@ribo

Today, it is International Women’s Day. A day of celebration of what we have achieved in women’s rights, but also a day to put the spotlight on the injustices that women still suffer all around the world: unequal salary and work conditions in the developed world, limited rights in some Muslim countries, exploitation in many developing countries…

The victims of these injustices are not only women, but all. A world that is unjust for some, it is actually unjust for most of us except the minority that takes advantages of the injustice. Thus, all of us should be activists in removing from our planet the stigma of being a woman.

I’d like to quote a sentence that I read today on Francisco Polo’s blog:

To be a girl is so powerful that we had to educate everyone not to be one.

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Sending thunders far
bringing sculptures of the sea
shaping my life
as it is dying in me

Clouds is what I see
storms is what I bring
beasts is what I create
it ain’t what I wish…ed

Walking on dark tiles
dragging waves in dreams
sinking in me
drowning what remains

Closed eyes
still body
senseless soul
end is here

telling me to go

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I know nothing about neurology. I probably know less about art. But I know much about creating unfounded, a bit crazy, theories. There it goes one.

Why does art give us pleasure? Or at least, why does it give it to some?

Imagine yourself in front of this Kandinsky painting. For some, this might be an ugly doodle. But for many it is a very appealing piece of art. Why? I think it is in part because of learning. When we look at this painting our brains start to imagine and construct its meaning, they try to find links between its different elements (e.g. shapes, colours, positions, structure, textures…). These links can be old (learned) or new. While watching we learn the new ones as part of the “possible world”, thus new neuronal connections are created linking “things” never linked before. We are learning. This creates a mental pleasure, that in fact, represents the actual building of physical connections between our neurons.

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In a world where politicians and civil servants do nearly what they please with our money and resources, because we, the citizens, don’t have enough instruments to scrutinize what they are doing, the banks take advantage to reap the possible benefits. This is what happened in Greece and other European countries on the road to the Euro before 2001. And this is probably what continues to happen today.

The New York Times, still the best newspaper in the world IMHO, has a news article on how Goldman Sachs and other Wall St banks negotiated financial products with the Greek government, and possibly other European countries, which facilitated their hiding of high deficits to get onto the Euro. In return, they got the future proceeds of Greece’s airports and highways, among other things in a deal termed as a “garage sale”.

This is what happens when governments and public administrations do what their please without the proper scrutiny. In most of Europe, parliaments are not anymore, if they ever where, a place of accountability, but of consent and quarrelling. Today, it is up to the citizen to control that those who govern us and administer our resources and tax money do it properly. Every bit of control, even the minor one is useful by aggregation. For this we need new instruments and rules. Opening public data to all (e.g. data.gov and data.gov.uk) is a very good step in this direction.

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Another genius strip from xkcd

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At the request of the UK government, Facebook took down 30 pages linked to prison inmates who were, according to the authorities, behaving inappropriately on the site, including taunting victims’ family members. It took them 48 hours to do it.

In itself this fact is worrisome. At the request of a government Facebook decides, at its own judgment, to curtail the individual freedom of 30 people (for though they are in prison and they are crime offenders, they are still people), without the intervention of a judge to guarantee the respect of fundamental rights. It seems that victims, government and Facebook (!) are the new authorities with regards to online freedom.

But it gets worse, for these new authorities are taking their self-assigned responsibilities very seriously, according to their declarations reported on today’s International Herald Tribune (print-version).

Gary Trodwell of Families United, a group founded by relatives of young murder victims, said:

When someone is convicted of a crime he loses his civil liberty through sentencing…We say he should lose his cyberliberty as well.”

Will Mr. Trodwell run for Parliament to get that law passed?

Even worse, John Straw commenting on the excessive time that took Facebook to take off the pages (48 hours!), he said:

What we’ve got to do is set up a better system with Facebook so that if they get a notice from us that this site is improper the all tehy have to do is not make a judgment about it but press the delete button”

What about given the same powers to China or Iran, Mr. Straw?

Even, even worse, Facebook wants to become the online sheriff, or at least that’s what Sophie Silver, a Facebook spokeswoman, is implying when she affirms that:

Facebook is absolutely committed to keeping its sites safe and clean…[the web could] be a wild an unruly place. Facebook tries to put some rules and protocols on top of the unruly Web.”

Wow, good thing we have Facebook, don’t you think? Otherwise we’ll be all online raped and smuggled by the scary people populating the “wild and unruly” online world!

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Yesterday I did some digital reporting. For nearly two weeks, I’ve been collaborating with TweetyHall & FutureGov in preparation for the UK elections in May. His founder, Dominic Campbell, asked me if I could attend the first conference of local councilors in the UK C’llr10 organized by the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) last Thursday. So armed with my iPhone and a Kodak digital camera I tweeted about it, took some pictures and recorded some interviews with councilors about their use of the web in their work.

I am very critical with the party system. I think it is based on bureaucratic and opaque principles that are not much adapted to the informational and social transformation of the last decades. When I arrived, I saw all these councilors, most of them in suit and tie, that looked, in my eyes, like political bureaucrats, just managers of mid-size organizations. This image was confirmed by the speeches in the plenary: Caroline Spelman, tory shadow secretary for local government, Julia Goldsworthy, lib-dems shadow secretary for local government and John Denham, the current secretary for local government. Nothing new under the sun, and lots of “ours is great, yours is awful” discourse.

Yet, during the day and through getting into small conversation with some of the councilors my perspective changed. There are good people in local politics doing very important stuff. Communities should thank these people for their work, for most of them feel it in their hearts, and do it for vocation. My last personal tweet after the conference was:

I am very critical with the party system, but today I’ve seen at #cllr10 how the best of it is in local politics #win

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The title of this post seems counter-intuitive. Common sense tells us that battling successfully against the consequences of the financial crisis, capitalism is more alive than ever, thriving in India and China, making states tremble on their foundations. Yet I dare to say that, against this common sense and in line with Marxists, anarchists, socialists of all kinds and other anti-system movements, capitalism as we know it, i.e a socio-economic system based on the ownership and accumulation of capital, is showing its last moments of life. Yet I don’t affirm its decease for the reasons that these other ideological movements assume i.e. capitalism is failing, but because thanks to both its success and its deficiencies, it’s letting way to a new system that, like capitalism itself and contrary to communism or I would even say (paradoxically) anarchism, doesn’t need to be imposed for its popular acceptance, for it feeds from a characteristic that makes us human. In capitalism it was greed, in compartism it’s generosity.
keep reading »

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My mother doesn’t know anything about computers. Nothing. Nada. I’ve tried so many times to teach her unsuccessfully how to use the computer that I’ve actually forgotten myself how to use it. So, I must agree with Ethan Nicholas when he says that the iPad is perfect for her mother for

It does exactly what she needs. It will let her watch movies and listen to music and read books on long flights. It will make using a computer fun instead of an annoying chore.

This year I struggled with my mother’s Christmas present. I ended up buying her a very useful (and not expensive) Brita water filter jug. Yes, I know it is not a conventional present, though she really liked it! But now, I know what she will totally love and change her life: an iPad. It will also change my life: I will finally be free of teaching my mother how to use a computer…if ever that’d be possible.

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