Sunday, December 12, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
To Publish or Not To Publish: That Is The Question.
Given the affordances offered by current Internet capabilities and the ease in which ideas can be disseminated throughout the world, I wondered at this recent phenomena of Wikileaks. Here, essentially, we have a media organization set up to accept and publish, at the organizations' discretion, any perceived newsworthy items that a self proclaimed whistle-blower has deemed essential for the world to see.
Julian Assange, the creator and overseer of Wikileaks, has therefore, by creating this cultural 'tell-all' space, set himself up as basically the chief decision maker for the world as to what we should or shouldn't be privy to. Yes, I see that other news organizations, if given the same materials, would also have that same power, except that here we have almost a self-proclaimed arbiter of what we, the people, should know or not know. We elect governments, for good or ill, but we do 'choose' our representatives. In the case of Wikileaks, which has such a global reach and global impact, there is no semblance, effective or otherwise, of the public's democratic choice.
On the one hand, Julian Assange is lauded as the savior of the world for letting us see and hear all that may be passed to him from 'unknown' sources: we trust that he is totally objective in what he chooses to reveal. On the other hand, who gets to judge what the balance of harm to good is achieved by such methods...is it, again, Julian Assange? Is there a democratically elected body that oversees such decisions based on the common good? Or, are we allowing too much power to reside in one person? I wonder about this.
So, To Publish or Not To Publish: That IS The Question.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Designing Demonstrations
Here are a few Design Demonstrations of note, together with several connections of design interest
In Praise of Good Design
2010 Best Designed Products
Canadian Design Resource
AskTog: First principles of Interaction Design
Bad Designs Scrapbook
IDEO
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