How will computer use affect the way people are wired?

I just finished taking the Future of the Internet survey that is run by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center. One of the questions asked about the impact of technology use on the...

Live blog: Cyber Security in a Wikileaks World

I am at the APSA panel on Cyber Security in a Wikileaks World, which I will be live blogging for the next couple of hours. Tweet me your questions aboutany of the papers (you can download them, or just follow along here) and I will happily ask them when the time...

An online cure for an unsustainable model of leadership

Jack Layton’s death has me thinking back over many years of NDP activism, going back to the very first campaign I ever worked on: Dan Heap’s 1984 election campaign, when one of the most tireless presences in the committee room was that of Dan’s young...

10 challenging perspectives on social media & the Vancouver riots

The past week has been a laboratory in the power and limitations of online dialogue. While I have been troubled by the number of simplistic, hostile or unconsidered posts and comments about crowdsourcing the identification of rioters, I have more often been astounded...

Riot vigilantes speak for themselves

In the past couple of days I’ve heard from people who were initially enthusiastic about the crowdsourcing of rioter identification, but now see the concern with this kind of vigilantism. I’d love to take credit, but I’m not the most convincing voice...

Crowdsourced repression: Could it happen here?

The debate that is unfolding online about crowdsourced surveillance — what Christopher Parson referred to as Vancouver’s Human Flesh Search Engine — rests on two implicit assumptions. It’s time to get clear about what they are, so that people...

On the dangers of crowdsourced surveillance

My blog post for Harvard Business today looks at the troubling online reaction to last night’s riots in Vancouver. Reflecting on the widespread enthusiasm for using social media to track down criminals, I wrote: I don’t think we want to live in a society...

10 ways you can tap the value of the Delicious community

A social bookmarking service that draws value from both its user and developer communities, Delicious makes it easy to keep track of your favorite web sites. Here are 10 ways you can tap into the unique value of the Delicious.