We currently have a working paper available in the APSA 2009 conference proceedings:
Devereaux, Z.P., Cukier, W., Ryan, P. M., & Thomlinson, N.R. (2009, September 5). Using the Issue Crawler to Map Gun Control Issue-Networks. APSA 2009: Toronto Meeting [Conference Paper]. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1449612
We would appreciate any comments on the paper before we send it off to a journal for formal publication.
On another note, my blog activity has gone through the roof in the past few months for two reasons:
1) SSHRC season (everyone is looking for SSHRC advice):
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/phd-dissertation-proposal-sshrc.html
2) CPSA Paper on the "Canadian Gun Registry":
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2009/08/canadian-firearms-registry.html
Those two blog entries are now the most searched for on my site. Facebook policy is still popular too, but no where as near as these top two.
Showing posts with label ICT Tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICT Tools. Show all posts
Monday, 7 September 2009
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
The Canadian Firearms Registry
Well, we’ve started a bit of a political ballyhoo with some research at Ryerson. I want to affirm here from the beginning that I am an independent researcher, and my research is not out to target or support any single Canadian political party. I am simply a concerned Canadian citizen, and I do not share who I vote for (like most journalists) in order to be as objective as possible in my research.
Working with Wendy Cukier, Neil Thomlinson, and Zachary Devereaux (three Albertans in total on the article including myself!), we went looking to better understand the merits of the Canadian Firearms Registry and what we should do now that it is here, despite its costs running so high initially.
A link to the original newspaper coverage of our study is available here -- "Study shoots holes in $2B 'fabrication'" by Rob Linke:
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/703339
The main point of the article is that anyone who says the registry cost "$2 billion" is lying to the Canadian people and has not done their research. Officially, the registry has cost near to $1 billion over ten years (Auditor General of Canada, 2006).
Our paper at the Canadian Political Science Association (May, 2009) was cited in the article, and a copy of the paper can be found here:
http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2009/Ryan-Cukier-Thomlinson-Devereaux.pdf
Some pertinent details include the following:
1) The old registry system cost $30M / year (over ten years = $300M), which would not have had any of the benefits of the new system. The system was definitely in need of an upgrade, which the initial Progressive Conservative Party Bill C-17, a revised version of Bill C-80, under then Justice Minister Kim Campbell, was attempting to provide in 1991.
2) Police consistently maintained that the registry system is an important tool for police, who use it nearly 10,000 times a day according to Steven Chabot, President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (“Public safety will be at risk if gun registry is dismantled,” Toronto Star, 10 April 2009: A23).
3) Public health analysts maintain that gun-related deaths have decreased in Canada since the new Firearms Act became law (Snider et al., 2009; Cukier & Sidel, 2006).
4) Ian MacLeod is the author of the Ottawa Citizen article that describes how police had confiscated 3560 guns nationally in one year, which “would have been more difficult, if not impossible, to locate and confiscate” without the registry:
Source: MacLeod, I. (2009). 92 handguns collected in city since fall. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved May 29, 2009, from http://www.ottawacitizen.com/handguns+collected+city+since+fall/1640924/story.html
I don’t know about you, but after doing my research, I was quite swayed to go with what doctors and the police think about the registry rather than the non-authoritative accounts.
Contextualizing Costs of the Registry
How can we contextualize the cost of the registry? How much should public safety cost? Yes, the registry went over cost like other IT endeavors – for example, the current Harper minority government’s support of Secure Channel – another $1 billion information technology “boondoggle” – that has gone mostly unnoticed [see: “Government to replace $1B online service ‘boondoggle’” (Ottawa Citizen, May, 2008)] -- but how much should the registry cost now that it is here? What do we do with it?
Here are some numbers to consider:
1) A Canadian Medical Association article placed the costs of gun death and injury in Canada at $6.6 billion (1993 Canadian dollar value) in 1991 (Miller, 1995).
2) The Geneva Small Arms Survey states that productivity losses due to firearms are $1.6 billion annually in Canada (Small Arms Study, 2006).
3) Comparison to other safety investments: A Coalition for Gun Control report “Continued funding for the Firearms Program is essential to public safety” (2004) provides the example that $400 million was used to fix a stretch of road in New Brunswick where forty-three lives were lost between 1996 and 2000. By comparison, Canada has more than one thousand gun deaths every year.
4) Per Capita costs of Other Government Programs: Legal Aid spending in Canada per year (2008, Thursday, July 31), which arguably is very low compared to other Western nations, totalled $583 million (02-03) and $659 million (06-07). The per capita cost was $18.59 (02-03) and $20.19 (06-07) (Tyler, 2008). By comparison, the gun registry costs every Canadian $2.81/year at its current cost.
5) Canada’s Passport Office costs $125 million a year (over ten years = $ 1.25 billion) to register travelers.
Lastly, I’ve also attached the estimated costs of registering guns today from the Canada Firearm Centre:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/est-pre/20052006/CFC-CAFC/CFC-CAFCr5602_e.asp#22
While the CFC has a budget of $82.3M a year, actually registering the guns is $15.7M, and scrapping the long gun registry would save $3M (according to some estimates). These costs are in fact lower now than the older registry.
However, the only people who seem to want to scrap these things are Conservative politicians linked with the gun lobby and a few rural MPs.
I want to hear more from other people about this, because I really do see the value of the registry at this point after doing the research, and I think citizens shouldn’t take it lightly that MPs Breitkreuz and Hoeppner are lying about public accounts in the House. A $1B error in fact…
All of my Albertan friends who own guns that I have talked to have say a registered gun can kill a moose just as easily as an unregistered gun – in other words, they feel that the registry did cost too much, but now that it’s here we should agree with the doctors and police who argue it is needed for public safety issues.
I was interested to see what happened to the story on-line a month afterward -- Here’s what others think about the story in the blogosphere:
> The reader’s comments on this article from MP Breitkreuz are interesting: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/257-tearing-down-the-long-gun-registry
> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=118&topic_id=235208
> http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
> http://www.gunpolicy.org/Topics/Gun_Rights.html
Lastly, just to alert some people to the potential consequences of independent research: Some anonymous user named “BigUglyMan” (no word of a lie) on the password protected “Gun Nutz” website profiled me as a “joker” and “a disciple of Wendy” within minutes of the original Rob Linke article being posted. Obviously, I don’t have a brain of my own to make up my mind about the gun registry, and I’m not a concerned Canadian citizen with a right to my own voice…
Michael Ondaatje’s words here are humourously poignant “I was always a private man. It is difficult to realize that I was so discussed” (The English Patient, p. 138), but I guess it comes with the territory of researching issues and networked politics. A member of my family joked that a gun registry is needed simply because people like that exist…
Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!
Peter
Working with Wendy Cukier, Neil Thomlinson, and Zachary Devereaux (three Albertans in total on the article including myself!), we went looking to better understand the merits of the Canadian Firearms Registry and what we should do now that it is here, despite its costs running so high initially.
A link to the original newspaper coverage of our study is available here -- "Study shoots holes in $2B 'fabrication'" by Rob Linke:
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/703339
The main point of the article is that anyone who says the registry cost "$2 billion" is lying to the Canadian people and has not done their research. Officially, the registry has cost near to $1 billion over ten years (Auditor General of Canada, 2006).
Our paper at the Canadian Political Science Association (May, 2009) was cited in the article, and a copy of the paper can be found here:
http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2009/Ryan-Cukier-Thomlinson-Devereaux.pdf
Some pertinent details include the following:
1) The old registry system cost $30M / year (over ten years = $300M), which would not have had any of the benefits of the new system. The system was definitely in need of an upgrade, which the initial Progressive Conservative Party Bill C-17, a revised version of Bill C-80, under then Justice Minister Kim Campbell, was attempting to provide in 1991.
2) Police consistently maintained that the registry system is an important tool for police, who use it nearly 10,000 times a day according to Steven Chabot, President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (“Public safety will be at risk if gun registry is dismantled,” Toronto Star, 10 April 2009: A23).
3) Public health analysts maintain that gun-related deaths have decreased in Canada since the new Firearms Act became law (Snider et al., 2009; Cukier & Sidel, 2006).
4) Ian MacLeod is the author of the Ottawa Citizen article that describes how police had confiscated 3560 guns nationally in one year, which “would have been more difficult, if not impossible, to locate and confiscate” without the registry:
Source: MacLeod, I. (2009). 92 handguns collected in city since fall. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved May 29, 2009, from http://www.ottawacitizen.com/handguns+collected+city+since+fall/1640924/story.html
I don’t know about you, but after doing my research, I was quite swayed to go with what doctors and the police think about the registry rather than the non-authoritative accounts.
Contextualizing Costs of the Registry
How can we contextualize the cost of the registry? How much should public safety cost? Yes, the registry went over cost like other IT endeavors – for example, the current Harper minority government’s support of Secure Channel – another $1 billion information technology “boondoggle” – that has gone mostly unnoticed [see: “Government to replace $1B online service ‘boondoggle’” (Ottawa Citizen, May, 2008)] -- but how much should the registry cost now that it is here? What do we do with it?
Here are some numbers to consider:
1) A Canadian Medical Association article placed the costs of gun death and injury in Canada at $6.6 billion (1993 Canadian dollar value) in 1991 (Miller, 1995).
2) The Geneva Small Arms Survey states that productivity losses due to firearms are $1.6 billion annually in Canada (Small Arms Study, 2006).
3) Comparison to other safety investments: A Coalition for Gun Control report “Continued funding for the Firearms Program is essential to public safety” (2004) provides the example that $400 million was used to fix a stretch of road in New Brunswick where forty-three lives were lost between 1996 and 2000. By comparison, Canada has more than one thousand gun deaths every year.
4) Per Capita costs of Other Government Programs: Legal Aid spending in Canada per year (2008, Thursday, July 31), which arguably is very low compared to other Western nations, totalled $583 million (02-03) and $659 million (06-07). The per capita cost was $18.59 (02-03) and $20.19 (06-07) (Tyler, 2008). By comparison, the gun registry costs every Canadian $2.81/year at its current cost.
5) Canada’s Passport Office costs $125 million a year (over ten years = $ 1.25 billion) to register travelers.
Lastly, I’ve also attached the estimated costs of registering guns today from the Canada Firearm Centre:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/est-pre/20052006/CFC-CAFC/CFC-CAFCr5602_e.asp#22
While the CFC has a budget of $82.3M a year, actually registering the guns is $15.7M, and scrapping the long gun registry would save $3M (according to some estimates). These costs are in fact lower now than the older registry.
However, the only people who seem to want to scrap these things are Conservative politicians linked with the gun lobby and a few rural MPs.
I want to hear more from other people about this, because I really do see the value of the registry at this point after doing the research, and I think citizens shouldn’t take it lightly that MPs Breitkreuz and Hoeppner are lying about public accounts in the House. A $1B error in fact…
All of my Albertan friends who own guns that I have talked to have say a registered gun can kill a moose just as easily as an unregistered gun – in other words, they feel that the registry did cost too much, but now that it’s here we should agree with the doctors and police who argue it is needed for public safety issues.
I was interested to see what happened to the story on-line a month afterward -- Here’s what others think about the story in the blogosphere:
> The reader’s comments on this article from MP Breitkreuz are interesting: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/257-tearing-down-the-long-gun-registry
> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=118&topic_id=235208
> http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
> http://www.gunpolicy.org/Topics/Gun_Rights.html
Lastly, just to alert some people to the potential consequences of independent research: Some anonymous user named “BigUglyMan” (no word of a lie) on the password protected “Gun Nutz” website profiled me as a “joker” and “a disciple of Wendy” within minutes of the original Rob Linke article being posted. Obviously, I don’t have a brain of my own to make up my mind about the gun registry, and I’m not a concerned Canadian citizen with a right to my own voice…
Michael Ondaatje’s words here are humourously poignant “I was always a private man. It is difficult to realize that I was so discussed” (The English Patient, p. 138), but I guess it comes with the territory of researching issues and networked politics. A member of my family joked that a gun registry is needed simply because people like that exist…
Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!
Peter
Friday, 15 May 2009
New JITP Publication on Political Blogging
The Infoscape Research Lab has a new publication on Canada's political blogosphere in the Summer 2009 issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics:
"Blogs I Read": Partisanship and Party Loyalty in the Canadian Political Blogosphere. Greg Elmer, Ganaele Langlois, Zachary Devereaux, Peter Malachy Ryan, Fenwick McKelvey, Joanna Redden, and A. Brady Curlew.
http://www.jitp.net/m_archive.php?p=10
The JITP issue also has a rather balanced review of Jonathan Zittrain's book (it's tough on the work in some parts, but I might say fair overall from a quick read):
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Reviewed by Jeremy Malcolm
"Blogs I Read": Partisanship and Party Loyalty in the Canadian Political Blogosphere. Greg Elmer, Ganaele Langlois, Zachary Devereaux, Peter Malachy Ryan, Fenwick McKelvey, Joanna Redden, and A. Brady Curlew.
http://www.jitp.net/m_archive.php?p=10
The JITP issue also has a rather balanced review of Jonathan Zittrain's book (it's tough on the work in some parts, but I might say fair overall from a quick read):
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.
Reviewed by Jeremy Malcolm
Friday, 23 May 2008
Bruno Latour's Keynote at Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity
I just attended Bruno Latour's keynote address at “Reclaiming the World: the Future of Objectivity”.
It was a packed house at the U of T's Bahen Centre, and they will be putting a video recording of the event on-line shortly.
They said there was no problem if I made an audio recording, so I've attached my handheld audio recording to this blog post in case anyone can't wait for the official video copy. It's a Latour bootleg! If they ask me to take it down for any reason, I will... But they gave me the green light in person, so here it is (see the attached 1 hour itunes/QuickTime M4a clip; it's about 22 MBs -- I hope the sampling frequency is audible and the file size isn't too large for folks):
* Bruno Latour Keynote
If you're up to date with Latour's work, there wasn't much new in his talk on political epistemologies. He mostly developed ideas from his two recent works Reassembling the Social and Making Things Public for a North American audience. He also provided numerous examples of new data visualization tools and projects such as:
1) http://www.demoscience.org/
2) http://mapofscience.com/
Perhaps the most interesting part of the talk for Latour fans were the reactions to it. For example, Ian Hacking critiqued Latour's work as being an "insane phenomenology" with too many examples and not enough of a through line. Others from the more traditional and perhaps not so cutting edge U of T crowd similarly critiqued Latour’s work for not going into enough depth to develop a sense of how new data visualization projects are in fact “new” or leading to a redesign of society that is different from classical epistemologies. Also, many did not understand how networked technologies provided any resistance to dominant epistemologies.
My thoughts on the topic would be that if people are not seeing in Latour's work that new data visualization tools are "new", then they should stop using them and see what happens to their research. I believe other network theorists, like Yochai Benkler for example, would definitely support Latour’s analysis. Google, the military, and other big industries are banking on these “new” visualization tools, so there must be some reason behind it. To spell it out explicitly, beyond Latour's justifications which you can hear in the audio recording or find in his works, I would say that “new” data visualizations are "new" because of:
1) Massive Public Data Interaction: Open data access allow individuals to interact with massive networks that were not publicly available and at scales that have never before been studied, at such an instant speed of investigation (e.g. Just watch CNN's coverage of the Presidential race).
2) Automated Political-Technological Agents: The amount of technological penetration in Western society also increasingly has technology making decisions for us in our research as politically invested agents with their own in-built epistemologies that reflect particular dominant political groups. These epistemologies must be questioned and understood, especially when they do not fit into traditional epistemologies or ways of knowing.
3) On-line Discourse Domination: Decision making processes are moving on-line, and if different cultures want to be invested in science and technological decisions of "objectivity", then they have to become a part of this game, which is increasingly exclusionary.
That's my quick take on the topic. I'll write more as debate arises or time allows me to offer up more insights.
Overall, I was happy to finally hear the work of someone I have been studying for the past five years in person, and his slideshow was definitely very impressive. One of the main things that will stick with me from the talk is how the Maps of Science group and other scientometric tracking projects are demonstrating that globally there are about 12 major research clusters in the new knowledge economy of any discipline. That’s a fairly powerful data visualization of the realignment of social agents.
Okay, that's my final word, for now...
It was a packed house at the U of T's Bahen Centre, and they will be putting a video recording of the event on-line shortly.
They said there was no problem if I made an audio recording, so I've attached my handheld audio recording to this blog post in case anyone can't wait for the official video copy. It's a Latour bootleg! If they ask me to take it down for any reason, I will... But they gave me the green light in person, so here it is (see the attached 1 hour itunes/QuickTime M4a clip; it's about 22 MBs -- I hope the sampling frequency is audible and the file size isn't too large for folks):
* Bruno Latour Keynote
If you're up to date with Latour's work, there wasn't much new in his talk on political epistemologies. He mostly developed ideas from his two recent works Reassembling the Social and Making Things Public for a North American audience. He also provided numerous examples of new data visualization tools and projects such as:
1) http://www.demoscience.org/
2) http://mapofscience.com/
Perhaps the most interesting part of the talk for Latour fans were the reactions to it. For example, Ian Hacking critiqued Latour's work as being an "insane phenomenology" with too many examples and not enough of a through line. Others from the more traditional and perhaps not so cutting edge U of T crowd similarly critiqued Latour’s work for not going into enough depth to develop a sense of how new data visualization projects are in fact “new” or leading to a redesign of society that is different from classical epistemologies. Also, many did not understand how networked technologies provided any resistance to dominant epistemologies.
My thoughts on the topic would be that if people are not seeing in Latour's work that new data visualization tools are "new", then they should stop using them and see what happens to their research. I believe other network theorists, like Yochai Benkler for example, would definitely support Latour’s analysis. Google, the military, and other big industries are banking on these “new” visualization tools, so there must be some reason behind it. To spell it out explicitly, beyond Latour's justifications which you can hear in the audio recording or find in his works, I would say that “new” data visualizations are "new" because of:
1) Massive Public Data Interaction: Open data access allow individuals to interact with massive networks that were not publicly available and at scales that have never before been studied, at such an instant speed of investigation (e.g. Just watch CNN's coverage of the Presidential race).
2) Automated Political-Technological Agents: The amount of technological penetration in Western society also increasingly has technology making decisions for us in our research as politically invested agents with their own in-built epistemologies that reflect particular dominant political groups. These epistemologies must be questioned and understood, especially when they do not fit into traditional epistemologies or ways of knowing.
3) On-line Discourse Domination: Decision making processes are moving on-line, and if different cultures want to be invested in science and technological decisions of "objectivity", then they have to become a part of this game, which is increasingly exclusionary.
That's my quick take on the topic. I'll write more as debate arises or time allows me to offer up more insights.
Overall, I was happy to finally hear the work of someone I have been studying for the past five years in person, and his slideshow was definitely very impressive. One of the main things that will stick with me from the talk is how the Maps of Science group and other scientometric tracking projects are demonstrating that globally there are about 12 major research clusters in the new knowledge economy of any discipline. That’s a fairly powerful data visualization of the realignment of social agents.
Okay, that's my final word, for now...
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Tools from MaRS and other places
Happy post-St. Patty’s Day to ye all,
I hope everyone is still feeling the luck of the Irish today, and are not too under the weather from the cheer last night.
I thought I’d just quickly post some new interesting tools coming down the pipe and also some other items that people might find interesting. First off, here are some of the tools that were demonstrated at the MaRS “Permanent Campaign” event that the Infoscape Lab attended today with Greg Elmer being the keynote:
1) aideRSS: http://www.aiderss.com/
This seems like a generally useful tool for those who read a large number of blogs. However, at the moment, aideRSS are keeping their ranking heuristics hidden, and they do not allow readers to set up their own advanced ranking methods. For instance, it would be useful for someone to just choose to read blogs that have a lot of comments, or that have a large number of blogs linking to them. It would also be useful for the aideRSS tool to present such information as comments and links in an easily readable manner along with the other statistics they offer. Test it out to see what I mean exactly, of course.
2) Blogscope.net: http://www.blogscope.net/
Blog surveillance technology from the U of T. These folks have even automated tone judgments of the postings on blogs in the beta version, which sounds pretty sketchy to me, especially since once again they do not share their heuristics for how they judge tone. Their plan so far is to also make it the blogger’s individual duty to de-list their personal information from their network tracking software, which profiles every blogger on the web. This could be potentially very controversial.
The company linked with Blogscope is: www.Sysomos.com
3) Iotum: http://iotum.com/
Free conference calls for everyone, using Facebook or otherwise. This might be useful, especially if they add video calls some day. It appears to be a step up from plain old Skype.
************************************************
Here are some other items not connected with the MaRS event, but connected with political tools in general:
1) Microsoft’s Blews: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blews/blews.aspx
This software seems similar to the Blogscope.net platform above, but it appears to have a more elegant user interface. However, the team that has worked on it does not include any political scientists or sociologists, so I’m not sure how well it will target specific user needs to drill into political blogs and news ("blews") in the social media space.
2) Gapminder.org: Interesting use of data visualization software, and there is a TED video of Hans Rosling from the Gapminder.org group on their powerful use of data visualization here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI
3) Morningside Analytics: http://morningside-analytics.com/
John Kelly from Columbia University who was at the OII SDP this summer has officially launched his company with the help of Leonard Lidov, who is a Torontonian. Their business looks interesting, and I wish them well.
4) Michael Zimmer’s bibliography of ethical and privacy dimensions of web
search engines: http://michaelzimmer.org/2007/06/30/scholarship-on-privacy-and-search-engines/
More to come on the MaRS talk when I get a second to write in April.
I hope everyone is still feeling the luck of the Irish today, and are not too under the weather from the cheer last night.
I thought I’d just quickly post some new interesting tools coming down the pipe and also some other items that people might find interesting. First off, here are some of the tools that were demonstrated at the MaRS “Permanent Campaign” event that the Infoscape Lab attended today with Greg Elmer being the keynote:
1) aideRSS: http://www.aiderss.com/
This seems like a generally useful tool for those who read a large number of blogs. However, at the moment, aideRSS are keeping their ranking heuristics hidden, and they do not allow readers to set up their own advanced ranking methods. For instance, it would be useful for someone to just choose to read blogs that have a lot of comments, or that have a large number of blogs linking to them. It would also be useful for the aideRSS tool to present such information as comments and links in an easily readable manner along with the other statistics they offer. Test it out to see what I mean exactly, of course.
2) Blogscope.net: http://www.blogscope.net/
Blog surveillance technology from the U of T. These folks have even automated tone judgments of the postings on blogs in the beta version, which sounds pretty sketchy to me, especially since once again they do not share their heuristics for how they judge tone. Their plan so far is to also make it the blogger’s individual duty to de-list their personal information from their network tracking software, which profiles every blogger on the web. This could be potentially very controversial.
The company linked with Blogscope is: www.Sysomos.com
3) Iotum: http://iotum.com/
Free conference calls for everyone, using Facebook or otherwise. This might be useful, especially if they add video calls some day. It appears to be a step up from plain old Skype.
************************************************
Here are some other items not connected with the MaRS event, but connected with political tools in general:
1) Microsoft’s Blews: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blews/blews.aspx
This software seems similar to the Blogscope.net platform above, but it appears to have a more elegant user interface. However, the team that has worked on it does not include any political scientists or sociologists, so I’m not sure how well it will target specific user needs to drill into political blogs and news ("blews") in the social media space.
2) Gapminder.org: Interesting use of data visualization software, and there is a TED video of Hans Rosling from the Gapminder.org group on their powerful use of data visualization here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI
3) Morningside Analytics: http://morningside-analytics.com/
John Kelly from Columbia University who was at the OII SDP this summer has officially launched his company with the help of Leonard Lidov, who is a Torontonian. Their business looks interesting, and I wish them well.
4) Michael Zimmer’s bibliography of ethical and privacy dimensions of web
search engines: http://michaelzimmer.org/2007/06/30/scholarship-on-privacy-and-search-engines/
More to come on the MaRS talk when I get a second to write in April.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Open CourseWare Consortium
I recommend taking a peak at the Open CourseWare Consortium site to see some of the interesting courses available there. The site is useful to see what is happening in different disciplines around the world from instructors who have the time and ability to post their entire course content and lecture notes on-line, without having a negative impact on their careers.
Open CourseWare Consortium:
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
MIT Open CourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
Open CourseWare Consortium:
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
MIT Open CourseWare:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Social Networking Technologies
I've been developing a few lists of on-line tools for Informational Politics researchers and the Digital Humanities from various listservs that I'm on. Here are some recommendations for people to check out:
Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Tools List:
1) Tools listed at the Oxford Internet Institute (July 2007): http://toujoursdeja.blogspot.com/2007/08/tools-for-humanities-researchers.html
Social Networking and Tracking Tools:
1) Infoscape Lab’s list of research centers and tools (including the Webivore): http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/311
2) Pajek: http://iv.slis.indiana.edu/lm/lm-pajek.html
3) Builtwith.com: Identifies what codes are used in creating a website.
4) Trackmenot: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot
5) TechPresident.com: offers some interesting visualizations.
6) Dapper: http://www.dapper.net/
7) Many Eyes: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
8) Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com/main/login
9) Tubemogul: http://www.tubemogul.com/
10) Issuecrawler: http://www.govcom.org/Issuecrawler_instructions.htm and their tool section --http://tools.issuecrawler.net/beta/
11) Presidential Watch: http://presidentialwatch08.com/index.php/map/
12) Web Scraping Tool: http://www.merchantos.com/makebeta/php/scraping-links-with-php/
13) Gregarius (Blog tracker): http://gregarius.net/
Digital Humanities
1) Textual Analysis Portal (TAPoR) of Tools: http://tapor.humanities.mcmaster.ca/
2) NORA: http://noraproject.org/
3) Mandala: http://mandala.humviz.org/
Concept Mapping Software: From the ComPrac Listserv
1) John D. Smith’s del.icio.us list: http://del.icio.us/smithjd/mindmap
2) Cmap: http://cmap.ihmc.us/
3) Explore Brain: www.thebrain.com
4) MindJet MindManager (compatibility with the MS office products):
http://www.mindjet.com/us/
5) Mindmeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/1171895
6) PersonalBrain
7) Freemind
The Real News
Also, if you haven’t heard about this new media initiative check it out. They’re hoping to launch before the next Presidential election.
http://www.therealnews.com/web/index.php
Oxford Internet Institute / Berkman Center Tools List:
1) Tools listed at the Oxford Internet Institute (July 2007): http://toujoursdeja.blogspot.com/2007/08/tools-for-humanities-researchers.html
Social Networking and Tracking Tools:
1) Infoscape Lab’s list of research centers and tools (including the Webivore): http://www.infoscapelab.ca/node/311
2) Pajek: http://iv.slis.indiana.edu/lm/lm-pajek.html
3) Builtwith.com: Identifies what codes are used in creating a website.
4) Trackmenot: http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot
5) TechPresident.com: offers some interesting visualizations.
6) Dapper: http://www.dapper.net/
7) Many Eyes: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
8) Dopplr: http://www.dopplr.com/main/login
9) Tubemogul: http://www.tubemogul.com/
10) Issuecrawler: http://www.govcom.org/Issuecrawler_instructions.htm and their tool section --http://tools.issuecrawler.net/beta/
11) Presidential Watch: http://presidentialwatch08.com/index.php/map/
12) Web Scraping Tool: http://www.merchantos.com/makebeta/php/scraping-links-with-php/
13) Gregarius (Blog tracker): http://gregarius.net/
Digital Humanities
1) Textual Analysis Portal (TAPoR) of Tools: http://tapor.humanities.mcmaster.ca/
2) NORA: http://noraproject.org/
3) Mandala: http://mandala.humviz.org/
Concept Mapping Software: From the ComPrac Listserv
1) John D. Smith’s del.icio.us list: http://del.icio.us/smithjd/mindmap
2) Cmap: http://cmap.ihmc.us/
3) Explore Brain: www.thebrain.com
4) MindJet MindManager (compatibility with the MS office products):
http://www.mindjet.com/us/
5) Mindmeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/1171895
6) PersonalBrain
7) Freemind
The Real News
Also, if you haven’t heard about this new media initiative check it out. They’re hoping to launch before the next Presidential election.
http://www.therealnews.com/web/index.php
Thursday, 1 January 2004
My First Blog Post Finally Recovered: Why I Blog
I’ve been meaning to re-post this final popular entry from my old blog on the topic “Why I Blog”, and I’ve finally got around to recovering it completely. I’ve even updated it at this point, and I think it’s rather interesting that I’ve come to terms with my old blog through recovering and putting it to rest about the time that my dissertation is starting to be wrapped up.
In short, the main reasons that I blog are as follows:
* To archive effective research and teaching resources that I come across
* To openly share my research because it is publicly funded
* To network with other scholars from around the world with similar research interests
* To connect with potential research subjects since my research has an on-line component
* To explore this relatively new medium via formal practice and engagement with the technology and the social agents who use it
* To present alternative views on political issues and critically question events that the mainstream media often ignores
I have found that blogging has been a great asset for all of these above reasons. Overall, it has allowed me to connect with many people that I would have possibly never come into contact with before, and has enhanced all aspects of my life through honing my technology and research skills, as well as frequently providing me with academic opportunities and employment contacts. After using a blog for a few years now, I truly think people can ill afford not to use such a valuable tool in today’s networked world to communicate with people, especially if your career requires you to connect with others.
For another example of the uses of a Blog: In the Google Analytics age I’m able to even quantify some of this value in that my blog has attracted regularly between 300-400 unique visitors each month, from countries around the world, including (in order of most unique views):
1. Canada
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Ireland
5. Thailand
6. India
7. Australia
8. Palestinian Territory
9. Philippines
10. Japan
11. France
12. Netherlands
13. Turkey
14. Singapore
15. Malaysia
16. South Africa
17. Sweden
18. Nicaragua
19. Guatemala
20. Germany
21. Finland
22. Russia
23. Indonesia
24. Venezuela
25. Ukraine
26. Vietnam
27. Spain
28. Slovenia
29. Poland
30. Algeria
31. Bahrain
32. Italy
33. South Korea
34. Iran
35. Jordan
36. Norway
37. Mexico
38. Brazil
39. Portugal
40. Nigeria
41. Egypt
42. Botswana
43. Ghana
I’ve only been using Google Analytics since January, so at this rate I’ll hopefully have had a visitor to my site from every country on the planet by the end of the year (hey, you gotta have goals, even if they don’t necessarily have any substance behind them). I’m confident that I’ll at least be able to get New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, and China added to the list shortly, but really that’s just my virtual ego talking. :-)
Jokes aside, the Google Analytics tracking tools are interesting in how they present the blogosphere as a large lurking space; Bloggers tend to link and comment on one another’s work, but the predominant Internet behaviour for the average Internet user is not to interact or leave a proclaimed trace, instead voyeurism rules. In other words, without the Internet Protocol address tracking of Google Analytics, or a similar tool, I might not know how useful to others particular blog entries are, beyond word of mouth feedback, personal e-mails, blogger links and comments posted on the blog. However, even without these tools, the blog is useful for archiving and networking, of course.
The Google Analytics tools simply help a blogger, or any writer for that matter, begin to identify how to craft better stories that others might be interested in. For instance, the top blog entries that people have been reading on this blog are listed as follows:
1. Facebook Policies:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html
2. My Dissertation Proposal:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/phd-dissertation-proposal-sshrc.html
3. ICT Tools:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/tools-from-mars-and-other-places.html
4. Comprehensive Exam Questions:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/comprehensive-exams-questions-actual.html
5. Getting a Job in the Public Service:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/02/jean-mcnulty-talk-getting-job-in-public.html
danah boyd's insight that she found any topic she wrote on Facebook would start to attract attention to her blog is quite evident in the above list. These insights into what kind of information people are looking for can only help to improve a researcher’s abilities to craft and engage with pertinent social issues that can affect others in a public space.
You don’t have to take my word for it though; here are some other bloggers thoughts on why they blog which I have found quite eloquent:
* Stefan Sinclair: http://stefansinclair.name/node/83
* Ismael Pina Lopez: http://ictlogy.net/20070729-oii-sdp-2007-epilogue-last-thoughts-about-web-sciences-and-academic-blogging-or-why-did-not-academia-came-up-with-wikipedia-and-some-acknowledgments-too/
* Daithí Mac Síthigh has a bit of a humourous take on Blogging: “I use it as a shoebox, as a sandpit, and for various research-related purposes. My non-law interests include politics, music, baseball, radio, libraries and more - all get the occasional mention. I also post speeches, papers and presentations, where possible.”
* danah boyd's warning "Blogging isn't safe": To limit my enthusiasm for blogging though, I think boyd's warning about the potential pitfalls to blogging is a good balance here.
Thinking through boyd's arguments, I know that I am definitely constructing a particular social space in my work that focuses on the following themes: post-secondary education, ICT tools, innovation, narrative analysis, social networks and politics. Beyond those few topics, I don't let much of my personal life appear on these pages, because I hope to focus the discussion on public matters, without having too much crossover with my private life (although the two are, of course, linked intimately). Generally though, I hope that others do find this blog useful (within safe limits, of course), because I know I sure have!
Okay, from now on, I will be posting only on my dissertation research as I get to work wrapping that up over the next few months.
In short, the main reasons that I blog are as follows:
* To archive effective research and teaching resources that I come across
* To openly share my research because it is publicly funded
* To network with other scholars from around the world with similar research interests
* To connect with potential research subjects since my research has an on-line component
* To explore this relatively new medium via formal practice and engagement with the technology and the social agents who use it
* To present alternative views on political issues and critically question events that the mainstream media often ignores
I have found that blogging has been a great asset for all of these above reasons. Overall, it has allowed me to connect with many people that I would have possibly never come into contact with before, and has enhanced all aspects of my life through honing my technology and research skills, as well as frequently providing me with academic opportunities and employment contacts. After using a blog for a few years now, I truly think people can ill afford not to use such a valuable tool in today’s networked world to communicate with people, especially if your career requires you to connect with others.
For another example of the uses of a Blog: In the Google Analytics age I’m able to even quantify some of this value in that my blog has attracted regularly between 300-400 unique visitors each month, from countries around the world, including (in order of most unique views):
1. Canada
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Ireland
5. Thailand
6. India
7. Australia
8. Palestinian Territory
9. Philippines
10. Japan
11. France
12. Netherlands
13. Turkey
14. Singapore
15. Malaysia
16. South Africa
17. Sweden
18. Nicaragua
19. Guatemala
20. Germany
21. Finland
22. Russia
23. Indonesia
24. Venezuela
25. Ukraine
26. Vietnam
27. Spain
28. Slovenia
29. Poland
30. Algeria
31. Bahrain
32. Italy
33. South Korea
34. Iran
35. Jordan
36. Norway
37. Mexico
38. Brazil
39. Portugal
40. Nigeria
41. Egypt
42. Botswana
43. Ghana
I’ve only been using Google Analytics since January, so at this rate I’ll hopefully have had a visitor to my site from every country on the planet by the end of the year (hey, you gotta have goals, even if they don’t necessarily have any substance behind them). I’m confident that I’ll at least be able to get New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, and China added to the list shortly, but really that’s just my virtual ego talking. :-)
Jokes aside, the Google Analytics tracking tools are interesting in how they present the blogosphere as a large lurking space; Bloggers tend to link and comment on one another’s work, but the predominant Internet behaviour for the average Internet user is not to interact or leave a proclaimed trace, instead voyeurism rules. In other words, without the Internet Protocol address tracking of Google Analytics, or a similar tool, I might not know how useful to others particular blog entries are, beyond word of mouth feedback, personal e-mails, blogger links and comments posted on the blog. However, even without these tools, the blog is useful for archiving and networking, of course.
The Google Analytics tools simply help a blogger, or any writer for that matter, begin to identify how to craft better stories that others might be interested in. For instance, the top blog entries that people have been reading on this blog are listed as follows:
1. Facebook Policies:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/university-facebook-policies-breakfast.html
2. My Dissertation Proposal:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/10/phd-dissertation-proposal-sshrc.html
3. ICT Tools:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/tools-from-mars-and-other-places.html
4. Comprehensive Exam Questions:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/05/comprehensive-exams-questions-actual.html
5. Getting a Job in the Public Service:
http://prnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/02/jean-mcnulty-talk-getting-job-in-public.html
danah boyd's insight that she found any topic she wrote on Facebook would start to attract attention to her blog is quite evident in the above list. These insights into what kind of information people are looking for can only help to improve a researcher’s abilities to craft and engage with pertinent social issues that can affect others in a public space.
You don’t have to take my word for it though; here are some other bloggers thoughts on why they blog which I have found quite eloquent:
* Stefan Sinclair: http://stefansinclair.name/node/83
* Ismael Pina Lopez: http://ictlogy.net/20070729-oii-sdp-2007-epilogue-last-thoughts-about-web-sciences-and-academic-blogging-or-why-did-not-academia-came-up-with-wikipedia-and-some-acknowledgments-too/
* Daithí Mac Síthigh has a bit of a humourous take on Blogging: “I use it as a shoebox, as a sandpit, and for various research-related purposes. My non-law interests include politics, music, baseball, radio, libraries and more - all get the occasional mention. I also post speeches, papers and presentations, where possible.”
* danah boyd's warning "Blogging isn't safe": To limit my enthusiasm for blogging though, I think boyd's warning about the potential pitfalls to blogging is a good balance here.
Thinking through boyd's arguments, I know that I am definitely constructing a particular social space in my work that focuses on the following themes: post-secondary education, ICT tools, innovation, narrative analysis, social networks and politics. Beyond those few topics, I don't let much of my personal life appear on these pages, because I hope to focus the discussion on public matters, without having too much crossover with my private life (although the two are, of course, linked intimately). Generally though, I hope that others do find this blog useful (within safe limits, of course), because I know I sure have!
Okay, from now on, I will be posting only on my dissertation research as I get to work wrapping that up over the next few months.
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