Hasta La Gadget!

Good news for those of you who use Microsoft’s cloud storage service on Android. Earlier today, the OneDrive app received an update that now lets it send push notifications for shared files and folders to your device, making it easier to keep up with…

 Friday is a beautiful thing, and this morning’s podcast celebrates that.
Pioneer released a new version of its in-car AppRadio system that integrates CarPlay, and the WSJ reported that Intel would replace TI under the hood of the next version of Google Glass. Meanwhile, the tech world is salivating over the new Star Wars trailer. Read More

We have reason to rejoice these days. Ever since the world became aware of U.S. policy to surveil Internet users en masse, the ground has shifted under the idea of ‘Internet Governance.’ This term, if not yet extinct, is at least already outdated.

For many people, ‘Internet Governance’ was little more than an empty buzzword. Few will mourn its passing. Those who benefit from imbalances of power over the Internet might think this is good news; the end of ‘Internet Governance’ could remove obstacles to complete domination. But, for them, I think this news will be especially unwelcome. As the concept of ‘Internet Governance’ loses value, ‘Internet Public Policy’ rises alongside it. Here’s what the change looks like.

During the recent Geneva Internet Platform conference, I met Bob Kahn, one of the authors of TCP/IP. TCP/IP is one of many protocols defining how computers, servers and networks route data. By far the dominant protocol, TCP/IP gave the Internet its ‘interconnecticity’ (another buzzword, borne of ‘interconnectivity’ and ‘velocity’), and the impression of the web as a discrete and fluid space. Kahn, in one of his many visits to Geneva, had just presented his latest ‘baby,’ the Digital Object Naming Association, a tool for assigning a unique global number to every object in the Internet. Kahn’s new prima DONA, as he put it, resembles the early IANA under Jon Postel. “Very early on, Jon was corresponding with me about the naming and numbering system established for the Internet (IANA). He would receive calls from all over. Once, the chief of staff for the King of Jordan asked why a student was handling domains from his classroom at Amman University. We replied that we had no religious stance, and they let him keep the job.”

But why has DONA chosen a Swiss home address instead of joining ICANN, IANA’s host, in sunny southern California? Kahn shared his thoughts: “IANA and DONA are similar, but as we talked to different governments about global numbering, the Chinese and others said, ‘if this system is set up as a U.S. non-profit under U.S. jurisdiction and control, we won’t use it.’ This is why we opted for a Swiss foundation.” I asked him why IANA wasn’t a Swiss foundation from the start, as Dr. Postel once wished. Kahn, who had differed from Postel on this point, gave a simple answer: “The last thing you wanted was regulation, but things have changed.”

If DONA is incorporated in Switzerland, the question remains: How much control will the U.S. try to exert? Governance of DONA will be a matter of global public policy; oversight can’t be unilateral. Even Kahn’s personal patent to “protect this new object numbering process” will come under scrutiny, especially if the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) gets involved in Kahn’s numbering system.

In a twist of historical irony, Louis Pouzin, another Internet Hall-of-Famer, was in the audience when Kahn presented DONA. The French polytechnicien was the first to use datagrams to exchange data packets in a network. In February 1973, Pouzin presented his work to Kahn and Vint Cerf, when they were still puzzling over data packet exchanges between networks (a puzzle they solved with TCP/IP). Unlike Kahn with DONA, all three researchers were working on public grants (Pouzin for France, Kahn and Cerf for DARPA), and so none patented his work. The French Wikipedia page says “Pouzin’s work was used greatly by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf to create TCP/IP,” whereas the U.S. Wikipedia page puts it differently: “His work influenced Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and others in the development of TCP/IP protocols used by the Internet.” Cerf is now VP of Google, Kahn still hates regulation and Pouzin is a computer scientist turned activist competing against ICANN for more Internet through alternative open routing. It’s no surprise that Pouzin advocates for re-balancing Internet power away from the U.S..

For years, the U.S. exploited unbalanced power to make ‘Internet Governance’ a diplomatic no-man’s land, which it alone policed through vague processes of self-nomination to a Byzantine nominating committee to… Formal consensus was always kept at bay, unfavorable issues scuttled and decisive votes avoided. A not-so-democratic world. But now, a number of governments have already had their say in the role DONA could play in the Internet. Such a shaping of the tech landscape is a sign of this shift away from ‘Internet Governance’ to public geo-politics and geo-economics.

The NetMundial Initiative, announced last summer as a joint venture by ICANN and the World Economic Forum, involves WEF’s 750 transnational corporate members, who bring countless global leaders and social activists to Davos, even though some are left out in the snow. This ‘initiative’ follows the NETMundial ‘summit’ in Sao Paulo last April. The summit proved to be a carrot for Brazil, who walked away the diplomatic bon hôte. But for all of President Rousseff’s finger-wagging at the UN over U.S. surveillance, the U.S. skirted the issue at the Brazil summit by announcing it could end its IANA oversight, with control shifting, conditionally, to a “multistakeholder” arrangement, possibly ICANN itself.

No one expected WEF and ICANN to follow up the summit by launching the NetMundial Initiative. Some summit participants felt the NETMundial name was hijacked. Others worried NetMundial would co-opt both the name and the joint statement made by the conference participants, even though there is no official listing of the signatories. There are persistent murmurings of re-writing the NETMundial principles under the NetMundial Initiative, which, sadly, hasn’t mobilized many of the summit participants.

Some participants went further, like the Just Net Coalition, which strongly refused to join the Initiative. For that matter, the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) also declined to join the NetMundial Initiative. Just Net Coalition sees the Initiative drawing the corporate elite into a new power center, a global Internet ‘establishment.’ ISOC may see the Initiative as a rival. The Just Net Coalition, an umbrella for civil society organizations from around the globe, has called on civil society not to join NetMundial. But many join nonetheless, because “nature abhors a vacuum,” “we will know our enemy better, if we join,” or “we will be able to influence from within.”

Wherever one stands, when the WEF calls for “constructive debate over non-technological issues,” the fog begins to clear. Debates about safe encryption, mass surveillance, interconnection, searching, aggregating personal profiles, localized data within national jurisdictions — many issues once considered dry and technical — are transformed to be political. Once WEF’s wealthy corporate members become interested in these issues, heads of state soon follow, and deputy ministers and undersecretaries of telecommunication will be scrambling to brief the higher levels of government around the world.

In May 2014, the shift was signaled elsewhere: The advocate general for the EU’s Court of Justice argued that Google shouldn’t honor individuals’ “right to be forgotten.” No one expected Google to lose. But the Court’s judgment upended the advocate general’s case — aurprise! The decision was a re-affirmation of political will; it bolstered the European personal data directive passed three years before Google’s launch. Remember, a directive is a legal and regulatory act by the European Council, Commission and Parliament, not a “multistakeholder” decision involving corporations, special experts and whoever else can insinuate themselves into the fray. The judgment was in favor of a democratic Europe protecting its citizens’ rights and against the supremacy of a transnational corporation.

The European Parliament recently called for Google to break up. This action was supported by a large majority of MPs. The Internet is truly back in politics. But this doesn’t mean the U.S. will stop derailing whatever contravenes its interests. The last time the Internet enjoyed so much political attention was in 1995 — the year the EU passed the personal data directive — when Al Gore recognized the value of controlling the Internet route zone. After three years of lobbying, control was wrested away from academics and given to a California non-profit by the United States government. Since then, the U.S. has controlled its contract with ICANN for the performance of the IANA function.

Now, 15 years of ‘Internet Governance’ are being dumped into the dustbin of history, along with the “multistakeholder” narrative and its foggy concepts like the “equal footing,” which tries to make corporate votes equal to state votes in Internet matters. It is critical that we recognize these concerns as in the public interest, not allow them to be only vested interests.

We might also ask whether the repeated calls to protect freedom of expression for the individual — a watchword against intervention in Internet affairs — is not a ruse for avoiding regulation on the grounds that the Internet is like life: It all boils down to individual choice. The sum of individuals’ actions does not match the needs of the poor, fragile and forgotten in society. The Internet can disrupt daily life and the social order in good ways and bad, but when disruption obscures the democratic social contract, it is a matter of grave concern.

Stepping in political science, Vint Cerf made a telling attempt to quote Rousseau in a recent public chat. Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist” ineptly twisted the philosopher’s Du Contrat Social, a major writing of the Enlightenment, which calls on citizens to abandon part of their personal sovereignty to a state. In turn, the state protects them and their right to electoral representation. Cerf read (see 01:30:10) that, “roughly speaking”, Rousseau says: “Citizens give up some of their privacy in exchange for safety.” This must be a different Rousseau, maybe one who works in the NSA’s public relations department. Or perhaps this is just how Rousseau looks through Google Glass. Whatever the case, it’s touching to see a computer scientist waxing philosophical about social justice, especially when it’s the VP of Google trying to legitimate mass surveillance. Here, too, we see the Internet courting traditional politics, even if Cerf merely muddles them. Old power is new power.

It is time for our Internet masters, most of them in the U.S., to acknowledge that a state is not just a counter-terrorism agency or a counter-regulating body. Each state must stand for social peace, public health, education, welfare, protection and prosperity for its citizens and neighbors. We must pressure our governments to re-balance Internet power and care about digital policies so that it reinforces democracy instead of marginalizing it. Let’s see citizens drive Internet public policies not simply with clicks and logs but with a vote.

Jean-Christophe Nothias

Post-scriptum: During the same Geneva Internet Conference, we had the pleasure of meeting Helena Dalli, Malta’s Minister for Social Dialogue, Consumer Affairs and Civil Liberties. Listening to her explain her views on digital policies, I was reassured that there is indeed room for innovation in politics, and not just through “public funded” research that makes fortunes for private entities who are smart enough to be in the right place at the right time.

In the winter of 1972 I was invited to live as a guest of Mishkenot Sha’ananin in the legendary city of Jerusalem. It proved to be a rare opportunity to engage in a dialogue with Israeli and Palestinian writers and artists involved in a search for peace. “It is tragic that, in effect, Arabs and Jews are in the Alamo now killing each other,” was an oft-heard remark.

The wife of an Arab scholar told me: “I’m still tense when I talk to a Jew. I can’t accept any real relationship with Israel. But I’m not against them as human beings.”

In the midst of this dialogue came a few prophetic words from Israeli writer Amos Oz. He said, “If an occupation should continue, it would bring about a corruption of Israeli society. You cannot have a double standard, with first-class citizens and second-class ones.

“If a blow-up occurs in 25 years, it will come from my son.”

Someone else involved in this scenario was Teddy Kollek, who was the legendary mayor of Jerusalem for many years. Teddy often rode in Israeli garbage trucks with Arab workers, to show solidarity with them. This is where we first made our acquaintance. I engaged in a lot of solitary walking in Jerusalem, and he would stop and talk to me. Often we met and talked at the Garden of Gethsemane. After I returned to the United States, Teddy and I continued to correspond. He once wrote, “How good it was hearing from you about your writer-priest activities. Surely better than my mayor-garbage collector.”

Teddy Kollek seems to have been at his prophetic best when he came to Jerusalem. “The only city that may be compared to Jerusalem in Montreal,” he once said. “There you have the French and the English, and neither intends to become the other. Here we have no intention of making a goulash. Arabs will remain Arabs, and Jews, Jews. Neither wants assimilation. We do not wish to let the dividing lines vanish. You will find the same situation here in a hundred years. People want to stick to their roots. This is a positive and not a negative thing.”

Americans are able to comprehend this situation because of the its traditional melting-pot mentality, but does that apply here? The American notion of “e pluribus unum” has recently come under sharp attack from many quarters. Ethnic and social groups in the U.S. now take new paths in their differences, origins and varied social aspirations. This has radically altered the makeup of American society. I wonder sometimes: should our mayors consider riding on garbage trucks?

Today, on International Volunteer Day, we celebrate the contributions of volunteers all over the world to improving our communities, whether those efforts are focused locally, nationally, or globally. 62 million Americans volunteered last year, that’s close to 25 percent of the population over the age of 12! But, why do all of these Americans volunteer? Conventional wisdom tells us that volunteering is a selfless act of helping others in need. Yet, studies show that volunteering leads to better physical and mental health – so is it really selfless? And are we actually helping others when we volunteer, or creating shining but fleeting moments with strangers who we’ve judged to be in need?

There are no one-size fits all answers to these questions. In the first of a five part series, I grapple with these challenges and explore the big question of “Why Volunteer?”

*****

Impact in the Community: Giving Children a Voice … in Yemen

It is a Wednesday afternoon in July of 2010, and the summer rain which floods Sanaa’s streets has yet to begin. At the Safia Community Development Center, Matthew Stackowicz stands before his photography class of 19 students. “Yesterday,” he says, “we talked about how pictures tell a story. Every picture we take tells a story about us or maybe the city or maybe a person.”

Matthew is a 30-year old teacher from South Bend, Indiana, with glasses, longish hair, and several days of stubble. He came to Yemen to study Arabic for a month and to volunteer as a photography teacher. His students are among the roughly 250,000 refugees (most from the Horn of Africa) in Yemen today. Some of these kids were born in Yemen and others fled with their parents from Somalia or Ethiopia. The youngest of the group is a doe-eyed six-year old boy with long curly hair, and the oldest is an 18-year-old girl with crooked front teeth, a big smile, and a toddler little brother in tow.

Matthew hits a keystroke on his laptop and a black and white image of two boxers projects on to the white dry erase board behind him. One boxer’s glove crashes into the headgear of the grimacing second fighter. The projector rests on an uneven desk, and the picture is tilted, making it seem as if the boxers are starring in one of those old V-8 juice commercials. Matthew asks, “What is this story about?”

Osama, a pre-teen with a tilted brown baseball cap, stands to Matthew’s right and translates the question into Arabic for the Somali students. Bivtu, a tall 14-year with a patterned hijab and shining eyes, stands to Matthew’s left and translates his words into Oromo, an Ethiopian language.

“I like to volunteer when I travel,” Matthew told me. “I’ve traveled to 30 countries and after about 15 countries I realized that I travel and I take from cultures and don’t give back. I decided I need to give more. Giving back, you learn so much more about the people and it enriches your experience in the country.”

Matthew’s goal for this three-week class is to teach his students to use photography to tell the stories of their lives as refugees. He wants his students to understand that they have a voice and what they say matters. He is using photography to build their self-confidence; taking photographs is something new and previously unimagined for this group. Before meeting Matthew, none of the children had ever taken a picture, been photographed, or owned a photo.

Before giving his students cameras, Matthew covered composition, the “rule of thirds,” and had each student diagram their ideas. In this, the second week, the students received disposable cameras from the Center and Matthew instructed them to photograph a self-portrait, their family, and their neighborhood. On their first day with the disposable cameras, many of the students snapped all of their pictures, mostly self-portraits. Fortunately, Matthew came to Sanaa with three digital cameras that were donated by his students back home.

Matthew turns off the projector, draws ten boxes on the dry erase board, and asks the class to tell a 10-frame story with pictures. After some discussion, he breaks the class into groups and sends them off to script their stories.

A few days later, I return to Matthew’s class to check on how the group is progressing. This is the last week of the course, and Matthew and his students are reviewing their “homework,” projected on to the dry erase board. The first picture is of a boy standing in front of his apartment building, a brown door equally balanced to his left and right. The photographer practiced the “rule of thirds,” and Matthew diagrams the thirds on the board with a marker.

“The first thing we see is the boy. Very, very good picture!” Matthew exclaims. “How does this picture feel?” he asks the class.

There is chatter in Oromo and Arabic, and Bivtu translates, “dirty” and “poor.”

“Lonely,” Matthew says.

The next group of pictures on the dry erase board includes the self portrait of a girl in a red hijab who looks like she is 11 or 12-years-old. On Wednesday, she was babysitting her little brother. After class, Matthew tells me that she is 18, and that the toddler is her son. Close to 50 percent of girls in Yemen are married by age 18.

In the self-portrait, the young mother is sitting on a bed. Matthew diagrams the picture, which is weighted to the left and asks, “What could we add?” The class understands the lack of balance and Matthew says, “Not a problem, but that’s why we talk about it so that we can take better pictures.”

The next set of pictures are by Asya, another thin, head-covered young woman. They are remarkable. The first is of a girl with two little children in an alley strewn with broken glass. The children are framed by brick walls, and there is a large gas cylinder in the background.

Matthew remarks, “These pictures are good; they show us your neighborhood.”

The next photo is the kind of picture you would stop and study at a museum. A frowning girl in a blue hijab stands in front of a clothing store. To her left and right, the store’s windows display elegant wedding dresses that are spread like royal teepees. The picture raises so many questions about marriage, early marriage, wealth, and poverty. What sort of wedding will the girl have? What sort of wedding does she want? Or maybe, what sort of wedding did she have? It is spellbinding. Matthew comments, with reverence, “This makes us wonder what she wants with the dresses. It tells us a story.”

When class ends, Matthew arms his students with the digital cameras and dispatches them to take 20 pictures. The kids are overjoyed. They could only take five pictures before. The cameras have brought something different and wonderful into their lives. They clamor around Matthew, shake his hand, and say, “Goodbye, Teacher.” When we are speaking after class, Matthew explains, “You can see from the children that they appreciate that an adult from another country wants to teach them something and spend time with them.”

Matthew shows me the photos he developed from the disposable cameras which run the gamut of self-portraits, family members, neighborhoods, and community problems. Some are of the quality that a cynic would expect, but for the most part, the pictures take you there: generations of families sit on worn yellow and brown couches inside poorly lit homes and children swing on the Center’s swing set, above stale puddles, and beneath the blue sky. The pictures tell the stories of these refugee children, and not just their struggles, but their daily being and the warmth of their families. Those stories offer a level of detail that is a privilege to an outsider like me or Matthew.

Two weeks ago, these kids had never taken a picture before or even owned a photograph. It is impossible not to look at the talented young women in the class – by far the best students – and to think about what these cameras and photos have done for them, the voice it has offered, the skill-set, and the feeling of accomplishment.

At the end of the week, the Center held a final ceremony for the students to display their photos. For two hours on a Thursday night in Sanaa, 125 people – the students, their families, people from local NGOs, journalists, and other foreigners – came to the Center to see these students’ stories. At the exhibition, the students stood next to their photos and explained them to anyone who would listen. They had pictures taken with their families in front of their work. A number of guests asked Matthew who had really taken the photos. At the end of the night, the kids each received their photos, their first pictures.

“The students had the chance to be proud of something they created and to have others honor them for their achievements,” Matthew explained. “Too often children, especially refugee children, are told what they can’t do and feel like they will never amount to anything in life. This class gave children hope… I also believe that they learned a new language: how to communicate through photographs.”