blog de notas de juan freire

… sta discusión creó uno de los trending topics de Twitter en junio, con su empleo del hashtag “#MyIdea4CA”. Con la creación de la web MyIdea4CA.com, todos los twits que incluyen el hashtag “#MyIdea4CA” son categorizados en dieciocho áreas temáticas, segun de lo que hablen (educación, legislación, medio ambiente…). Se pueden categorizar por los propios usuarios de twitter añadiendo otro hashtag, por ejemplo “#edu” para educación, y también se categorizan a través de palabras clave.

Lo más interesante es que todas estas ideas de la población californiana pueden votarse o comentarse, con lo que la conversación sigue su curso, aprovechando esas ideas y el talento o imaginación de quien las hace. Como indican en esTwitter, “mostrar los tweets con ideas además sirve para hacer un gigantesco brainstorming que puede multiplicar la efectividad e importancia de las ideas”. Aunque eso sí, también se pueden dar votos negativos, y en ese caso, esas ideas que no gustan desparecen de la vista…

Abstract: The majority of research on the information revolution in Korea focuses exclusively on the 1990s, disregarding previous historical periods, claiming that decade marked the beginning of an “information society.” This article, on the other hand, adopts a wider, sociohistorical perspective on urban mobility and mobile communication technologies in the Korean context. By doing so, it recontextualizes the shifting relationship between mobile communication technologies and urban mobility and provides insights into how the modern social geography of mobility in Seoul is being constantly made and remade. In particular, the article focuses upon the social space ofbang (literally “room” in Korean) as a product of the specific modern spatial rearrangement of the public and the private. It examines how the organizing principles of social spaces are moving from enclosure and containment to connection and distribution.

When it comes to Internet software and websites, there is a lot of confusion about the meaning of the words “free” and “open.” “Free” can mean “no cost” or “politically and legally free.” In using the term “free software,” Richard Stallman famously distinguished between the two meanings in his immortal phrase, “free as in freedom, not free as in free beer.”

So…assuming that we are using this latter definition of “free,” is there a difference between “free” and “open”? Isn’t an open Internet the same as a (politically) “free” Internet?

Well, it depends. A lot of commercial ventures on the Web like to be as open as possible because it attracts more readers and viewers, which in turn boosts a website’s advertising revenue. In this scenario,open access = greater commercial prospectsl. But does openness mean that a site is (politically) free as well? Is an open website the same as a commons?

A recent article by Phoebe Connelly, Web Editor of The American Prospect, dives into this issue by looking at the demise of GeoCities, one of the earliest online communities. GeoCities, which started in 1994, was a crude version of blogging and social networking. The site made it easy for Internet users to build their own free (no-cost) websites, and it let people create their own user profiles and organize materials by topic categories. GeoCities was a community in which individuals could build their own personalized spaces…

Once the Internet applications got sophisticated enough to host all sorts of online social life, the question arose: Who owns the information, photos and other digital material placed on the platform? If the materials are all accessible and shareable, does that mean that the space is a commons?

No. I call such sites “faux commons.” The corporate host is in business to make money, and their terms of service are typically crafted to advance that goal. If the company goes bankrupt, or if it decides that it needs to impose new terms of service on its website users to enhance revenue, what then of the community? What happens to the shared resource?

The community is subservient to the company, and the company may own the content and can dictate how the site is run. Corporate spaces come with “terms of service” agreements that lay out the rules users must abide by and what control they agree to surrender in exchange for using the product…

About 18 months ago, the journal R&D Management called for paperson open innovation. This month, the journal has published the resulting special issue, edited by Ellen Enkel, Oliver Gassman and Henry Chesbrough…

ut if you dig a little deeper, what’s more impressive is that almost all of the articles are about Open Innovation. This means there’s a depth of open innovation research and researchers (at least in Germany) producing open innovation research good enough for a good journal like R&D Management…

Having articles about open innovation seem unremarkable. However, if you look at the previous R&D Management special issue in June 2006, five of the nine articles were clearly about user innovation with only passing mention (if at all) of open innovation as generally defined…

A wealth of city knowledge is now online as Vancouver becomes one of the most open cities in the world. The information means a click on your smart phone could get you to an open parking space, or a free drink of water. David Eaves helped city hall create the open source motion, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, “For hundreds of years, cities have been collecting all sorts of data, everything from what the maps of the city are to the location of drinking fountains, but it’s always stayed locked behind city wall because it was written down on paper and so you actually had to go to city hall to access it.” While much of the information seems innocuous, web developers can use it for all sorts of applications. Eaves offers up two examples out of Washington, D.C. where last year the city put up hundreds of data sets, “They looked at where all the parking meters were in the city and they created a map on Google maps to show you where all the parking meters were. Better still it showed you if they are paid or not so that you can look at this map from your iPhone and immediately see where there are parking spots near you and where the meters are unpaid.” “Someone took a map of the city and found all the bars and then matched it up with crime data,” adds Eaves, “So what you can do is say ‘I want to go to this bar, and I live here’ and it would plot the safest route home for you.” Despite the information only being online for a few days, http://vantrash.ca has already popped up - there you can get an email reminder so that you never forget garbage day again. When Vancouver passed the open source motion in May, it became the first city to do so, though cities like Washington and San Francisco have already been providing similar information. You can see it all on the City of Vancouver website.

o hace falta tener grandes estructuras organizacionales, sino más bien patrones de organización. Como señala el título, más falta hace organizarse que una organización. Fundamentalmente por algo muy singular del mundo actual: es necesario compartir.

…

Para maximizar el potencial creativo y la capacidad de aprendizaje, es crucial que los directivos y ejecutivos comprendan la interrelación entre las estructuras formales y las redes informales autogenerativas. Las primeras son un conjunto de normas que definen las relaciones entre personas y tareas y determinan la distribución de poder. Los límites son establecidos por acuerdos contractuales que delinean subsistemas (departamentos) y funciones. Las estructuras formales están en documentos oficiales de la organización (diagramas organizativos, reglamentos, estrategias y procedimientos). Las informales son redes de comunicaciones fluidas y fluctuantes. La noción de red es la propiedad emergente de las nuevas organizaciones. La capacidad de estructurarse en forma de red y en relación con el entorno está constituyéndose en la clave. La fuerza de una organización -su flexibilidad, su potencial creativo, y su capacidad de aprendizaje- reside en la capacidad de generar redes en su interior y con su entorno. Juan Freire habla de la organización interfaz, que se acopla y desacopla con rapidez y ductilidad en torno a proyectos y objetivos …

… Similar to the Federal government’s efforts with Data.gov and Google’s recent Public Sector release, CitySourced is offering users a chance to take government matters into their own hands …

CitySourced offers citizens a chance to photograph their local pet peeves directly from their iPhones. Users send their pictures and complaints to their local municipalities with a couple clicks. From here, governments are recognize the needs of their constituencies and are forced to take action.

While programs like Apps for America and Apps for Democracy work to crowd source programmer-driven applications, CitySourced can be utilized by a non-technical user. In addition to the decision-making data being generated from this service, cities also offer users an active outlet for their frustrations …

La elección de las tecnologías que utilizamos o el tratamiento que damos a las tecnologías que desarrollamos nunca es neutral. Si no analizamos críticamente las opciones para poder decidir conscientemente también estamos tomando una posición que puede ser fruto de la inercia o de dejarse llevar por las corrientes; esta posición no-consciente también puede tener su impacto social o incluso político. 

La organización del Congreso tiene una responsabilidad que debe afrontar. A continuación se expone su posicionamiento inspirado en unos criterios mínimos de neutralidad (intentar que nadie quede excluido) pero inclinando la balanza hacia las tecnologías libres y los proyectos abiertos para reforzarlos desde el Congreso, y que éste se vea a su vez reforzado por su implicación con ellos …

The Internet Model = why Open Access is not enough

Publishing and peer review processes in academia are currently closed models. In my view, at least in the areas i operate in (social sciences and humanities), these processes should be far more, if not entirely, open, with a provision for privacy in special cases. I call this model Open-process academic publishing.The name deliberately distinguishes it fromOpen Access, which refers to only the final outcome of academic knowledge production being open.  The suggestion is not to open the processes in random ways, but in ways in which this openness — fundamentally based on volunteer participation — brings/enables more structure, more internalized working discipline, more commitment, and more ability to improve cooperation/collaboration with deliberate precision – all with the goal of improving the outcomes.  “[…] culture of open processes was essential in enabling the Internet to grow and evolve as spectacularly as it has”, hence, we could call it The Internet Model (software/FS + networking/IETF). Its potential screams for being reused, hacked, for other areas of production. Academia, especially its publishing side, seems to me capable of embracing such volunteer-core open-process cooperation …

[Entrevista en Letras Libres]

¿Cuánto de C.P. Snow y sus Dos Culturas hay en tu reivindicación de la ciencia y la tecnología de cara a la literatura?
Bueno, bastante. Creo que esa separación es el gran timo de la Era Moderna. Yo no me identifico con esa separación, y creo no tiene sentido en un mundo en el que cada vez todo está más conectado en red…

… ¿respecto a qué eres optimista, es decir, qué drama humano o problema global crees que la ciencia será capaz de resolver en los próximos años?

Todos. No soy apocalíptico. Tarde o temprano todo se soluciona y muta. Un ser individual puede suicidarse, pero no se conoce una civilización que se suicide en masa. Es de lógica, y antropológicamente inconsistente. Llevan siglos diciéndonos que esto se acaba, que tal drama es irreversible, etc. Y aquí estamos. Nos toman por tontos. Es la política del miedo. Ahí a mí no me pillan. Creo que vivimos en el mejor de los mundos posibles hasta ahora conocidos, y que viviremos aún mejor.

Las conferencias y presentaciones del Encuentro Universidad Expandida podrán seguirse en directo desde la web del Espacio-Red de Prácticas y Culturas Digitales UNIA (http://pcd.unia.es). Sigue también la conversación en Twitter a través de la hashtag #pcdunia.

Programa:

LUNES 14
10.00 Presentación
10.30 Conferencia de JM Duart (UOC): El caso de la UOC.
11.00 Pausa
12.00 E-learning en la educación superior: desafíos para la formación y la profesionalización docente
12.30 Implementación de un Sistema de Información
13.00 Wikicursos
13.30 Gnoss Sistema Semántico

16.00 Gente Guada
16.30 Complementos pedagógicos en Física
17.00 Academy commons
17.30 Educación Universitaria para el Siglo XXI (Cátedra 2.0)
18.00 Sesiones con e-cultura + espacios de reunión informal

MARTES 15
10.00 Conferencia Aníbal de la Torre: “Activismo institucional”
11.00 Pausa
11.30 OptoelectrónicaWeb
12.00 Ritmos / En el espejo de otro
12.30 Media Art Wiki
13.00 Desarrollo de competencias transversales mediante la construcción de un periférico multimedia
13.30 Modos de conocer y comunicar en la universidad (postitulo periodismo)

16.00 Máster en Cultura Digital (Medialab Prado) 
16.30 AULABIERTA
17.00 Proyecto Docente Doble UGR
17.30 Diseñoteca
18.00 Mapas de Experto Tridimensionales

MIÉRCOLES 16
Desayuno 8.00-9.30
10.00 Conferencia ZEMOS98: “Educación expandida”
11.00 Pausa
11.30 Arquitectura en el universo online
12.00 Experimentando e-learnig colaborativo en BBAA
12.30 Cierre: Conferencia de Andrés Pedreño: “Cultura digital, transformaciones y retos de nuestras universidades”