Klaus-Peter Schöppner: “Partei der Mitte”: Der Chancentod der CDU
An interesting analysis of the state of things for the CDU before the German election campaign 2009.
Henry Farrell: Political scientists in public debate
This is a nice conversation starter about the roles political scientists should play in the public discourse about politics.
Joshua-Michele Ross: The Rise Of The Social Nervous System
and
Tim O’Reilly: The Social Nervous System Has More Than One Sense
Joshua-Michele Ross gets the ball rolling by talking about the real-life consequences of the use of social media by large groups of interconnected people. Messages send through internet services to a large community of interest become signals that in turn influence behavior. Tim O’Reilly then picks it up and plays with the possibilities when internet services go beyond text messages. What information will be send by our devices and what signals will be picked up by our community of interest?
Quinn Norton: Etech liveblogging: Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People (Tony Jebara)
Robert Kaye: ETech: Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People
Two accounts of an interesting presentation at this years Etech where Tony Jebara talked about Mobile Phones Reveal the Behavior of Places and People. These are interesting examples on how to infer social context from seemingly unrelated data. Also a reminder for all those who search for the ultimate social graph on the net, that they have to include offline social behavior in their analyses.
Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
Clay Shirky once again comments on the future-of-newspaper debate. His take is: we are living through a transition, we don’t know what will work, we therefor have to experiment – a lot. Sounds like just the time for rapid prototyping. His point is, that we have to phrase the question differently. Not, how can we save newspapers. But, how can we provide the functions newspaper provided for society in this new emerging environment.
Paul Starr: Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)
Yochai Benkler: A New Era of Corruption?
Benkler answers to Starr’s original essay on the public goods that will be lost with the death-of-newspapers. He does not share Starr’s pessimistic outlook.
Steven Berlin Johnson: Old Growth Media and the Future of News
This is the transcript of a speech Steven Berlin Johnson at the SXSW09. What makes his take on the death-of-newspaper-story interesting is his vision of locally relevant news that can be reported and distributed through social media and his idea of traditional media outlets as filters to a plethora of news.