I’m honored to have been asked to participate in a hearing being held by the US Helsinki Commission this Thursday, in Washington, D.C. While my enthusiasm for the power and potential of new media will be evident, I hope to bring a metered tone to this discussion, laying out a number of issues, including the risks to activists utilizing these tools, the role of corporations in surveillance, as well as issues with the U.S. Government’s own position towards the use of these tools for domestic dissent…
“Twitter against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian Regimes”
Thursday, October 22, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
1539 Longworth House Office Building
This briefing will consider the ways in which new media and Internet communication technologies affect the balance of power between human rights activists and authoritarian governments. Panelists will focus on new media’s role in protests and elections, the ways in which it empowers civil society activists, and the darker side: how dictators use new technology to control and repress their citizens.
The following panelists are scheduled to speak:
• Daniel Calingaert, Deputy Director of Programs, Freedom House
• Nathan Freitas, Adjunct Professor, New York University Interactive Telecom Program;
developer of groundbreaking technology for protests
• Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University’s E.A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service; contributing editor, Foreign Policy
• Chris Spence, Chief Technology Officer, National Democratic Institute
Catch up on previous weeks’ readings and homework that you haven’t turned in yet
Continue to develop and plan your cause with a target on being able to concisely explain it for your midterm and the next Speed Geek!
Review the content presented in class and decide on the approach (server vs client or mixed) and the tools which you will utilize.
All: develop the user stories and basic mockups of your service – “iterate with pencil” before moving into fancier renderings
Server Developers: setup an IMified account and review the developer documentation
Client Developers: setup the Android SDK, then download and build the gReporter source code
Another exciting week at ITP. This week the classes was visited by Evan Henshaw-Plath aka Rabble, who both spoke of his personal experiences with mobile technology and activism, and also provided critical feedback to students on their projects during our first Speed Geek.
The second half of the class focused on preparing for the development of actual mobile applications and services. While students are free to choose any software or hardware approach they want, the two platforms that will be covered in class are IMified and Google Android.
Here is the audio of the second hour of class as I walk through the links and slide presentations embedded below:
This first presentation provides an overview on approaching the development of mobile applications considering all of the unique factors of using a small, portable device on the go:
The second presentation uses the gReporter application to discuss the development of location and media-capture applications on the Google Android platform.
Finally, for beginning to design and mockup applications, here’s a list of solutions for the iPhone (thanks to TechJini blog) that can also apply to Android:
Here’s the audio from the first hour of class, listen to this while reviewing the text below:
Class begin with a discussion on the use of strategy from the school of non-violent direct action, as means for planning and designing mobile applications for social activism. In other words, approach mobile application design from a typical “product” or “consumer” perspective or even a thoughtful usability/design approach, may not make sense when it comes to trying to implement something to create actual change in society.
In the case of social activism, you must developer a strategy to affect an existing regime. A regime can represent a corporation, government, a specific issue, social prejudice, or any existing state of mind or structure in society that can be targeted for change. A long term strategy is necessary to keep focus on the goal.
Opportunities present themselves over time through the effort to affect change on an issue. They can be expected or unexpected. Your effort should be positioned to take advantage of them as they emerge.
Tactics are short term actions implemented to take advantage of opportunities. They can be of varying length and intensity, but must be aligned with your overall strategy. Multiple tactics can be used at once.
You must also consider deeply the structure of the existing regime you are targeting. Here is a typical governmental regime and the “Pillars of Support” which actually make a government function.
However, this same concept could be applied to more mundane campaigns such as increasing efficiency in shopping or promoting the purchase of only pasture-raised eggs at the Park Slope Food Coop:
These timeless approaches to campaigns, drawing from the likes of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” as much as from the non-violent victories of Gandhi and Mandela, are useful and powerful constructs within which any campaign must be processed. More specifically, for mobile application design, it is critical that you consider a non-corporate, non-consumer perspective as part of your design process, and ideally throughout your campaigns efforts.
Many thanks to The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for their great instruction, content and overall efforts in this area of work and practice. Here are some related readings on these concepts and more:
Week 4 features two excellent guest speakers. The first, Ben Stein, presented a US-oriented perspective through the work of his organization, Mobile Commons, and the many mobile advocacy campaigns they’ve implemented, including fighting for their own right to broadcast Pro-Choice SMS messages on the Verizon Wireless network. The second speaker, Tonyo Cruz, spoke to us in the midst of the Philippines cleanup from a large storm and flooding in which mobile phones were used to coordinate rescue and raise money. Tonyo’s perspective on the use of mobile in a more social, distributed, “peer to peer” manner, was an excellent contrast to the more centralized broadcast and web-based models that Ben described in the US.
Ben Stein – MobileCommons – http://www.mobilecommons.com
Mobile Commons’ customers are some of the leading cause-related organizations in the world. They use our web-based application to create mobile programs based around text messaging, voice calls, and web-based interactive components. With those tools, they raise money, build their lists, add interactivity to live events, get more support from the web, and make it easier for their ideas to spread.
Our second guest of the evening was Tonyo Cruz of TXTPower– Mobileactivist, writer and journalist Philippines – Since 2001, Tonyo has helped convene TXTPower, the leading mobile activist group in the Philippines and helped initiate its many high profile campaigns.
Invent your own spoken, typed or visual image code, along with a reason for its use, that could be communicated through a mobile device using texting, image sharing, bluetooth or any other aspect of the mobile device. Document this code, post it to your blog, and share a sample of it via 41411/ITP2800, on Twitter #itp2800 or another mobile medium of your choice.
Come up with a list of at least three real world organizations, communities or specific people that will benefit or may want to collaborate with you on your proposed cause. IDENTIFY a contact point within at least one of these groups and call or email them to begin a conversation about your idea. If they don’t respond immediately that is fine, but you must take the first step in communicating what you plan to do
Here’s what we talked about in class:
I announced my work in porting the Tor Project to Android. Tor is an “onion router” web proxy that allows web surfers in places like Iran and China get free, anonymous access to the web. Having secure, anonymous browsing that can route around censorship is a critical component of my Guardian secure smartphone project.
The story of Alan Turing and his impact on computing came up briefly and I just wanted to make sure everyone knew the amazing yet tragic story of his life. Just recently, an online, crowd-sourced petition effort pressured the British Government to issue a formal apology for causing his suicide, and countless others who were persecuted for their sexuality.
At some point in class, I drew a diagram that I quite enjoyed sharing, and will attempt to recreate here, since I unfortunately didn’t get a photo or capture it using the smart board. The drawing below is an attempt to demonstrate the various layers of network communication layers, both the physical medium and the amount of government/state and corporate control at each layer. Ultimately, the best opportunities for using networks with less control lie at the LAN layer and the Global layer…. though there are opportunities and technologies at all layers.
I also realized that I hadn’t given the class a background on myself, and decided to share a talk I had recently given at Parsons on my life and work. The presentation tells my story through the various computing hardware and devices I’ve owned, used, hacked and programmed in my life. Notice that the devices get smaller, more powerful and more connected over time. The slides are posted below, and then a video from the talk I gave at Parsons is below that.
Finally, we reviewed week 2 homework, specifically “mobile videos shot under duress” and the first draft of proposals for the cause they’d like to work on and the technology they plan to use.
Take pictures or video using a camera phone or Flip-style device of something controversial or in a place where you might be seen as a threat to the subject of the video or photo. The goal is to feel/experience the state of using mobile technology under duress. Post videos to a public website and share the link via textmarks ITP2800 or twitter #itp2800
Write a one page proposal for developing a mobile technology solution for a specific cause
The slides begin with a review of a breakdown of the class title “Social Activism using Mobile Technology” that the class went through in week one. Out of that, I came up with some slightly silly, but potentially introspective, alternate titles for the course:
Some brainstorming on the service value grid I shared…. the class brought up the idea that synchronous request/response service might provide a different experience than asynchronous messaging application. Larger questions about how and when to make value judgements about mobile services which interrupt, distract and complicate our lives was also brought up.
The goal was to consider how to create a memorable tag that is also short. Positive feedback was given on tags that were intriguing, calling the user to take action to find out more. Some of the tags were actually put into use, gaining hundreds of re-tweets in just a few weeks. Another student created posters with mobile barcode images to promote their tag.
The overall topic of this week was “Simplicity is Powerful”, and so we did a whiteboard analysis of the “Flip cam”, cheap video cameras that have proliferated the market, and their usefulness in the service of social activism:
– Cheap < $100 in some cases
- Durable
- Great battery life (electricity is a common foe)
- Push-button "fisher price"
- double as hard drive storage
- Unambiguous about what it is far
- Ambiguous in that it might look like a cellphone or iPod
- low profile
- has a screen for display
- has a video output jack
- has a tripod connector (gorilla grip clamps work too!)
- Can't remove storage (this is a plus and minus)
- Easy to carry
- quick to use, boot, load, very responsive UI
- standard, global usability, globally available
- standards based plugs, video (usb, rca 1/8 inch)
While it is easy to dream up complex, James Bond-esque technology solutions, often it is the more MacGuyver-esque "off the shelf" approach of combining cheap, easy to use things, that can make a greater impact.
Our first guest speakers for the semester were Mark Belinksy and Emily Jacobi from Digital Democracy. They visited the class through a live Skype video connection, and presented the slides below, discussing their recent visit to Burma (Myanmar) and work in Thailand refugee camps, sharing information on digital communication and social media tools.
Unfortunately, the video capture of the event failed, but you can view clips from a previous event with Mark and Emily – “Subversive Tech and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy”, a talk held in Brooklyn, NY in June 2009, involved a presentation by Digital Democracy on the use of technology inside and along Burma’s borders, footage from the Sept 2007 Saffron Revolution, where mobile phones and the internet allowed protesters to coordinate and publicize the largest protests seen in a generation, and a Q&A with “Stanley”, a Burmese computer programmer and chairperson of the All Burma IT Students Union.
