Library

Perhaps one of the finest books written on the history of the Internet. This book is the first to cover the entire history of the Net – from the earliest glimmerings of the ideas embodied in it, to the exposition of the World Wide Web in the 1990′s. It is also an empassioned attempt to celebrate the engineers and scientists who created the Internet and to explain the values and ideas that drove them. Its heroes are the people who laid the foundations of the post-modern-world – from visionaries like Norbert Wiener and Vannevar Bush – to engineers like Larry Roberts and Tim Berners-Lee

“Image advertising is the junk mail of the 21st Century” says John Grant. And I am inclined to agree.

Wikipedia

The original Al Jazeera channel was started in 1996 with a US$150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa.

In April 1996, the BBC World Service‘s Saudi-co-owned Arabic language TV station, faced with censorship demands by the Saudi Arabian
government, shut down after two years of operation. Many former BBC
World Service staff members joined Al Jazeera, which at the time was
not yet on air. The channel began broadcasting in late 1996.^[3]

Al Jazeera’s availability (via satellite) throughout the Middle East
changed the television landscape of the region. Prior to the arrival of
Al Jazeera, many Middle Eastern citizens were unable to watch TV
channels other than state-censored national TV stations. Al Jazeera
introduced a level of freedom of speech
on TV that was previously unheard of in many of these countries. Al
Jazeera presented controversial views regarding the governments of many
Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar;
it also presented controversial views about Syria’s relationship with
Lebanon, and the Egyptian judiciary. Critics accused Al Jazeera of
sensationalism in order to increase its audience share. Al Jazeera’s
broadcasts have sometimes resulted in drastic action: For example, on 27 January 1999, Al Jazeera had critics of the Algerian government on during their live program El-Itidjah el-Mouakass
(=”The Opposite Direction”). The Algerian government cut the
electricity supply to at least large parts of the capital Algiers (and
allegedly to large parts of the country), to prevent the program from
getting seen.^[4][5][6] At that time, Al Jazeera was not yet generally known in the Western world, but where it was known, the opinion about it was often favourable^[7] and Al Jazeera claimed to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. Al Jazeera’s well presented coverage of the Lebanese Civil War
in 2000-2001 gave its viewer ratings a boost throughout the region.
However, it wasn’t until late 2001 that Al Jazeera achieved worldwide
recognition, when it broadcast video statements by al-Qaeda leaders.^[8]

Every so often a book comes along which places a finger on the pulse of the times. In 2000, Naomi Klein unloaded her record of corporate manipulation, No Logo, on an unsuspecting readership, raising consciousness in the process. But how was her audience to act on this epiphany in the midst of a complex life? The world keeps spinning and getting off isn’t an option. Technology and the information age may have betrayed us in so many ways, but they have also delivered freedoms which we wouldn’t do without. Nevertheless, there is a growing sense that something is missing, and this is where radical economist David Boyle enters the debate.

Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life presents the increasing rejection of spin and manipulation by New Realists. These “shock troops” (albeit armoured in natural fibres and brandishing organic vegetables) are fighting back against an artificial world, in pursuit of a human connection. Aware that the more we gain in efficiency the more we lose in what is felt as reality, people are turning to local brands, reading groups, slow food, poetry readings and vintage clothing for an authentic experience. By Pip Cummings

A paradox arose in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Hard times forced many Americans to struggle to find and keep work, to feed their families, and to hold on to their homes or pay their rent. Yet increasingly they were being viewed by policymakers—and were thinking of themselves—as consumers, as purchasers of goods in the marketplace. Even as many people were barely making ends meet in the thirties, two images of the consumer came to prevail and, in fact, competed for dominance. On the one hand, what I will call citizen consumers were regarded as responsible for safeguarding the general good of the nation, in particular for prodding government to protect the rights, safety, and fair treatment of individual consumers in the private marketplace. On the other hand, purchaser consumers were viewed as contributing to thelarger society more by exercising purchasing power than through asserting themselves politically.

This book brings teachers a bold vision and on-the-ground Monday morning practicality. It will move educators to think differently about technology’s potential for strengthening students’ critical thinking, writing, reflection, and interactive learning. Will Richardson demystifies words like “blog,” “wiki,” and “aggregator” making classroom technology an easily accessible component of classroom research, writing, and learning.

This guide demonstrates how Web tools can generate exciting new learning formats, and explains how to apply these tools in the classroom to engage all students in a new world of synchronous information feeds and interactive learning. With detailed, simple explanations, definitions and how-tos, critical information on Internet safety, and helpful links, this exciting book opens an immense toolbox, with specific teaching applications for

1. Web logs, the most widely adopted tool of the read/write Web
2. Wikis, a collaborative Webspace for sharing published content
3. Rich Site Summary (RSS), feeding specific content into the classroom
4. Aggregators, collecting content generated via the RSS feed
5. Social bookmarking, archiving specific Web addresses
6. Online photo galleries

Links to school bloggers

Will Richardson blog

We live in an age of cultural disorder, where to point a finger at the absurdities of radical Islam is to be branded a racist, a fascist or a bigot. This timely and important book would probably not have been published 10 years ago, but its relevance is bracing. Michael Burleigh’s theme: the moral squalor, intellectual poverty and psychotic nature of terrorist organisations, from the Fenians of the mid-19th century to today’s jihadists – the latter group, especially, being composed of unstable males of conspicuously limited abilities and imagination, and yet who pose “an existential threat to the whole of civilisation” with their crusade to realise “a world that almost nobody wants”, all in the hope of an afterlife featuring 72 virgins and rivers foaming with honey and beer. A member of Italy’s Red Brigades conceded that ideology was “a murderous drug, worse than heroin”. Maybe Burleigh’s biggest achievement is persuasively to argue that no ideology is worse than radical Islam – itself motivated by “sheer racial hatred” – which exploits Europe’s tradition of freedom of worship (and welfare state) to curtail our freedom of speech. Its leaders are people who know their human rights, but not anyone else’s.

The Telegraph Michael Burleigh Blog

As western economies struggle with escalating healthcare costs, there are growing calls for a paradigm shift from a system that simply treats patients to a model for health services in which the focus is on prevention rather than cure. Within this context, there has been rapid growth in the market for self-monitoring and self-diagnosis products that enable people to take a more proactive approach to managing their own health. But, according to Helen Hamlyn Research Associate Indri Tulusan, there is an ‘in between’ space between self help and the expert help of medical professionals that has received relatively little attention from designers, manufacturers, service or social providers.
This is the social network of friends, family, work colleagues and neighbourhood facilities such as health food shops and fitness centres which operates alongside the GP or hospital professionals in helping us to maintain our health.
Complementary model
Tulusan’s study is a collaboration between the RCA’s Department of Interaction Design, healthcare product designers Pearson Matthews and mobile network company Orange. It has identified the social network as a complementary healthcare model and given it a name: Circles of Care. “The question we sought to answer,” she explains, “is what kind of new circles of care can be evolved and what new services are needed to sustain them?” The project began with a cross-cultural analysis of individual attitudes to maintaining health by focusing on a user group of 20 people (ten in the UK, ten in India and Italy) who had recently moved to a new town or country, necessitating the creation of a new circle of care. Displacement was the key factor to get people to focus on the social relationships that support their health and a user research exercise invited participants to define their own circle of care on a glove. The findings of this research revealed that people have three universal requirements to support their own health: fitness of body, autonomy of mind and relatedness to others. The study chose to explore this third aspect in greater detail, creating a Circles of Care map which addresses health activities across the span of different life events,
from childhood to old age via leaving home, marriage and having a family.
The study identified the main activators and patterns of behaviour within circles of care, such as family caring, partnering and friends coaching. From these insights, a series of eight service narratives were created which illustrate how the space between self-help and expert help can be populated with new services that activate the social network. Some services use network technology: Health Heritage Blog, for example, is an online family health diary that dispersed family members can access and contribute to wherever they are living in the world.

Young people today have grown up living
substantial portions of their lives online, seeking entertainment,
social relationships, and a place to express themselves. It is clear
that participation in online communities is important for many young
people, but less clear how this translates into civic or political
engagement. This volume examines the relationship of online action and
real-world politics.

The contributors discuss not only how online networks might inspire
conventional political participation but also how creative uses of
digital technologies are expanding the boundaries of politics and
public issues. Do protests in gaming communities, music file sharing,
or fan petitioning of music companies constitute political behavior? Do
the communication skills and patterns of action developed in these
online activities transfer to such offline realms as voting and public
protests? Civic Life Online describes the many forms of civic life online that could predict a generation’s political behavior.

Since 1993, computer networks have grabbed enormous public attention. The major news
and entertainment media have been filled with stories about the “information
superhighway” and of the financial and political fortunes to be made on it. Computer
sales continue to rise and more and more people are getting connected to “the
Net”. Computer networks, once an obscure and arcane set of technologies used by a
small elite, are now widely used and the subject of political debate, public interest, and
popular culture. The “information superhighway” competes with a collection of
metaphors that attempt to label and define these technologies. Others, like
“cyberspace,” “the Net,” “online,” and “the web,”
highlight different aspects of network technology and its meaning, role and impact.
Whichever term is used, it is clear that computer networks allow people to create a range
of new social spaces in which to meet and interact with one another.

Instead of people talking to machines, computer networks are being used to connect
people to people (Wellman, et al. 1996). In cyberspace the economies of interaction,
communication, and coordination are different than when people meet face-to-face. These
shifts make the creation of thousands of spaces to house conversations and exchanges
between far-flung groups of people practical and convenient. Using network interaction
media like email, chat, and conferencing systems like the Usenet, people have formed
thousands of groups to discuss a range of topics, play games, entertain one another, and
even work on a range of complex collective projects. These are not only communication
media – they are group media, sustaining and supporting many to many interactions
(Licklider 1978; Harasim 1993).

What kinds of social spaces do people create with networks? Two opposing visions are
popular. One highlights the positive effects of networks and their benefits for democracy
and prosperity. A prominent proponent is Al Gore (1993) who captures this vision by
saying, “Our new ways of communicating will entertain as well as inform. More
importantly, they will educate, promote democracy, and save lives. And in the process they
will also create a lot of new jobs. In fact, they’re already doing it.” The promise
is that networks will create new places of assembly that will generate opportunities for
employment, political participation, social contact and entertainment. At their best,
networks are said to renew community by strengthening the bonds that connect us to the
wider social world while simultaneously increasing our power in that world.

An alternative view notes that this glowing vision is in part driven by significant
investments in public relations, advertising and political rhetoric. Critics see a darker
outcome in which individuals are trapped and ensnared in a “net” that
predominantly offers new opportunities for surveillance and social control. For Theodore
Roszak, “information technology has the obvious capacity to concentrate political
power, to create new forms of social obfuscation and domination” (1986, p. xii).
While these critics do not rule out the idea that computers and networks increase
the power of individuals, they believe that networks will disproportionately increase the
strength of existing concentrations of power. More

“Communities Dominate Brands offers a front line perspective on the ways that media change is transforming the branding process. They have surveyed the best contemporary thinking about engagement marketing, participatory culture, and consumer relations, translating it into terms which will be accessible to industry insider and lay reader alike.”
Henry Jenkins – author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program

A few weeks ago I was visiting The Harvard Business School as a guest lecturer and during a break was sitting in Spangler Hall reviewing Tomi Ahonen’s and Alan Moore’s powerful new book, ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ when I looked up at the dozens of groups chatting away and wondered “What the hell are these students going to do with this insight and opportunity. Should I even share it with them at the risk of blowing their finely tuned minds? Or maybe they’ll dive into their first post grad job determined to implement such bold directions.” So I shared some of Moore and Ahonen’s thoughts later in the lecture hall. There wasn’t one student who didn’t believe that they were not a member of a virtual connected community. Soon we’ll see what they do with it as leaders.

It is difficult to put a lens on a developing social trend moving as fast as ‘connected communities’ but Alan and Tomi have done that. Together they have made a rare and important breakthrough insight, have developed a credible hypothesis and backed it up with validated supporting points. This is not radical misinformed extremist hype. This work is an accurate description of the issue, the opportunity and the crisis confronting marketers if they don’t cut loose the shackles of the traditional advertising agency and TV network model and explore the world of possibilities recommended by this book.

Books on business and marketing are launched weekly. Most are weak adaptations of other people’s thoughts. Some authors like Sergio Zyman, Seth Godin, Scott Bedbury, and Marc Gobe, have made bold and meaningful interpretations of contemporary opportunities and helped me to clarify a new advanced perspective on how to be a more successful marketer. Tomi and Alan have done that and with ‘Communities Dominate Brands’ will end up shaping our thinking and approach for some time.

Stephen C Jones

Ferdinand Tönnies (July 26, 1855, near Oldenswort (Eiderstedt, North Frisia) – April 9, 1936, Kiel, Germany) was a German sociologist. He was a major contributor to sociological theory and field studies, as well as bringing Thomas Hobbes back on the agenda, by publishing his manuscripts. He is best known for his distinction between two types of social groups — Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. He was, however, a prolific writer and also co-founder of the German Society for Sociology (being its president 1909-1933, when he was ousted by the Nazis). In English his name is often spelt without the umlaut as Ferdinand Toennies, as this spelling can also be accepted in German.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Tönnies distinguished between two types of social groupings. Gemeinschaft — often translated as community (or even gemeinschaft)— refers to groupings based on family and neighborhood bonds and ensuing feelings of togetherness. Gesellschaft — often translated as society — on the other hand, refers to groups that are sustained by an instrumental goal. Gemeinschaft may by exemplified by a family or a neighborhood in a pre-modern society; Gesellschaft by a joint-stock company or a state in a modern society, i.e. the society when Tönnies lived.

His distinction between social groupings is based on the assumption
that there are only two basic forms of an actor’s will, to approve of
other men. (For Tönnies, such an approval is by no means self-evident,
he is quite influenced by Thomas Hobbes) Following his “essential will” (“Wesenwille“), an actor will see himself as a means to serve the goals of social grouping; very often it is an underlying, subconscious force. Groupings formed around an essential will are called a Gemeinschaft. The other will is the “arbitrary will” (“Kürwille“):
An actor sees a social grouping as a means to further his individual
goals; so it is purposive and future-oriented. Groupings around the
latter are called Gesellschaft. Whereas the membership in a Gemeinschaft is self-fulfilling, a Gesellschaft is instrumental for its members. In pure sociology — theoretically —, these two normal types of will are to be strictly separated; in applied sociology — empirically — they are always mixed.