Felicia M. Sullivan, Ph.D.

braintag: Links for doc.exe

useful apps, media, technology, services, and ideas from that tech, media, community guru Kenyatta.

PEG_FINAL.pdf (application/pdf Object)

this report by Hans Klein at Georgia Tech highlights the weakness and strengths of PEG and some strategies for confronting it. Written in the context of Atlanta’s People TV.

Other interesting future of PEG items can be found at http://www.kdrt.org/acm

The Shifted Librarian: Video Games Roundup

games for girls and llibary involvement.

This is an interesting flash movie looking at the trajectory of online social networks, search engines, and media / news / information online. Will this world of personalized news and information yeild a richer, more informed public or polarize opinion and news into a self referential loops?

epic-2015-thompson-sloan.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Demos – Projects – Public Spaces; Shared Places?

Translating the idea of this into virtual and media space might be an interesting idea to follow.

OnTheCommons.org | What Can Evolutionary Science Teach Us About Designing Online Commons?

Jason sent this my way via unmediated. It gets at some very interesting ideas around organica and technical commons.

As I embark upon new work here in Lowell, MA, I am beginning to think through in a broader sense what a community communication systems looks like. What are its defining features? I have come up with some preliminary thoughts which I hope will expand and develop as I add new knowledge and thoughts into my day-to-day work.

So here is what I have thus far, a COMMUNITY COMMUNICATIONS system:

=> preserves and promotes our cultural heritage
=> is accountable to the people it serves
=> is open to all to participate
=> engages its citizens in important dialogues and debates (civic engagement)
=> supports and develops the social and economic life of its citizens
=> resists commercialization and explointation of public ICT resources
=> is flexible and broad in order to provide the right tool for the right situation
=> builds the communication skills (both the message making and tool weilding varieties) of tis community
=> insists on a culture of sharing and public exchange
=> champiions free and creative expression

What are other markers? It is easy to see how such a system differs from mass mediated and commercial communication systems, but how does it differ from our current “public” communication systems? I’m interested in what others have to offer.

DigitalBicycle: new piano, old tune

Jason Daniels just posted this to the Digital Bicycle site.

In the euphoria of new gadgets and high-tech seduction, it is easy to forget that the purpose of any new technology is to expand our humaness. To augment our own human capabilities in order to realize ourselves and our communities more fully.

Communnication tools that isolate, alienate, separate and segregate fail to realize the potential that exists in all of these rapidly developing tools and mechanisms to decentralize control to leverage the power of p2p and distributed networks towards richer lives, stronger communities, and a better world is hard and mindful work.

A magnificent human being who understood this and spread the work of the transformative power of communication died yesterday. Dirk Koning of the Grand Rapids Community Media Center will be missed.

Flickr: FlickrCentral

This is the other kind of value of these technologies – connecting the unconnected and reminding us of our human bonds.