Alejandro@Oxford

Pilar Juárez was the head of the political section in the European Union delegation in Haiti. She was trapped in the collapse of the United Nations building in last week’s earthquake. On Sunday, 17 January, the Commission received news of the confirmation of her death, with High Representative Cathy Ashton releasing a press release, after her body was found the day before…but was it?

Today, we know that the body claimed as Pilar’s is not hers (in English). Apparently, the United Nations Police, UNPOL, made a mistake in the recognition of her body. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs discovered the truth after checking the fingerprints. Her furious husband said that he was “disgusted” by this “very serious mistake.” He accused international organizations and donors of lack of proper channels of information and coordination among them.

Meanwhile, a relatively small organization called Ushahidi was mounting an impressive network of people to gather information on the field to help the coordination of aid assistance and rescue missions, which has been translated into a website (haiti.ushahidi.com) gathering all the reports they receive via SMS and web apps. On the Ushahidi Situation Room, Patrick Philippe Meier, one of the persons behind this effort of humanitarian crowdsourcing and writer of the blog iRevolution, tells us about a

live Skype chat between Anna here in the Sit Room and Eric Rasmussen (InSTEDD and former Chief Medical Officer of the US Navy). Eric skyping from tarmac of PoP airport asking for GPS coordinates of the most obscure addresses, sites, locations and Anna providing these in record time. She has wowed the entire team in PaP including military, UN, etc. Incredible to witness all this real time networking and collaboration.

Witness the gap between an international organization that is trapped in old bureaucratic, unnecessary and expensive procedures and the agility, low-cost efforts of a network of people sharing information. The gap is how they treat and respect information. One understands information as a secondary element of “action”, whatever the latter means. Ushahidi is born with information at its core. We need to understand that information is not what is written on a paper, stored in a computer or in a book, information is alive and it is the most essential element for action. Without information one is blinded. Information is not what an expert knows, it is what everybody knows and shares. The arrogance of bureaucratic organizations is their own nemesis, for they think they know, when they don’t. They thought they knew where Pilar was. The truth was unfortunately not theirs.

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Ulysses and the Sirens (Herbert James Draper)

Ulysses knew how to pass safely by the coast of the Sirens. In the Odyssey, we are told how he instructed his sailors to put wax in their ears, bind him tightly to the mast, and by no means release him until they had passed the Sirens’ island. Ulysses knew that the Sirens’ temptation was such that he won’t be able to resist it without restraint. He knew that the wonderful Sirens’ song meant in truth destruction. It had, therefore, to be resisted.

Technology has a sweet, melodic and very attractive singing. It promises humans to do, make and achieve the impossible. It wonders us at all ages, and we fall quickly for its wonders. We imagine new perfect worlds that will bring us happiness and plenty, all thanks to our technological advances. Yet the Sirens of technology, if not resisted, can easily bring us to destruction. History is witness of this danger.

Technology and ethics are intimately related. How we approach and use technology is very much conditioned by our ethical values. Therefore, the construction of a society based solely on technological disruption is a dangerous evolution. For our behaviours, as individuals, groups and as society as whole are transformed unknowingly by these new technologies without the restraint of ethical principles that would, otherwise, guide our conduct in more beneficial directions. When Ulysses ordered its sailors to bind him to the mast and keep him there, he was imposing on himself an ethical principle to resist the temptation of the Sirens. He was telling his sailors not to follow his orders in any circumstances; he was innovating to resist a path he knew will bring him destruction.

Since the enlightenment and particularly since the XIX century, Western civilization has based great part of its social, economic, scientific and political development on technological advance. Despite all technological revolutions it has gone through, there hasn’t been an equivalent ethical revolution to help us cope with the transformations that they implied. Instead, we are now living in-between a conservative Christian ethic, which did indeed suffer a great transformation during the Reformation, and a materialist ethic based on external impulses of consumption and accumulation, ignoring other principles and values that form the complex nature of a human being, creating therefore what Durkheim called “anomie“: a lack of social ethics that produces “moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspiration.”

The Internet is the technological revolution of our era. At the same time, it is by and IN itself a social revolution. There are those, many, that want to see mainly its positive aspects. Or those that mostly focus on its negative consequences. Yet the nature of the disruption and revolution of the Internet depends not in the technology itself, but in the context where it is immersed, and how this context changes accordingly or not. A very important part of this environment is our ethics. If we use the Internet within our current ethics, I am afraid it won’t be as good as the optimists want us to believe. It is urgent, I believe, that we discuss seriously our values and principles that should drive our lives, and that we spread them in dialogue with the people. And it is in this need where we see the complexity of social phenomena; for the Internet is, at the same time, the perfect instrument and space to do so. In fact, I think it’s already happening at a small scale. How successful this ethical disruption and revolution in the making can be won’t be determined by a technological feat, but by many other factors that organize our human lives, among them our own will to bind ourselves to the mast.

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As of today, this blog will be getting some of my posts on my personal blog http://www.aribo.eu

The Internet may be facilitating the creation of echo chambers and the balkanisation of politics. This is what Cass R. Sunstein, now Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said in his book Republic and then repeated in Republic 2.0. It meant that because of the new possibilities of filtering our information as “Daily Me” we may be heading towards a world where people will only read, watch and hear what they want to. According to Sunstein, in a democracy it is essential to have public spaces where different opinions are contrasted and collide. The Internet may not only hinder the existence of these spaces, but actually it may facilitate the emergence of echo chambers where what we believe is repeated.

This morning I checked my twitter. Yesterday I checked my twitter. Until this weekend, most of the people I followed where in the US and other English-speaking countries. Basically it was mostly in English. After this weekend, after attending the PDFEU in Barcelona, I started to follow more people in Spain and, particularly, in Catalunya. Until now I was getting information about a variety of issues regarding internet, politics, culture… from the English world. Now I see information mainly from Spain and Catalunya. What happened? You will say that now I follow, in proportion, more people from there, but actually I don’t. What happened is that among all the new followed people there were US people and Spanish people, in more or less equal proportion. What happened is that I checked my twitter when the latter are awake and the former are sleeping. A time chamber is being created. It makes me think that geography/location is still very important on the Internet. Or even, location is becoming even more important than before, an apparent paradox, but it is not.

Just bumped into Cory Doctorow’s review of Chris Anderson’s Free book (I know it was published on The Guardian netaaaages ago i.e. July 28). The core of his review…

There’s plenty in our world that lives outside of the marketplace: it’s a rare family that uses spot-auctions to determine the dinner menu or where to go for holidays. Who gets which chair and desk at your office is more likely to be determined on the lines of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” than on the basis of the infallible wisdom of the marketplace. The internally socialistic, externally capitalistic character of most of our institutions tells us that there’s something to the idea that markets may not be the solution to all our problems [...] for the sizeable fraction of this material – and it is sizeable – that was created with no expectation of joining the monetary economy, with no expectation of winning some future benefit for its author, that was created for joy, or love, or compulsion, or conversation, it is just wrong to say that the “price” of the material is “free”.”

Yesterday, I went to the BBC Proms. Walking back home with my partner and her brother we passed the British Natural History Museum. A big orange banner said in big letters “ADMISSION FREE”. I’ve seen this banner in another museum, Tate Modern perhaps? In the morning I had been listening to the free audiobook of Chris Anderson’s new book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (you can download on the Anderson’s blog or via iTunes, I did the second; and/or buy the atoms version on Amazon). I linked the banner and Anderson’s book quickly and I said to myself: “UK museums are using the free economic model since very long. They offer free their collections to get people into their exposition and buy their products. They are very good at it!” And indeed, I think this is a model all other museums should start exploring seriously. You give free an information product i.e. collection to get people buy eventually in many occasions another information product e.g. expositions, books, cds…and even atom products e.g. cups, postcards…

For some time, my interests have turning towards the direction of public transparency and collaborative government. I started my PhD at Oxford with the intention of writing a thesis on foreign policy and the Internet (!), and now I find myself absorbed by four things: freedom of information, open data, open government (the three legs of transparency) and collaborative government. My thesis is turning towards a political theory dissertation on the role of granular diversity in democracy (more soon, or so I hope). And now I am putting words to actions by starting up a project of transparency in Catalunya. My ambition is to build up platforms of transparency in Catalunya, Spain and European Union with the three transparency legs I’ve mentioned: freedom of information, open data and open government, which in time will allow for the formation of collaborative government or wiki-government, in other words “government with the people.” (I recommend you to read Beth Noveck’s Wiki Government (Amazon link on the side)). In future posts I intend to develop each of those legs, and what I mean by collaborative government and the jump from transparency to collaboration.

For all of those like me that couldn’t go this year OpenTech in London, you can access their good quality audio recordings on their website. For those that don’t know what OpenTech is, let me copy&paste their description

Open Tech 2009 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, democracy and community. This year’s theme [was] “Working on Stuff that Matters” [...] Totaling 33 talks across 3 sessions covering 7 hours, some space hijacking and plenty of time to talk in the bar after sessions which challenge, inspire or talk about something that makes you want to help how you can.

I haven’t still listened to any of the talks. Have you?

Enjoy it!

Great video about a guy who dances unstoppably in Sasquatch Music Festival and makes everybody dance. Interesting to see the collective action going on. From the guy alone, one guy joins him, a couple of more, until all of a sudden everything breaks loose! The creator, the early adopters, the followers and the laggards.

On Saturday 11 July, fifteen people gathered in an isolated field in Sowton, Exeter (UK) to celebrate Andrew Poole’s 30th birthday with a barbecue and some beers. Before they plugged the music in, at around 4 pm “eight officers with camouflage pants and body armor jumped out of their vehicles and ordered everyone out about an hour into the party.” They were part of a team of four police cars, a riot van, and a force helicopter dispatched to the location to stop an “all-night” rave party advertised on Facebook. Andrew Poole explains that his party had the “overnight” tag in case anybody of his friends and family invited to the event would like to stay to sleep there. The police insists, a spokeswoman for Devon and Cornwall police said that “had it gone ahead, it is likely that far more of our resources would have been used to police the event and there would have been considerable disruption to neighbouring properties.”

How did the police get news of this party? The BBC says that the police was warned by locals fearing that a rave was going to take place. Did the police have a look at the Facebook event to check out the story or they just believed whoever told them about it? How did the neighbours got to see a private event announcement on Facebook in the first place? Were “the locals” invited originally to Andrew’s party? Or is the police (or someone out there) permanently monitoring the Internet and “the locals” is just a way of hiding a fearsome system that scans and records our communications on the net?

And what about this culture of prevention that is becoming the rule in British police? It makes you a criminal even before you have committed a crime. Remember Tom Cruise’s movie, Minority Report?