We’ve been having a really great conversation about the recent WikiLeaks incident on an informal Fletcherite group list, and I wanted to get some of the thoughts up that have been spiraling about, as well as refine my own thoughts.  For those I mention below, if they’ve got a blog, they’re well worth the follow so I suggest doing so!

My biggest issue with this situation from the get go was whether or not this leak was handled in a responsible and constructive manner.  I don’t think it was. I am in complete support of transparency and open government and all those high-aspiring concepts we work so hard for (especially in the digital activism field).

However, I feel there are effective ways to accomplish this, and ineffective ways. This, in my opinion, was an ineffective way.

In our conversation stream, the first question I brought up was something to the effect of…”This isn’t everyday information, and while I feel the government should be more transparent, I also wonder what level of expertise Julien has with that sort of information and *everything* (consequences, people involved, military structure, etc) included with it.  Did he actually do a “responsible” vetting process before leaking, to the point where military info could be appropriately consumed by the public, the regular Joe, in a constructive, non-agenda-based way?”

I always try to push the responsibility aspect of issues like this, as I think it works better than willy-nilly throwing around of information for sensationalist purposes….soap-boxers and dramatic whistle blowers don’t strike a chord with me very often in a situation like this, and it’s very clear that Assange and WikiLeaks had an agenda they were trying to push.  This means that it wasn’t about transparency anymore, it was about an agenda.  This is further supported by the fact that the original source of the information has essentially said that the leak was not for the purposes of broad-based transparency… it’s because he himself had become disillusioned with the war he was involved in, he didn’t like his position, and he wanted to “strike back.”  Even people close to the course felt compelled to bring the original leak to the government’s attention because of the way it was handled…

Carol Waters said it very well in our email discussions:

“I’ve been a fan and supporter of Wikileaks since its inception in 2007, and I still strongly believe that it occupies a critical space for information that needs to see the light of day.  But the biggest issue right now –embodied in the current case of Wikileaks– is the establishment of a code of conduct as leaks and transparency become more and more common over the next few decades.

I’m concerned with the direction WikiLeaks has taken recently — the site’s power resides in its stateless existence, but this is also its greatest weakness, for it chooses its own code of accountability.  And now that WikiLeaks has received so much attention as the new hip place to break dirty-dirt on various governments, organizations, corporations, individuals, and movements, this is an even greater issue.

When Assange released the video of the bombing a few months ago and titled it “Collateral Murder,” he lost me as a supporter.  Not because I disagreed with his sentiment that the acts in the video were murderous in nature, but because it showed that Assange was going overt with his political editorialization of the material on the site, and I couldn’t trust his judgment any more.  Not because he stamped his opinion and politics on the video in such a bald manner, but because it implied something more serious and dangerous in my eyes: selective leaks to serve political agendas, taking the culture of wiki away from the site. Selective political leaking has always been an issue, but I can no longer view WikiLeaks choices of leaked material as anything other than deeply politicized, and I find this a sad element in Assange’s recent decisions.

I agree that “official” journalists shouldn’t have the exclusive stamp of legitimacy in the realm of “fair and balanced” reporting, and I think transparency is good and preferred (albeit with some heavy caveats), but I think when Assange only chooses to leak documents that promote his political beliefs and agendas, he becomes a variant of a cleverly edited cable news show, be it Jon Stewart or Fox.  What’s disappointing is that whistleblowing and “leaks for good” still have a positive connotation, but Assange’s choices and contextualizations may change that, throwing all of it into a barrel labeled infowar or counterintelligence as we move into the future.”

If Assange/WikiLeaks had firstly done a more thorough job of sifting through the information – really curating it for the readers he was trying to reach – and been more sensitive of that information (it’s generally agreed that the amount of time that was spent on this process was not nearly enough…), I might be ok with it.

If he had also presented it in a way that was more compelling, and more constructive than a “hear me roar” I may have also listened.

Before I get carried away – which would be easy in this case – I’ll leave you with a few more comments from my colleagues, which really sum up the breadth of issues and takes on the matter.

Mark Belinsky, Founder and Co-Director of Digital Democracy and a new media strategy consultant with his company New Words, put his thoughts on his blog, well worth reading (”Notes on Wikileaks,” a few snippets of which I’ve place below):

“Julian’s point, which I agree with, is often that newspapers are failing because of bad journalism. How many stories has Wikileaks broken vs the Times. Or the Guardian. Combined. And as budget cuts increase, it allows for good journalism to emerge from Global Voices and other interesting new projects.

This disruptive media source is something that western governments are now struggling with. I’ve been speaking with members of EU Parliament about it and have even presented to US Congress on the subject. Pinning the internet to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as Secretary Clinton did in her “Internet Freedom” speech was a bold move, but not one entirely based in reality. There is a lack of general consensus as to the nature of these right, making it hard to implement policy after the fact of making a strong declaration. The US needs allies in this battle in sympathetic governments (and vice-versa since so many tools are built here), but there’s a lack of consistency with what’s happening across the pond….

….After all, even an internet based-system is not “stateless.” It is bound by servers and wiring, of which only a few people know. And only a few lawyers know the legal frame that allows it to exist through the cables and servers of a handful of friendly States. In this sense it continues to be “centralized” even if the system for leaking itself is distributed and protected.”

From Josh Goldstein, who writes over at In An African Minute:

“Reality is far too complex for the 20th century institutions we are burdened with. How can a government, or even a small number of new and old style journos that make up the media elite, possibly claim a monopoly on truth in a situation as complicated as Afghanistan. Wikileaks matters because it will provide the raw content for those of us who are conceiving of new ways to interpret the world…..

…Money quote from the New Yorker article Mark points us towards:

“He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks”—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare…..”

John Rahaghi, a former active duty military member and current reservist, offers his take on the situation:

“I think this was a clear demonstration of contempt for the government, among other things. Many people have noted the leak hasn’t revealed alot of new information, at least so far.  Then why do this? Were there war crimes exposed?  Possibly, (I’m sure we’ll find out).  Were there 90,000 of them?  What was the whistle blown on?  That we are in a war?  That its conduct has gone poorly?  That we have differences with allies?  Is this an indictment of government secrecy in any form, the fact we have a military at all, or some combination of other factors?  Maybe its an attack on the very structure of the government altogether.   A leak this massive doesn’t lend itself to any simple explanation, at least for me. In the military, you are supposed to take the oath and follow lawful orders.  Ostensibly, if you see something that you feel is egregiously wrong, illegal, unethical, immoral, or whatever the case is as you see it, you bring it to the attention of the chain of command, the JAG corps, or your civilian leadership.  Naturally, this can be difficult, but this wasn’t a leak of an incident or pattern of behavior, it was years of classified documents covering many areas and I personally don’t think this was a credible way to change policy, if that was even the intent.

While you can talk about government secrecy as a separate topic itself, I think its important to understand some things about classified documents and the negative effects that can result from their disclosure.  JFK conspiracies, UFOs, or specs for a new death ray aren’t the only topics under confidential and Top Secret. The majority of what is classified is not as super cool as people think and I would bet seems innocuous or even obvious to a casual observer. I’d wager many people would read these documents and think whats the big deal, I knew that/guessed that/assumed that. But anything about tactics, sources, methods, operational details, assessments, and mission planning, to name a few, are in fact valuable to an enemy even years afterward.  Airing the fact that we have doubts about allies only complicates matters further (the State Dept cables could be an even bigger bombshell), and even something widely known in the press can take on different meaning when its seen to be the official thought or assessment of the U.S. government.  These are broad strokes and I suppose someone may not care about any of it because of how they feel about the conflicts, conduct, and administration etc.”

Ben Mazzotta transferred his discussion over to his blog post, which is well worth reading.  A few of his thoughts to wet your appetite (definitely read the rest of his piece if you’re interested in the topic):

“Graph theory or no graph theory, Assange’s intent here is to wage war on the Obama Administration, by attacking the American public’s political will to continue the fight. He is specifically opposed to the policy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with disregard for the law he attempts to bring about a change to the Administration’s stated policy. Let’s grant him that the information is too cold to be acutely dangerous in a tactical sense, although that’s another argument worth having….

…Imagine if your small business was targeted, or if Google were targeted, or if Lockheed Martin were targeted by a similar disclosure of thousands of internal reports and communications not intended for public release. The damage to shareholders and management would be immense, partly because of the sheer irresponsibility of the leak per se, and then again from regulatory penalties, civil liability, and ruined corporate strategy. Malicious disclosure in business and government goes by the same name: espionage. In private life it can end marriages, friendships, and careers. The fact that the adversary here is The Man does not change the character of this leak….

…

This disclosure is a watershed event. It drives home the ease with which any individual can compromise the boundary between internal and public information. Actions of this type can undermine American strategy in the war. Political decisions about partnerships have tactical consequences, witness the importance of Turkish air bases in 2003.

In order to applaud Wikileaks for its role in this disclosure, I believe you have to hold two opinions. First, that the injustice of the Afghan war is so immense that citizens have a responsibility to bring about its immediate end, through civil disobedience or comparable means. Second, that Wikileaks is well qualified to assess the potential harm that might be inflicted as a result of the disclosures. You have to make up your own minds about the ethics of the Afghan war. On the second question, though, I invite you to think carefully through the wisdom of giving unaccountable, private organizations the power to disclose stolen, sensitive information based solely on their judgment that the benefit outweighs the harm. Can you reconcile the indiscriminate, voluminous, and quotidien nature of the leak with a story about plucky and righteous individuals bending unjust government to their will? To me, the leak betrays haste, youth and passion. I cannot buy into Assange’s vision of a world without confidentiality or privacy.

I don’t buy the Robin Hood argument here, and I don’t see this as a Tank Man moment.”

Chrissy Martin got into some of the implications on journalism (of which there are many in this case!)

“I think this raises interesting questions regarding the interaction between new media and traditional journalism.  Julian basically decided to do the newspapers the favor of offering them access first, a decision that I think was better for everyone involved because it allowed the documents to be vetted and analyzed before being released to the wider public.  But a decision that was not required, or enforceable, and may not happen the next time around.

This a case where regulation cannot keep up with technology, a situation that we are now seeing on an increasingly regular basis.  I am all for open government, transparency, citizen journalism.  However, I also think that the dissemination of information and how it is presented is a vital and often overlooked aspect of open initiatives.  Is it really a service to post a mass of information that may or not be true, as with intelligence reports that might have already been determined to be misinformation, but are not marked as such when posted on the internet?”

If you’re curious about some history of leaks in general, Mary Joyce put up a good post over at the MAP site (which she added to our discussion as well).

I’d love there to be further discussion in the comments below.  What do you think about the whole affair?  Who’s right?  Who’s wrong?  Who’s effected and how?

Wikileaks, Transparency, Responsibility, and Constructive Action is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

On Monday, Henry McCance wrote about why he moved his firm from Boston to Silicon Valley, and why Boston isn’t a good place to start a company.

Well, I found this to be crap, and sent it to a few locals in high places to see if they had a response.  One of them was Doug Banks, Publisher of Mass High Tech, who wrote a wonderful rabble-rouser of a post on the MHT blog (you should definitely read the whole thing, there are a lot of good retorts).

I wrote a comment on the post, and I wanted to repost it here and break it down.

“Completely awesome retort. Glad I sent you the article as you’ve done a great job in countering the many points.

To add a few myself, I think it’s a pretty weak claim to say that you shouldn’t do business in a place because it doesn’t have name brands. As far as I’m concerned, probably half of Silicon Valley went to Silicon Valley simply because name brands were there, not necessarily because it was a better place to do business…..”

As I’ll allude to later, a lot of what McCance talked about was simply “I gotta be where the cool kids are.”  The Googles, the Facebooks.  I might argue that many of those made it out to Silicon Valley for the same reasons.  Granted, they are actually the cool kids, but couldn’t it be that the reason is because Silicon Valley is a great place to start a business (it’d be silly to say otherwise) and not necessarily that Boston is a bad place.  And Doug has some really great points about the reality of this claim as well – there a lot of intricacies to the Silicon Valley vs Boston landscape that aren’t so simple as “SV/Cali is bigger and better than Boston…”  As an addition here (forgot this in the comments), California in general is actually a really tough place to do business in overall – employee insurance/taxes are atrocious, rent in at least San Fran and LA at least equals and in many cases well surpasses Boston and even NY….. I could go on, but will stop…..

“….I started right out of college in the start-up environment in Cambridge. To your point about MIT, in most cases, the first place MITers would go is right across the street to CIC (founded by MITers). It was like their second home. If they couldn’t get something thru the MIT tech tranfer office, they’d go next door, not across the country. And based on the success of CIC, I’d say it’s a pretty supportive environment to start a company in, and it just keeps growing.

From there, I also had my stint at places like Bose. In terms of encouraging innovation, it’s not as cutting edge as Google, but the stuff that goes on in that place, and the support Bose gives to research and “tinkering” is amazing (Dr Bose started the company based on the premise of trying to solve many of the worlds huge problems, including cold fusion. They have a car that can jump over a curb, which Dr Bose developed based solely on a physics graph that said to him “this is possible.”…”

In addition to Bose, Doug mentioned a LOAD of other rocking start-ups that started and stayed in the Boston area.  Are they Google? No (well, actually, as Doug mentioned Google’s second largest “center” is in Boston…).  But they’re powerful and successful companies (zipcar, Staples, Monster) and some of the newbies are poised to be big names (Carbonite, iRobot).

That reminds me, someone should do a tally of the companies that have also gotten sold for valuable price tags, because I would also consider those a success…..

“….I agree, there is some work to do, but there are plenty of organizations that not only realize this, but are pushing for progress. Orgs like Mass High Tech, Girls in Tech and Boston World Partnerships are actively pushing for more visibility on the benefits of doing business in Boston….”

And this is important.  Doug points out several gaps we have, and the fact that we know we have them.  This debate has gone on for so long, we would be silly not to be trying to fix every hole.  As Managing Director of Girls in Tech Boston, we had several conversations about this issue internally and externally.

We’re all proud of Boston and the supportive entrepreneurship community that’s here, and we darn well know we have a lot of substantial, meaningful things to offer to any business that wants to be here.

“…..McCance’s argument seemed to be based a lot on PR issues…. Silicon Valley has the brand, Boston doesn’t. That’s no reason to claim that Boston is a bad place to do business though. It needs a few improvements in that area, and a good PR campaign… that’s all.”

This is where I think the bulk of the problem lies.  It’s a PR issue.  McCance really doesn’t give any more substantial argument as far as I’m concerned.  Doug says, “Even [he] agrees there’s “no compelling reason” why Silicon Valley should get all the credit for consumer e-commerce companies. So if it’s a matter of perception, then what should we be doing to change that perception?”

And THAT’s the question we should all be answering.  It’s not about whether Boston is a good place to have a company.  It is.  But what can we all do to change peoples’ views on it?

We’ve got to develop a solid PR strategy, and the organizations I listed above along with plenty of others can get the job done.  There’s no point in just letting this argument be an argument, a we’re-better-than-you-are discussion, because that’s not constructive.

Doug called for solutions and progressive movements forward, and I’m calling for them as well.

I’m also calling for collaboration and partnerships to get the job done. We’ve got the people, we’ve got the brainpower, and we’ve got an awesome city, with awesome people in it.

So let’s do it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Greylock Partners on Why You Shouldn’t Start a Company in… Boston (fastcompany.com)
• Thought Leadership moves to Silicon Valley from Boston (cambridgecluster.com)
• Innovation Events: a Tale of Two Coasts (vocecommunications.com)

Doing Business in Boston: Why it’s good and why we should move on is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

I listened to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson’s FIR podcast (#555, 12 July…yes, I’m a little behind on podcast listening) on my way to work today, and they had a conversation about something I’ve written about before (see #7), but only briefly. It’s time to open up the conversation more, because I really do think it’s important to talk about as social media users.

For the marketers out there, notice I said AS USERS. That means forget about the marketing components for a second (tough, I know).

Shel and Neville were talking about a case on England where a man had committed murder and was on the run. The police started using social media as part of their hunt. The public started to follow alerts etc, and then….well…. somewhere along the line the public got out of hand. They created fan pages for the hunted man. One even uploaded a photo of the man minutes before he shot himself with a gun to himself.

Why am I telling you this story? Aside from the obvious dramatization and frankly disgusting nature of this, one point came out that’s applicable in a lot of our lives, manhunt or not.

Sometimes (and for some, it’s a lot of the time) users move too quickly, without thinking about the consequences of their actions.

There are several mechanisms at work here that make it easy to be irresponsible as users:

Speed
Platforms have made it really easy to respond, make comments, like or dislike.  If you can start the ball rolling in a quick 140-character rant – which takes about 10 seconds – there’s not a whole lot of time to think about it if you don’t force yourself to do so.

Anonymity
People will make statements – good or bad – that they might not normally make if they can do so with little more than a first name or a Twitter handle.  At the very least, even if you’re identifiable, there’s something to be said about initiating a conversation or making a case for something online versus doing so face-to-face.  It’s amazing what standing in front of someone will do to your diplomacy….

Hype
The new “cool” thing to do as a consumer/user is to bash brands in public when they’ve wronged you, or hunt them down to vent to them.  While there is absolutely some degree of accountability on the part of brands, wouldn’t you say it’s a little much to sign up for a Twitter account just to find your cell phone company…and cable company…and [insert other company here]…. to try and see if you can get money off your bill by complaining about them because you heard someone got answered by @ComcastCares?  Afterall, we deserve a voice too, right?

I argue… well, yes, but not in a manner that cuts them out of the first round of discussions and is just used to kick them while they’re down. I try to treat online conversations/statements/comments/debates as if I were talking to a family member or a coworker.  I’m not going to organize a group of my coworkers to hammer another coworker because he wore a shirt that was red and it reminded me of getting my heart broken 10 years ago (that’s not true, by the way, you can wear red around me).

One prime example of this is the Motrin campaign from last year. Ignoring the poor response on the part of Motrin (yes, it could have been better), let’s look at the first part of this scenario: the mommy bloggers.

I refrained from saying this while it was happening, but I found the collective actions of the mommy bloggers to be repulsive, irresponsible, and disrespectful. It got out of hand, too quickly, with no thought to what all of these quick, reactive responses would snowball into.

How can we as users demand brands to listen to us, to respond nicely in 2 second flat, to have conversations, to not push their messages on us, without giving them the same in return? How is it that a few angry moms let their message get out of control to the point where a company is shelling out I don’t even know how many dollars to fix a PR problem concerning a video that just wasn’t as offensive as it was getting trashed for? A few disgruntled people started a quick downward spiral into the kinds of depths that no company likes. Was it deserved?  I sure don’t think so.

Then they get bashed for having a slow PR response to boot.  As I said, they could have done a lot of things differently and better, but companies are still learning.  A mark of a good company isn’t always whether they mess up or not, but whether they learn from their mistakes. I say we ought to cut them a little slack in a space (social media marketing) that’s still pretty new to many folks.

More more urgently, I call for us as users to think before reacting so hastily and reactively. We owe the brands we’re “now having conversations with” an ear that’s listening. They should listen when were upset, yes, and we should pause and let them address us before it gets to heated battle. Last time I was in angry at someone, I knew without thinking that screaming at the top of my lungs was going to get us nowhere, and fast.

What we ask from our brands, what we’ve demanded, we owe them right back or these relationships we speak so highly of aren’t going to work.

And the first way we can do that is to stop and think about what we’re saying and how we’re using social media. So ask yourself….am I being responsible?

Hasty Use of Social Media and Responsibilities as Users is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

TechCrunch had a good post today on how there needs to be more room for opinion in news reporting (”We Need More Opinions in News, Not Less,” TechCrunch, 8 July 2010).  A few thoughts.

Other Publications are Already Doing It

It might be good to take a cue from publications like the Economist.  I quite appreciate when they put opinion into their reporting. They usually identify their stance within the first two paragraphs – “It’s the opinion of this magazine that…..” – and then they continue reporting.

Get the Juices Flowing for a Better World View

When I get hit with opinion, I welcome it.  It offers the reader an immediate starting point and helps them identify where the reporter is coming from. All the complaints about the difficulty for the lay reader of filtering news content, and such and such a publication or newscast being biased. This is actually a perfect way to give the reader their own filter before they start reading.  “Ok, I’m reading something from an author who has this lens on.  Therefore, what I hear may be affected by that.”

In my opinion, this opens the door for much more robust thought processes and discussions on the events and issues happening around us.

Note: This may not be entirely fair or realistic, as I’m trained to do the above, and many people haven’t had that opportunity and may not know to apply this filtering process.  All the more reason to be blatant about where the opinion is, and then offering them opportunity to think further about it in their mind.

Be a Good Professor

I’ve been through my fair share of education – one undergraduate and two graduate programs – and I think the best professors I’ve had have been those that can clearly and comfortably state “what side” they’re on, get the facts out, and encourage us to think further – in whatever direction – about what we’re learning.  They’ve pushed their students past the point of consumption, memorization etc, and really gotten them analyzing, having meaningful conversation and getting to the meat of things, while still being able to convey “just the facts.”  I don’t think they could have accomplished all of that if they kept all opinion out, both theirs and ours.  They allowed room for opinion in a forum that was meant to inform people about what’s happening around them, and the experience and takeaways were much more valuable because they did that.

Keep Op-Ed and Editorials Where They Are

Should journalism turn into opinion writing? No, it shouldn’t.  Opinion pieces – which usually contain a smaller number of hand-picked facts amidst the opinion – should stay opinion pieces.  If you muddle opinion too much, you start losing the facts.

But there should be room for opinion.  It forces thinking and opens viewpoints.  So bring it.

Yes, opinion should be part of journalism and news reporting is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

You can find Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change on Amazon now.  My chapter is on the Digital Divide.

From Amazon:

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product Description

The media have recently been abuzz with cases of citizens around the world using digital technologies to push for social and political change from the use of Twitter to amplify protests in Iran and Moldova to the thousands of American nonprofits creating Facebook accounts in the hopes of luring supporters. These stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, but the underlying mechanics of this practice of digital activism are little understood. This new field, its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in Digital Activism Decoded. Topics include: how to think about digital activism: the digital activism environment: infrastructure, social, political, and economic factors: digital activism practices: two research perspectives and the danger of destructive activism: digital activism s value: balancing optimism and pessimism: building the future of digital activism.

Digital Activism Decoded is Officially out on Amazon is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

Being a marketer, I often times find myself in situations where I sympathize with brands when they’re in tough marketing situations.

On the flip side, being a marketer sometimes makes me really intolerant of things like poor customer service, and my level of brand disgust is….perhaps…. more than it would be if I were just a regular ‘ole customer (not that I’m necessarily anything more than a regular ‘ole customer, but the viewpoint adds something to your experience).

Case in point: A completely unmoving, unreasonable and unsympathetic DMV.  I know I know, I’d be shocked if any one of you haven’t had a ridiculously annoying interaction with the DMV.

I just don’t get why there’s such a consistent disregard for even one element of customer service.  Things like, firstly, rationality.  From there, what about sensitivity, flexibility, even just a really sweet “Sorry honey, I know it stinks, but there’s nothing we can do. It would make my day if I could tell you otherwise.  Here are some tips for the future so this doesn’t happen again…. at the very least, I’ll see what I can do about the late fee on there….”

Nope, none of that.

So, after a tiring phone call with a DMV personnel, concerning my car which hadn’t entered the city of Medford all year and had been registered and insured in NY since last December and was now receiving a Medford city excise for plates that had been cancelled on January 3rd – none of which I understood because the whole thing is completely unreasonable – I attached the following letter to my payment.  I doubt they’ll read it, but it was a plea to just think about the job they’re doing….

15 June 2010

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m unclear as to why I need to pay this excise tax (including the incredible late fees!), even after speaking with someone in your office.

My car has been registered in New York State (where I now live) since December of 2009, and has been in the state of Massachusetts only a hand full of times since then for one day periods at a time  (with NYS plates on it).  Furthermore, as of November 2009, I’m no longer a resident of Medford, as I sold my condo and moved to New York.

Despite trying to get a logical explanation from someone concerning this issue, after additionally explaining that I hadn’t  received the initial request even remotely on time to my new address (thus, I was not able to pay it or deal with it), you were unwilling to offer even a single dollar off this amount (which simply makes no SENSE to me!).

At this point, I’ve been told I need to just pay up.  I expect nothing in return from your office, but I would like to suggest that just because you’re a government office, doesn’t mean you need to live up to the already poor reputation that most government offices are subject to in terms of customer service.  You should be able to offer some sort of leniency in issues that just don’t make ANY logical or rational sense (which your office personnel readily admitted to).

Unfortunately, when you don’t, you leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people that you’re supposed to be affecting positively.

I spent many years in Medford, and it really stinks that my last impression of the Medford brand is how insensitive the government bureaucracy was in this case.  It might do you well to start thinking like a marketer and realize that your number one audience is your citizens.  While you need them to follow a certain set of rules and guidelines, and they should be expected to give you something in return, you also need them to appreciate you and feel as if you respect them and are working for them. The excessive nature of your “punishment” does NOT do that.

So, I’ve enclosed my cheque for $53.75 for a car that is no longer in your town, plus a total of $32.00 in unnecessary “warrant,” “demand,” and “warrant notice” fees (have fun at your summer BBQ at my expense, since I can’t understand where else these fees would go).  Oh, I forgot the $0.99 final slap in the face for “interest.”

Sincerely,

Kate Brodock

Letter to the City of Medford: Why can’t you think about customer service more? is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

This is a guest post by Joshua Goldstein, an incoming technology policy PhD candidate at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, where he will be working with the Center for Information Technology Policy.  He’s also a former Fletcher classmate of mine and working on some really neat stuff (you can find his full bio here). Make sure to follow him on Twitter.  The original post can be found on his blog, In an African Minute.

Two symbols of this era of open data are President Obama’s Open Governance Initiative, a directive that has led agencies to post their results online and open up data sets, and Ushahidi, a tool for crowdsourcing crisis information. While these tools are bringing openness to governance and crisis response respectively, I believe we have yet to find a good answer to the question: what does open data means for the long-term social and economic development of poor and marginalized communities?

I came to Nairobi on a hunch. The hunch was that a small digital mapping experiment taking place in the Kibera slum would matter deeply, both for Kiberans who want to improve their community, and for practitioners keen to use technology to bring the voiceless into a conversation about how resources are allocated on their behalf.

So far I haven’t been disappointed. Map Kibera, an effort to create the first publicly available map of Kibera, is the brainchild of Mikel Maron, a technologist and Open Street Map founder, and Erica Hagen, a new media and development expert, and is driven by a group of 13 intrepid mappers from the Kibera community. In partnership with SODNET (an incredible local technology for social change group), Phase I was the creation of the initial map layer on Open Street Map (see Mikel’s recent presentation at Where 2.0). Phase II, with the generous support of UNICEF, will focus on making the map useful for even the most marginalized groups, particularly young girls and young women, within the Kibera community.

What we have in mind is quite simple: add massive amounts of data to the map around 3 categories (health services, public safety/vulnerability and informal education) then experiment with ways to increase awareness and the ability to advocate for better service provision. The resulting toolbox, which will involve no tech (drawing on printed maps), and tech (SMS reporting, Ushahidi and new media creation) will help us collectively answer questions about how open data itself, and the narration of such data through citizen media and face-to-face conversations, can help even the most marginalized transform their communities.

Guest Post: What Open Data Means to Marginalized Communities – Joshua Goldstein is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change is now available for download on the Meta-Activism Project website!

The hard copy will be available June 30th at  Amazon.com (You can pre-order it if you’d like to).

Be sure to also check our blog, as we have been and will continue to be posting chapter excerpts.

Table of Contents

Preface….. by Mary Joyce
Introduction: How to Think About Digital Activism….. by Mary Joyce

Part 1: Contexts: The Digital Activism Environment
Infrastructure: Its Transformations and Effect on Digital Activism….. by Trebor Scholz
Applications: Picking the Right One in a Transient World….. by Dan Schultz and Andreas Jungherr
Devices: The Power of Mobile Phones….. by Brannon Cullum
Economic and Social Factors: The Digital (Activism) Divide….. by Katharine Brodock
Political Factors: Digital Activism in Closed and Open Societies….. by Tom Glaisyer

Part 2: Practices: Digital Actions in the Aggregate
Activism Transforms Digital: The Social Movement Perspective….. by Anastasia Kavada
Digital Transforms Activism: The Web Ecology Perspective….. by Tim Hwang
Destructive Activism: The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Tactics….. by Steven Murdoch

Part 3: Effects: What Is Digital Activism’s Value?
Measuring the Success of Digital Campaigns….. by Dave Karpf
The New Casualties: Prisons and Persecution….. by Simon Columbus
Digital Politics as Usual….. by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
The Future of Advocacy in a Networked Age….. by Sem Devillart and Brian Waniewski

Conclusion: Building the Future of Digital Activism….. by Mary Joyce
Glossary….. by Talia Whyte and Mary Joyce
About the Authors

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Digital Activism Decoded: Book available for download! is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

Yesterday we posted an excerpt of the chapter I wrote for our new book on MAP, and below is an excerpt (See here for original post).

NOTE: On June 1st we’ll be posting a free downloadable copy of our new book Digital Activism Decoded and on July 1st the paper version will go on sale at Amazon.com. For the next two months we’ll be posting brief excerpts from all the chapters in the book. To learn more, visit our book page.

This chapter is entitled “Economic and Social Factors: The Digital (Activism) Divide”. The chapter describes how contextual factors beyond digital infrastructure can affect digital activism outcomes.

…Research indicates that economic differences limit not only access to technology but also the likelihood of an individual to take part in political activism. The 2009 Digital Activism Survey conducted by DigiActive, an organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digital technology, found that digital activists, particularly in developing countries, are more likely than the population at large to be paying a monthly fee for home Internet access, to be able to afford a high-speed connection, and to work in a white-collar job with access to the Internet in the workplace.

In short, digital activists are likely to be prosperous, with their economic resources offering them a significant digital advantage. These initial findings indicate that the digital divide strongly influences digital activism because it tends to limit participation to the economic elite.

This research was corroborated by a report of the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Research Center. A September 2009 Pew report—Civic Engagement Online: Politics as Usual, by Aaron Smith—stated that “whether they take place on the Internet or off, traditional political activities remain the domain of those with high levels of income and education.” Smith continues, “Contrary to the hopes of some advocates, the Internet is not changing the socio-economic character of civic engagement in the United States. Just as in offline civic life, the well-to-do and well-educated are more likely than those less well off to participate in online political activities.”

The digital divide is also made wider by the fact that not only do lower-income populations have less access to digital technologies, they sometimes must pay more for them. For example, the 2007 ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society report stated that the cost of broadband as a percentage of the average monthly per capita wage was around 2 percent in high-income countries, whereas broadband costs in low-income countries were more than 900 percent of the average monthly per capita wage. Higher income populations are not only likely to receive the higher-quality products of modern communications technology and in greater supply, they often are able to purchase them at significantly lower relative cost.

Combined with the research on digital activism participants from DigiActive and the Pew Research Center, these findings indicate that digital technology often mirrors rather than undermines preexisting divides in economic resources. Digital technology provides new communication capacities, but it is people of higher economic capabilities who are best able to take advantage of them….

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Chapter Excerpt: How Digital Activism Empowers Existing Elites is a post from: Today and Tomorrow

In a post a few weeks ago, Mary started us down the path of “Ok, all this chatter about digital this and activism that.  What constitutes digital activism anyway?”  Obviously we’ve got to start thinking about this, or else MAP has no reason to exist, so let’s keep at it.  Mary said, very rightly so:

“For digital activism to be a new field, the addition of digital technology to activism practice must be a change of kind not just degree.”

Are we creating a different type of activism is the question we have in front of us.

I want to push this discussion further, because I think there’s some good stuff nestled in this concept of degree vs kind.

If we think about it simply, most uses of digital technologies are amplifying existing processes:

• I can now reach 1000 people on Twitter with my 140 characters rather than the 50 I had on my email list serve.
• Friends of friends on Facebook can now see my posting, and can pass it along with the click of a mouse, rather than just my friends viewing something static.
• Geomapping technologies can now put me on my street, rather than in my by neighborhood.

And the examples go on.  But I want to argue that, in fact, by increasing the degree of many of these actions, a new kind is often being created.

For the full post – and my really awesome napkins drawings – head over to the MAP Blog.

MAP Post: Seriously, is Digital Activism New, or it just the Same Old on Steroids? is a post from: Today and Tomorrow