Keeping The Portal Open: Erik Davis on TechGnosis and the Blurring “Real” & “Virtual”
Over a glitchy Google Hangout, Erik and I discussed our culture’s highest hopes and darkest dreams for our collective future, and how they’ve both become more complicated since the turn of the millennium.
The Future is Now: An Interview with Douglas Rushkoff
Author of Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff teaches us that “the future is now”; that we are in control, if we choose to be, and that a career can be made as a sort of kosher Dennis the Menace.
Obama urges FCC to regulate broadband as a utility
President Obama today urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reclassify broadband service as a utility and to impose rules that prevent Internet service providers from blocking and throttling traffic or prioritizing Web services in exchange for payment. Obama also said utility rules should apply both to home Internet service and mobile broadband.
Global Brains & Singularities: Cadell Last & Michael Garfield Debate The Technopocalypse
Cadell Last is an evolutionary anthropologist at the Global Brain Institute and producer of the PBS Digital Studios series The Advanced Apes. We discussed the possibility that our entire planet is waking up as a single super-intelligent organism, and the consequences – both light and dark – for both humankind and the whole biosphere…
Internet Archive: A Short Film About Accessing Knowledge
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, describes his vision for universal access to all available knowledge in this 13 minute video.
It’s Time to Encrypt the Entire Internet
The Heartbleed bug crushed our faith in the secure web, but a world without the encryption software that Heartbleed exploited would be even worse. In fact, it’s time for the web to take a good hard look at a new idea: encryption everywhere.
FOMO, Digital Dementia, and Our Dangerous Experiment
The couple thumbing their smartphones while ignoring one another, the moviegoer texting while his smartphone’s screen blinds us, and the person who can’t stop messaging long enough to keep the checkout line moving are all suffering from FOMO.
An Internet for the Common Good: Engagement, Empowerment and Justice for All
More than a technology or a marketplace, the Internet is a social environment, a community space for people to interact with the expectation that principles of equity, fairness and justice will prevail.
It’s Time to Take Mesh Networks Seriously (And Not Just for the Reasons You Think)
The internet is weak, yet we keep ignoring that fact. Which is why I believe it’s time to reconsider the potential of mesh networking, and make mesh networks a reality. Not just because of their obvious benefits, but also because it provides an internet-native model for building community and governance.
Sporeganizer Spotlight: Why and How Networks Connect, by Jason White (Evolver Boston)
I started the netfoundry project because I had been in correspondence with several people over the years about the need for a “network-of-networks” type of social media/organizing infrastructure. To further elaborate on what netfoundry is intended to accomp…