Friday, March 21, 2003

Nature How to slake a planet's thirst
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"By this time next year, some 1.75 million people will have died before their time for the simple reason that they must scratch out their existence without access to safe drinking water. This is the toll from cholera, dysentery and other diarrhoeal diseases that the World Health Organization attributes to unsafe drinking supplies."

"Whatever transpires in the Iraqi desert over the next few weeks, the water crisis will still be with us, quietly exacting its devastating toll (see page 251). As the world's population continues to expand, and climate change alters the hydrology of river basins, as many as 7 billion people in 60 countries could face water scarcity by 2050, if action isn't taken."

redux [11.12.02]
Reason Online Water, Water Nowhere?

"One thousand Arkansas rice farmers have just about pumped away all their ground water. Naturally, they are looking to taxpayers for relief."

"The Arkansas rice farmers' situation is a microcosm of a problem affecting much of the world. A new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, "World Water and Food to 2025," addresses the global freshwater crisis. "Unless we change policies and priorities, in twenty years, there won't be enough water for cities, households, the environment, or growing food," Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the report and a senior research fellow at the IFPRI, warned in a press release. "Water is not like oil. There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food--or both.""

The New York Times Editorial/Op-ed One Subsidy Too Many
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"Americans are depleting their water supplies, especially their once-vast underground aquifers, at a rapid pace. Yet this alarming fact has failed to register with influential segments of the population, including developers who keep building unsustainable subdivisions and farmers who keep growing unsustainable crops. A case in point are the rice growers of Arkansas, who are on the brink of pumping one of the state's biggest aquifers dry and are now imploring the federal government to bail them out."

"The White River ecosystem, which includes two important wildlife refuges, will inevitably suffer. What's most irritating about the scheme, however, is that it further enriches an industry that is already extravagantly subsidized."

Mother Jones Water for Profit

"Instead of ushering in a new era of trouble-free drinking water, Atlanta's experiment with privatization has brought a host of new problems. This year there have been five boil-water alerts, indicating unsafe contaminants might be present. Fire hydrants have been useless for months. Leaking water mains have gone unrepaired for weeks. Despite all of this, the city's contractor -- United Water, a subsidiary of French-based multinational Suez -- has lobbied the City Council to add millions more to its $21-million-a-year contract.

Atlanta's experience has become Exhibit A in a heated controversy over the push by a rapidly growing global water industry to take over public water systems. At the heart of the debate are two questions: Should water, a basic necessity for human survival, be controlled by for-profit interests? And can multinational companies actually deliver on what they promise -- better service and safe, affordable water?"

Paul Simon Excerpts from Tapped Out: The Coming World Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It

"Buried in all the daily news trivia, the careful reader can find strong warnings about our future. The Financial Times of London begins a story: "Water, like energy in the late 1970s, will probably become the most critical natural resource issue facing most parts of the world by the start of the next century."8 The British publication, People and the Planet, predicts that by the year 2025 at least sixty-five nations will experience serious water shortages.9 Another British journal, Worldlink, the magazine of the World Economic Forum, has a cover article titled "Water: The Next Source of Trouble."10 A scholarly journal on international law calls the shortage of fresh water "the national security issue of the twenty-first century."11 "Water Crisis Looms, World Bank Says" is the heading of a story on an inside page of the Washington Post of August 3, 1995. The Associated Press story accompanying that heading quotes World Bank Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development Ismail Serageldin: "We are warning the world that there is a huge problem looming out there.....The experts all agree on the need to do something fast. The main problem is the lack of political will to carry out these recommendations."

That is the crux of the matter: political will. That is not going to be generated by World Bank reports. It must come from aroused citizens who understand the severity of the problem and demand action. Almost four centuries ago, a British writer noted: "Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruel master.""

Thursday, March 20, 2003

MSNBC Net users offer glimpse of life in Iraq

"Chicago native Kathy Kelly filed her last dispatch from Baghdad on Wednesday for ElectronicIraq.net: "Here, amid a dearth of justice, human kindness is overflowing," she wrote. Then she told the site's Webmaster not to expect any more diary entries for several days. News of everyday life in Baghdad could be found on the Internet right up until the war began Wednesday.

KELLY IS ONE of a small contingent of observers and independent journalists who have chosen to take the risk and remain in Iraq when hostilities with the United States began."

Paul Boutin Q: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real?

"Speculation continues that Dear Raed, the weblog of a young man in Baghdad who posts under the name Salam Pax, is a hoax, perhaps even a disinformation campaign by the CIA or Mossad. A month after Computerworld published a story quoting a "terrorist" who turned out to be a one of their former writers pranking them, it would be foolish not to wonder.

Rather than guess, I emailed Salam and asked for proof of his location just before the first attack on Baghdad this morning."

Plastic Putting The 'War' Into War-Blogging

""Kevin Sites is a CNN corespondent who also runs a weblog that he updates from the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq. Like the recently famous Lt. Smash and Salam Pax, Sites' blog attempts to give the world a first person perspective from the war zone. (Although some have questioned the authenticity of the Baghdad blogger.) In addition, many professional news organizations have adopted the weblog format for their reporters' own first-hand dispatches.

"While the anonymous and easy-to-update nature of blogging has the potential to transform reportage, by freeing reporters from military censorship and spineless news mega-corporations, it also increases the likelyhood that blogs could be used to spread disinformation. Will blog users be able to sort fact from fiction?" And will the proliferation of 'warbloggers' who happen to be in the middle of a war-zone challenge the media profiles of other so-called 'warbloggers' who, fixed on their television sets and computer monitors, will make up the 82nd Couchborne Regiment in the current conflict?"

The Age Bullets over broadband

"There have been suggestions that during a conflict, the internet could now be used by "moblogging" journalists, who could now, in theory, upload photos and video from the front line direct to the net. Der Derian has doubts about this. "The mistake of the anti-war movement against the first Gulf War was to think that you could mobilise, as with Vietnam, after the war had started." But modern war happens too quickly."

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Wired News Protests to Start When War Does

"With the help of communications technology, protesters are gearing up to take immediate action if and when war breaks out in Iraq."

""Groups wouldn't have been able to do some of the logistical and other planning without the aid of the Internet for getting the message out," said Rayan Elamine, organizer with Direct Action to Stop the War, an umbrella organization for a number of antiwar groups based in the San Francisco Bay Area."

CentreDaily.Com Technology replaces community in protests

""The Internet is communication, but it's not community. People make that mistake sometimes," said Gordon Clark, national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which calls on people to engage in civil disobedience when a war with Iraq begins. "You can't replace physical activism with online activism."

The generation gap sometimes shows when younger activists are asked to pass out flyers or circulate petitions, Smith said. The constant committee meetings behind the Vietnam War protests may have been grueling, but they brought people together in a way that electronic communication can't duplicate, he said."

redux [03.07.03]
The New York Times Magazine Smart-Mobbing the War
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"Internet democracy solves the problem of how to focus political activity in a vast country of extremely busy and distracted citizens, because what keeps so many Americans busy and distracted these days is the Internet. In late February, my in-box received a forwarded message with the subject line ''Virtual March: Heading to 200,000. SEND FAX~a5646u63431t0~.'' The ''Virtual March on Washington'' was a campaign that Pariser and moveon.org held on Feb. 26: more than 1 million Americans around the country, moveon.org reports, flooded the Washington offices of their elected officials with antiwar messages, timed by electronic coordination so that phone lines wouldn't jam up. Internet democracy allows citizens to find one another directly, without phone trees or meetings of chapter organizations, and it amplifies their voices in the electronic storms or ''smart mobs'' (masses summoned electronically) that it seems able to generate in a few hours. With cellphones and instant messaging, the time frame of protest might soon be the nanosecond."

redux [02.23.03]
The New York Times How the Protesters Mobilized
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"The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.

Because no central decision-making authority exists, protests can be localized and can appeal to new groups and individuals who don't live in areas where social protest information would typically reach."

"Military theorists are fond of saying that future warfare will revolve around social and communication networks. Antiwar groups have found that this is true for their work as well."

redux [01.03.03]
The Globe and Mail In South Korea, it's the mouse that roars

"The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.

When Roh Moo-hyun's organizers wanted supporters to vote on election day, they simply pressed a few computer keys. Text messages flashed to the cellphones of almost 800,000 people, urging them to go to the polls."

"With the world's highest penetration of high-speed and mobile Internet services, South Korea is at the cutting edge of technology that is transforming the political system, making it more open and democratic. It could be a preview of the shape of Western democracy."

redux [05.10.01]
First Monday The Impact of the Internet on Myanmar

"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web."

"In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."

redux [01.20.01]
The Guardian Unlimited Filipinos rally to oust the president: C U @ the revolution

"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."

"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."

redux [11.29.00]
NPR: Morning Edition Cell Phone Rally

""NPR's Eric Weiner reports on the latest in the effort to unseat Philippine president Joseph Estrada. Filipinos send 30 million cell phone "text messages" daily- more than anywhere else in the world. Activists are using the technology to organize rallies and respond instantly to the latest corruption charges. (5:19)""

redux [07.07.00]
The New York Times Manila's Talk of the Town Is Text Messaging
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"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone.

"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces," said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending the insults back." ."

"Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe, especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive."

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

NEPA News United Way to build wireless Internet network in poor neighborhoods

"The United Way is building a network of wireless high-speed Internet antennas in a pair of poor city neighborhoods where some people still can't afford a phone.

""What we are really trying to do is connect folks to the mainstream economy, and you do that through the Internet," he said. "Middle income folks pay their bills in their pajamas online at 6 o'clock in the morning. That same level of access should be provided to low-income people.""

CNN Low-income housing goes wireless

""How's the signal?" asked the apartment's resident, Nakia Keizer, watching from a sofa.

"Not bad," said Kevin Bowen, the technician.

Not bad at all, considering this wireless "hotspot" was intended not for cafe-hoppers and Internet surfers with money to burn but for urban poor who only a few years before had been fighting roof leaks and overflowing sewers."

Monday, March 17, 2003

Wired News Who's Winning Privacy Tug of War?

"Privacy is set to become even more of a key issue for businesses and government over the next few months, as some firms fight to retain what they believe is a key provision of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law that restricts who can access credit information and how it can be used.

A provision of the act, slated to expire next January, restricts states' abilities to pass privacy laws. If the state preemption provision is allowed to expire, it could open the way for states to pass their own laws determining how consumer information may be shared by businesses."

NPR: All Things Considered Passenger Screening Software Would ID Terrorists

" Federal officials commission a new air-passenger screening system to identify people linked to terrorism. The Transportation Security Administration says commercial databases will be used to check the authenticity of passengers' names. Privacy advocates worry about the extent of the data search. NPR's John McChesney reports."

redux [06.06.02]
BusinessWeek Privacy vs. Security: A Bogus Debate?

"Let me emphasize again: Without some privacy, we couldn't stay human. But we'll be better equipped to defend a core of essential privacy if our overall civilization is open enough to let us catch the Peeping Toms and power abusers.

Better, more intrusive technology is going to limit our [ability to stay anonymous]. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have eyeglasses that scan any face on the street, look it up on the Internet, and provide captions as you walk by. This will be a return to the village of our ancestors, where they recognized everyone they saw. No one will be a total stranger."

redux [06.28.00]
The Standard Consumers Fight Back, Anonymously

"It's unlikely that in the future everyone will choose total online anonymity. But the new privacy technologies have implications that go beyond the short-term questions of law enforcement and marketing.

"The real dimension here isn't the choice between privacy and disclosure," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "The real story is the impact it has on our sense of identity. The fact that we can selectively disclose things on the Internet is changing the nature of social interactions. If you can change your persona at will in cyberspace, that begins affecting what you think of your own identity and who you think you are.""

redux [04.30.00]
The New York Times Magazine The Eroded Self
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"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."

"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."

Salon Twilight of the crypto-geeks

"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.

Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."

redux [02.15.01]
The Atlantic Online The Reinvention of Privacy

"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?

A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""