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Daily Digest: PdF '08 Day Two -- Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, June 24 2008

This is Day Two of the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum and we’ll be (mostly) devoting the Daily Digest to a recap of what’s going down at the conference, being discussed in the halls, and heating up the back channels. We’ll return to our regular digest format tomorrow.

Visual presentation virtuoso Larry Lessig at a text-only mid-morning press conference here at PdF '08: "I'm a little lost because I don't have slides."

Google evangelist and wise guy Vint Cerf: "PowerPoint corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."

(Yes, we know Larry uses Keynote in his presentations. But still, that's a great line.)

Bad weather kept keynoter Elizabeth Edwards away from New York City in body but she was still able to appear at PdF '08 via Skype, which preformed remarkably well. The upside of Elizabeth staying in North Carolina? Her husband, John, popped into view of Elizabeth's laptop camera [here's a photo] and stuck around to say a few words. The New York Times' Katharine Seelye reports on the tech-focused discussion between Elizabeth and the PdF crowd.

NPR's Sunday Soapbox "field vlogger" Jacob Soboroff conducted video interviews with MySpace IMPACT's Lee Brenner, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington and Open Left's Matt Stoller. Also in NPR land, Soapbox's senior producer Davar Ardalan responds to Jay Rosen's take on notes on "semi-pro" journalism presented at a PdF panel yesterday morning and posted to TechPres last night, saying that digital integration "brings with it many philosophical questions about editorial control and the ethical rules we have all been trained to follow."

Over on the tech blog ArsTechnica, Julian Sanchez responds to yesterday's discussion over the modern media's "fake neutrality," to borrow a phrase from Arianna.

Silicon Alley responds to McCain advisor Mark Sohoo's defense yesterday of his candidate's relationship with the Internet. The Guardian UK also has coverage of the session under the in-no-way-judgmental headline "Republicans Admit Obama is Winning the Online Battle." Ooh, this just in: source material -- video of the exchange between Mark and John Edwards' online staffer Tracy Russo that has had people talking since.

CNN's iReport has a station set up here and the conference and has gone live with interviews and coverage with attendees.

Virtual reality pioneer Mark Pesce gave a keynote this morning on "hyperpolitics -- American style" that both Twitter and room tone seemed to indicate was very well-received. If the reporting on the speech strikes you as slightly fuzzy, that's because I unfortunately arrived at the talk where there was only about three minutes left; no worries, though, because Mark has generously posted the full text of his presentation.

PdF's Alison Fine has great coverage of Doug Rushkoff talk on "The New Renaissance" and Morely Winegard's presentation on the civic engagement of the millennial generation.

PC World covers the unveiling of Internet for Everyone, a new Free Press-engineered push for universal broadband launched at PdF '08 this morning. Nancy Scola (hey, that's me) has a quick guide to the the bite-sized arguments made by the project's supporters, from Vint Cerf to Writers Guild East president Michael Winship to TechPres contributor David All.

CNET's Caroline McCarthy reports on Larry Lessig's exhortation to the PdF crowd to not fall into the "four-year trap" of keeping a close watch on politics and politicians only when election time rolls around.

Nancy Scola (again, me) reflects upon a session featuring Mayhill Fowler where the OffTheBus contributor called for bloggers to agree to some "code of the road" that creates a safe, off-the-record space for press.

ThePoint.com's Alex Steed is doing some granular liveblogging of the conference.

Of course, there's more going on than we can possibly capture. So check out the Twitter stream tag
ged #pdf2008 on Summize.

UPDATE: UpTakeVideo has video of Dabble's Mary Hodder and PdF/Change's Josh Levy performing "The Twitter Song" on stage at Lincoln Center this afternoon. Words fail me...

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

The UK Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

GO

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

On Threshold of Telecom Revolution, Future of Internet Freedom in Burma Uncertain

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

GO

Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

GO

thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

GO

wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

GO

PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

Mike Honda Locks Up Establishment Support, But Challenger Has Ear of the Silicon Valley Elite

Some of Silicon Valley's most influential business people will hold a fundraiser in San Francisco this Thursday for Ro Khanna, the 36-year-old lawyer who's challenging 71-year-old California Democrat Mike Honda for his 17th Congressional District seat. The names at the top of the invite: Ron Conway and Sean Parker. They're apparently forming a committee to help Khanna build his campaign. The other bold-face names who are listed as part of the 'committee in formation' include Salesforce.com's Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Benchmark Capital General Partners' Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, tech entrepreneur Shawn Fanning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, her big data venture investor husband Zach Bogue, and Conway's SV Angel colleague, Founder and Managing Partner David Lee. GO

Tools to Keep Independent Media Online in Hostile Environments

Websites and media outlets in developing countries or countries with corrupt or repressive regimes struggle daily to fend off hacker attacks, some from their own government — like the Malaysian news portal Sarawak Report, which techPresident reported was taken down in April by sustained denial-of-service attacks. The negative attention controversial reporting draws can scare local advertisers away as well, making it difficult for a media company to support itself. Media Frontiers offers two services to websites dealing with either of those problems.

GO

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