Some links to this summit(#gvsummit08)  I'm attending from 25th-29th

http://summit08.globalvoicesonline.org/

Live stream: http://www.mayvelous.com/?p=402

Twitter channel: https://twitter.com/gvsummit08

Twitter summize: http://summize.com/search?q=gvsummit08

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/event/global-voices-2008-summit

Photos on flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/gvsummit08

  I'm now in Bali Island but not for the legend sea shore and historical views.  It's the first time that I'm here joining the 3rd Global Inter-media Dialogue(GIMD), a conference backing by two distinction countries, Norway and Indonesia.  Deputy Minister Wegard Harsvik shared me the story how this GIMD was founded three years ago: Indonesia was one of three countries(China, Indonesia and Vietnam) Norway conducted talks on human rights with.  And eventually after those talks, Indonesia become more democratic and healthy on politics today.  They win the friendship of Norway as well. So the two governments set up the conference quickly in month in 2006.

I enjoyed some of the sessions especially those about local issues and community practices, but more happily to see old friends( Ying Chan, Kavi Chongkittavorn, etc.) there. I was surprised with the coverage of this conference because the organizers did invite a broad range of journalists from almost around the world. Amazingly, Cuban journalist, Lic. Magda Resik Aguirre,  almost flied around world to attend this conference.  The first session I joined was about the minority coverage problem of current media where a guy called Said Ibrahimi came from Afghanistan added me more knowledge about this country on the situations of reporters, as well the problems in that not-far-away country.  What should global journalists do with such issues? Be more participatory or be more professional watcher? How to keep ethics in extreme situations?

If we just think about such issues in traditional ways. I can't help because they are actually the all time issues bothering journalism the whole discipline. The common problem to journalism in any countries, of course, its prejudice and ethical correctness. In our session called "Global Happenings" most on China issue, I quickly shared the future journalism could be the best collaborative spectrum between amateur journalism and professional journalism by applying the new technologies especially those web 2.0 ones.  The stories in China were actually telling not only the possibility of such blurring between amateur and professional journalism, but also the possibility to approach truth.

About the truth, actually it'll be forever issue in our society but a real challenge to current traditional media. Even we can see some stories from the mainstream media covering minorities timely, it may be easily eclipsed by the limited bandwidth and persistency of the media. However, since everyone of us has more channels today to get information, you can sense how important the future journalism will be with new media technologies. Further saying, if people can provide and well use the throughput of new information channels, they can find more supporting materials to support their co-perceiving the truth.  Obviously, the traditional media and journalists should change themselves proactively to fit for the trend.

The last minute before I click "publish" of this post and go to the Bali beach, there's a new notification from Twitter telling me one of my friends Maria Trombly  recommended a new article about journalism: The future of journalism. Though there are different perceptions on the future of journalism, the holy thing to me in Sharism age is that you can meet magic of coincidence with new technologies all the time. Isn't it part of future journalism?

Just re-posted to Slideshare, yet to have another video explanation on BigThink.com.

Some pages on Slideshare were changed on color palettes and drawings positions. But seems slideshare is still the best place to share presentations.

It's really bizarre recently after a series of blocking and un-blocking by the censorship system in China(GFW):
-  Youtube was blocked after 3/14 tibet riot
-  Youtube was released two weeks later
-  English BBC News released 25th,Mar.
-  Wikipedia English site found unblocked on 1st, April (not April Fool), including https://secure.wikimedia.org
-   Wikipedia https://secure.wikimedia.org blocked again  two days ago on 6th, April, because Chinese version of Wikipedia can be accessed via this channel
-  Flickr picture farm1, farm2 found unblocked yesterday (7th, April)
Etc.

How do you think if the Olympic Torches behave the same?

As more and more people are now on various social applications(over 10 types of such Social Software), Micro-pipeline is also emerging to show how information can flow over different kinds of social application from people to people in a more efficient way than traditional media.  We can predict that "Micropipeline" as a new concept will be studied more in the coming years to see how this infrastructure can be applied to form a larger scale of social fabric to make the world more flat and equalized.

For different kinds of social application, we can now link them easily by importing/exporting their RSS/Atom feeds. In this way, they can be connected like a pipeline system(Do you still remember the classic fun game "Pipeline"?).  Meme with XML format can flow over different pipes to reach different users eventually . There are different kinds of pipeline building blocks in the system including pipes, Tee joints("T"), and elbow joints, etc. Since there are more and more such type of components can be chosen by users, the system becomes more complex than a traditional one-to-many system(like the urban waterworks). The many-to-many relationship between those building blocks can generate non-linear chain effect that maybe possible to amplify little voices into big bang. It's the new type of media, "Social Media".

I'm making an illustration on "Social Media" big picture  by putting some typical "Micropipeline" applications on one map to show how information could flow from one person to mass population by routing those pipelines and possibly generate impact. Of course, the value of the original meme should be recognized along the path.  Traditional media like "Reuters" is no more than a super node on such a big map. The picture is not finished yet, but I would love to share some draft works to get your comments to improve it.

Someday in near future, I think the connection between different pipeline application won't be just limited to RSS. They can eventually "talk" to each other in more flexible and semantic way.  Some new kinds of authentication methodologies like OpenID could be applied in such scenario to ensure that information are authentic enough. And I'm sure XML-based Microformats will play key roles in future picture.

Micropipeline will be more important to some totalitarian countries like China to confront it's censorship system("Great Firewall", or GFW in short). Those seems-redundant building blocks(like Google Reader v.s. Bloglines) just more helpful to build fault tolerant media pipelines to serve people in such countries.  E.g. It's found that Soup.io were blocked two weeks ago by GFW in China:

As feared, we've been blocked in China again.

Soup user kunshou has posted some new suggestions on how to circumvent the block (in Chinese). Should these fail, Tor remains your best bet.

This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs for our Chinese users – but as much as we'd like to, we can't just keep changing our IP address every day.Sorry! :(   ---[via  Censorship evades Soup, has stronger kung-fu]

Bloggers got very angry(Chinese) on such blockage with curses all the time. But they are now becoming smarter to build more complex personal pipelines to avoid of single point failure.  They switched to FriendFeed.com as the alternative solution to burn their social feeds as life stream.  And their subscribers can response as well to keep their information pipes flowing at normal level.  The same trick applys to Yahoo Pipes! when people found Feedburner was blocked in China half year ago.  If it's a mouse and cat game, the mouse seems faster and smarter now.

For the draft illustration shown above. I'm actually using Zooomr as the picture link here instead of Flickr since the later one has been blocked in China as well. However, I believe they can't block every picture sharing site around the world to kill themsevlves. So I think it's a great hack that we Chinese can survive in such a Social Media age.  We can even change the country in a longer extent for sure.

Labels: Computing, GFW, Sharism, Singularity, Social Media

Just watched the "Super Tuesday" gala via many ways, the Twitter+Google mashup is the coolest one. But after reading Richard Dreyfuss's comments on how to teach our kids on the concep of "Democracy" and how to foster the love , I realized that the real democracy is still a long way to go. That' is how to maximize the enlightment of "collective intelligence" to cover all human brains.

There are still silent majority in our world( even in those so-called democratic countries) to eclipse the value of democracy. But with the longtail of sharing with different kinds of social applications, human's intelligence is possible to be aggregated to upgrade the established democratic system. We can call it Democracy 2.0.  We can all see the changes  in the new presidency bids 2008 in US, as well in Taiwan and other more wired countries.

Twitter's "Super Tuesday" experiment is cool, yet to improve in two directions: firstly, more inclusive to enable people to express in such a micro-way; secondly, to aggregate such intelligence and merge into the future design of democratic system.  Twitter is killer app because it amplifies the sharing mechanism from explicit sharing to subtle sharing. It works just like the membrane to exchange materials in between cells. Sharing of such nano-sized memes can be easily adopted by users to open their mind to connect them with the social voice space.  Those with such tendency of sharing can understand the return of sharing step by step.  It's a kind of spiritual practice I called "Sharism".

Sharism, then, plays very important role inside people's social tendency. In the presidency racing, people were actually reluctant to vote or express because of their weary of the procedures and results. In democracy 2.0, people were enlightened to share their opinions. And if they found their any opinions are collected and respected, they will be encouraged to participate further steps.  So Sharism fosters a continuum of participation of the democratic system, even effective after the voting with its open-end power.

Without considering such spirit in democratic system redesign, I'm afraid, the more problems will emerge in the next decade over the current democratic system around the world. The emergence of second super power won't just be a utopia, but a driven force to change the world. The news about a Chinese former professor set up a new political organization called "Chinese Netizen Party" won't be just April Fool as well.

Labels: 2.0, Democracy

During the talk over "Social Media" as Luncheon Addresss(Slide) at the conference of "Changing Dynamics in the Asia Pacific: Power Politics, Economic Might, Media Challenges", I also presented the situation of the "lonely family" of Hu Jia.

There were bloggers tried to send powder milk the small girl last week, however, it's still impossible to break the cordon to enter and conduct. They didn't give up though. More tools will be expected to be used to make things smarter. You can find Hujia's house in a vivid way from Google Maps(same using Google Earth). More bloggers are called to join the action to update the map time by time. And furtherly the leaks can be found anyway to save the baby.

I hope the audience really understand Sharism in such a context because it's really relevant to each of us. And most importantly, I've got a lot information from the local bloggers meetup last night and some insights from other speakers in different panels.

Labels: Creativity, GFW, HumanRights, Sharism, Social Media

Some friends has posted the video document "Prisoners in Freedom City", cameraed by Hujia and produced by his wife Jinyan, on Youtube.  Although the story is well known on blogosphere even traditional media(not including Chinese ones).  I have to say that it's very movable after watching over all seven episodes(they were seperated due to the limitation of Youtube, obviously). Many Chinese people are freer than before, however, when is the tipping point to a substantial change in this country. Olympic 2008? Seem impossible just from Hujia's case.

Bloggers are now talking how to send milk powder to Jinyan to save their one-month old daughter QianCi because all the food channels has been blocked by security police after Hujia's arrest.  It is not a game, it's about life.

updates: Where the family located(on Google Map and Google Earth) and BBC4's interview after Hujia's arrest

Labels: China, HumanRights

Tim O'Reily just compiled some ideas on "Huamn vs. Machine: The Great Challenge Of Our Time". It actually suggested that an emergent inflexion of web 2.0 to be re-invented to a higher stage. The next stage will be the well designed mashup of human computing and machine computing which I used "P2R Computing" to described it before. I think it's better to expand the idea to reflect Tim's one.

Google was being very successful in the last past 8 years. They found a basic fact of Internet content democracy and formed the super search algorithm "Page Rank" to enable thousands of machines to work in a parallel way to support large scale indexing and searching request. The creative design of Adsense model helps Google collect money from large scale eye balls along with the booming of search behaviors. Undoubtedly, Google can earn more from the "Big Number" effect and for more years.

However, what I'm sure is that Google merely itself can't bear is the global change of content structure since the new paradigm that Web 2.0 leads, whatever their investing in more machines, adjusting the Page Rank algorithm, or more activities to be more 2.0 alike. The problem to Big G is the internet content granularity has been dramatically downsized by both people and new kinds of technologies(like RSS and Atom). The connectivity between information will be not only described by physical links between web pages, but also a new layer of social filtering yet to be articulated by more new innovative social applications(like those RSS readaers, twiter.com, soup.io, etc.). Some recent found fake sites can present itself as a real content destination from Google's search results, however, they are actually generated by machine programs to make money for their authors. The downsizing of virtual hosting and domain costs makes such things easily be mass produced. So actually, Google's machine algorithm is now facing their distributed siblings from other hosts everywhere. Of course, people will be unsatisfied more and more.

Social Search, a new but long discussed concept is the right time to emerge in the coming two years(Am I optimistic?) Just a quick simple example first: When I search Google about "Human vs. Machine", I can find Tim's article, but obviously it's not at a relevant position in my mind. And I can't find any referential information to this search result. I switched to another mashup tool with the same query string and found more interesting results. I'm sure some of the links were really what I want and most importantly my own mind told me some are really relevant with some of the names I know and trust. Recently I compared many such just-in-case searches for in real context, for either blog composing or reference search, the "nearly social" search wins more than Google. Google may argue that skillful users can also realize social search based on their algorithm, but obviously Google didn't index well in some cases I met (though I found Google added one missing index days later). The fundamental problem is Google still slowly adopt social layer in their base service. The missing link, Social Ranking(SR) , should be be introduced into future search system.

The Social Rank(SR) concept, which can be a perception inherited from Page Rank, yet to be developed deliberately based on one's Social Portfolio(I dislike the term "Social Graph", either from semantic or public acceptance) and calculated in a large enough scale to ensure its accuracy. Your Social Portfolios on each social application sites(Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, etc.)  will be crawled frequently to compile your SR.  The more content you generated on those social sites, the higher your SR could be(but not linearly correlated).  The trust relationships to connect those "Social Portfolio" will be another key factor to be compiled into your public SR. The people with best Sharism virtue will be recognized in this way.  Like Tim, Joi Ito, Stehphen Downes, Dave Winner,  Rebecca Mackinnon, etc.

In my humble vision, people will get more information in a streaming way from their daily social context instead of today's individual keywords-driven machine searches(In some countries, the portal way still dominate, though).  Their activities will be logged and fed to their trust circle. Your Social Portfolio with its inherent sensing capability will help you aggregate "right" information to avoid of a problem of "don't know what you don't know".  The Micro-pipeline is in shaping and more applications will emerge to support such "information streaming" time by time. Like Soup.io's experiment.

The basic unit of the fluid in the micro-pipeline will be micro enough to support almost everyone's participation and easy aggregation and remixture. Both Atom and Micro-format are in this category.  But it's questionable to apply larger granularity work as base content unit, like wiki. So Wikia's effort could be on a too complex direction at least from the requirement of social searach on mass participation perspective. 

Eventually, Social Search will be an entropy game, Google won the first round because they found the algorithm to map the less complicated web 1.0. And who will win next round to resemble the web 2.0 variety?

Just finished a fabulous "Museum" day in London. We started at morning to meet the speakers of the evening debated with a rough topic on "The New China: What does the First Emperor's legacy mean in a globalised world?". We met some really interesting guys to exchange some interesting ideas(including a recent eco-protestor who put mask on a warrior's face, which could be seen as an emergency if it's in China), actually I just feel the debate would be more like a panel discussion without flame wars.

We were taken by Jane Portal, curator of this over-half-year-long exhibition of "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army", to make a short touring. I was exited that it's the first time I see clearly real Terracotta Warrior. Its simply amazing not only because of the whole exhibition format navigated in a creative logic, but also the works themselves. Actually, its very hard to imagine how people keep the craft skills in such a media-less age and mass produce so many warriors like modern factory. As a trained engineer, I was too much impressed by the process of engineering. Unfortunately, those techniques wasn't respected and reserved to keep China a innovative country in the later centuries.

Our debate, as one of the parallel program with the exhibition, attracted about 300 people. My blogger friend Cathy Ma was lucky to get a seat because of my speaker advantage. It's very hard talk for the speakers including Me. Jon Snow from BBC Channel 4 moderated the panel after Neil MacGregor (Director of the British Museum) gave a warm-up speech. Then four speakers including Jonathan Fenby (auhtor a the book Jiang Kai-shi) , Sun Shuyun (documentary producer ), Steve Tsang, and me started our talks over "legacy" based on the understanding from different background. I mentioned the "Great Firewall" behind China Internet users is just the legacy mindset of "control" by communist rulers. And the most wise choice for the ruling party is to remove it to prove their over-propagandaed harmonious society and peaceful rising. The collective intelligence from counting Internet users won't just wait for the non-progressive democratic regime if they don't like to change their mindset. Unfortunately, we didn't see such change even after the passing 17th Party Congress.

China Ambassador, Ms. Fu Ying, also joined tonight's event. She commented that the best way to understand legacy is to forget it. It's somewhat a quite safe comment for her role. I was told she is very nice and smart lady though Steve remind me to be cautious after I return China. I noted but somewhat feel easy with that. It's not the first time I speak publicly about Great Firewall in China. It's truth that everyone should knows and change it together. I'm happy to see there are more and more Chinese Internet users(especially those millions of bloggers) started to talk about it explicitly and try to find constructive solutions to persuade government to rethink about this stupid mindset. In a modern globalized China, we don't need such legacy, instead, we need inherit the blood of creativity in Terracotta Warriors.

I enjoyed the talks from other speakers too. They are all China experts rather insightful than me about the history of China. I didn't see the flame wars in the debate though. Some friends told me after the debate that I'm somewhat too optimistic to the future of China. I think I should be because the paradigm of the whole world is changing from 1.0(top-down) to 2.0(bottom-up) even the Great Wall mindset unchanged today in China.

The Guardian, cooperator of the debate, will have podcasts published online soon to get the full script and audio of the debate. Stay tuned. (update: The guardian podcasting has been published here and Jonathan's long review of the debate, "Continuity and change")

Labels: China, Emperor, GFW, guardian, London, Terracotta, The British Museum, Warrior