Internaltional Telecommunications Union

  If you have read a few of my posts you may have realized I am an active supporter of internet freedoms domestically and abroad.  I was excited to see the failure of SOPA and PIPA in the US.  These pieces of regulation would have begun a downhill slide towards the fracturing of the World Wide Web.
  The internet; it has spawned societies entirely encased in digital form, brought down governments (read my last post), forged international relationships, created cultures, all on it's own.
  But all this could be thrown to an abrupt stop if we, the internet users are not careful.  I believe that a free and democratic society depends upon the free exchange of ideas and information. Without that we are limited by whatever ruling power controls the flow and distribution of information.

Thanks to New World Order War

   Right now the next threatening piece of regulation that could overburden the Internet information highway is the ITU and the next international conference.
  The ITUwas founded in 1865 and became a part of the United Nations in 1947.  It's main goal has been to regulate and develop international communications world wide.  It has proved many great communication resources to third world and developing nations and has done some excellent things to further the progress of international communication networks.
  But the problem is that it is not a democratic community.  Only certain countries in the UN have voting power on the ITU and many of those countries have horrible track records with internet freedoms (Russia and China are both voting members).
  I'm not sure what can be done to battle this encroaching regulation of internet freedoms, but I recognize the necessity for a free and open exchange of ideas in today's world.

 

Property of Fight For The Future and AccessNow.org

Six Degrees of Seperation (linguistics edtition)

  So the proverbial 'scientists' have done it again.  Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University are using computer software to track the development of language, and colloquialism, across the US.
  The BBC published this article, written by Phillip Ball, recently exploring the work of Jacob Eisenstein, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech.  Eisenstein is using Statistical Analysis techniques to analyze around 40 million messages from about 400,000 different users to track where different terms, like "bruh" or "af", originated from and have moved to.

Image from Visual Complexity

  In the case of "bruh," the term originated in the southeast US and moved to southern California due to it's usage on Twitter.  The result of tracking terms like these is a representational map of how different slang terms and emoticons have moved across the US, perhaps even across international borders.  Think of movies where detectives use string and different photographs to track suspects in an organized crime case (they may still do this)
  This new system of organizing and analyzing data could help linguistics and other researches in many ways.  The entertainment industry could now localize productions to specific geographical locations.  Law enforcement could use this to track different slang or gang terms across the country to track where gangs are located and spreading to.  Linguists could use the information to project the spread of colloquialisms across geographical lines and gain a better understanding of how culture develops.

CollegeHumor

The Adventure Begins

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
- Andre Gide

  Andre Gide is a French writer who worked during the first half of the 1900's.  Granted, I have read little of his work, but I love this quote.  It also aptly describes much of my view on life.  I believe fully in repeatedly leaving your comfort zone and traveling on to new people, places, and ideas.  This method of madness has served me well in my travels both close and far from home.
  This next adventure, that I hope you join me on, will be one of social and cultural study.  I will be examining the contemporary world and how it has reacted to the creation of this new new media (see video).
  It is an incredible subject to be examining now that the world has fully embraced this new advance in both technology and communication beyond the internet.  new new media has already changed the way we work, communicate, explore, travel, research, think, and essentially everything else!
  I will be posting more videos, photos, and links to news stories and studies pertaining to the subject and how society has either changed the flow of technology or been changed by it.  I hope you join me for this wild ride backwards into the future!