Author: fms

Felicia M. Sullivan is a researcher, educator and community advocate. With an MA in Media Studies, a MS in Public Policy and over 20 years of community-based practice, she works with community-based organizations towards individual, organizational and community transformation and change. She is currently a researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRLCE) housed Tufts University’s Tisch College. She is working towards her PhD in Public Policy at the John W. McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Current Research Interests: youth development and out-of-school-time programming, human development and organizational learning in community-based settings, social impacts of communication and technology policy, social movements and change theory, social networks, civic / democratic / participatory communications
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Bit Torrent: P2P King – 53% of all p2p file-sharing traffic

broadband » News » Bit Torrent: P2P King – 53% of all p2p file-sharing traffic: “53% of all p2p file-sharing traffic
Earlier this year P2P traffic-monitoring company CacheLogic noted that more data is now being transferred via BitTorrent than by any other P2P network worldwide (53%). As Technology Review Notes, that popularity is rising, and shows no indication of slowing down anytime soon. So far the film and music industries haven’t targeted Bit Torrent as much as they have other clients, but according to a BayTSP source in the article, that won’t last much longer.”

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Could we have social video editing?

Could we have social video editing?

So conversations over the last few days have been about what happens to the social sphere in a decentralized, individualized media consumption environment. This post to Many2Many gets at some of the potential of “social” in this world. The idea of Flickr culling together photos and presenting “ad hoc” social galleries is another.

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All That is Solid Melts in Air:

All That is Solid Melts in Air::

The possibilities of the next evolution of social economic systems.

“Since we have cast the extant world system as being evolutionary, we must assume that if it is to survive, the world system will have to adjust and that the inevitable thermodynamic tax must be paid. What will the evolutionary system look like? Certainly, the >dysecological= aspect of Western thought that is anthropocentric, linear, discrete, materialistic and simplistic will have to be softened or replaced while the positive aspects such as creativity, love of nature, art, and reason would seem to be necessary for a high quality existence. Eastern models that are cosmic, non-linear, and complex are more congruent with the global mind but are flawed in their, passivity, fatalism, and anti-intellectualism. A sustainable world system must work optimally within the constraints of the global ecosystem and the human value systems the latter of which will be evolutionary rather than a composite of the present (Perelman, 1976). Whatever the path, it is unlikely that the futuristic myth of modernist historical progress will be played out; however, given the stochastic nature of post-modernist thought, neither is it predictable (Jones, Natter, and Schatzki, eds., 1993).”

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The Globalization Website – Theories

World-systems theory has been a practical theory to analyze capitalist globalization. The following highlights some of the issues surrounding fragmentation and decentralization which are relevant to modern communication systems.

The Globalization Website – Theories: “Such twentieth-century developments set the stage for what Wallerstein calls a period of transition. New crises of contraction can no longer be solved by exploiting new markets; economic decline will stimulate struggle in the core; challenges to core dominance will gather strength in the absence of a strong hegemonic power and a globally accepted ideology; polarization will push the system to the breaking point. While this chaotic transition may not produce a more equal and democratic world, it does spell the end of capitalist globalization”

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PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: “Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it”