Diaspora – the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network

We are four talented young programmers from NYU’s Courant Institute trying to raise money so we can spend the summer building Diaspora; an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data.

What is it?

Enter your Diaspora “seed,” a personal web server that stores all of your information and shares it with your friends. Diaspora knows how to securely share (using GPG) your pictures, videos, and more. When you have a Diaspora seed of your own, you own your social graph, you have access to your information however you want, whenever you want, and you have full control of your online identity. Once we have built a solid foundation, we will make Diaspora easy to extend to facilitate any type of communication, and the possibilities will be endless.

For a little more detailed explanation, checkout this blog post.

March 14, 2010 marks the 60th Anniversary of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list. Between murderers and robbers there’s also Osam Bin Laden. Here you can have a look to the information regarding the current Top Tenners.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Internet search firm Google is finalizing a deal that would let the National Security Agency help it investigate a corporate espionage attack that may have originated in China, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The aim of the investigation is to better defend Google, the world’s largest Internet search company, and its users from future attacks, the Post said, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the arrangement.

The sources said Google’s alliance with the NSA — the intelligence agency is the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization — would be aimed at letting them share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of online communications.

via Reuters

Government officials have labelled environmental campaigners extremists and listed them alongside dissident Irish republican groups and terrorists inspired by al-Qaida in internal documents seen by the Guardian.

The guidance on extremism, produced by the Ministry of Justice, says: “The United Kingdom like many other countries faces a continuing threat from extremists who believe they can advance their aims by committing acts of terrorism.”

It was sent to probation staff who were writing court reports or supervising a range of activists, including environmental protesters.

The advice lists “environmental extremists” alongside far-right activists, dissident Irish republicans, loyalist paramilitaries and al-Qaida-inspired extremists as among groups “currently categorised as extremist [that] may include those who have committed serious crime in pursuit of an ideology or cause”.

via The Guardian

Xerography – every man’s brainpicker – heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simply xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one – instant steal!

As new technologies come into play, people become less and less convinced of the importance of self expression. Teamwork succeeds private effort.
Marshall McLuhan, 1967

This book was written in a collaborative Book Sprint by six core authors over a five-day period in January 2010. It was developed under the aegis of transmediale, and executed by FLOSS Manuals. The six starting authors each come from different perspectives, as are the contributors who were adding to this living body of text.

As we began the collaborative process of crafting this book on the future of collaboration, we realized we were all working from a set of assumptions, many of them shared, some of them divergent. We were talking about a specific form of collaboration, specific media of collaboration, and specific goals of collaboration. And we were talking about a specific history of collaboration, and a correspondingly specific set of futures.

To begin looking at those futures, we look back to others who have looked into the future. Marshall McLuhan’s quote above, from “The Medium is the MESSAGE” give us our first clue about all of these assumptions we are making. We are talking about media, we are talking about freedom, we are talking about technologies, and we are talking about culture. McLuhan’s prophetic utterance, several decades before the photocopier fueled the punk cut-up design aesthetic, or the profusion of home-brew zines, is still a prophecy unmet. We are still chasing it. Mainstream culture continues to consolidate around block buster films, books, and music. Copyright restrictions make it harder and harder to exercise the creative power of these reproduction tools without breaking increasingly restrictive intellectual property rights laws. But one thing is unanimously true: “Teamwork succeeds private effort.”

This is no new thing. Teamwork has succeeded private effort for as long as man was hunting and gathering food, organizing and creating culture through tribal associations, common languages, defending themselves against enemies, organizing and centralizing religions, transforming power from the tribal to the city-state to the nation-state, waging large scale warfare, building an Atomic Bomb, etc.

Teamwork is nothing new, nor is it necessarily benevolent. The key assumptions we are making in this text are that we are talking about new technologies, that technology is not necessarily computers, that digital media makes it easier to collaborate across distance, but that it also makes barriers to collaboration more apparent. We are focused on collaboration that shares similar progressive social goals. We also see a potential threshold between teamwork and collaboration, and between sharing and collaboration.

We are focused on new technologies, and in particular digital technologies. We are interested in new forms of social organization through online networks. We are excited by the possibility of digital technology to bridge distances: we had collaborators writing this book with us from many corners of the world. The proliferation of communication networks allows this, as does the invention of new tools for collaboration.

But we are quick to realize that the removal of distance makes other barriers more apparent. Distance has been the greatest impediment to collaboration; in its removal other barriers quickly rise to the fore: language, culture, politics, education, etc.

Likewise, the core of this collaboration was taking place not in cyberspace, but in meatspace. We were there, in a room in Berlin for five very intense days of brainstorming, discussion, argument, and mostly… writing. The sound of tapping keyboards filled the room. Likewise, some of the most important developments in collaboration are the opportunities for meatspace meetings that would have been much more difficult prior to the advent of social networking software. From the Howard Dean US presidential campaign, to MeetUp, to Unconferences, to even the wrongheaded right wing Tea Party demonstrations protesting universal healthcare in the U.S.A (which are, it should be mentioned, heavily sponsored by the conservative Fox News network), to even the increasing prevalence of relationships started through online dating sites, some of the most important collaborative developments that this new technology has created are taking place offline.

While we are not interested in building Atomic Bombs, we are interested in finding the Higgs Boson. The presence of collaboration is not “good” in and of itself. Science provides a particularly stark example that highlights the importance of openness. There are military employed scientists who are using teamwork to develop more and more lethal weapons. They do this in secret: under security clearances that keep certain people out, their work is classified and never published, and their work is therefore anonymous. They do not share, and they do not own their work. Contrast this with the policies set forth at CERN, the nuclear physics research facility that just powered up the Large Hadron Collider to search for the elusive Higgs Boson. At CERN all work is published for the community of science. Every publication automatically is attributed to every scientist working at the facility, even if he or she was on vacation at the time the discovery was made, because the nature of the enterprise is so inherently collaborative over such a long term: the Large Hadron Collider project was started in 1984, and only made its initial runs at the end of 2009.

These were our assumptions as we began writing this book. This was our baseline from which we hoped to expand. The collaborations we are looking at involve new technologies, but we are interested in their offline results. This technology breaks down certain boundaries, but highlights others. And while this process can be used for a wide range of goals, the goals we are interested in are goals that are rather utopian: the increase of freedom of expression, the equality of authorship across group work, and the advancement of free culture.

via Booki.cc

The Bush administration’s determination to mimic the hollow corporations it admired extended to its handling of the anger its actions inspired around the world. Rather than actually changing or even adjusting its policies, it launched a series of ill-fated campaigns to “rebrand America” for an increasingly hostile world. Watching these cringeful attempts, I was convinced that Price Floyd, former director of media relations at the State Department, had it right. After resigning in frustration, he said that the United States was facing mounting anger not because of the failure of its messaging but because of the failure of its policies. “I’d be in meetings with other public-affairs officials at State and the White House,” Floyd told Slate magazine. “They’d say: ‘We need to get our people out there on more media.’ I’d say: ‘It’s not so much the packaging, it’s the substance that’s giving us trouble.’” A powerful, imperialist country is not like a hamburger or a running shoe. America didn’t have a branding problem; it had a product problem.

I used to think that, but I may have been wrong. When Obama was sworn in as president, the American brand could scarcely have been more battered – Bush was to his country what New Coke was to Coca-Cola, what cyanide in the bottles had been to Tylenol. Yet Obama, in what was perhaps the most successful rebranding campaign of all time, managed to turn things around. Kevin Roberts, global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, set out to depict visually what the new president represented. In a full-page graphic commissioned by the stylish Paper Magazine, he showed the Statue of Liberty with her legs spread, giving birth to Barack Obama. America, reborn.

So, it seemed that the United States government could solve its reputation problems with branding – it’s just that it needed a branding campaign and product spokesperson sufficiently hip, young and exciting to compete in today’s tough market. The nation found that in Obama, a man who clearly has a natural feel for branding and who has surrounded himself with a team of top-flight marketers. His social networking guru, for instance, is Chris Hughes, one of the young founders of Facebook. His social secretary is Desirée Rogers, a glamorous Harvard MBA and former marketing executive. And David Axelrod, Obama’s top adviser, was formerly a partner in ASK Public Strategies, a PR firm which, according to Business Week, “has quarterbacked campaigns” for everyone from Cable­vision to AT&T. Together, the team has marshalled every tool in the modem marketing arsenal to create and sustain the Obama brand: the perfectly calibrated logo (sunrise over stars and stripes); expert viral marketing (Obama ringtones); product placement (Obama ads in sports video games); a 30-minute infomercial (which could have been cheesy but was universally heralded as “authentic”); and the choice of strategic brand alliances (Oprah for maximum reach, the Kennedy family for gravitas, and no end of hip-hop stars for street cred).

The first time I saw the “Yes We Can” video, the one produced by Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am, featuring celebrities speaking and singing over a Martin Luther Kingesque Obama speech, I thought: finally, a politician with ads as cool as Nike. The ad industry agreed. A few weeks before he won the presidential elections, Obama beat Nike, Apple, Coors and Zappos to win the Association of National Advertisers’ top annual award – Marketer of the Year. It was certainly a shift. In the 1990s, brands upstaged politics completely. Now corporate brands were rushing to piggyback on Obama’s caché (Pepsi’s “Choose Change” campaign, Ikea’s “Embrace Change ‘09″ and Southwest Airlines’ offer of “Yes You Can” tickets).

Indeed everything Obama and his family touches turns to branding gold. J Crew saw its stock price increase 200% in the first six months of Obama’s presidency, thanks in part to Michelle’s well known fondness for the brand. Obama’s much-discussed attachment to his BlackBerry has been similarly good news for Research In Motion. The surest way to sell magazines and newspapers in these difficult times is to have an Obama on the cover, and you only need to call three ounces of vodka and some fruit juice an Obamapolitan or a Barackatini and you can get $15 for it, easy. In February 2009, Portfolio magazine put the size of “the Obama economy” – the tourism he generates and the swag he inspires – at $2.5bn. Not at all bad in an economic crisis. Rogers got into trouble with some of her colleagues when she spoke too frankly with The Wall Street Journal. “We have the best brand on earth: the Obama brand,” she said. “Our possibilities are endless.”

The exploration of those possibilities did not end, or even slow, with the election victory. Bush had used his ranch in Crawford, Texas, as a backdrop to perform his best impersonation of the Marlboro man, forever clearing brush, having cookouts and wearing cowboy boots. Obama has gone much further, turning the White House into a kind of never-ending reality show starring the lovable Obama clan. This too can be traced to the mid-90s branding craze, when marketers grew tired of the limitations of traditional advertising and began creating three-dimensional “experiences” – branded temples where shoppers could crawl inside the personality of their favourite brands. The problem is not that Obama is using the same tricks and tools as the superbrands; anyone wanting to move the culture these days pretty much has to do that. The problem is that, as with so many other lifestyle brands before him, his actions do not come close to living up to the hopes he has raised.

Though it’s too soon to issue a verdict on the Obama presidency, we do know this: he favours the grand symbolic gesture over deep structural change every time. So he will make a dramatic announcement about closing the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison – while going ahead with an expansion of the lower profile but frighteningly lawless Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and opposing accountability for Bush officials who authorised torture. He will boldly appoint the first Latina to the Supreme Court, while intensifying Bush-era enforcement measures in a new immigration crackdown. He will make investments in green energy, while championing the fantasy of “clean coal” and refusing to tax emissions, the only sure way to substantially reduce the burning of fossil fuels. Most importantly, he will claim to be ending the war in Iraq, and will retire the ugly “war on terror” phrase – even as the conflicts guided by that fatal logic escalate in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This preference for symbols over substance, and this unwillingness to stick to a morally clear if unpopular course, is where Obama decisively parts ways with the transformative political movements from which he has borrowed so much (the pop-art posters from Che, his cadence from King, his “Yes We Can!” slogan from the migrant farmworkers – si se puede). These movements made unequivocal demands of existing power structures: for land distribution, higher wages, ambitious social programmes. Because of those high-cost demands, these movements had not only committed followers but serious enemies. Obama, in sharp contrast not just to social movements but to transformative presidents such as FDR, follows the logic of marketing: create an appealing canvas on which all are invited to project their deepest desires but stay vague enough not to lose anyone but the committed wing nuts (which, granted, constitute a not inconsequential demographic in the United States). Advertising Age had it right when it gushed that the Obama brand is “big enough to be anything to anyone yet had an intimate enough feel to inspire advocacy”. And then their highest compliment: “Mr Obama somehow managed to be both Coke and Honest Tea, both the megabrand with the global awareness and distribution network and the dark-horse, upstart niche player.”

Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti-war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two-party ­monopoly through dogged organisation and donations gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swallowed the Democratic party establishment in one gulp after defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued “bipartisanship” with crazed Republicans once in the White House.

excerpt by Naomi Klein, via The Guardian

A different world is possible!

“Luca Tornatore? La verità è che è un rompipalle come ogni buon scienziato dovrebbe essere”. Parla Pierluigi Monaco, compagno di stanza di Luca all’Osservatorio Astronomico, e si dice sicuro dell’estraneità ai fatti del collega: “Non l’ho mai visto lanciare un oggetto contro la polizia”. Eppure è questa l’accusa, la spada di Damocle che pende sulla testa di Luca, il ricercatore dell’Università di Trieste, residente a Quarto d’Altino, arrestato la notte del 14 dicembre a Copenhagen. Da quei giorni di conferenze e manifestazioni sul clima, Luca non ha fatto ritorno. Ha bruciato la sua 38esima candelina, trascorso il Natale lontano dagli affetti, sentito il rimbombo del nuovo anno dalla cella. Così avanti, fino all’udienza preliminare in programma tra lunedì e martedì prossimo. Quando Tornatore potrebbe tornare a casa, oppure vedersi confermare la reclusione.
A casa ha lasciato la madre, la compagna Federica e una figlia di 5 anni. Nell’ufficio, la sua scrivania con qualche carta arruffata su un angolo, prima della partenza per la capitale danese. “Fa una tristezza infinita vederla così, vuota” dice Gabriella, dall’altro lato dell’ufficio. Anche lei, da poco vincitrice di un programma europeo per la ricerca, è nel team di Luca. Insieme simulano galassie.

E l’apporto di Tornatore al gruppo di ricerca è indispensabile. “Da noi è un programmatore unico nel suo genere” afferma Pierluigi che spiega: “La scienza ha bisogno di persone che sappiano programmare bene e lui è uno dei pochi a farlo”. Si tratta di far funzionare macchine informatiche come la nuova SP6 collocata a Bologna, cose da 10 mila processori, leggi milioni di euro.

Ai corsi base ti spiegano che alla domanda “chi sei?”, un russo risponde in base al suo mestiere. Ecco, Luca risponderebbe: “Sono un pre-cog”. Un precario cognitivo. Dopo gli studi universitari a Padova, Luca è approdato nella città giuliana grazie ad un dottorato curato da Stefano Borgani. Oggi è assegnista di ricerca con un contratto in scadenza. Da cui la posizione precaria. Ha alle spalle 27 pubblicazioni scientifiche e un indice di classificazione internazionale – basato, oltre che sulle pubblicazioni, sulle citazioni di altri autori- che, normalmente, gli varrebbero un posizione tra ricercatore e professore associato. Da cui la conoscenza.

Luca Tornatore ha il pregio, per alcuni il diffetto, di essere un attivista. “Di vecchissima data” racconta ancora Pierluigi. Ha una storia nei centri sociali veneti, in particolare Attac. Giunto a Trieste nel 2000, ha manifestato contro la costruzione del CPT (ora CIE) di Gradisca. E’ passato attraverso i G8: quello ambientale di Trieste -moderando una conferenza con Andrea Fumagalli – e quello più crudo di Genova. C’era alla contestazione a Nolte e nell’onda, la mobilitazione del mondo accademico contro i tagli all’università, recentemente posta “in vendita” da lui e dai suoi colleghi -ricercatori e studenti -per l’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico triestino presenziata da Fini.

C’era senza mai esser violento. “Se l’avessero accusato di aver offeso verbalmente qualcuno ci avrei potuto credere, ma così proprio no” ha dichiarato la moglie Federica.

“Era da più di un mese che lo vedevo impegnarsi per i preparativi della conferenza sul clima”. Nella credenza, condivisa dal compagno d’ufficio Monaco, che lo scienziato debba farsi “cittadino attivo”, sfruttando anche la sua predisposizione: “L’approccio dei sistemi complessi, come può essere quello dei cambiamenti climatici, è molto simile a quello della simulazione della galassie, si tratta pur sempre di fare delle predizioni considerano migliaia di variabili”. Aveva una sensibilità scientifica sull’argomento, Luca Tornatore. E questo l’ha fatto scendere dall’albero e prendere una posizione: nella città danese era uno dei relatori di “See you in Copenhagen”, la nuova contestazione figlia del popolo di Seattle. Quel movimento raccontato da Naomi Klein.

E’ stato arrestato mentre tornava da un incontro a cui interveniva proprio la Klein. Coinvolto, stando all’accusa, negli scontri al quartiere di Christiania. A differenza dei tanti fermati, Luca è ancora dentro. “Ho provato a mandargli del materiale di lavoro e un libro, dubito gli sia arrivato – dice Gabriella – una delle risposte è stata che la biblioteca è abbastanza fornita, anche di titoli italiani”. “Ormai, noi ci sorridiamo su – confida Pierlugi – siamo convinti della sua innocenza e che tornerà presto a sedersi qui, affianco a noi”.

di Davide Lessi, via neurogreen.