Erupting Irruption
Ask Elk Grove, launched ten days ago for the city of Elk Grove, California, numbers among the newest localized smartphone applications for reporting civic repairs. Most follow agendas similar to GRCity311, an app developed for Grand Rapids, Michigan:
“GRCity311 makes it possible for anyone with an iPhone or Android Smartphone
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The humankind is moving online. Our work, relationships, communications, banking and even shopping can be done online today, and where possible we’ll happily take the easy ‘one click away’ shortcut, because it’s faster, more efficient and more convenient. For most, the internet is comfortable. But it’s not all so beneficial after all. Elias Aboujaoude, MD writes in his book ‘Virtually…
LabSurLab is a gathering of different worldwide Labs taking place in Medellín first time this year. From the 6th of April to the 12th of April different projects will present their work and exchange ideas on subjects such as community improvement, hardware recycling and open source applications amongst others.
Searching the definition of ‘community’ on Wikipedia (yes it is ironic) I found the most common one of ‘ a group of interacting people living in a common location. The word is often used to refer to a group that is organized around common values and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social…
Social networks come in a wide variety on the World Wide Web. There’s the generic social network focusing on sharing info and multimedia with your friends (like facebook), professional sites (LinkedIn), forums, collaborative blogs and so on. Most of these sites serve the purpose of staying in touch or getting in touch with people you met off-line and want to…
The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is an interesting product of the Web 2.0. Wikipedia asks its users to actively participate, add and change the content of the website, in order to create a knowledge database which is more up to date and holds more information then any other encyclopedia in the world. Basically, Wikipedia employs a power to the people…
In this review, Howard Rheingold’s vision on the future of communication and interaction is explained, as layed out in his book ‘Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution’, 2002.
Rheingold noted that SMS has been used for dating in teenage culture but also for the mobilization of big groups; for example in the overthrowing of the Filipinian government in 2001…
The first speaker on this theme is Canadian Yukari Seko. She has done research on self destructive behaviour in connection with keeping a blog/being part of a blogging community. Seko argues that self destructive individuals act out their feelings online through murmuring. She has chosen the verb murmuring/mumbling in order to define the fine line between the protected spaces of…