internet

WorldDevils Highlights Evil for Good

- Adam Clare

WorldDevils is a site that aims to bring people’s attention to the wrongdoers on our planet. The site is very young so right now it’s only a predictable list of devils (GW Bush to Carlos Menem). I encourage everyone to sign up and add some lesser-known evil people to see what happens at this site.

How is this site good you ask, well over at Mashable they argue that:

The hope with WorldDevils is to bring awareness to those individuals and entities that are causing harm on a larger level, whether it be socially or politically. The company has indicated that it will be adding a system for curbing the abuse of its system by those out to cause harm on a personal level.

It’s up to you decide if calling people devils increases awareness and will provoke change.

Information Communication Technology for Social Justice

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Association for Progressive Communications has an article / interview on how communication technologies can be used for development. It’s a neat read to remind us that the internet and other new technology can be used for more than just LOLcats (I love LOLcats!).

I rather feel that WSIS showed two things, if only by default. First, that it is important to develop a common understanding of the potential of ICTs in development between the development community and the ICT community. This requires that both listen to one another’s priorities and issues. Second, that it is important to develop a much better evidence base concerning experience with ICTs in development. WSIS did neither of these, but it demonstrated their importance. Effective use of ICD is unlikely to occur without them being addressed much more effectively.

Hope Cube

- Adam Clare

Sometimes all someone needs is a little hope. After seeing people loose hope in their struggles with cancer, poor health, or addictions George Ruann decided to do something about it.

Hope Cube is the result. It’s a social networking site for people who need support in their lives to tackle some difficult aspects of living. You can even ask open-ended questions to the community to solicit support and knowledge.

Facebook for Justice

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Wal-Mart, the king of conspicuous consumption, has tried to open a group on Facebook only to find that people are well aware of the bad things Wal-Mart does. The good part of this story is that Wal-Mart is getting told by people what they actually think, and Wal-Mart’s being encouraged to take the battering.

I like seeing people use a social networking tool to argue against a corporation with a poor track record on nearly everything.

Games as Outbreak Simulations

- Adam Clare

Two years ago a disease ravaged the country sides of the World of Warcraft, an online virtual world in which players have to interact with one another to solve problems. The virtual disease effectively ‘killed’ the players and now researchers are thinking that they can examine these virtual outbreaks and compare them to real-world scenarios because in both cases the outbreak is treated as real by the humans involved.

Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, said: “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour.

“The players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously, even though it was only a game.”

She acknowledged that a virtual setting might encourage riskier behaviour, but said this could be estimated and allowed for when drawing conclusions.

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