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davislisboa   davislisboa Davis Lisboa's TIGblog
Davis Lisboa's profile

Lauren Renda (Corporate Communications, Jamuse, NY, USA)

Dear Davis,

This is Lauren from jamuse and I would like to personally welcome you. I would also like to congratulate you as your work has impressed the community, the founder of jamuse and the site advisory board. You have now been selected as a featured artist, and can see your profile and work showcased in our Featured Artist section. We look forward to your involvement in jamuse.



Best -

Lauren

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Lauren Renda, Corporate Communications
www.jamuse.com
230 Park Ave. 10Th Floor
New York, New York 10169
Lauren@jamuse.com
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August 25, 2008 | 4:08 AM Comments  0 comments

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ictlogist   ictlogist Ismael Peña-López's TIGblog
Ismael Peña-López's profile

The digital war on poverty is not won. A comment to Jeffrey Sachs

Economist Jeffrey Sachs signed on August 21 2008 an article at The digital war on poverty — in which, summing up, he explains that [t]Thanks to market forces, even the world’s poorest people are beginning to benefit from the flow of digital information. Not that I do not agree, in general, with what is explained in his article, but there are some clarifications I’d like to make.

Over all, the tone of the article is optimistic. I am too optimistic about the ends, but not on the actual estate of the situation nowadays. Besides, I’m becoming more sceptic about leapfrogging, which is one of the strong points made by Sachs. Don’t get me wrong: I do believe ICTs are a revolution and will provide renewed energies for those who will be capable of benefiting from them, but I think that ICTs will be catalysts and multipliers (perhaps in several orders of magnitude), but not substitutes.

I’ll try and comment some original statements made in the article one by one, and then gather up some conclusions.

The digital divide is beginning to close

Were this a question, the answer would simply be no. Put short, the inequality in the quantity of existing infrastructures is certainly narrowing. But when we look about quality, the digital divide is actually widening. I’ll be discussing this later, but here come some other articles of mine where I already debated about this issue (in chronological order):

Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation [...] [b]ut mobile phones [...] will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology

I agree. Mobile technologies (cellphones, wireless, etc.) have a strong power and I also think that they will (they actually are) transforming the society at several levels. But from this sentence we understand — I’m sorry if it is me that got the author wrong — that poverty comes from isolation and, hence, as mobile devices will make isolation disappear, so will poverty.

I agree with Sachs that poverty usually means isolation — I’d say “exclusion” — but this is a consequence of other factors, a symptom, but not (or not always) a cause. So:

  • Communication fosters development, but isolation not necessarily leads to (dire) poverty.
  • Poverty has many factors, and many of them come from unequal distribution of wealth, unbalanced trade relationships, personal exploitation, etc. And they do happen in spheres of actual communication and not isolation (especially exploitation, by construction).

Mobile phone technology [...] costs so little per unit of data transmission

Underdeveloped countries quite often are accompanied by lack of civil rights and concentration of power, which includes, usually, lack of competition in the telecommunications market. This means that prices are not that cheap. In absolute terms. In relative terms, with huge amounts of people living under the threshold of poverty, the prices are anything but cheap. Of course I agree that they provide cheaper means to exchange knowledge than other technologies, but I’m afraid that, even so, costs are not “so little”.

On the other hand, not only communication services have to be cheap, but also devices. Data transmission requires some devices (e.g. 3G cellphones) that are simply out of reach to 99% of the world population. Of course, I’m talking about rich data, and not SMSs or (in some cases) WAP — remember what we said about quality.

Despite this criticism, there are excellent experiences like Brosdi, Tradenet or (also mentioned by Sachs), M-Pesa, that picture an optimistic future. The final results will depend on how these experiences impact on developing countries and, more important, how fast developed countries are in running their own path… with better technology.

In the following paragraphs, Sachs explains some good examples on how ICTs have changed jobs and employment, business and commercial relationships, Education or the Health system. I agree these are good examples. I agree too that convergence is a very good thing, so that same content and services are made accessible regardless of the place or tool you’re using to access them. In general, I somewhat share his ideal that the end of poverty, could be reached would we put all the potential we already have pointing to that goal.

But the devil is in the details.

In a research I’m just carrying on, I’m finding that (almost) all good performance in indicators from the Digital Economy depends on exogenous factors, on analogue or “real economy” ones: the gross domestic product, education, inequality, freedom, etc. This puts at stake some optimisms about leapfrogging. The idea that the Information Society, Knowledge Based Societies or the Digital Economy can run in parallel from the Industrial Society does not seem backed up by evidence. A circle is a figure that fits best. A virtuous circle or a vicious one, depending on what sense are you making it spin.

For all the benefits that Sachs speaks of to come, other (deeper) changes must take place too. And it’s right, we can provoke and speed up some of these changes by means of ICTs. But to have a rabbit coming out of the had, someone had to feed it first.


August 24, 2008 | 12:08 PM Comments  0 comments



davislisboa   davislisboa Davis Lisboa's TIGblog
Davis Lisboa's profile

Maria Luisa Persson (Art Review)

Hello Davis Lisboa

You're invited to join artreview.com

You’re invited to join artreview.com – a place for artists, galleries, collectors, critics, curators and all art lovers to network and exchange ideas. Sign up now (it’s free to join) and post your artwork, blogs, videos and audio... and the best of it we can put on the homepage.

Looking forward to seeing you on artreview.com!

Click here to join:
www.artreview.com

Thanks,
Maria Luisa Persson

August 23, 2008 | 6:08 AM Comments  0 comments

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davislisboa   davislisboa Davis Lisboa's TIGblog
Davis Lisboa's profile

My Art Friends (USA)

I'd like to invite you and all your friends to join an exciting new online artists community called My Art Friends at www.myartfriends.com where you will find all the tools you need to share your art and ideas with other artists, galleries and the world. Tools include uploading and sharing photos, music, videos as well as chat, groups, boards and classifieds. It's easy to use and it's free, so surf on over there and join the fun.

August 22, 2008 | 5:08 AM Comments  0 comments

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davislisboa   davislisboa Davis Lisboa's TIGblog
Davis Lisboa's profile

Photospace (España)

Buenas Davis

Somos un espacio de arte,con un unico objetivo conectar y unir todo el
arte visual.
La filosofia es Exponer, Contactar, Invitar, Opinar, Compartir y
Disfrutar, con el fin de conectar tanto personas amateurs como
profesionales, con agencias y disponibilidad para exponer sus obras.
Photospace es gratuito y nos gustaria invitarte para que expusieras tus
obras y formar parte de este espacio.

PhotoSpace
Arte Visual

www.photospace.es

August 22, 2008 | 5:08 AM Comments  0 comments

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davislisboa   davislisboa Davis Lisboa's TIGblog
Davis Lisboa's profile

Marta Sozzi (Argentina)

Estimado Davis:

Buscando en internet he encontrado tu obra y me parece muy buena.
Hace ocho años que trabajo con una galeria de Nueva York y organizo exposiciones en la misma de artistas iberoamericanos.
Si a ti te interesa exponer para el mes de Septiembre o Diciembre, puedes mandarme un mail, que te completare los datos y condiciones de la muestra.

Muchos Cariños,

Marta Sozzi

August 22, 2008 | 5:08 AM Comments  0 comments

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ictlogist   ictlogist Ismael Peña-López's TIGblog
Ismael Peña-López's profile

Summer tidy up: ICT4D Courses

Three years ago I set up ICT4D Courses, a repository where I would be uploading learning materials related to training courses in the field of ICT4D.

After that time, the repository has not grown at all — it was somehow part of my MPhil’s dissertation.

On the other hand, I had recently created ICTlogy Learning Materials Series, a place where to upload the learning materials that I had created.

Now, it does not make sense to be having two different places for the same thing: open educational resources, so I merged them into one. The URLs have not changed, just the respository, that now holds everything concerning open educational resources:

 

 

You’ll see it missing from the top menu, but you can always access it at the Bibliography, and then go to Types of Works and Learning Materials.


August 9, 2008 | 3:08 AM Comments  0 comments



ictlogist   ictlogist Ismael Peña-López's TIGblog
Ismael Peña-López's profile

Announcement. Call for Candidates and Fellowships at the PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society, Open University of Catalonia

The PhD on the Information and Knowledge Society Programme recently opened the call for candidates — including 10 full time fellowships —, offering 33 student places in the following fields:

As said, UOC’s research institute, the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, offers 10 grants for full-time PhDs that are carried out physically in its headquarters in Castelldefels’s Mediterranean Technology Park (20 minutes from Barcelona). It carries a stipend and access to travel funds.

Please visit the PhD programme’s website, for detailed information about the places on offer and the fellowships.


August 1, 2008 | 2:08 AM Comments  0 comments



FRedondo   FRedondo Quijote's TIGblog
Quijote's profile

EL PRESIDENTE LULA Y EL ESCRITOR CARLOS FUENTES, PREMIOS INTERNACIONALES DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA
Translations available in: Spanish (original) | French | Italian | German | Portuguese | English | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

THE PRESIDENT LULA AND THE WRITER INTERNATIONAL CARLOS FUENTES, PRIZES DON QUIXOTE OF THE SPOT
Automatically translated into English thanks to WorldLingo
The contest consists of two prizes: Prize the International Don Quixote of Mancha to the best institutional work and Prize the International Don Quixote of Mancha to the most outstanding individual trajectory. The purpose of the award is to grant recognition to the work of the candidates who better have contributed to the diffusion and the knowledge of the culture and the Spanish language. The delivery finery will take place in autumn in Toledo.

The Prize the International Don Quixote of Mancha, granted by the Government of Castile-The Spot and the Santillana Foundation, has corresponded, in his first edition, to the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula gives Whistles, in the category of better institutional work, and to the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, in the category of the most outstanding individual trajectory.

President of Castile-The Mancha, Jose Maria Barreda, accompanied by the president of the Foundation Santillana, Emiliano Martinez, has been the one in charge to present the names the winners of the first edition this prize that has as purpose of granting institutional recognition to the work of the candidates of any nationality which better they have contributed to the diffusion and the knowledge of the culture and the Spanish language.

Failure of the jury

In the category of better institutional work the prize has been for Lula because the jury has considered who with the Law of the Spanish, the Presidency of Brazil has impelled an educative initiative of great social importance, cultural and political. The institutional endorsement to the study of the Spanish in the secondary school and baccalaureate will allow that more than nine million students they know our language and they use it like instrument of cultural and professional development.

The decision of president Lula implies an enormous challenge for the educative system of Brazil because it implies the incorporation of 29,000 professors and a specific development of the manual methods and of education of the language. The measurement will extend the horizons of the cooperation, the communication and the cultural interchange of Brazil with the Hispano-American countries of its surroundings.

In the category of the most outstanding individual trajectory, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes has been awarded by his work like impeller of the collective patrimony of the language and the Spanish culture.

The jury considers to Carlos Fuentes one of the most remarkable intellectuals of the cultural scope and linguistic Hispano-American. Its persistence in impelling the Territory the Spot as common cultural space to the hispanohablantes has been taking force in the countries in which its work has a decisive influence. Like thinker, ensayista and novelist Carlos Fuentes it has contributed to consolidate the conscience of the Spanish like international language of knowledge.

Against this background, president Barreda explained that this prize has continuity vocation and hopes that becomes a reference for all? Territory of the Spot? , as well as? for all those that we on both sides spoke Castilian of the sea the ocean? , it aimed, simultaneously that emphasized that it will be a great stimulus for the diffusion of the Spanish.

On the other hand, the president of the Foundation Santillana, Emiliano Martinez, emphasized the sensitivity of president Barreda with the cultural questions and the global projection of the same ones.

In this sense it said that the task of expansion of the Spanish language is today a task undertaken by diverse countries and institutions reason why it applauded the initiative of president Barreda with the creation of these prizes, that described as valuable and eminent. We hoped that the delivery of these prizes has the projection that are deserved? , it emphasized.

Bases of the aid

the contest consists of two prizes: Prize the International Don Quixote of Mancha to the best institutional work and Prize the International Don Quixote of Mancha to the most outstanding individual trajectory. In the first case they will be able to choose to award the institutions academic, governmental or cultural, public or deprived, whose performance contributes to the spreading and is present at of the language and the Spanish culture and in the second the authors, investigators, professors or publishers whose work and professional trajectory have enriched the collective patrimony of the language and the Spanish culture.

The prize frames within the cultural project Territory the Spot, that it has like objective to emphasize the international importance of the Spanish language. The dowry for each modality will be of 25,000 euros and one sculpture of Manolo Valdés.

The jury of the aid is formed by president of Castile-The Mancha, Jose Maria Barreda; the advisor of Culture, Mª Solitude Blacksmith; Juan Luis Cebrián, delegated advisor Group Haste; Emiliano Martinez, president Grupo Santillana; Basilio Balthasar, director Institutional Relations Group Haste; Victor Garci'a of the Shell, Real director Academy Española and Gregorio Marañón and Bertrán de Lis, president of the Real Foundation of Toledo.

July 24, 2008 | 11:59 PM Comments  0 comments

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ictlogist   ictlogist Ismael Peña-López's TIGblog
Ismael Peña-López's profile

Stephen Downes: The Future of Education

Conference by Stephen Downes at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society in Barcelona (Spain), 17 July 2008, on the production and sharing of free educational and training materials about Free Software.

Stephen Downes, Institute for Information Technology’s Internet Logic Research Group
The Future of Education

The Public in Public Education

Stephen Downes
Stephen Downes
(Photo: César Córcoles)

Public education, education for everyone, is an important concept not for the “education” part, but for the “public” part, as its impact goes far beyond the acquisition of knowledge, but the shaping of the whole society.

Stephen Downes presents gRSShopper. Besides the most evident uses of the tool as a resource harvester, the main purpose being connecting the different resources amongst them, to link one to each other different pieces of content scattered around the Internet. This is a personal learning environment, more than a social software intended to build community; an personal environment but headed to openly being a part of the network of people and content.

Freedom

Freedom as a state of being: putting the stress on the personal capability and will to do something, more than e.g. on the formal or legal permission to.

Freedom is an attitude, a perspective of self-determination, of self-government, to be what you want to be. Education means realizing the degree of freedom you’re in and finding out the way to get more of that freedom. But being educated does not suffice, as practical constrains (fear, etc.) also apply.

Freedom is also about being able to reach one’s own potential.

Freedom as access: access to knowledge and learning, where these are public goods, created in a nonprofit way that expects no revenue from their creation and distribution.

The Future of Education

The concept of the “class” is an administrative one, not related with pedagogy, not related with a course. But the question is that, for several (socialization) reasons, the idea of the “class” sticks. But could the network substitute the group? Communication is central to our being, so our connections do shape ourselves and our actions.

So there’s pressures towards using our natural connections to engage in collective learning, more than to move into an artificially built classroom that, even if it might have been an efficient tool in the past, it only seems now to be perpetuating relationships of power between teachers and learners.

Competences

Competences are a dynamic concept, based on growth. And they require a constantly changing path that can be filled with different (ad hoc) educational recourses.

Nevertheless, there is learning hardly identifiable with competences.

So, competences should be one more way to identify learning opportunities, and the selection of learning resources just an add-on to a whole system of learning activities (traditional and new ones).

The selection of learning options should depend on our background and framework (former learning, actual legislation, etc.) and should be driven also by context, by actual needs.

Delivery systems

We have, hence, to build topic delivery systems, systems that deliver learning resources.

Delivery systems today are, basically, content delivery systems. The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is here to replace learning management/delivery systems. The PLE is more a concept than an application:

  • Is based on the idea of personal access to resources from multiple sources
  • Is based on a personal web presence
  • Focuses on creation and communication rather than on content completion

Education should be no more as managing a system, but delivering in a network; no more something self-contained, closed, but something interacting with a larger environment. Thus, educational institutions have to reshape themselves to become entities that interact with the larger environment.

Connectivism and Freedom

Our ideas of concepts are created through “wholes” of information sets — the basis of Connectivism. So educational institutions have to make resources available to both contribute and be able to build these “wholes”. The resources have to be able to learn from the environment and the student, and communicate with their framework and environment. Among other things, this will make personalization more efficient.

Education should be a flat network, where both students and teachers are nodes communication one to each other. And the communications among these nodes should be free: if these communications are mediated (or just made possible) by digital resources, these resources need to be free to enable communication… and hence education.

Al Gore, The assault on reason: we’ve gone from a society that used to think by itself to a society that is being though for itself (e.g. media think for the society). We have to go back to the society that used to think for itself. And content needs to be free to be able to reach this state of freedom of communication and thought.

The market — and their firms — are putting barriers to these freedoms. And, indeed, non-commercial licenses (cc-sa, copyleft) allow bad practices against the free flow of content, as they do not prevent perverse uses of open resources.

The role of public education institutions should be, in the end, to promote this free flow of resources. To guarantee access to the public good that is digital content and media as the language of interaction today.

Update:
Audio of the conference (MP3 file, 9.5 MB)

July 17, 2008 | 4:07 AM Comments  0 comments



ictlogist   ictlogist Ismael Peña-López's TIGblog
Ismael Peña-López's