Community Media - Interactive World

  Update (2 April 2012) from the official Report " 5 Days in August " Following the riots that occurred in towns and cities across England between 6 and 10 August 2011, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Official Opposition established the Riots Communities and Victims Panel and asked it to consider: what may have motivated this small minority of people to take part in the riots; why the riots happened in some areas and not others; how key public services engaged with communities before, during and after the riots; what motivated local people to come together to resist riots in their area or to clean up after riots had taken place; how communities can be made more socially and economically resilient in the future, in order to prevent future problems; and what could have been done differently to prevent or manage the riots. What this blog said at the time : As the police announce that arrests and convictions in the recent rio...

It's lamentable that London's violent looters are more interested in phones and brand new trainers than in the creative use of revolutionary collage. If only we could bring dada to the ghetto we would have a happier outcome. Surely, increasing and more effective policing is not the most cost-effective answer. As the government's emergency COBRA committee meets to discuss its response to riots and looting we turn to more creative solutions to the ennui of modern youth. Cobralingus offers a radical new remix which is far better suited to modern times. Jeff Noon, author of Cobralingus explains "Cobralingus comes completely from my love of electronic music, attempting to give language a little of the freedom that music enjoys. How can language refer to itself? Can it be bent, mutated, made liquid? Sometimes this will bring on certain poetic effects. I wouldn’t myself label it as poetry, because I think that should refer to a more heightened sense of lan...

The dark forces of Anarchy? A silhouette of revolution? A nation of shopkeepers (and their looters)? (Above) Winson Green Murder Scene. Update (2 April 2012) from the official Report " 5 Days in August " Following the riots that occurred in towns and cities across England between 6 and 10 August 2011, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Official Opposition established the Riots Communities and Victims Panel and asked it to consider: what may have motivated this small minority of people to take part in the riots; why the riots happened in some areas and not others; how key public services engaged with communities before, during and after the riots; what motivated local people to come together to resist riots in their area or to clean up after riots had taken place; how communities can be made more socially and economically resilient in the future, in order to prevent future problems; and what could have been don...

    If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, there would be 57 Asians 21 Europeans 14 from the Western Hemisphere , both north and south 8 Africans 52 would be female 48 would be male 70 would be non-white 30 would be white 70 would be non-Christian 30 would be Christian 89 would be heterosexual 11 would be homosexual 6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States . 80 would live in substandard housing 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth 1   would have a college education 1 would own a computer So much for the march of technology, science, globalization and progress.

The European Union is waking up to the "social capital" potential for ICT. Researchers have noticed that many voluntary and community groups exist 'below the radar.' (They may wish to stay that way to avoid the interference of the state?) Alexandra Haché (2011) writes "Each Third Sector Organization (TSO)  has its own tradition/capacity in developing tactical uses of ICT in order to overcome its weaknesses or boost its strengths. Levels of access, uptake and appropriation of ICT are different among TSOs and their participants. Additionally, TSO involvement with ICT ranges from using ICT simply as a tool at one extreme, to aiming expressly to have an effect on digital inclusion and social inclusion supported by ICT at the other. The study has also shown the importance of taking into account as key actors those TSO which are “under the radar”. The large numbers of small, medium and/or ephemeral organizations in this category not only shape the variety,...

 Dieter Zinnbauer (2007) writes "Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), inclusion and social capital are in themselves three very broad concepts that can be plausibly interlinked with each other in a wide variety of ways. Social capital, for example, can mitigate many risks of social exclusion, while dynamics of exclusion such as inequality and marginalization can precipitate an erosion of social capital. Likewise, ICT can support social inclusion efforts, while - in the form of digital inclusion - becoming itself a new item on the inclusion agenda. And the relation between social capital and ICT can plausibly be assumed to be even more ambivalent: ICT is sometimes expected to pose challenges to the social capital in local communities, but also believed to open fresh opportunities for weaving new social ties and expanding the formation of social capital. Exploring in more detail these multiple interrelationships in the triangle of social capital-inclusion-ICT ...

Several weeks ago I started reading David Mamet’s book Bambi vs. Godzilla; On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business . I was just getting started when Lars von Trier’s Nazi remarks were reported at the Cannes Film Festival. In this blog I offer some observations on media frenzy; anti-semitism in cinema, and the role of the Director as romantic and rebellious auteur . What are the connections? Whatever Lars von Trier actually said; intended to say; or really thinks, there was understandable outrage that the suffering and deaths of millions could be so nonchalantly brushed aside in passing remarks. The celebrated director appeared to proclaim himself a Nazi. Enough is enough? But let’s consider, before we rush in to judgment, that the missing scandal, at Cannes, is film itself, where the worthy desire to unmask and reveal, and to improve our poor fallen world, is also enmeshed with a billion dollar industry, designed to profit from suffering. Hollywood...