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The CPSR Compiler - August 2004
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The CPSR Compiler - August 2004 - 3.2 < <<br />
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COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS for SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Turning Thoughts to Actions
***
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CPSR ANNUAL CONFERENCE -Washington, DC-October 16-17
REPORT FROM THE BOARD
CPSR ONGOING PROJECTS
-ELECTION VERIFICATION PROJECT
- PUBLIC SPHERE PROJECT - DIAC PUBLICATIONS
PDC2004 REPORT AND PROCEEDINGS
MORE UPCOMING EVENTS
OTHER MEMBER ACTIVITIES
RECOMMENDATIONS
**********************
2004 CPSR ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND MEETING
BAD GRADES: A REPORT CARD ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
October 16-17, 2004
Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Hosted by the Communication, Culture & Technology Program at Georgetown University ( http://cct.georgetown.edu )
****
REPORT FROM THE BOARD
CPSR Bylaws Change
The CPSR Board of Directors will soon approve a bylaws change affecting how terms are allocated to candidates to the board. This was motivated by the situation we had this year in which there were three vacancies due to normally expiring three-year terms and two additional shorter-term vacancies due to Board resignations. The bylaw change establishes a procedure to try to keep about a
two thirds of the board continuing through each election to facilitate continuity. The bylaw change also specifies how ties are to be resolved. The new text is:
Section 6.3 Term of Office of Directors
Directors shall be elected for 3-year terms beginning at the start of the fiscal year, except as provided in the following paragraph:
Prior to each election, the board shall determine the number of one-year, two-year, and three-year terms so as to ensure that 1/3, or as close to this proportion as possible, of the elected Board is replaced in any given year, based on the normal expiration of terms.
Successful candidates shall be assigned term lengths depending on the number of votes received, with the candidate(s) receiving the most votes being assigned the longest term(s), etc. Ties either in the election or the assignment of length of terms shall be resolved by some random process (such as drawing names or tossing a coin).
For the full Bylaws, see http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/bylaws.html
***
CPSR got a revised budget approved for the Ford Foundation capacity building grant to put more resources toward a new CPSRwebsite. We recently contracted for $19,286 with ifPeople( http://www.ifpeople.net/ ). The site will include a discussion forum, new email support, and a members-only area. We will also be translating some of the content into Spanish.
The redesign process should take about three months, with iterations rolled out as we go - the first in September, followed by at least one other in October.
To manage the process, CPSR's Ford Project Director, Sarah Granger and ifPeople Project Manager and Co-Founder (aswell as our own CPSR Environment Working Group Chair), Chris Johnson, have organized a small ad-hoc committee to work efficiently on the development issues. The committee will be bringing in core groups at various points during the process to request feedback for different features of the site.
If you are interested in volunteering to help develop and/or maintain content for the new web site, please contact sarah @ cpsr.org.
***
We are pleased to announce that CPSR is accredited as an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
This means that CPSR has a right to participate in UN meetings that are under the aegis of the ECOSOC and relevant to CPSR's mission. Bill Drake will be CPSR's lead representative to UN agencies in Geneva and Robert Guerra will be the lead representative to UN agencies in New York. More information on ECOSOC and its relationship to accredited civil society organizations is available at http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/
***
Help With the Integrity of U.S. Elections
Please volunteer for TechWatch at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/techwatch/
The TechWatch program is an effort to assist voter protection groups to ensure that voters will have their votes counted. The program enlists technology professionals in ensuring election integrity. CPSR is co-sponsoring the TechWatch program, which is organized by The Verified Voting Foundation.
Volunteers who sign up with TechWatch will have the opportunity to get trained and help out with observing and documenting:
* Logic & Accuracy Testing of voting technology by election officials prior to Election Day
* Poll Watching on Election Day (assigned to a single polling place or central election office)
* Election Incidents on Election Day (on dispatch from an Election Incident Reporting system to polling places within a given county)
By applying technical expertise to mind the polls, TechWatch volunteers can chronicle election problems for follow-on litigation and policymaking in a way that most poll watchers cannot.
Please join with Verified Voting Foundation and our current and invited partners: Advancement Project, Americas' Families United Voter Protection Project, California Voter Foundation, Citizen's Alliance for Secure Elections (Ohio), Common Cause, CompuMentor, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Exchange Fair Election Project, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, National Committee for Voting Integrity, People for the American Way, ACORN / Project Vote, Quixote Foundation, TrueVoteMD, Unity '04 / National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, Working Assets / ActForChange, and others.
Please volunteer for TechWatch at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/techwatch/
***
Election Verification Project
CPSR's new collaborative project with Verified Voting is advancing. Demos of the system, are being given to organizations to bring in more partners and users. Thanks to CPSR's collaboration on the Project, we are being mentioned in numerous media reports. An example is: Maryland Activists Want E-Voting Receipts, by Robert MacMillan in the Washington Post.
If you belong to an organization working to make elections verifiable, and would like to learn more about CPSR's collaborative efforts, please contact Susan Evoy - evoy @ cpsr.org 650-322-3778.
***
CPSR's Public Sphere Project (PSP)
by Doug Schuler
CPSR's Public Sphere Project (PSP) made progress in several areas last month. There are now 257 pattern submissions in the pattern language for democratic communication system (http://www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/patterns) and approximately 130 of them are slated for phase II. The phase II pattern management system is in development and should be available soon. We will start sending out our book proposal next month. As always we welcome your participation.
The e-Liberate online deliberation system (http://www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/e-liberate/about.php) developed by Evergreen student Nathan Clinton will be rolled out later this month for beta-testing with non-profit organizations. E-Liberate will enable organizations to hold meetings online using an approach modeled on Roberts Rules of Order. This may be the world's first online system that supports deliberation in this way with motions, discussion and voting. Our plan is to work with several organizations over the next few months to identify any problems with the system and fix them before opening up the system to general use and releasing the software under a free software license.
Earlier this month a proposal to the National Science Foundation was submitted on the topic of Civic Intelligence: Investigating CivilSociety's Evolving Use of Participatory Information Technology. If this is funded, we will convene a workshop with about 40 people to explore today's "civic intelligence" and develop ideas for future work. Civic intelligence is a holistic concept that is intended to provide motivation as well as analytic tools for social change projects, particularly those that employ information and communication systems.
Finally, PSP director Doug Schuler will be giving presentations later this month in Chelyabinsk, Russia and Amsterdam on civic intelligence.
***
If you are interested in creating a CPSR Ongoing Project, checkout the guidelines ( http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/ongoing_project.html )
***
New "Network Society" Books Explore Civic Uses of Information Technology
June 2004 was a good month for those who are putting digital technology to use for good causes. Douglas Schuler and Peter Day, edited two relevant books.
The books, Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace (MIT Press) and Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action / Global Interaction (Routledge) have their origins in CPSR's biennial "Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing" symposia, the oldest regular forum for exploring the implications of computing in society.
The authors contributing to these edited collections describe how technology can be used effectively by communities, activists, and citizens to address the range of social challenges confronting us today. Rejecting the traditional techno-economic perspectives that dominate so much of the network society discourse, Day and Schuler challenge the reader to consider alternative pathways for human development in this digital age.
A common theme runs through both of these quite different texts, namely collaborative partnerships between researchers and community and civic activists. This represents a departure from traditional approach to and treatment of network society and information age activities, which have a tendency to concentrate on partnerships between the public and private sectors. Historically research on community and civic uses of technology has been neglected or even discouraged.
The authors contributing to these books counter this trend; their theoretical and practical discussions illustrate a new orientation--research that works with people in their natural social environments, uses common language rather than rarefied academic discourse, and takes a pragmatic perspective. The topics are central to democratization and positive social change in the network society.
***
PDC 2004
ARTFUL INTEGRATION: INTERWEAVING MEDIA, MATERIALS AND PRACTICES
July 27-31, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
The conference went very well. There were 180 registrants from 19 countries, a full, interestng and varied program. The feeling was good, and a lot of people commented on how much they enjoyed it. Of special note were the two keynotes speeches, by Tone Bratteteitg and Jonathan Barker, and the presentation of the first Artful Integrators Award to Randy Trigg and the Global Fund for Women. They have created an information and communications infrastructure that exemplifies in process and products, the spirit of the Award. (see http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/artful.html
Thanks, in large part, goes to the work by Conference Co-Chairs: Andrew Clement and Peter van den Besselaar,Program Co-Chairs: Fiorella de Cindio and Doug Schuler, The Speakers, The Program Committee, Session Chairs, (See http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/committees.html)Adrian Bond, Christie Hurrell, and a lot of volunteer work during the event itself.
Sponsors, in addition to CPSR, included
Knowledge Media Design Institute - http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/
The University of Toronto - http://www.utoronto.ca/ and
Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto - http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/index_MSIE.htm
The next conference will be held in Trento Italy, in 2006, organized by Gianni Jacucci and Finn Kensing, with Ina Wagner and Jeanette Blomberg as Program co-Chairs.
PDC 2004 and past PDC Proceedings are available from http://www.cpsr.org/publications/publications.html#workplace with pre-payment using https://secure.privaterra.org/cpsr/publications.html See http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/
***
MORE UPCOMING EVENTS
Richard M. Stallman, initiator of the free software movement, founder of the GNU project (1984) and of the Free Software Foundation (1985), will be the featured speaker at the conference called The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System to be held at the Faculty of Law of the University Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP), on August 20.
The event is being organized jointly by the Faculty of Sciences andEngineering of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru - PUCP and CPSR-Peru, the Peruvian chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. The purpose of the conference is to encourage the dissemination of knowledge about free software, provide an opportunity for people to exchange ideas and experiences in GNU/linux as a technological, reliable, powerful and economic alternative, and to promote the development of FLOSS in Peru
The conference will be relayed by webcasting at 10:00 a.m Peruvian hour (GMT -5) at http://sachapuyo.pucp.edu.pe Contact katitza @ cpsr.org
***
Pedro Mendizibal Simonetti, CPSR-Peu chair, and Katitza Rodriguez Pereda, CPSR board member and Director of CPSR-Peru, will speak at the workshop INFOSOFT 2004 to be held in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, on August 26 and 27. The workshop is being organized jointly by ACM student chapter and the Research Group of Software Development of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (GIDIS PUCP).
***
Robert Guerra will give a keynote talk in Berlin at the 20th annual meeting of Forum InformatikerInnen fŸr Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung (FIfF) - which is CPSR's equivalent in Germany - September 30-October 3. FifF offered to give us a stand. Could anyone help us out with that ?
See http://www.fiff-2004.de , http://www.fiff.de/2004/ or
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/peter/fiff/2004/
***
OTHER MEMBER ACTIVITIES
CPSR Board member Paul Hyland spoke at the Space for Progress forum at the Cannon Congressional Caucus Room on July 22. The forum promoted the Space Preservation Act and Treaty, and the U.S. Department of Peace. He spoke about CPSR's roots opposing Star Wars, the risk to peaceful uses of space by militarizing it (which also applies to computer technologies like encryption), and the inefficiency of Federal technology policy's emphasis on military technology.
***
Paul also visited Capitol Hill with a group of CPSR and New Yorkers for Fair Use members to express opposition to the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" (INDUCE Act). In our opinion this act threatens innovation -- and possibly much open source software -- chilling technological development through the threat of legal action by the entertainment industry. They met with Derek Lindblum from Senator Charles Schumer's office, and Tom Sydnor, the intellectual property counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and probably the person who drafted the legislation. He presented it as a careful balance, but he was balancing a false set of options.
***
Andy Oram, a long time CPSR member and editor at O'Reilly Media, gave Susan a heads up that he would be visiting the Bay Area while attending a conference, and wanted to get together with CPSR members. We contacted some members, and that led to various meetings with members, and two members independently inviting him to give a presentataion at Google. Andy spoke on August 2nd about why communities of computer users find themselves filling in gaps in documentation with ad hoc work on their own, because they can't depend either on vendors and project leaders or on traditional publishers such as his company.
***
If you want to try to meet up with other members, either locally, or when you are on the road, it can just take an email to Susan, who can forward it to others, to make things happen. . .
***
Katitza Rodriguez and Pedro Mendizibal wrote the Peruvian report for the Privacy & Human Rights Report 2004, for the Electronic Privacy Information Center - EPIC
(http://www.epic.org) and Privacy International (http://privacyinterantional.org).
***
CPSR-Peru officers (Pedro Mendizibal, Katherine Cieza and Katitza Rodriguez) attended the workshop organized by @LIS Alliance for the Information Society. @LIS is a programme of the European Commission aiming to reinforce the partnership between the European Union and Latin America in the field of the Information Society. Its objectives are to establish dialogue and cooperation on policy and regulatoryframeworks in key areas and to boost interconnections between research networks and communities in both regions.
***
CPSR-Peru joined Online Volunteering service (http://www.onlinevolunteering.org) on August 11, 2004.
****
CPSR Voting Technology - Birds of a Feather by Cere Davis and Andy Oram at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 29, 2004
They gave a brief description of CPSR, handed out information flyers, ane noted some issues about voting by touchscreens (DRE machines) without paper votes, vote-counting machines, and proprietary versus open source voting software. They also described the advocacy coalition CPSR is affiliated with; monitoring elections for irregularities. Discussions ensued.
****
The Compiler is not just for reporting about the CPSR-related activities of just some CPSR members. . .To report your related news for future issues, send a sentence or two (and URL if available) to cpsr @ cpsr.org
***
RECOMMENDATIONS
Bill Drake published, "Reframing Internet Governance Discourse: Fifteen Baseline Propositions," Social Science Research Council, http://www.ssrc.org/programs/itic/publications/Drake2.pdf Also forthcoming in, United Nations Information and Communication Technology Taskforce, Internet Governance: Toward a Grand Collaboration. Bill Drake's co-edited book series, The Information Revolution and Global Politics http://mitpress.mit.edu/IRGP-series was launched by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology Press.
***
CPSR board member Dr Madanmohan Rao from Bangalore, India, is co-editor of a forthcoming book, "Asia Unplugged: The Wireless and Mobile Media Boom in the Asia-Pacific" (Sage Publications). The Web site of the book has just been launched: http://www.indiasage.com/asia_unplugged.asp The book covers a range of issues including policy, regulation, marketing ethics, digital copyright, wireless impacts on education, country profiles, and reviews of books such as "The Wireless Internet Opportunity for Developing Nations."
***
The Internet Caucus Advisory Committee hosted a spirited discussion on "The DMCA Revisited: What's Fair?" The event featured comments from Congressmen Goodlatte and Boucher as well as an interesting back and forth amongst the four panelists -- David Green, Michael Petricone, Fred von Lohmann and Jonathan Zuck.The video of the event is up online at http://www.netcaucus.org/events/2004/dmca/video.shtml
***
Lotus' unending crusade against spam - featuring Nathaniel Borenstein. See http://searchdomino.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid4_gci994667,00.html
***
Getting Universal Service to Work, by Andy Oram. See http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5217
***
Bill Moyers "NOW" show about electronic voting. See http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript330_full.html
******************************
The CPSR Compiler is a monthly notice with short updates on recent activities of our members and opportunities to engage in the development of the public voice through CPSR projects.
To report news for future issues, send a sentence or two (and URL if available) to cpsr @ cpsr.org
CPSR provides a discussion and project space where individuals can contribute to the public debate and design of our global digital future. Through CPSR's chapters and working groups, members focus on regional and civic issues developing the public voice. To insure a democratic future in a time of intense globalization, the voice of the public must command a prominent position on the world stage. CPSR frames and channels the public voice.
When in doubt about how to get more out of your CPSR membership, contact cpsr@cpsr.org or refer to the Activists Handbook http://www.cpsr.org/publications/Activists_Handbook.html to get help in getting the most out of your membership.
To get involved in policy work through CPSR, consider joining one of CPSR's Working Groups http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/workgrps.html or contact cpsr @ cpsr.org about starting a new one.
CPSR-Activists is the main members forum of CPSR, where the board and members discuss current policy and organizational issues. Only subscribed members can post to this list: http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/cpsr-activists
(c) Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility 2004. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally - is encouraged if it includes this paragraph.
CPSR is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
Donations are tax deductible.
Pay Dues, Buy Tshirts, or Make Donations via http://cpsr.org/membership
Find out about email discussion lists and Working Groups hosted by CPSR at
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/
The CPSR Compiler is emailed to CPSR members in good standing,who have provided CPSR with their email address. If you do not want to receive these monthly messages reply with Subject "do not send compiler"
********************************************
Secure Online Dues and Donation Form: http://cpsr.org/membership/
--
Susan Evoy * Managing Director
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
P.O. Box 717 * Palo Alto * CA * 94302
Phone: (650) 322-3778 * (650) 322-4748 (fax)
Email: evoy @ cpsr.org
http://www.cpsr.org/
The CPSR Compiler - August 2004 - 3.2 < <<br />
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<br />
COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS for SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Turning Thoughts to Actions
***
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CPSR ANNUAL CONFERENCE -Washington, DC-October 16-17
REPORT FROM THE BOARD
CPSR ONGOING PROJECTS
-ELECTION VERIFICATION PROJECT
- PUBLIC SPHERE PROJECT - DIAC PUBLICATIONS
PDC2004 REPORT AND PROCEEDINGS
MORE UPCOMING EVENTS
OTHER MEMBER ACTIVITIES
RECOMMENDATIONS
**********************
2004 CPSR ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND MEETING
BAD GRADES: A REPORT CARD ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
October 16-17, 2004
Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Hosted by the Communication, Culture & Technology Program at Georgetown University ( http://cct.georgetown.edu )
****
REPORT FROM THE BOARD
CPSR Bylaws Change
The CPSR Board of Directors will soon approve a bylaws change affecting how terms are allocated to candidates to the board. This was motivated by the situation we had this year in which there were three vacancies due to normally expiring three-year terms and two additional shorter-term vacancies due to Board resignations. The bylaw change establishes a procedure to try to keep about a
two thirds of the board continuing through each election to facilitate continuity. The bylaw change also specifies how ties are to be resolved. The new text is:
Section 6.3 Term of Office of Directors
Directors shall be elected for 3-year terms beginning at the start of the fiscal year, except as provided in the following paragraph:
Prior to each election, the board shall determine the number of one-year, two-year, and three-year terms so as to ensure that 1/3, or as close to this proportion as possible, of the elected Board is replaced in any given year, based on the normal expiration of terms.
Successful candidates shall be assigned term lengths depending on the number of votes received, with the candidate(s) receiving the most votes being assigned the longest term(s), etc. Ties either in the election or the assignment of length of terms shall be resolved by some random process (such as drawing names or tossing a coin).
For the full Bylaws, see http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/bylaws.html
***
CPSR got a revised budget approved for the Ford Foundation capacity building grant to put more resources toward a new CPSRwebsite. We recently contracted for $19,286 with ifPeople( http://www.ifpeople.net/ ). The site will include a discussion forum, new email support, and a members-only area. We will also be translating some of the content into Spanish.
The redesign process should take about three months, with iterations rolled out as we go - the first in September, followed by at least one other in October.
To manage the process, CPSR's Ford Project Director, Sarah Granger and ifPeople Project Manager and Co-Founder (aswell as our own CPSR Environment Working Group Chair), Chris Johnson, have organized a small ad-hoc committee to work efficiently on the development issues. The committee will be bringing in core groups at various points during the process to request feedback for different features of the site.
If you are interested in volunteering to help develop and/or maintain content for the new web site, please contact sarah @ cpsr.org.
***
We are pleased to announce that CPSR is accredited as an NGO (non-governmental organization) in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
This means that CPSR has a right to participate in UN meetings that are under the aegis of the ECOSOC and relevant to CPSR's mission. Bill Drake will be CPSR's lead representative to UN agencies in Geneva and Robert Guerra will be the lead representative to UN agencies in New York. More information on ECOSOC and its relationship to accredited civil society organizations is available at http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ngo/
***
Help With the Integrity of U.S. Elections
Please volunteer for TechWatch at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/techwatch/
The TechWatch program is an effort to assist voter protection groups to ensure that voters will have their votes counted. The program enlists technology professionals in ensuring election integrity. CPSR is co-sponsoring the TechWatch program, which is organized by The Verified Voting Foundation.
Volunteers who sign up with TechWatch will have the opportunity to get trained and help out with observing and documenting:
* Logic & Accuracy Testing of voting technology by election officials prior to Election Day
* Poll Watching on Election Day (assigned to a single polling place or central election office)
* Election Incidents on Election Day (on dispatch from an Election Incident Reporting system to polling places within a given county)
By applying technical expertise to mind the polls, TechWatch volunteers can chronicle election problems for follow-on litigation and policymaking in a way that most poll watchers cannot.
Please join with Verified Voting Foundation and our current and invited partners: Advancement Project, Americas' Families United Voter Protection Project, California Voter Foundation, Citizen's Alliance for Secure Elections (Ohio), Common Cause, CompuMentor, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Global Exchange Fair Election Project, Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, National Committee for Voting Integrity, People for the American Way, ACORN / Project Vote, Quixote Foundation, TrueVoteMD, Unity '04 / National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, Working Assets / ActForChange, and others.
Please volunteer for TechWatch at http://www.verifiedvoting.org/techwatch/
***
Election Verification Project
CPSR's new collaborative project with Verified Voting is advancing. Demos of the system, are being given to organizations to bring in more partners and users. Thanks to CPSR's collaboration on the Project, we are being mentioned in numerous media reports. An example is: Maryland Activists Want E-Voting Receipts, by Robert MacMillan in the Washington Post.
If you belong to an organization working to make elections verifiable, and would like to learn more about CPSR's collaborative efforts, please contact Susan Evoy - evoy @ cpsr.org 650-322-3778.
***
CPSR's Public Sphere Project (PSP)
by Doug Schuler
CPSR's Public Sphere Project (PSP) made progress in several areas last month. There are now 257 pattern submissions in the pattern language for democratic communication system (http://www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/patterns) and approximately 130 of them are slated for phase II. The phase II pattern management system is in development and should be available soon. We will start sending out our book proposal next month. As always we welcome your participation.
The e-Liberate online deliberation system (http://www.cpsr.org/program/sphere/e-liberate/about.php) developed by Evergreen student Nathan Clinton will be rolled out later this month for beta-testing with non-profit organizations. E-Liberate will enable organizations to hold meetings online using an approach modeled on Roberts Rules of Order. This may be the world's first online system that supports deliberation in this way with motions, discussion and voting. Our plan is to work with several organizations over the next few months to identify any problems with the system and fix them before opening up the system to general use and releasing the software under a free software license.
Earlier this month a proposal to the National Science Foundation was submitted on the topic of Civic Intelligence: Investigating CivilSociety's Evolving Use of Participatory Information Technology. If this is funded, we will convene a workshop with about 40 people to explore today's "civic intelligence" and develop ideas for future work. Civic intelligence is a holistic concept that is intended to provide motivation as well as analytic tools for social change projects, particularly those that employ information and communication systems.
Finally, PSP director Doug Schuler will be giving presentations later this month in Chelyabinsk, Russia and Amsterdam on civic intelligence.
***
If you are interested in creating a CPSR Ongoing Project, checkout the guidelines ( http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/ongoing_project.html )
***
New "Network Society" Books Explore Civic Uses of Information Technology
June 2004 was a good month for those who are putting digital technology to use for good causes. Douglas Schuler and Peter Day, edited two relevant books.
The books, Shaping the Network Society: The New Role of Civil Society in Cyberspace (MIT Press) and Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action / Global Interaction (Routledge) have their origins in CPSR's biennial "Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing" symposia, the oldest regular forum for exploring the implications of computing in society.
The authors contributing to these edited collections describe how technology can be used effectively by communities, activists, and citizens to address the range of social challenges confronting us today. Rejecting the traditional techno-economic perspectives that dominate so much of the network society discourse, Day and Schuler challenge the reader to consider alternative pathways for human development in this digital age.
A common theme runs through both of these quite different texts, namely collaborative partnerships between researchers and community and civic activists. This represents a departure from traditional approach to and treatment of network society and information age activities, which have a tendency to concentrate on partnerships between the public and private sectors. Historically research on community and civic uses of technology has been neglected or even discouraged.
The authors contributing to these books counter this trend; their theoretical and practical discussions illustrate a new orientation--research that works with people in their natural social environments, uses common language rather than rarefied academic discourse, and takes a pragmatic perspective. The topics are central to democratization and positive social change in the network society.
***
PDC 2004
ARTFUL INTEGRATION: INTERWEAVING MEDIA, MATERIALS AND PRACTICES
July 27-31, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
The conference went very well. There were 180 registrants from 19 countries, a full, interestng and varied program. The feeling was good, and a lot of people commented on how much they enjoyed it. Of special note were the two keynotes speeches, by Tone Bratteteitg and Jonathan Barker, and the presentation of the first Artful Integrators Award to Randy Trigg and the Global Fund for Women. They have created an information and communications infrastructure that exemplifies in process and products, the spirit of the Award. (see http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/artful.html
Thanks, in large part, goes to the work by Conference Co-Chairs: Andrew Clement and Peter van den Besselaar,Program Co-Chairs: Fiorella de Cindio and Doug Schuler, The Speakers, The Program Committee, Session Chairs, (See http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/committees.html)Adrian Bond, Christie Hurrell, and a lot of volunteer work during the event itself.
Sponsors, in addition to CPSR, included
Knowledge Media Design Institute - http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/
The University of Toronto - http://www.utoronto.ca/ and
Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto - http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/index_MSIE.htm
The next conference will be held in Trento Italy, in 2006, organized by Gianni Jacucci and Finn Kensing, with Ina Wagner and Jeanette Blomberg as Program co-Chairs.
PDC 2004 and past PDC Proceedings are available from http://www.cpsr.org/publications/publications.html#workplace with pre-payment using https://secure.privaterra.org/cpsr/publications.html See http://cpsr.org/conferences/pdc2004/
***
MORE UPCOMING EVENTS
Richard M. Stallman, initiator of the free software movement, founder of the GNU project (1984) and of the Free Software Foundation (1985), will be the featured speaker at the conference called The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System to be held at the Faculty of Law of the University Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP), on August 20.
The event is being organized jointly by the Faculty of Sciences andEngineering of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru - PUCP and CPSR-Peru, the Peruvian chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. The purpose of the conference is to encourage the dissemination of knowledge about free software, provide an opportunity for people to exchange ideas and experiences in GNU/linux as a technological, reliable, powerful and economic alternative, and to promote the development of FLOSS in Peru
The conference will be relayed by webcasting at 10:00 a.m Peruvian hour (GMT -5) at http://sachapuyo.pucp.edu.pe Contact katitza @ cpsr.org
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Pedro Mendizibal Simonetti, CPSR-Peu chair, and Katitza Rodriguez Pereda, CPSR board member and Director of CPSR-Peru, will speak at the workshop INFOSOFT 2004 to be held in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, on August 26 and 27. The workshop is being organized jointly by ACM student chapter and the Research Group of Software Development of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (GIDIS PUCP).
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Robert Guerra will give a keynote talk in Berlin at the 20th annual meeting of Forum InformatikerInnen fŸr Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung (FIfF) - which is CPSR's equivalent in Germany - September 30-October 3. FifF offered to give us a stand. Could anyone help us out with that ?
See http://www.fiff-2004.de , http://www.fiff.de/2004/ or
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/peter/fiff/2004/
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OTHER MEMBER ACTIVITIES
CPSR Board member Paul Hyland spoke at the Space for Progress forum at the Cannon Congressional Caucus Room on July 22. The forum promoted the Space Preservation Act and Treaty, and the U.S. Department of Peace. He spoke about CPSR's roots opposing Star Wars, the risk to peaceful uses of space by militarizing it (which also applies to computer technologies like encryption), and the inefficiency of Federal technology policy's emphasis on military technology.
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Paul also visited Capitol Hill with a group of CPSR and New Yorkers for Fair Use members to express opposition to the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" (INDUCE Act). In our opinion this act threatens innovation -- and possibly much open source software -- chilling technological development through the threat of legal action by the entertainment industry. They met with Derek Lindblum from Senator Charles Schumer's office, and Tom Sydnor, the intellectual property counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and probably the person who drafted the legislation. He presented it as a careful balance, but he was balancing a false set of options.
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Andy Oram, a long time CPSR member and editor at O'Reilly Media, gave Susan a heads up that he would be visiting the Bay Area while attending a conference, and wanted to get together with CPSR members. We contacted some members, and that led to various meetings with members, and two members independently inviting him to give a presentataion at Google. Andy spoke on August 2nd about why communities of computer users find themselves filling in gaps in documentation with ad hoc work on their own, because they can't depend either on vendors and project leaders or on traditional publishers such as his company.
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If you want to try to meet up with other members, either locally, or when you are on the road, it can just take an email to Susan, who can forward it to others, to make things happen. . .
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Katitza Rodriguez and Pedro Mendizibal wrote the Peruvian report for the Privacy & Human Rights Report 2004, for the Electronic Privacy Information Center - EPIC
(http://www.epic.org) and Privacy International (http://privacyinterantional.org).
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CPSR-Peru officers (Pedro Mendizibal, Katherine Cieza and Katitza Rodriguez) attended the workshop organized by @LIS Alliance for the Information Society. @LIS is a programme of the European Commission aiming to reinforce the partnership between the European Union and Latin America in the field of the Information Society. Its objectives are to establish dialogue and cooperation on policy and regulatoryframeworks in key areas and to boost interconnections between research networks and communities in both regions.
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CPSR-Peru joined Online Volunteering service (http://www.onlinevolunteering.org) on August 11, 2004.
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CPSR Voting Technology - Birds of a Feather by Cere Davis and Andy Oram at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 29, 2004
They gave a brief description of CPSR, handed out information flyers, ane noted some issues about voting by touchscreens (DRE machines) without paper votes, vote-counting machines, and proprietary versus open source voting software. They also described the advocacy coalition CPSR is affiliated with; monitoring elections for irregularities. Discussions ensued.
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The Compiler is not just for reporting about the CPSR-related activities of just some CPSR members. . .To report your related news for future issues, send a sentence or two (and URL if available) to cpsr @ cpsr.org
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RECOMMENDATIONS
Bill Drake published, "Reframing Internet Governance Discourse: Fifteen Baseline Propositions," Social Science Research Council, http://www.ssrc.org/programs/itic/publications/Drake2.pdf Also forthcoming in, United Nations Information and Communication Technology Taskforce, Internet Governance: Toward a Grand Collaboration. Bill Drake's co-edited book series, The Information Revolution and Global Politics http://mitpress.mit.edu/IRGP-series was launched by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology Press.
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CPSR board member Dr Madanmohan Rao from Bangalore, India, is co-editor of a forthcoming book, "Asia Unplugged: The Wireless and Mobile Media Boom in the Asia-Pacific" (Sage Publications). The Web site of the book has just been launched: http://www.indiasage.com/asia_unplugged.asp The book covers a range of issues including policy, regulation, marketing ethics, digital copyright, wireless impacts on education, country profiles, and reviews of books such as "The Wireless Internet Opportunity for Developing Nations."
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The Internet Caucus Advisory Committee hosted a spirited discussion on "The DMCA Revisited: What's Fair?" The event featured comments from Congressmen Goodlatte and Boucher as well as an interesting back and forth amongst the four panelists -- David Green, Michael Petricone, Fred von Lohmann and Jonathan Zuck.The video of the event is up online at http://www.netcaucus.org/events/2004/dmca/video.shtml
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Lotus' unending crusade against spam - featuring Nathaniel Borenstein. See http://searchdomino.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid4_gci994667,00.html
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Getting Universal Service to Work, by Andy Oram. See http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5217
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Bill Moyers "NOW" show about electronic voting. See http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript330_full.html
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The CPSR Compiler is a monthly notice with short updates on recent activities of our members and opportunities to engage in the development of the public voice through CPSR projects.
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--
Susan Evoy * Managing Director
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
P.O. Box 717 * Palo Alto * CA * 94302
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