closing Digital Divide

While reading on topics about digital divide, I can't help but start searching statistics on Internet access again (the book uses world region in its discussion on global divide, where the statistic comes from International Communication Union. However, my understanding about the region *Asia* is that there are huge gaps within Asia itself, so there must be a lot of outliers in Asia...).

In terms of closing digital divide, I think South Korea can provide the most successful story. First of all, S. Korea has the fastest Internet connections with more than 94% of people having high-speed connections. There is an article talks about "Why Internet connections are fastest in South Korea." The article explains why S. Korea has the fastest Internet connections, and mentions several factors: the broadband industry is competitive in S. Korea, its culture places high value on education, it uses open networks and infrustractures to lower the entry barriers for small companies, it has more dense population, and most importantly, a strong government policy to promote the Internet.

Korean government not only created a special agency (Agency for Digital pportunity & Promotion) to promote the Internet usages, but also put a lot of efforts into education. There is another article that discusses how it deals with digital divide: Korea Bridges Digital Divide

I guess S. Korea has proven that as long as the government has a well-planned policy to battle the problem, the first 2 critiques Mark Warschauer made would no longer be issues?

Gaming can make a better world

Quite an interesting talking on how gaming will make our world a better place because it aspires people to collaborate and do good.

Check it out here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Facebook knows when you'll break up...

More than meets the eye... visual analytics allows more to be pulled from the reams of data than ever before:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/02/facebook.breakups/index.html?hpt=T2

This raises some interesting questions regarding privacy: At what point do we draw the line as to what is public access? Is using special tools to derive more information from one's behaviours on a social networking site (for example) still respecting one's privacy?

Another interesting question: how far does your assumption of privacy extend? Consider the following: I think we're all in agreement that if you submit something to a web site, be it a submitted data field, or toggling a setting in one's user settings, for example, it constitutes a revelation of sorts and the assumption follows that at least someone may see what we've done. But what about general navigation? If you, say, hover over a button, but don't click it (think "onMouseOver")... do you expect anyone to be tracking your mouse movements? Would it bother you if they were? What if they took the general pattern of how you use your mouse on a web site to suggestion "helpful" modifications to the layout of Facebook for you? What if the software tracking your status updates on Facebook was used as part of a larger app that users could install to warn them of impending breakups from their beloveds?

Collecting vast quantities of data and using programs, such as those being created by the visual analytics folks, mean that it is possible to extract more information about you (that perhaps you didn't even know about yourself) than ever before. Who owns that information? Better yet, who has the right to extract it? In this web-centric world it's entirely too naive to simply say, "Oh, well it's Facebook's site, therefore Facebook.". Clearly we need some sort of code of conduct, or at least to have thought about it.

Just a quick brain dump....

(If you didn't get a chance to see this TED talk on visual analytics, it's available online.)

CPSC 490: CS Education (next term)

Hi all,

As I mentioned in class last time, next term I'm running a student directed seminar next term on CS education -- if you're finding an interest in what the public can and should know about CS, this is one of many issues we'll be talking about in the course! http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~cs490/

Cheers,
Elizabeth
CPSC 490 coordinator

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/pl_print_harris/

check out this article...An interview with an atheist (maybe more appropriately a scientist) who discusses scientifically determining whether something is good or bad.

Humans Could Solve Digital Divide by Becoming the Network

Currently, research is being conducted at Queen's University of Belfast (QUB) to improve mobile internet by using humans as network nodes. The body to body network would boost coverage by sending information between themselves before reaching a base station. This would also mean that at large events, where coverage is currently decimated due to so many devices trying to connect to the network, it would actually be augmented. I found this approach to be pretty fascinating for our next generation of smart phones.

The following is an example of a body to body network:


The image states that data is streamed via "smart devices" using body to body networking

Friends at the bar are able to watch impromptu performance in real-time without depending on mobile phone network.




More on the article...

http://thefrontline.v3.co.uk/2010/11/humans-could-so.html

"Firesheep allows easy hacking over open WiFi"

I was reading the Metro Vancouver newspaper this morning when I saw this article headline:
"Firesheep allows easy hacking over open WiFi."
Basically, a software developer has created a program called firesheep which uses unsecured wireless networks to hack into other users' Facebook and Twitter accounts. He also put the program on the internet for public download. The developer says he created the program in order to educate people about the dangers of using unsecured wireless networks. I'm not sure how ethical this was of him though. It seems dangerous to make a program like this available for public download.

Here is the link to the online article:
http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/life/article/675035--firesheep-allows-easy-hacking-over-open-wifi