Friday, November 4, 2005

What if the rent was due and nobody came? Bolivia: Leasing the Rain Available for viewing online. Privatization sparks a deadly protest in the town of Cochabamba when the Bolivian government sells off its water system to a private, multi-national consortium Aguas del Tunari. New Yorker writer William Finnegan travels to Cochabamba to learn why people took to the streets and what happens next. (more) [FRONTLINE/World - Reports | PBS] 10:11:09 PM    comment []

There is listening to librarian's think out loud and there is letting them lead us to where we discover for ourselves. (highly recommended) So Many Digital Divides to Bridge, So Little Time (and Resources and Money and Staff and....) Digital Divide Multiplied "One thing that did occur to me yesterday, that I think is important, is the nature of our digital divide. There are lots of digital divides, each with its own seeds for danger. What I was thinking about was the digital divide between tech-savvy students and students with little or no access to networked digital information outside the classroom -- and to some extent, the digital divide between tech-savvy students and less-savvy teachers. The literacy divide of the 20th century distinguished between people who could functionally read and those who could not. Democracy was certainly at stake, but to no small degree, so was commerce. The literate could consume the messages of content producers. Today, the divide has multiplied, because people with contemporary (digital/21st century) literacy skills not only consume content, but they are the content. Being literate means being part of the network. The difference is not merely the individual who can read and individual who can not. It's the difference between networked communities of power, and individuals who are cut off. This is a distinction too broad to ignore or postpone. Consider IM Speak, the abbreviations that students use in their instant message conversations. It is, in no small way, a new grammar, and these students invented it spontaneously in collaboration. The industrial literacy way would have been to assign a standards committee to establish a new grammar, and then spend years teaching it in our classrooms. We should be amazed and in awe of this accomplishment. It happened not because these kids were digitally literate, but because being digitally literate meant being part of a network -- a community of power. Where is our community of power?" [2 Cents Worth] David Warlick posted these thoughts in regards to education, but I think they're very relevant for librarians, too. After all, we're supposed to be the safety net for the digital divide(s), right, whether it's access or information literacy? I'm becoming more and more convinced that libraries will have to find a way to help fill the coming divide of content-creators (those who think of themselves as creators with the skills necessary to actually create) versus strictly consumers (the old model in which the person simply ingests everything as one-way media and doesn't participate in these new networks and resources because they can't or didn't even know they could). On the one side, you have great models like Lane and Matthew, but on the other side you have millions of kids I can't even point to because they're left out of this community. One model to combat this: Bloomington Public Library. Side note: check out this other great post by David: Something from my Research, which includes the following statement in the comments (read the post for context): "I liked these rules because they were worded for the learner, not against undesired behaviors. They grant students the right to learn, rather than defining a container within which to behave like students." [The Shifted Librarian] 10:05:22 PM    comment []

There is browsing in the Library and there is listening to librarian's think out loud (highly recommended) internet librarian 05: my keynote ...how much things have changed since the 2003 conference, as evidenced by things I overheard on Monday morning: "yeah, they're talking about social software and blogs and all that stuff." -- in a classic "that's so 5 minutes ago" voice "I flickr'ed a photo of you and Stephen Abrams." "it's blah blah flickr blah blah tags blah blah don't be afraid..." (literally)... internet librarian 05: karen schneider on blogging ethics ...On a "micro" level, your blog represents you and everything you're connected with, including librarianship. Great quote: "For most readers, you are the last stop between the reader and the truth." From a utilitarian standpoint, being ethical is a strategic approach. Information has a long half-life. Being ethical is a form of self-preservation... "the blogosphere can be cruel. the biblioblogosphere can be crueler." On a "macro" level, "The harder we work to make the world a moral place, the better it is for everyone." She points out that librarianship is a profession defined by its concern for others -- witness librarians' willingness to go to jail rather than provide information about patrons. She flashes some "rules of blogging," but they're gone before I can look up from my screen. :) Five things not to say about your blog It's only a blog So-and-so does it Everyone understood what I meant They can always look up Nobody trusts the web anyway Key Rules.... {go, read, enjoy, maybe learn} [mamamusings] "The harder we work to make the world a moral place, the better it is for everyone." 9:35:18 PM    comment []

Another moment of context If you can read this: You are rich. Posted by thomas crampton Defining the poor is common (The World Bank's one dollar per day level, for example) But who are the rich? If you can read this posting, you are likely rich. Anyone with a university education and an income at or above the lower-middle class level for an OECD country is rich, I would argue. Being rich is more about having time and freedom to make choices about your life than bagfulls of money. Joi's latest posting may suggest a way to measure wealth through a Technorati rating! What is the best metric to define someone as rich? [Joi Ito's Web] 9:05:19 PM    comment []

A moment of context I recommend you read the whole blog entry. Reflections on 30 tons an ounce While my dissertation project is not incredibly obscure, it usually only matters to a small number of people -- most of whom live in Australia, Papua New Guinea, or Vancouver. So I've been really amazed to see the New York Times's series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently -- suddenly my area of expertise is literally news. How do I feel about the article, and how do I feel about the gold industry more generally? I study the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine that they work with. As someone who had studied Melanesia for years before I lived there, and who lived in a local community, the biggest problem I had was fitting in with the white mining executives and not the local Papua New Guineans. Call it the narcissism of small difference. Culture shock and fieldwork with Papua New Guineans was easy in some sense, since no one really expected me to fit in when I first arrived. Mine management, on the other hand, were supposedly 'from my culture.' Learning to like and respect these men (they were almost entirely men) was one of the hardest parts of my fieldwork. They were mostly Australian and Canadian, and had the usual Commonwealth suspicion of Yankees. I was an artist and an intellectual, and over-educated to boot. While many of my informants in the mine had some form of tertiary education it tended towards the vocational, or the physical sciences. And they were MEN in a way that I was not -- they talked about rugby and worked with their hands and had pictures of naked (or nearly naked) women on their walls, in there calendars, on their screen savers. And, of course, in the struggle between landowners and company, I was sympathetic to my indigenous hosts. Of course, I can imagine how strange I must have appeared to them: hopelessly young, over-educated, exotically Jewish, under-nourished and unshaven. In fact of all of my fieldwork experiences, one of the things that I am most proud of is the fact that I established as close a rapport with them as I did. It was, for me, one of the classical lessons of anthropological relativism: no matter how savage and barbaric your natives -- in this case, Canadian capitalists -- may seem to you, you need to learn to understand them.... The power of the Times article comes from its title: Thirty tons an ounce. The massive amount of effort undertaken -- and hardship inflicted -- for a single ring's worth of gold is tremendous. And yet for the post-fieldwork me it is also emblematic of the nature of the primary industry which supports first world lifestyles. As one mine executive once remarked to me "if it's not grown, it's mined." When staring at an open cut or touring float mills its impossible to escape this fact. But the existence and extent of primary industry is occluded from the view of most Americans. Times readers may be disturbed by the process of gold mining, but what this should really cause them to do is rethink not just gold mining, but their lifestyle in general. Look up from your computer screen for a moment and look around the room -- how much metal do you see? Imagine the copper wires and metal pipes and lines of nails that stretch around you for thousands of miles. Where did they come from?... As for me, I own a computer and nice knives and pots and pans. After two years of living in rural Papua New Guinea I am more than ready to have the earth pay the price for my current abode[base ']s indoor plumbing and electrification. But I've never owned a car, don't want to, and I have various other idiosyncratic personal commitments to simple living. I know my adopted family in Papua New Guinea wants the same standard of living that I have (except for the car part, which they can get behind), and I think they should have the opportunity to have it as well. I just hope that the readers of the Time's new series realize, as I did, that they have something to come to grips with beyond just the problems of the gold industry. [Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology -- A Group Blog] Yes indeed, much to come to grips with. 8:57:34 PM    comment []

You read it there 1st Umm, you saw it there 1st. Ah, you heard it there 1st. Cool Project: Wikipedia + Physical World = Semapedia Here is a cool project from Vienna. Semapedia is an attempt to make a location-aware Wikepdia for your cell phone. From the site: Our goal is to connect the virtual world with the physical world by bringing the best information from the internet to the relevant place in physical space. We do this as a community by combining the physical annotation technology of Semacode with the availability of high quality information using the free encyclopedia Wikipedia. Imagine your cellphone as your smart travelguide File under "Everything Goes Digital Eventually." (Thanks Bubble Generation). [business2blog] 8:26:23 PM    comment []

The Gold Standard for the environment is.... This story series discusses the good as well as bad local impacts of a gold mine in Peru. Also at New York Times. Peru - The Curse of Inca Gold PBS Frontline, October 2005 High in the Andean mountains of Peru is a gold mine, Yanacocha, run by Newmont Mining Corporation of Denver, Colorado, the largest gold mining company in the world. Once part of the Incan Empire, this land was conquered by the Spanish, who came in search of gold and silver. ... The Yanacocha Mine recently celebrated the pouring of its 19 millionth ounce of gold. It is said to be the world's most productive gold mine.... "Communities are becoming more and more involved in their own destinies," says a chastened Kurlander. "When I say a social license, I mean it. Without the community support, you'll be out of business eventually. They will force you out of their community, and it doesn't matter how much government support you have." [PBS Frontline] The Toxic Shimmer of Gold Is your gold ring really worth its weight in gold? When experts include the risks to the environment and the people living near mine operations, some say no. A look at the hidden toxic costs of gold mining.... [PBS Frontline] Behind Gold's Glitter: Torn Lands and Pointed Questions Some metal mines, including gold mines, have become the near-equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity. Hard-rock mining generates more toxic waste than any other industry in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal mines could reach $54 billion. [New York Times] 5:41:45 AM    comment []

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