Document Freedom Day, March 31st 2010

Document Freedom Day (DFD official site) is a global day for document liberation. Its main purpose is to raise awareness about document freedom and spreading the word about the importance of open documents and the workable open standards that ensure access to your documents now and in the future.

The digital environment is increasingly showing the need to develop and apply technologies and standards that enable smooth exchange and use of content, as well as the freedom of information and expression. When we save a document we need to be sure that the information in it will be accessible in the future. How and where we choose to access our documents shouldn’t make a difference. The only guarantee of long-term access to data is independence of formats and application which are used.

Open Standards are essential for interoperability and freedom of choice based on the merits of different software application. They enable choice of any operating system or application and still be able to read and edit all your old document and collaboration with others regardless of which software they are using. They also lead to more competition in software, resulting in better pricing and service, increased competition in hardware and this means more flexible, innovative and cost-effective solution. Moreover free software can be developed without thinking about commercial pressure that often degrades the quality of the software.

Open Source is also important for education. Software produced and marketed with restrictions on its use, is never really owned by the organizations that use it. For example, schools cannot give their students software they use at school, and students cannot copy proprietary software to share with friends. Why should be use of proprietary software taught in schools when students have to purchase for home use? Free software has become the foundation for society where we want to share our knowledge.

Document liberation is really an important issue for our future and we can join efforts of many teams around the world with support, spreading the word about it and also with participation. In Slovenia there will be numerous events occurred on this topic. Here is list of some events.

Why I like Prezi …

Prezi is zooming presentation tool and it is much more interesting and funny then all other presentation tools I know. I got tired of creating boring slideshows and Prezi helps me to express my ideas in a different way; that is why it has convinced me to use it. Prezi is beyond slides; it helps audience to understand and remember much better. Prezi is just one big canvas where you place your text in allowing clear presentations where you can provide great overview of ideas and you can focus on details and particular topics or show the relations between objects.

Prezi is easy to use; on their official web site there are many short tutorials. I learned its basics and most important functions in only ten minutes.

Prezi is not open access tool but you can get a free public license, which has 100MB storage space or free student/teacher license but these licenses does not include options for making content private and does not include use of Prezi Desktop, which enables offline work with Prezi. Great option is Portable Prezi, which is exported version of Prezi presentation and works without internet access. So it is easy to download presentation on your computer or share it online.

Here is my short Prezi presentation about Prezi.

Prezi is really worth to check it out!(:

Is the Age of Privacy really over?

These days there are many debates about social networks and their effects on our lives, friendships and also business issues. Many students enrolled in New Media & Society seminar already wrote about this theme on their blogs, so I decided to focus on dilemma about privacy policy of social networks. 350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between friends they confirmed. But is this true?

The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people”, he said. “It is important for companies to reflect the changing social norms in order to remain relevant and competitive.” "This statement may not be a surprise because it helps to justify the company’s recent and highly controversial decision to change the privacy settings of its 350 million users and it also represents a remarkable shift from where Facebook originally started out, as an exclusive network that allowed people to communicate privately within small groups of friends."

Many people disagree with Zuckerberg justification and one of them is also Marshall Kirkpatric. He says that Zuckerberg’s statements are “not a believable explanation”. Kirkpatrick points that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy because society is not in fact changing the way that Zuckerberg claims it is. Kirkpatrick presents three main arguments. “Evolving preferences do not justify elimination of choices”, although people are becoming more comfortable sharing private information that doesn’t mean that it is ok to take away peoples choices and force them to make public some of their information all the time. "It is hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of Facebok users want to throw their privacy out the window." Secondly, “privacy doesn’t just mean secrecy”, accurate and contemporary understanding of privacy is based more on the integrity of context. When personal information and conversation become public, Facebook is eliminating any integrity of context that these conversations would naturally have. Third argument, “many people need control over personal information”, point out that people need to keep access to some of their personal information online limited just to trusted friends. Removing user control over what's public removes the ability for millions of people to safely participate on Facebook.

“While we are sharing more, we are gaining more too” said Zoe Margoils in her article “Is loss of privacy a price worth paying". Her idea is that just because one medium attract more headlines about its supposed effect on privacy, it does not mean that other areas in life are less responsible for any loss of privacy we might experience today. She stress that while there are serious moral and ethical issues concerning the loss of online privacy, maybe this is a fair price to be paid by the dramatic improvements in communication, connectivity and socializing.

I agree with Margoils statement that we have gained much from advances in technology, both, personally and society as a whole. But although I am a user of social networks, there are definitely things that I still want private. There are some options to select levels of privacy on Facebook, but they are buried under public default options and also much of a user’s activity is not subject of that kind of options. In my opinion best solution is that what we want to stay private we do not share over social networks. I disagree with Zuckerbergs argument that Facebook is only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing, Facebook itself is a major agent of social changes. I think it is all about having a choice and education about privacy is definitely the key. Unlike the current, we need understandable options that are transparent and still we must be careful what personal information we post in public places online and take in consideration that they are there forever.

Howard Rheingold on collaboration

While surfing on Web I encountered interesting video (you can find it here), where Rheingold talks about new technologies and collaboration that they enable. He is presenting some interesting ideas and it is really worth to see it.

Rheingold starts his talk with announcement that we can already see the beginnings of new story, story where cooperation and collective action will play a more important role in society. Through examples he is presenting his ideas about evolution of new media that create new forms of collective action and new forms of wealth.

Today, of course, the enabling technologies are based on the Internet and in the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broadcasting station, a community or a marketplace. He stresses that new forms of communication and new media in the past have helped to create new economic forms and with examples of open source business he is pointing to a new form of production: peer-to-peer production. He suspects that if new forms of cooperation enabled by new technologies create new forms of wealth, we may be moving into yet another economy form that is significantly different from previous ones; it is based on collaboration. Businesses that are open-sourcing their software and services are not doing this out of altruism, but because they are learning that a certain kind of sharing is in their self-interest (Amazon, EBay, Wikipedia). Instead of “neither of us can trust each other so we have to make suboptimal moves”, it is, “you prove to me that you are trustworthy, and I will cooperate”. For example, BitTorrent turns every downloader into an uploader, making the system more efficient the more it is used. Rheingold says that we don’t know enough, not even about basic principles and he makes an appeal to start to think about them.

Rheingold made an interesting speech, but because of its complexity, I only summarized his main ideas about communication technologies. Although he present new way to think about new technologies, in my opinion his expectations are not completely realistic. I think that cooperation-based economy, although has its own advantages, is not going to be realized so soon. There are many power relations and structures that wouldn’t agree.

About my blog ...
New Media & Society seminar represented many new possibilities for academic work that includes online environments. One of them is also to write a blog. Although I never thought to have one, it is good opportunity to explore new venues of using new technologies in academic environment. This blog is one of assignments for New Media & Society seminar and is intended for presenting and exchanging ideas and reflections regarding this seminar.

... and something about me.
I am postgraduate student in Media and communication studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. My diploma thesis was about new media hypertextual potentials and I found that these potentials are poorly used; only few web sites provided open links to other online sources that are important for users. I am very interested in new media and I also planned to write my master thesis about homogeneity and commercial exploitation of media web sites. During this seminar I want to upgrade my knowledge, theoretical background and get better insight into the field of online communication, its opportunities and constraints, better understanding of this would help me more precisely define my master thesis.

Let it be enough for the first time ... Thanks for attention :)