy makers in order to have them (including me) pledge to “do no harm” to this potent but also fragile ecosystem.

Below you find a code of conduct which I feel I can subscribe. However it is not and will never be final. Rather I plan to develop, add and sharpen the code further. Please send comments and suggestions as to what should be included and or put differently i.e. more precise.

Preamble

I recognize technology as a product of human effort, a product serving no other purpose than to benefit man in general, not merely some men; man in the totality of his humanity, encompassing all his manifold interests and needs, not merely some one particular concem of his. Humanistically viewed, technology is not an end in itself but a means to an end, the end being determined by man. I hence promote a humanistic conception of technology in which the desire to obtain maximum benefits is subordinated to the obligation not to injure human beings or society at large.

Therefore the following principles shall marshal my mindset, decision making and practices:

Code of Conduct

1) Do no harm:

I hold a humanistic conception of the internet and therefore will not simply compare costs and benefits of any particular code or practice, but follow a rights based approach as formulated in the 10 Internet Rights & Principles.
When assessing code, practices and policy proposals I will seek to understand the technological, economic, socio-cultural and ethical dimensions and interdependencies of the online ecosystem, always aiming not to hamper user-centered development and innovation but to further creative destruction and open competition.

2) Participate in deliberation:

Acknowledging that the internet governance must be an open multi-stakeholder process, I will participate in both internal organisational discourse as well as in public deliberation with the aim to collaboratively generate knowledge and to contribute to sound decision making.
I will take critics seriously. Governance is about constructive dialogue rather than representation.

3) Act responsibly

I will contribute to the internet governance discourse to the best of my knowledge. Should an obligation to an institution contradict my perspective I shall refrain from disagreeing publicly but will take the responsibility to argue my case internally.
Should I witness any error or misdeed (i.e. human rights violation) I shall first address and remedy it with the responsible individual or within the responsible organisation. However should it prove impossible to resolve a serious matter directly, I shall bring the case to prosecution.

4) Promote openness & contribute to the commons

Whenever possible I will contribute to the commons and the public domain. Subsequently I will always practice a strong bias towards open innovation and open standards.
I will always acknowledge from whom or what text I have learned about a certain idea or concept and if appropriate include direct links (or other relevant bibliographic references)
I will be transparent about my social networks and motivation to choose collaboration partners.

5) Respect privacy and confidentiality

I will honor the contextual agreement regarding the use and sharing of information and data that I have access to. This means that I will use and discuss information only within a given institution (confidential) or between certain individuals (private). In order to do so I shall always strive to understand the contextual agreement and make it explicit when in doubt.
Given the strong socio-political and economic benefits of information and data that is in the commons (or public domain), I will strive to make transparent and public as many of the endeavors and practices I am involved in as possible.

Acknowledegements
I had been inspired to work on such a code of conduct some years back when I read the excellent article “A Humanistic Technology” (1965) Hyman Rickover. (The Preamble is a mashup from his text.) In the article he proposes that given the power technocrats and engineers have over mankind they should swear an hippocratic oath which binds them to an ethical code which is placed above the interests of their employer or their self-interest.

Back then I chaired the Internet Rights and Principles coalition and the discussions about how to transpose human rights to the net and what technical principles should be upheld was also aimed at the goal to find an agreement on which to root internet governance (policies) and hence practices. The group has since produced an excellent document “10 Internet Rights and Principles” which I naturally use as fundament of this code of conduct.

During the development of these guiding principles I also consulted several related texts such as ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and The Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics from the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) website.

And of course I also happily followed Jeff Jarvis’ proposal to President Sarkozy (and all policy makers) to swear an hippocratic oath for the internet back at the eG8 Summit in 2011. In fact it was when I listened to his pretty good audio book “Public Parts” that I decided to take a shot at a prototype for such an oath as feels right to me as professional policy entrepreneur.

Speakers’ Tube - Meine Rede auf dem ersten Speakers' Corner in Berlin

2011-11-10T16:06:00.001+01:00

Ich bin 33 Jahre alt. Als ich aufwuchs, informierte ich mich über die guten alten Medien: Buch, Fernsehen, Radio, Zeitung. Mein 9 Wochen alter Sohn wird mit einem ganz anderen Bezug zu Medien und Partizipation aufwachsen. Erlauben Sie mir mit ein paar Worten zu analysieren, was sich in den letzten 33 Jahren verändert hat.

Ich fühlte mich dabei meistens ganz gut informiert. Doch schon damals fragte ich mich, wo denn eigentlich all jene Menschen Gehör finden, deren Themen nicht für die sogenannten “Massenmedien” tauglich sind. Und was war mit Ländern, die nicht über die breite, freie Medienlandschaft verfügten wie Deutschland sie zum Glück heute besitzt? Wie mochten sich wohl dort die Menschen informieren?

Die einzige Chance, seine Stimme zu Gehör zu bringen, lag für viele Jahrhunderte buchstäblich auf der Straße: in Demonstrationen, Versammlungen oder eben auf der berühmten “Speakers’ Corner” in London, wo immerhin schon seit Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts die Kraft der freien Rede zelebriert wird.

Es ist aber ohne Frage das Internet, dass die Möglichkeiten frei zu reden, Position zu beziehen, sich zu informieren und demokratischen Protest zu organisieren tiefgreifend revolutioniert hat. Grenzen überschreiten, Konventionen missachten, Debatten über alles zu führen - von Filmen bis zur Monarchie. Online war alles möglich. Im Internet entstand ein neuer globaler “Speakers’ Corner”, ein Forum der freien Rede, auf Twitter, Facebook und YouTube und (in Bälde auch unter jedem Pseudonym ihrer Wahl) auf Google+.

Über zwei Milliarden Menschen sind heute im Internet aktiv, und jeder kann seine Meinungen, Träume, Positionen und Forderungen veröffentlichen, die wiederum von allen anderen gefunden und beantwortet werden können. Diese Demokratisierung der Medialen- der Meinungs-Produktionsmittel bedeutet im Allgemeinen eine größere Auswahl und im Endeffekt mehr Macht für den Einzelnen. Erinnern Sie sich an die Bilder aus Ägypten? Leider ist es für viele Regierungen und Institutionen unbequem, die Kontrolle zu verlieren. Dies bedeutet, dass das kommende Jahr möglicherweise von einer zunehmenden Einschränkung der Freiheiten im Internet geprägt sein wird.

Staaten schränken das freiheitlich demokratische Potential des Internets ein. Doch nicht nur Staaten stehen der Rede- und Meinungsfreiheit immer wieder im Wege. Beispiel Mexiko: Im brutalen Drogenkrieg des Landes verzichten die klassischen Medien inzwischen zumeist auf Berichterstattung, die Journalisten fürchten um ihr Leben. Aktuellen Berichten zufolge sind Blogger und Aktivisten aus sozialen Netzwerken als letzte mediale Kraft übrig geblieben, die noch über das Treiben der Drogenbarone informieren. Auch hier beweist die sozio-technologische Infrastruktur des Netzes und die Netizens eine beeindruckende Kraft, die sogar über die der klassischen Medien hinauszureichen scheint.

1989, im Jahr, in dem die Mauer fiel, steckte das Internet noch in den Kinderschuhen. Doch auch damals gab es mutige Menschen, die für die Freiheit aufgestanden sind und gesprochen haben. Engagiert und offen.

Wir wollen hier und heute eine Brücke bauen zwischen der klassischen Kraft der freien Rede, der Speakers Corner, und jener neuen Kraft, dem Internet und seinen technischen Möglichkeiten Dialoge global, in echtzeit und (ver)öffentlicht zu führen.

Denn wer heute spricht, spricht nicht “nur” zu den Menschen, die gerade hier am Brandenburger Tor dabei sind. Ihre Stimme kann weltweit gehört werden. Wir werden Sie unmittelbar im Anschluss über den YouTube Kanal “GoogleFreeExpression” ausstrahlen.
Selbstverständlich holen wir dazu von jedem Redner und jeder Rednerin die Erlaubnis ein!

Hier und heute treffen sich also die analoge Speakers Corner und ihr digitales Pendant in Gestalt von YouTube. Nennen Sie es meinetwegen “Your Corner” oder “Speakers’ Tube” - der Name ist nicht wichtig. Lassen Sie uns diesen Tag zu einer Feier der Meinungsfreiheit machen. Fassen Sie Mut. Kommen Sie auf die Bühne und bringen Sie die Kraft Ihrer eigenen freien Rede zur Entfaltung. Vielen Dank!

„Dienste der Zukunft für die Gesellschaft von heute. Wie Vertrauen schaffen?“ (Mein Paneldiskussionsbeitrag beim Jahreskongress GeoBusiness & D21 im BMWi)

2011-11-09T18:53:00.001+01:00

Letzten Mittwoch am 3. November 2011 war ich im Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie zusammen mit Thilo Weichert (Datenschutzbeauftragter Schleswig-Holsteins) und Olaf Keitzel (CSC) auf einem Panel um zum Thema "Dienste der Zukunft für die Gesellschaft von heute. Wie Vertrauen schaffen?" zu diskutieren. Hier einige Argumente, die ich für die Diskussion vorbereitet hatte:

Kernfrage beim Thema Einführung innovativer Dienste ist das Spannungsfeld zwischen “Innovation without permission” und Schutz der User vor böswilligen Übergriffen.

Konstruktive Kritik aus Deutschlang ist wertvoll und “Privacy made in Germany” könnte sich als ein entscheidender Marktvorteil entwickeln. Allerdings hat man manchmal den Eindruck, dass es eher dystopische Verschwörungstheorien, vielleicht auch ein übertriebenes Geltungsbewußtsein und machmal auch strategische Polemik und Spiel mit den Ängsten von Wählern sind, die den Diskurs beeinflussen.

Wir brauchen mehr angewandte transdisziplinäre Forschung, um die emergenten Phänomene, die durch Internetdienste und -Nutzung entstehen, besser zu verstehen und unser individuelles sowie das Handeln unserer gesellschaftlichen Institutionen darauf einzustellen. Z.B. das acatech Projekt “Eine Kultur der Privatsphäre und des Vertrauens im Internet”, das vom BMWF gefördert wird und Experten von IBM, der Deutschen Post und Google mit Wissenschaftlern aus den verschiedensten Fachrichtungen zusammenbringt, birgt das potential nicht nur zu verstehen, was Unsicherheit hervorruft, sondern auch welche Funktionen und Erklärungen Vertrauen schaffen.

Das sozio-technische online Ökosystem kann als Komplex Adaptives System verstanden werden. Diesem Ansatz folgend, sollten Politik, Judikative und Exekutive in Kooperation mit den Betreibern und den Nutzern daran arbeiten, ein “dynamische Gleichgewicht” zwischen Vertrauen und Kontrolle zu gestalten. Dabei sind die traditionellen relativ starren Regelungen (Gesetze und Regulierung) ein recht unpassendes Mittel. Besser geeignet scheinen sog. Multistakeholder Governance Ansätze, bei denen alle Akteure einen kontinuierlichen Steuerungsprozess verantwortlich begleiten.

Erlaubt mir in diesem Kontext auf ein sehr gehaltvolles Paper meines Kollegen Rick Whitt hinzuweisen. Er analysiert und konstruiert Ansätze und Rahmenbedingungen für die Gestaltung von vernünftigen Internet Policies auf Basis einer komplexitätswissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung. Jedem, der ernsthaft an netzpolitischen Fragen interessiert ist, sei diese 108 Seiten starke Arbeit "Adaptive Policymaking: Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy" ans Herz gelegt.

Organisationen wie z.B. die Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle Multimedia-Diensteanbieter e.V. (FSM) oder auf internationalem Level die Global Network Initiative - in der sich Microsoft, Yahoo, Google zusammen mit NGOs wie Human Rights Watch und wissenschaftlichen Institutionen wie Harvard’s Berkman Center gemeinsam für die Einhaltung von Datenschutz und Meinungsfreiheitsrechten im Internet einsetzen - haben die besten Chancen, die Praktiken vernünftig zu überprüfen und ein gemeinsames Vorgehen der Akteure abzustimmen. Es wäre zu wünschen, dass die Politik häufiger auf solche Lösungen setzt.

Ein Denkanstoß, der in unserer letzten Co:Lab Initiative entwickelt wurde finde ich in diesem Kontext auch spannend: Die “Beta-Phase” bei Diensteinführungen sollte standardisiert und offiziell anerkannt werden. Traditionell werden Internetdienste zunächst als “Beta” - als Testversion - gestartet. Diese Herangehensweise scheint sehr geeignet, um einerseits neophilen Nutzern Innovationen früh anzubieten und sie mit Hilfe der User zu verbessern und reif für den "Massenmarkt" zu machen. Andererseits signalisiert das Beta eher konservativen Nutzern, dass der betreffende Dienst nicht final ausgereift ist und ggf. noch technische und usability Mängel (z.B. bei der Datenverarbeitung) hat.

Harnessing the complexity perspective to better understand internetworked companies

2011-07-25T20:29:00.001+02:00

Especially in turbulent and tempestuous times like now everybody has a natural tendency to revert to traditional and conservative practices, because even though they are not as progressiv or "cool", they have proven their worth. Especially many successful internetworked companies have undergone several evolutionary phases, and while some companies managed to maintain a decisively progressive and unconventional culture, with stunning growth complexity has grown to a point that is intimidating not only for new employees but also for veteran knowledge workers who observe that these organisations' startup approach needs to evolve so it can scale to global operations.

In the field of complexity sciences researchers have found patterns and insights that can help individual workers, teams and organisations as a whole to frame and harness heterogeneity and decentralization. Wisdom of the crowds, peer-production, community driven development, crowdsourcing are just some phenomena that can be explained and trained for using the complexity perspective.

Taking this new perspective will not only change the way how you see things but also what you see.

Read my 3 page musing in Google-Docs (And if you feel like commenting or collabowriting please drop me a mail).

Also, if you want a much more elaborate perspective on how the complexity perspective can be applied to internet policy making i highly recommend Rick Whitt's thinking:

the full 10 7 page article Adaptive Policymaking: Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy
Rick also kindly recorded a podcast in which he explains the paper. Together with the following presentation one gets motivated to read the whole piece.

Wind Art – Transforming Wind Mills into Innovative Beauty

2011-07-03T21:50:00.001+02:00

This is a marketing idea for an energy production company, pitched in an open source style under creative commons license. I would be happy to help interested companies with the implementation.

1. The Product

Wind mills have complemented our energy mix for many years. While alternative energy has a very positive intrinsic marketing value, in the best case they are tolerated, but mostly they are perceived negatively as ugly and devaluing the landscape and natural environment.

2. The Idea

What if windmills became art? The energy company responsible for the windmills will have the chance to present itself as innovative, as turning ugly into beautiful, as leading the way into a more humane, a more beautiful future.

Two promising creative elements to consider are color and light. Thanks to the organic shape of most windmills simply coloring them in relation to the landscape context could result in very appealing sights; more spectacular however would be to attach light diodes to them and connect them to a central programming interface which allows to have the lights create firework-like effects across the whole wind-park.

WindArt can be used for positive public relations from the initiation of the project to the inauguration of the artistic wind energy park and if desired, it can be repeated after a certain period.

The PR/Advertisment Campain has the following components:

· Call a competition for artists to propose the transformation of a given windpark into an artistic theme.

· Collect artistic proposals on website for everybody to review

· Have the public and experts evaluate the contestants in stages (from Xà100 à 10 à1,2,3)

· Document the creative transformation of the wind park

· Celebrate the inauguration of the wind art park

· In case of the wind-fire-work lighting effects the ignition can be celebrated every night at a given hour.

Yenta - The art of finding a match

2011-06-11T17:35:00.000+02:00

I recently decided that it would be a good idea to get to know a bit more about Google's chief economist Hal Varian, so I searched and watched a lecture in which he explained the basic economics behind Google's search and advertising business model.

Given that I work and research in this area for several years I didn't expect to learn too much in this video, rather I figured it might be a good source to recommend to people who just got started. Well, I was wrong: I really learned a lot about the emergence of the system (e.g. the competition with Overture), I learned that academics have already developed an algorithm that is a bit better than the one used by Google (at least back in 2008) and I learned about the magic of two-sided markets and the characteristics, benefits and challenges of a yenta.

A yenta - explained Prof. Varian - is a jiddish term used to describe a matchmaker. (A person that facilitates (or arranges) the marriage between a boy and a girl.) Yenta in a two sided market describes the role of a platform provider which facilitates that someone who wants to sell something and someone who is looking to buy something find each other as easily (in terms of time and money) as possible. Trust that the yenta is not biased towards one particular seller is naturally key for the buyers but also for the sellers, who would run away if they found out that the yenta is not treating all offers equal.

I had always held the believe that Google depends on the trust of its users to deliver the best search results but Hal Varian's analogy of the yenta opened my eyes that the business model *necessarily demands* that Google acts in the best interest of all parties involved. As soon as the neutrality of the platform is compromised, trust would plummet and the very efficient dynamic equilibrium of the two sided market would crash as soon as one side would loose its trust in the yenta.

In this context the principle "Don't be evil" makes enormous business sense.

First TESLA on the road (Dreams of an internet enabled global car race)

2011-06-11T11:38:00.002+02:00

Some years ago, when the aspiring e-Lotus-Sportscar Tesla first came out, I thought of the following marketing idea (which I still quite like and would love to see someone pursue):

1. The product

The tesla is a revolutionary 21^st century electronic car, with a body from the Italian luxury race car specialist Lotus and a uniquely powerful engine that accelerates faster than a Prosche and drives up to X km/h.

2. The idea

Invite TESLA owners to track the roads as well as the time it took them to cover a given course and submit it to an online global database – generating a map that shows how TESLA’s are conquering the world.

This approach will:

· Generate publicity because of it’s innovative nature and excellent conditions for social media participation. Drivers and citizen journalists can record and upload complementary footage to their “First TESLA on the road”.

· It instigates a positive ‘can do’ attitude and bricolage towards generating maximum reach and other performance measures of the TESLA.

· It generates publicity for each region, city and village as they produce their local “first TESLA on the road”.

· The best pictures / videos – e.g. TESLA in Patagonia, TESLA over Monte Carlo, TESLA at the Taj Mahal – can be used for professional print and video commercials.

CoLab Bericht "Offene Staatskunst" veröffentlicht und Open Data beim Elektrischen Reporter

2010-10-31T15:46:00.001+01:00

vor ca. zwei Wochen haben wir die zweite Initiative des Internet & Gesellschaft Collaboratory abgeschlossen und die Ergebnisse der Zusammenarbeit im Bericht "Offene Staatskunst: Bessere Politik durch Open Government?" veröffentlicht. Über 30 Experten aus Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft haben knapp drei Monate diskutiert und einen ganztägigen Workshop organisiert, auf dem wir unser Verständnis einem Realitätscheck durch ca. 20 Kollegen aus Politik und Ministerien unterzogen. Das Ergebnis kann sich, wie ich finde, wirklich sehen lassen.

Der Bericht entwickelt zunächst eine strategische Perspektive: Wie kann man (speziell als Politiker und Ministerium) die Instrumente des Open Government nutzen um die Legitimität, die Handlungsspielräume und Ergebnisse seiner politischen Arbeit zu verbessern? Das Kapitel fragt provokant "Wie würde Machiavelli sich des Web 2.0 bedienen um seine real-politische Situation zu verbessern?".

Im zweiten Teil behandeln wir das Thema ePartizipation. Das Kapitel erklärt die verschiedenen Einsatzmöglichkeiten, stellt erfolgreiche Beispiele vor und gibt dem Praktiker eine Reihe von Empfehlungen, die bei der Planung und Durchführung einer ePartizipationsInitiative von Nutzen sein kann.

Im letzten Kapitel geht es dann um einen sehr konkreten Aspekt von Offener Staatskunst, es geht um Open Data. Dieses Thema eignet sich besonders gut als Beispiel, da es den Kultur- und Paradigmenwechsel perfekt verkörpert. Bei Open Data geht es (verkürzt) darum, alle Daten des öffentlichen Sektors (die nicht personenbezogen sind) öffentlich im Netz zugänglich zu machen. Ich finde die Experten haben ein außerordentlich guten Text erarbeitet, der diesen Diskurs aufarbeitet und sowohl die Pro als auch die Kontra Argumente verständlich macht.

Am 25.10 beschäftigt sich auch der Elektrische Reporter mit dem Thema Open Data. Das in dem Beitrag sowohl Daniel Dietrich (Editor der CoLab Arbeitsgruppe zu Open Data) als auch Christian Kreutz von www.frankfurt-gestalten.de, der auch an unserem Abschlussworkshop mit diskutierte, mitwirken, freut mit natürlich besonders.

PS: Selbstverständlich liegen auch die Rohdaten unserer dimap-Umfrage zu Open Gov und Open Data auf der Collaboratory Site zum Download bereit.

What I believe

2010-10-03T21:16:00.001+02:00

During my trip to climb peak Korzhenevskaya I had the great pleasure to disconnect from the information overload and hectic that is my urban life. One of the most gratifying experiences was to read Hans Küng's essay "What I believe" in the base-camp sauna.

I knew about Hans Küng before, but this essay is so well written and conveys his mindset in terms of his most fundamental believe so convincing that I now proclaim myself a disciple and promoter of his approach.

A very short background about Hans Küng: He is a German theology professor, who used to train young men who wanted to become priests. However since he had published a book which doubts papal infallibility in 1971 the church's beholder of all dogmata (Mr. Ratzinger) and Küng have a long dispute. Küng began to focus on Ecumenical Theology and developed the axiom:"No Peace Among Nations until Peace Among the Religions" (1991). Over the last decades a global movement has gathered around this axiom and I can simply say: I very much agree and the efforts of the movement are highly sensible.

In fact, given the abhorrent and very counterproductive analysis put forward under the "clash of civilizations" label, Küng's efforts to find and define a "world ethics", as well as a format for peaceful theo-politics (see e.g. the world parliament of religions) hold, in my humble opinion, the key to overcome the challenge of peaceful religious/cultural co-existence.

So what is the essence of Küng's believe? For him the most decisive force that determines each individual human's struggle is whether or not the man or woman has a fundamental "trust in life" - a positive attitude and believe that things will develop in the right direction. He very savvily substantiates and explains his analysis by building e.g. on the work of eminent psychologist Erik Erikson.

I wont attempt to recount the marvelous content of said essay, but rather (1) point you to his book (first 6 pages of the introduction and first Chapter are accessible via Amazon's "Look Inside" and are the same as in the German essay) or if you read German I recommend you "Denkanstöße 2011: Ein Lesebuch aus Philosophie, Kultur und Wissenschaft" which contains the essay I read.

Some weeks ago I contacted the Berlin chapter of the Küng's World Ethics NGO but so far nobody replied to my email. If you happen to know about a good way to further the cause please contact me.

Breaking Borders Award & Reflections about Freedom of Expression online

2010-01-03T16:08:00.005+01:00

This Tuesday Google and Global Voices announced the details and call for nominations for the Breaking Borders Awards, which will honor activists, policy makers and technologists who make a contribution to develop the net as the global forum where netizens around the globe can express themselves and collectively deliberate and discuss ideas. In this post I'd like to share my own take on why freedom of expression is important and highlight some aspects regarding the potential of the net to improve governance and transform social conduct.

On the outset I'd like to set the scope regarding the importance of Freedom of Expression: Nobel economist Amartya Sen famously found that freedom of expression and access to information are fundamental conditions for development. In his analysis, no country in which information is freely disseminated and debated has ever suffered a famine. More broadly, political freedom correlates directly with economic success.

Let me now share my understanding of how internetworked technology advances freedom of expression and societal information sharing/management: One can distinguish between “factual news”, opinion and subjective contextualization.

What happens when reportage comes not from a select few professional sources, but from a multitude of decentralized observers feeding their social networks (and, incidentally, the public)? We see a dramatic increase in transparency—and, through the proliferation of sources, in credibility.

This “reported reality” (from neitzens posting their perspective on Twitter, YouTube, etc.) informed coverage of the recent demonstrations in Tehran and Urumqi. Such reportage will be still more important when, as well as covering breaking news, it brings transparency to institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

The other aspect of ”news processing”—analysis and interpretation—traditionally represented the view of an institution or, at its best, sought to deliver a balanced perspective. In times of blogs, social networks and other means of sharing your views online the information you publish defines your identity and how others perceive you; and it transforms and multiplies the original information.

The virality of information (the way it spreads and changes) has long been exploited by marketers and politicians. With the Internet democratizing information—putting a global publishing outlet and, more recently, a mobile live-streaming camera within every netizen's reach—you can not only globally publish your opinion but debate it. The process can have a substantial, and healthy, effect on citizen participation and decision making, and therefore on governance and societal dynamics.

The real pragmatic challenge however is not in the principle of free speech but in the hairy details of balancing it with other rights like privacy, and defining and deciding on defamation, hate speech complaints, etc.. All nations agree, for example, that child pornography should be banned. But individual governments have decided on highly divergent areas where national history necessitates thematic restrictions on freedom of expression.

If content is legal in one country and illegal in another, how do we foster the net’s potential as a global public space?

In my opinion there can, and should, be no final answer: human judgment and mores inevitably change over time. That is why I think two approaches should be pursued: To encourage the creation of national (and possibly international) expert bodies that transparently identify content which is illegal. And to create multistakeholder alliances like the Global Network Initiative, which has embarked on a step-by-step process to ensure good privacy and free speech practices within its constituents' online services.

Professor Lawrence Lessig warns us that the web—combining software (technological) code and legal (social) code—forms a perfect architecture of control. While we are very successful in building globally spanning internetworked technology on the basis of open standards and simple, liberal rules like “running code and rough consensus,”; we have been less successful at rooting our social code in similarly simple and liberal rules: those that nurture human rights.

With the Breaking Borders award Google, Global Voices and Thomson Reuters are looking for your nominations to promote good practices in freedom of expression online.

#NewLife in Berlin working in Google’s Policy Team

2009-10-08T11:33:00.002+02:00

About two weeks ago I started my new job and I thought it would be good to share my first impressions, my vision and motivation.

To start with the basics, I now work in Google’s policy team in Berlin, which is basically my manager Annette and myself (plus Ines in Hamburg).

My scope of work is to promote and co-create reasonable policies in Google products, as well as to work in multi-stakeholder groups to deliberate and help develop sound new media policies for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Thereby my special focus is to liaison and collaborate with colleagues from academics and civil society. In that regard I am really happy that I can build on and extend my engagement for a humanistic conception of the Internet, advocate for Rights and Principles based internet governance regimes, which enable us to enjoy our Human Rights on the internet.

More concretely I am looking forward to (a) work with all stakeholders on internet and society related questions here in Berlin, (b) contribute to the deliberations about and development of policies that are user-centered, maximize individual freedom and balance the sometimes paradoxical overlaps between fundamental rights e.g. freedom of expression and privacy, or access to knowledge and intellectual property, (c) promote transparency and access to information about public institutions (but also of Google as an organization of public interest)

Oh and my managers endorsed that I continue my work with the multi-stakeholder coalition on Internet Rights and Principles as my 20% project! I am really excited about our current endeavors to draft (in collaboration with APC) a Charter of Human Rights and Principles on the Internet (based on APC’s Internet Rights Charter).
However I want to use this opportunity to state that I believe it is time for the IRP coalition to elect a new chair during this years IGF (as stated in our charter). I will be happy to actively participate and continue in the steering committee (if I will be elected).

But back to my new job at Google. In my view Google has brought us some really remarkable services that have not only shaped the way we use the internet, but how we live and work. I have joined them, because I think it is one of the most interesting workplaces, with a true 21st century organizational culture and colleagues who share my passion for the internet. In my experience Googlers have a genuine interest in working with all interested stakeholders to deliberate and collaboratively find ways to (legally and socially) frame the use of its disruptive innovations, which necessitate innovative policies.

Your Data lives forever on the internet

2009-09-26T13:36:00.002+02:00

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has been thinking and talking about the inability of the Net to forget for quite a while now (ArsTechnica, 2007, (german) re:publica'08: Keynote: Nützliches Vergessen).
Now his new book came out "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" (Princeton Press)

The balance between privacy and a social online life is not easy to define and implement in practice. Social networking and social media (a.k.a. sharing culture) has become second nature to many of us, while other avoid or even outright reject to "make their private life public".

Allow me to share two aspects, which seem essential to describe and understand (my) social media life:

Networked publics are to be differentiated from the classical terms 'audience' and 'public'. The information I share on internet is interesting and relevant only to a limited group of people, most of which I know personally. One shares information in different groups (publics). And rather than "presenting" to an audience, it is more like a conversation at a (public) party.

The other concept is self-fashioning (wikipedia). A term that was introduced "to describe the process of constructing one's identity and public persona according to a set of socially acceptable standards." Originally applied to how people at the court of Renaissance kings used to design and live their roles like in a theatre play. It remindes me of "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" (Erving Goffman).
Putting information online is a concious act upon which most of us reflect regularly. The image, the mirror of our lifes we share online is a "positive" is a persona perspective.

impressive statistics about social media use and impact

2009-08-17T00:57:00.002+02:00

A friend pointed me to a really nice youtube arguing for the importance of social media using a lot of interesting statisitics (from the US).

you can read all the stats (and links to their respective sources) on his blog.

openDNS - seems to be a decent way of content filtering

2009-07-12T02:51:00.003+02:00

last night i met someone from www.openDns.com (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS). As the name says, they offer a free/open Doman Name resolver and what i thought was quite interesting: they allow for community based (crowdsourced) filtering by categories.

I just signed up for their service to test it. Here is how it works and some reflections:

You select the network you want to have filtered by either choosing one of the categories or doing a custom category filter:

High - Protects against all adult-related sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters.
Moderate - Protects against all adult-related sites and illegal activity.
Low -Protects against pornography and phishing.
Minimal- Protects against phishing attacks.
None - Nothing blocked.
Custom - Choose the categories you want to block.

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in their category list they have some pretty strange themes to filter like "Educational Institutions", "search engines" as well as really broad ones like "news & media"

once you selected the "evil" content you dont want your children, roomates or workers to see all you have to do is active the filter and no-one in your IP/network will be able to access these pages. In fact you can define custom messages/pages to be displayed for the different blocked categories.

I am not 100% sure how the system works though. I played around with it and e.g. didn't see a reason why weeklygripe.co.uk or even more strange http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ was tagged (to be decided for blocking) as hate & discrimination. In fact i didn't think any of the sites in that category were reasonably tagged.

In their defense it has to be said that from the 5,399,836 sites submitted only 1,034,372 are aproved for blocking right now.

here are some relevant answers from their FAQs

What Do I Do If A Domain Is Tagged Incorrectly?

If an undecided domain is tagged incorrectly, vote No.

If a decided domain is tagged incorrectly, go to the domain detail page and click the "Flag for review" link.

Community moderators will review all reports.

Who are the moderators?

Moderators are a mix of OpenDNS employees and trusted community members. Moderators are identified throughout the community by a badge .

**And they invite applications to become a moderator from the community.

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so here are my 2 cents worth of thoughts about this approach

A) I think the way the decisions about blocking are made should be described clearer (who has the final say?) and a wikipedia like discussion page would also be helpful

B) having that said, i think it is a rather transparent, community driven and therefore commendable approach

C) it would add substantial value if there was a "suggested warning" category -- so say nazi propaganda gets flagged and a warning page is displayed when a user tries to enter, but if s/he descides s/he wants to see the page there is a link to enter

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Interestingly Prof. David Casacuberta and myself had envisioned a relatively similar service in our 2007 article "Do we need new rights in Cyberspace? Privacy and the Need for an Internet Bill of Rights ", presented at the GigaNet Symposium 2007 and published in Enrahonar 40/41

Allow me to quote:

"Lets imagine the institution managing the cyber address assignment includes meta-information regarding the content of the information and service provided. This would enable, for example, the classification of content to be only appropriate for mature users as well as the insertion of a informative page advising the user of the quality of the content. This upstream page would also allow for public discourse and collective assessment of content provided at the site. This way there is no enforcement of particular axiological dispositions in the form of restraining the freedom of expression but vulgar and extremist content would be classified and debated."

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Lastly i looked and it seems quite easy/possible to "hack" (=circumvent) the openDNS system. You can go to the sites IP directly, or you can use a proxy server.

Also it seems that openDNS finds pretty interesting (value added) services to complement their core functionality. For example you/the admin can define shortcuts to point to urls; so you can define that the word "mail" points to your webmail etc.

I would be interested what you think about their system. For me it is clear that openDNS is operating in a space that is very relevant to internet governance so i would like to invite them to join our efforts and discussions; and if possible come to the IGF so we can work with them "in real life".

Fotos:: Climbing the Chief:: Squamish - BC Canada

2009-07-06T02:06:00.003+02:00

just came back from a really nice climbing trip in canada. Here are some impressions:

Schooling is the best way to fight terror & under development

2009-07-02T05:42:00.003+02:00

What i stated in the title is no news, but it is always encouraging to see someone really making a difference and putting theory to practice: Enter Greg Mortenson

Greg is a mountaineer who "climbed Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram range.
While recovering from the climb in a village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.

From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As of 2009, Mortenson has established over 90 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 34,000 children, including 24,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before."

Chapeau - it is a reminder that we can all really make a difference if we choose to do so!

Greg has written a book about his venture - read about it @ www.threecupsoftea.com

Values in (technology) Design

2009-07-02T05:28:00.002+02:00

I had a very productive meeting with Eddan Katz from the Electronic Fountier Foundation last Thursday. At the end of our conversation we found out that we both have a passion philosophy (of technology) and he recommended me the work on values in (technology) design done at the Center for Science, Technology & Society at Santa Clara University and e.g. by Helen Nissenbaum (Professor @ New York University) as well as Batya Friedman (Professor @ University of Washington).

On my travels up to Vancouver/Squamish i had some time to review their work and i really really like it. It is a super interesting approach to getting Human Rights included into technology planing and policy development.

Please if you know of similar approaches or other peoples work in this area please comment or contact me directly. I am especially interested in cultural differences in technology use & design.
Thanks in advance!

Emotions ~> Values ~> Rights - An Inspiring TED talk

2009-06-20T23:06:00.002+02:00

Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web:

also the two projects sites are interesting

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Universe, which explores the notions of modern mythology and contemporary constellations.
http://universe.daylife.com/ -- background: http://universe.daylife.com/statement.html

this made me think of Neil Postman's "grand narratives" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Education)

In the second part of the book, Postman proposes 5 narratives as possible alternatives to the current ones:

"Spaceship Earth" (the notion of humans as stewards of the planet)
"The Fallen Angel" (a view of history and the advancement of knowledge as a series of errors and corrections)
"The American Experiment" (the story of America as a great experiment and as a center of continuous argument)
"The Laws of Diversity" (the view that difference contributes to increased vitality and excellence, and, ultimately, to a sense of unity)
"The Word Weavers/The World Makers" (the understanding that the world is created through language — through definitions, questions, and metaphors)

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basically i would suggest to frame our "human rights online" story as a complementary (sub)narrative of this kind. something like "one free and fair global (online) community" what do you think?

Google's Data Libertation Front

2009-06-10T22:42:00.004+02:00

I just learned that there is a Google code team working to enable users to extract their data (email, contacts, blog-posts, etc.) and move it between different services. That would put the users in the driving seat regarding data ownership and increase competition on data security and privacy.

Here are the Goals of the Data Liberation Front as stated:

Liberate data across web services.
Make that data portable across cooperating web services.
Allow users to own their own data which is submitted to the Cloud.
Do anything else to allow users to have fine-grained, easy access, and control of their data.

This is pretty much along the lines of what Eric Schmitt was saying back in 2006:

We build a very good targeting engine and a lot of business success has come from that. We run the company around the users–so as long as we are respecting the rights of end users and make sure we don’t do anything against their interest, we are fine,” Schmidt said. He noted that history has shown that the downfall of companies can be doing things for their own self interest. “We would never trap user data,” (ZDnet interview, bold added)

Really looking forward to learn more about this initiative!

You can follow them on twitter: http://twitter.com/dataliberation

Slack-Lining [watch out HIGHLY ADDICTIVE]

2009-06-10T06:45:00.005+02:00

it seemed 1000% impossible, but then i tried and it was instant fun; and then it became my new obsession: Slack-lining is a thoroughly fascinating, meditative sport of balancing on a super-easy-to-setup sort-of tight rope ;-)

I guess it's most easily explained by a little video we shot next to my current home in palo alto. I am still very very beginner but who cares it was fun from the very first second i tried ;-)

So believe it or not I have already summoned basically everybody who met me over the last couple of weeks onto the slack-line and so far (a) they all had fun and (b) everybody was able to balance for at least a couple of seconds after about a 30 min session. IT'S REALLY RELATIVELY EASY. I am not saying it's easy, but the learning curve is just amazing. The first time feels impossible, but then with every second you spend on the line your body learns.
And that is a very interesting feature, it's not cognitive or intellectual learning it is only your body that learns to balance.
It is one of the most pure feelings of Flow (see wikipedia entry for psychological state of flow) i have ever experienced in my life. It is really just amazing and certainly more exciting than participating in a beard competition ;-)

It is pretty amazing what people do on these slack-lines. Watch e.g. this guy doing a back-loop landed on the freakin line:

But the real professionals are without a doubt the circus artists:

Here is another pretty crazy video Aye just send me: Dean Potter BaseLining (basejumping of a high-line that your balance on)

Best Firefox Plugins

2009-06-08T02:37:00.006+02:00

i have quite a number of firefox plug-ins installed, but really the ones that adds most value are

Googlepedia This very simple plugin adds a wikipedia search to all your google searches and displays the wikipedia page to the right of your google results.

Search Cloudlet - which adds a tag-cloud displaying the most used words on top of your google searches. The clue is that you can either increase the importance of the terms in cloud or exclude them from the search.

And last but definitely not least i installed AdBlock Plus, which actually really eliminates a big percentage of the banners and ad-words on websites all over the net (e.g. spiegel.de and google)
http://adblockplus.org/en/

What are your most useful plugins?

Best of Amsterdam [Travel Recommendations]

2009-06-04T22:35:00.003+02:00

Last weekend I had the pleasure of meeting with Howard in Amsterdam and I would like to recommend you the places I really liked:

www.canvasopde7e.nl/ - has a really nice roof terrace overlooking Amsterdam, really good food and it turns into a club at night

P96.nl is one of the very few houseboat cafes

Trouw Club - really good music - mixed and bouncing crowd - i liked shakin' that boody again ;-)

Jordino.nl - has the best choclate/pralines i have had in my life - period

Saunadeco.nl - is a supernice art deco spa - i did not have the time to go but Howard went and really likes it

and last but not least we took a pretty nice boat ride on our private little party barge. Marcel runs the business and he can be reached under bootvaren@gmail.com or 0642302209 (he also has a really nice little houseboat for rent)

OK hope this works for you next time you are in amsterdam!

Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

2009-05-13T12:50:00.003+02:00

This is probably the most entertaining, enlightening and pragmatically useful analysis/explanation for how/why there are such fundamentally different moral mindsets.

I am off to read his 2007 Science article http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/

Steinbeis-Transfer-Institut Information Ethics ( STI-IE )

2009-04-10T13:40:00.003+02:00

Over Christmas I met one of my academic-philosophic role models, Rafael Capurro. It was a gray german winter day, and as always when i meet an established elder I admire, I was full of excitement and a bit nervous. I am always especially nervous, when i meet intellectual specialists (Prof. Capurro has created the philosophy of angeletics and is one of the top authorities in information ethics). I know my scholarship is genuine and holistic, but because it is highly transdisciplinary it must be eclectic, hence it many times lacks in-depth genealogy of the respective field in question, which makes me a bit un-easy because many academics tend to judge their conversation partners based on what they know about their field.

Anyways, the meeting was a true intellectual and friendly encounter. We talked and philosophized for six hours straight, and I believe both of us had the understanding that we'd meet many times, collaborate and deliberate about the themes that matter to us (ethics and values in cyberspace, info-ethics, philosophy of technology, etc.).

On my next visit, some weeks later, we helt a short interview for the Internet Rights and Principles coalition (listen to mp3) and we agreed to setup a explorative survey about 'values on the internet' (please contribute!) meant to produce qualitative data, which we plan to use as basis for more research.

During that visit I also learned that Prof. Capurro and Dr. Michael Nagenborn had just setup the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institut Information Ethics (STI-IE), and I felt really honored when they asked me to join their international advisory board.

About two weeks ago we had the first board-meeting (adjunct to a symposium on Prof. Capurro's angeletics) and as expected i was impressed by the high academic competence, as well as cultural and geographical diversity of my peers in this community.

"The STI-IE envisions an international as well as intercultural cooperation focusing on the ethical impacts of information technology on human practices and thinking, particularly on social, economic, political, scientific and cultural interaction.
The STI-IE is devoted to academic research as well as to practical projects."

So if you plan to work on a project within that scope or if you are looking for a partner to address relevant aspects in a project you work on, please feel free to contact either me or Prof. Capurro.

What educators (and other media/) can learn (or Scott McCloud rocks)

2009-04-10T13:21:00.003+02:00

when you understand experience as the basis for learning, and when you realized that new social multimedia networks are replacing old text-book / frontal teaching knowledge container transfer methods; then Scott McCloud's TED talk about how human storytelling evolved to the high art of comic books, should be inspiring regarding how we can/should/must design knowledge ecologies that take advantage of the this amazing n-dimensional interactive canvas that is cyberspace.