Chomsky vs. Twitter

Last time I wrote I threw in a quote by Noam Chomsky regarding the de-facto mental slavery we are subject to when powerful interests are allowed to dictate the narratives, the advertising, the media we consume. If you haven't come across Chomsky before I'm going to let you Google him, but suffice to say that I've heard him described as the most influential intellectual of the last fifty years (more than once). Chomsky writes passionately about the individual in the face of larger corporate, political and media influences. He is an advocate of individual action and thought free from coercion. 

I'm a fan of Noam, but in my reading for the last post I also came across some comments he made about social media and Twitter. It seemed he was not a fan of the brevity or relative flippancy of tweets and their limited character. He has also described in interviews a view that communication via devices tends towards the "superficial, shallow, evanescent" while Twitter perhaps "draw(s) people away from real serious communication". 

Let's face it, he has a point and in Noam's defense these comments were made around the same time Charlie Sheen was lighting up Twitter with a very dim bulb. At it's worst social media is people you've never met telling you they're hungry and then posting a picture of what they're eating (before anyone says anything I do realise that the worst is more like racism, sexism, trolls and attitudes best left in the middle ages). Beyond the shallow though Twitter et al. is also a democratizing force as it allows the audience to decide which voices are heard through comments, critiques and simply by ignoring the undesirable.

If we accept the premise that Twitter is often heavy with trivia and ephemera, this does not exclude the possibility for meaning within 140 characters. Brevity seems to be a particular bugbear for Chomsky as he feels it negates or sidelines controversial, non-mainstream discussion. But 140 characters is merely a window to another world that people may choose to explore at the cost of a mere click. Personally I am drawn back to tweeters who lead to me to more interesting information through links.

As a gateway social media has as many doors to Narnia as it does to last seasons Kardashian closet. The mere presence of crap does not negate it's power to distribute voices however. Just as the printing press gave us newspapers it also helped fill them with comics and personals. We have the opportunity to control the content as it evolves and part of that evolution is engaging, discussing and aggregating voices towards social causes. Daily people create their own content and distribute it via the interweb and social media is a resource they utilise to get word out.

Is there anything to say though?

Embedded in the technology is the mechanism that (hopefully) will see us guide this evolution towards a positive channeling of public voices; Twitter and other microblogging sites are equipped with functions to retweet, comment or simply stop following. While publishing may be free and easy, editing happens at the hands of the public at large. This means that the network of users vote with their 140 characters on whether an opinion expressed is viable. I wrote recently of my first experience with a truly abhorrent Twitter post and how at the hands of the 'Twitterverse' the poster was duly chastened. 

In one of the interviews mentioned above Chomsky describes a 'good public citizen' as one "who participates in the management of public affairs". Amongst the idle thoughts and tummy rumblings social media offers a platform for participation that is open and uncensored as yet. Entry criteria for participation is the possession of an online device, and this can be a steep price in some markets, as I've discussed in a previous post. This is changing though and with access comes a proliferation of new voices. For those that can afford it, this is cheap compared to running for office in a developed western democracy.

These technologies offer both shallow, narcissistic interactions and the potential to engage in the public sphere like never before. It requires a little creativity to straddle the line and becomes a daily commitment if you really intend to engage, but I've found it worth the effort. In a future where this technology will become second nature I wonder if our questioning it's validity at length (longer than the aforementioned 140) will seem quaint. Till then I choose to embrace the voice it affords me.

Trust...

The opening salvo of election 2013 has been fired.

Tony Abbott has declared the election to be about trust. In this statement he has sought to frame the whole election race; if you trust me then you will make me your prime minister he says. What he doesn't really clarify is what this elusive virtue trust is, or how we might apply it to politics.

Fool! 

(I hear you loudly declare) 

Trust is simple and you have it or you don't; that PM we currently only kinda, sorta like betrayed our trust when she kept promising things and then changing her mind.

That statement sounds so obvious that I refuse to trust it without giving it a good once over. That's the thing trust, it shouldn't be given blindly. Things are rarely what they seem (especially in politics) and if someone is shouting loudly trying to get you to look at what they're doing with their right hand, there's a good chance they're robbing you with their left.

Firstly let's consider the 'trust me, I don't lie' claim. Every election, large or small, parties (frequently two) claim and counter claim against their policy platforms. They announce plans and schemes for what they will do when they obtain office. The thing is only one party will get into office and that means only one party will be judged on whether they come good on their plans. This makes it simple for the other party to say trust me; they haven't yet been tested. If elections were decided on trust and this was the standard we used it is likely we would swap governments every election. Trust has to be more than simply tallying the plans not enacted because the incumbent will never win.

But ol' Tony may still have a point, Julia did use words like promise and pledge when she was talking about the carbon tax and the budget surplus. Were they promises she could reasonably make? Did she jump, or was she pushed? In both these situations, circumstances outside the party lead to them abandoning their earlier statements (read: breaking their promise). The Greens compelled a scheme that put a price on carbon as part of forming a minority government and global finances, particularly a downturn in China forced a recount of the pennies in the piggybank.

Don't even get me started on whether these 'broken promises' were a good thing. A mechanism for forcing polluters to pay for pollution - tick! A reevaluation supported by the majority of economists - tick! Do we really want politicians of any colour or flavour that are unable to respond to changing circumstances?

So the second point to consider is whether election platforms are the sort of promises that are brought down from the mountain in stone or whether they might be something else. At present the coalition are fairly thin on the ground when it comes to presenting policies. Tony Abbott's reputation as 'Dr No' stemmed largely from his lambasting government policy without offering alternatives. Such a position, viewed in the light of the argument above, seems shrewd. No promises, platforms, positions then there's no chance of being accused of lying if you have to change track. The coalition is waiting for the best time to announce a platform they know they can back. Now we already know the world isn't always kind like that, so let's hope nothing comes up to surprise them.

Even the Greens, ever the hardline, firm statement types have announced a new policy platform filled with 'aims and principles'. Sounds like they know what they want to do, but are smart enough to give themselves a little wriggle room just in case reality gets in the way. 

Sounds like Tony Abbott's trust platform isn't quite what it seems. I don't want a politician so set on a particular agenda that they ignore the rest of the world. Our democracy only allows us to personally effect change once every three or so years. In between I want to be able to trust our politicians to think about the issues and move with new circumstances.

Political mistrust seems more the domain of back-room dealings and corrupt politicians. We've seen plenty of that across the board over the last few years, with both parties splitting at the seams on more than one occasion. As far as trust goes though, I'd rather see this election run on policies...

Election 2013

So, we're going to the polls...

September 14th is the date I hear and most of the country is all a'twitter and the rest are on Facebook. We knew it was coming this year but now we have a time frame and we know that there are going to be almost eight months of campaigning to win our hearts and minds in the lead up. What this means is anyone's guess but we can assume a certain level of vitriol between the main players.

A shrewd observer on Twitter asked not long after the announcement how we could tell the difference between campaigning now and the political rhetoric we've been made to suffer the last few years? Personality and personal attacks have become the bread and butter of Australian politics. I can't remember exactly when we moved towards an American, presidential style tete-a-tete, but I do know that Labour vs. Liberal feels more like Julia vs.Tony at the moment.

The presidential campaigning started straight out of the blocks as Tony Abbott framed the whole campaign as being based around trust. His comments of course refer to Julia Gillards backdown on statements made about the implementation of a carbon tax/emissions trading scheme. The issue of trust was later compounded by Labour's brazen statements about a budget surplus.

So Abbott says don't trust Gillard, coz she lies. Gillard says don't trust Abbott, coz he won't to commit to anything (lie or truth). They both make points in their own twisted ways but neither really mentions too much about their vision for the country beyond 2013 (except for the bit where we all go to hell if the other gets voted in).

Forgive me for thinking that policies and issues might be the important thing here. I believe there are plenty of things to be talking about in Australia in 2013...

What about our deplorable human rights record for compulsory, indefinite detention of asylum seeker arrivals? There's the state of our welfare safety net for the most vulnerable Australians and as the Sydney Mardi Gras enters it's 35th year we still have huge steps to take for gay rights and equality.

These are fringe issue to many Australians who are more concerned with making ends meet and providing for their families. Maybe the election could say something about the national broadband network; a resource for extending services and information to all of Australia. Or healthcare and education which affects us beyond the standard three year cycle. Everyone has their passion and everyone should participate in election 2013 with all the information to go on.

These are the issues that are important to me. There are many more that make up the larger picture of Australian politics this year and into the future. I'd like to explore them as we approach September and try to create some small perspective on what this election is all about. Please write me the things that matter to you, that you would like to see discussed in the lead up and heading into the future of our country...

An inclusive national identity?

Australians are fiercely proud of their national identity. Call us British or (shock, horror!) American and you'll likely be greeted with a confrontational:

"Maaate! C'mon!" 

When not stridently defending our national identity, we Australians are likely to be found just as passionately arguing over what said identity entails. This is never more prevalent than on, or around our national holiday when the beer, beaches and backyard cricket give way to more somber reflections. So it was in the aftermath of this Australia Day that I found myself reading the reflections of our deputy prime minister the Hon. Wayne Swann M.P. as he attempted to evoke our national character through an editorial piece for the Fairfax Media.

The article makes a case for the continued debate about an Australian republic. It does this by way of discussing the unique character of our Australian identity, distinct from the English, imperial settlers of the continent. Swann invokes the infamous 'Bodyline' series as model for our 'Australianess'; where a "democratic and egalitarian assertion of our national sovereignity" won out against tyranny. While many countries hearken back to periods of war and revolution to locate their defining moments of national character, for Australia the imagined battlefields are the sporting arenas our national teams so often dominate.

The 'Bodyline' series saw unorthodox tactics employed to gain a result for the English. Swann identifies these tactics as ruthless, imperialistic and against the spirit of the game. The implication is that England being the 'ruling' power felt they could bend and break established codes of behaviour to gain a favourable result for the team.

While arguments about the impact of the series will rage wherever there are cricket fans, in it we can see the origins of many a political tactic employed in modern Australia.

Spin and obfuscation; not of the bowling type, but the manipulation of words and perceptions. 'Bodyline' to the Australians was 'leg theory' to the English, not as sexy, but the Australian term was clearly adopted for maximum emotional clout. So it is in modern Australia that asylum seekers become 'queue jumpers', when their arrival is inconvenient; refugees become 'irregular maritime arrivals' when their legitimacy becomes inconvenient.

From our opponents we learned the assertion of power at the edges of legitimacy. Despite being unsafe and unsavoury, Bodyline fell within the broadest interpretation of the rules of cricket. Also legitimate, the Australian government feels, are our border control measures where we indefinitely detain people to ensure there is 'no advantage' to arriving by boat, or tow them back where no international convention protects their rights.

Bodyline may offer much by way of sporting history and tales of individual courage but it does not seem the best of models for political rule or national identity. Swann describes one element of the Bodyline series was the attempted assertion of imperial superiority. Against this our fledgling national identity could not stand down and heroes such as Woodfull, Oldfield and Bradman led us against this oppressive, restrictive regime. What this analysis fails to appreciate is the analogy between England's imposition of cultural hegemony on it's various, diverse, multicultural imperial subjects and contemporary Australia's attempts to impose a sense of Anglo-Australian identity over the much lauded but infrequently practiced multicultural tolerance.      

Further claims are made that Australian's are not a ruthless, whatever-it-takes people. This may ring true for the Bodyline series and it certainly accords with the image of the laid-back Australian. Such sanguine generosity may not resonate with Australian's Indigenous population, many of whom were ripped from their land and their people as Australia established it's modern identity without them. Nor would a refugee seeking assistance from Australia agree that our systems of acceptance are not ruthless. With legitimate refugees and children in immigration detention, it is hard to deny we do whatever it takes.

Swann's analysis works if you are arguing simply from an Australian/English dyad. This is admittedly his goal; to make the case for a republic. But in arguing for an Australian identity separate from England he presents a particularly exclusive, inward looking notion of who we are. Swann pays lip service to our Indigenous heritage but his argument turns on an Anglo identity that is Australian not English and certainly does not sound multicultural. A national identity that is not inclusive has no unifying force over it's population. Much in the same way a sense of identity that is too prescriptive will tend towards division as individuals struggle to locate their own personal self amidst a collection of stereotypical 'Australians'. 

Australia's national character and identity are not an issue resolved in a single article, a single conversation, perhaps not even by the severing of imperial ties with England. Minister Swann makes an admirable point about maintaining the republican debate but he crucially ignores the current state of our relationship with Indigenous Australians as well as those new Australians seeking our help. We need more from our politicians who should lead us in an open, inclusive conversation, one that appeals not just to inspirational moments in our past but to those of our future.

When I hear such conversations annually around Australia Day I wonder if perhaps discussing our evolving national identity is an integral part of that identity. What seems imperative to me is the acknowledgment of the shameful elements of our past and present as we forge an identity for the future.

Australia must identify that it was black before it ever was considered as white, and that we must see that heritage as ours. Constitutional acknowledgment of Indigenous Australians and a treaty would serve as an excellent beginning.

But Australia is no longer just indigenous and anglo. Identity also means accepting that 'the old country' is many places to many people, not just our old imperial master. Let's move towards an encompassing notion of identity for all. This will come at the cost of putting aside old rivalry for the promise of a peaceful tomorrow, nothing more than a greater peace throughout the world would require.

Most of all we need to talk, discuss, argue and agree because we continue to share this country and our division harms the future of our national identity. Even if this means debating who we are every year that is a conversation worth having, because that's a conversation we can all share in.

Representation?!

A tale of indifference from your elected representatives...

I've now written twice on the story of Ranjini and her brand new son Paari; locked up in Australian immigration detention during her pregnancy, then returned only days after Paari's birth. My plan is to continue writing in the hope that rallying support around this issue might see sense prevail and result in an outcome that sees a weeks old baby released from jail.

This outcome seems less and less likely when our elected representatives refuse to engage on the issue in a meaningful way, preferring to stonewall opposition to the official policy. I am not the only person writing on this issue, far from it. I first read about Ranjini's story through GetUp! and 'Letters for Ranjini'. Both of these organisations have been actively campaigning to see Ranjini and Paari allowed to reunite with their family. As a result of this campaigning a lot of letters have been written to a lot of local members requesting action.

Unfortunately the responses received by 'Letter's for Ranjini' were less than inspirational on the part of the government. While you might hope for a resounding success or fear an outright rejection, the replies from Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson reflect the worst of bureaucratic obfuscation designed to do nothing more than placate the reader. Both letters read as virtual carbon copies of each other. They are clearly form letters designed to deflect community concern over the issue of what they like to call 'irregular maritime arrivals' (asylum seekers in the regular parlance). These replies refer to Ranjini's case only in the final paragraph and speak nothing of addressing the urgent concern of having a newborn child locked up.

On their website 'Letter's for Ranjini' call these replies a complete disregard for democracy, but I would go a step further. These politicians attempt to use stock standard letters to placate their constituents because they have no regard for the intelligence and sincerity of collective community action. They feel they are safe within the 'democracy' because they sit in safe seats of regard Ranjini's story a fringe political issue.  

This is not an acceptable response from Australia's political representatives, no matter their political persuasion. Politicians govern at the will of the people and they must be reminded of the voices behind their power, that they may use it to some good end. Consider this and write to your local member; you can get most of them on Twitter if you don't have time for an email. Go to 'Letters For Ranjini's' - Facebook page and give them a 'like' so that they can continue this struggle. Most importantly though is to take back your voice and refuse to accept a stock reply from a politician; ask why, ask for more information and make them justify their position. Remember you gave them their job...  

________

More on Ranjini's story:

Here are some sites you might like to check out for more information about Ranjini's story and the issue of the detention of children in immigration detention facilities in Australia...

Rightzblock - Life Imprisonment? 

My first post detailing Ranjini's plight before Paari's birth.

Rightzblock - Followup to Ranjini's Story 

Detailing the shameful act of imprisoning Paari days after his birth.

Letters for Ranjini 

Campaigning for justice on behalf of Ranjini; write a letter of support!

Chilout 

Fantastic organisation campaigning on behalf of children in immigration detention.

Chris Bowen - Minister for Immigration 

Drop the minister a line; email, twitter or call to express your concerns 

over the issue of children being locked up! 

You can't do that!

So I was talking about civil disobedience wasn't I? 

It had been all over the newspapers in Australia that a young guy had faked a press release to make a statement about the environment. This in turn caused stocks in a mining company to dive. This guy broke the law and some politicians were calling for quite severe punishment, while others were situating him in a tradition of civil disobedience.

(check out my post @ http://rightzblock.blogspot.fr/2013/01/civil-disobedience.html)

This event was a dramatic, news-attention grabbing event which the Australian Greens Party situated in a long tradition of action and protest within the Australian community. These include environmental protests; most notoriously the Franklin River Dam protests in the eighties. Women's suffrage in Australia also benefitted enormously around the turn of the twentieth century from women willing to stand against an oppressive system.

Throughout October and November of last year there were numerous and long running hunger strikes in detention centers facilitated by Australia; these were supported by protests and marches on the mainland. Here we saw people defying official policies, occupying public spaces and making bold physical statements attempting to address the government policy on processing asylum seekers. Many of these people were already imprisoned in a detention center while others ran the risk of arrest which might lead to fines and or jail time.

If you want to talk about, read about or even just think about the notion of civil disobedience a few names generally come up; I'm thinking Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Aung San Suu Kyi. These are people that have stood up and made themselves heard because they saw injustice, even when it went against the law of the day. Their actions took many forms, some of which we might find quite benign in Australian society; things like occupying space that was reserved only for white people, or speaking out against the government that perpetuated injustice through it's laws and policies. 

In Australia you are generally allowed to speak your mind on any topic, expressing any viewpoint; this includes the enlightened and the repugnant. Our laws respect the right of expression and we trust in the public to gather and filter information on which they will make their decisions. This is not always so throughout the world. Online activists and bloggers in Vietnam are currently serving lengthy sentences for posting so called 'subversive' material and in perhaps the most visible case worldwide members of the Russian band 'Pussy Riot' are serving time for an anti government film clip.

One name inseparable with civil disobedience is the America philosopher, writer and lakeside camper named Henry David Thoreau. In his essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' he lays out the framework, indeed the ethos for living a life of civil disobedience. He outlines the need to live a life ruled by conscience even if this contravenes the law of the day. Further he acknowledges where conscience and law disagree we have an obligation to disobey the law, even go to jail for it. Thoreau was protesting against America's slave trade and their was in Mexico but his principles stand for time immemorial. 

Laws are not always right or just. This can be clearly seen throughout history and we must trust in our conscience to show us where unjust laws exist today. Standing against an unjust law is not an easy or simple choice to make and history has also shown us that civil disobedience often comes at the cost of ones personal liberty.

So far I feel like I've made only a brief tour of civil disobedience, protest and the like and this is not the full story. PersonallyvI feel it's an important part of our lives as citizens and that this is demonstrated in the amazing achievements and liberties gained by people speaking out. 

What about the rest of you though: how far would you go, or maybe you feel this is all just wrong? This is a topic that involves every person, on every issue. Share your opinion here, or you can tweet me @rightzblock. Love to here from you...

Followup on Ranjini's story...

Hi all,

I've been diligently working on a follow-up to my last post about civil disobedience that I hope to post soon but I want to interrupt with an update on an earlier post. A little while back I wrote about the detention in Australia of a young, refugee named Ranjini (if you'd like to read it - http://rightzblock.blogspot.fr/2012/12/life-imprisonment.html).

Ranjini was pregnant and there has been a lot of work by a lot of people to help free her before the birth of her baby. Well on the 15th of January Ranjini gave birth to baby boy named Paartheepan or Paari. Unfortunately she had not been freed from immigration detention at the time and as I understand it she has now been returned to Villawood detention center.

Today I'd like to share with you a letter I wrote to my local federal member challenging her on this issue. If you're in reading this in Australia and you feel strongly about this issue I'd challenge you to write to your local member as well. It's easy to do; you'll find their email contact online. If you're not in Australia, perhaps you could get on Twitter and message our Prime Minister on @JuliaGillard. I believe that this is a serious issue, deserving of attention just as I believe that a strong, engaged group of people can make a difference when they raise their voices.

Here's the letter:

Dear Minister,

I have written to you in the past regarding the current government's policies on refugees and asylum seekers. I do not support policies of mandatory detention nor do I support punitive, 'no advantage' policies regarding the processing of boat arrivals. As I have mentioned in the past, it is well documented in the scientific literature that detention has negative physical and psychological consequences for those detained. All of these points I feel must be acted on by a government that is both signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Refugees and a member of the United Nations Security Council.

Today I write out of urgency and sadness on the impacts of these issues. On the 15th of January 2013 a young Sri Lankan woman named Ranjini gave birth to a baby boy in detention. As I understand it both Ranjini and her son have now been returned to Villawood detention center. My understanding of the case is that Ranjini has received a positive refugee assessment from the government but a negative security assessment from ASIO. She now faces indefinite detention without a right to appeal. That's means that the current government is presiding over an illogical, unjust system and the consequence is a newborn child, innocent of any crime is locked up.     

Ranjini's story is not the only tale of detention deserving of attention. It is however the most striking case of the impersonal, bureaucratic attitude both the government and the opposition take of refugee issues. This is not about statistics of numbers on boats; this is a child born in Australian that is deserving of the protections our society offers.  If you are not currently aware of groundswell of support for Ranjini I would recommend you check out the website 'letters for Ranjini' (http://lettersforranjini.com/) for some perspectives on the public's feelings on this issue.

I am a voter in the electorate of Sydney and I would ask you to respond as my local member. I also challenge you to raise this issue in all it's gravity with your colleagues. Ranjini's story raises very real questions about Australia's approach to human rights and justice. If we cannot as a society protect those most vulnerable and respect the rights of those unable to protect themselves we must be judged poorly in the eyes of the world.

More importantly though I would ask you to utilise what influence you have within your party and the government to help free Ranjini and her newborn son before untold harm is done to this new life.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Pople

 

Civil Disobedience...

Did you hear the one about the man in the tree who wiped millions off the mining companies stock?

It would be funny if it weren't true, and more so if the poor bloke weren't being dragged from pillory to post for an act that reflects more on the vulnerabilities of the Australian stock exchange and the gullibility and lack of rigor amongst financial reporters.

The short version is an anti-mining activist by the name of Jonathan Moylan released a statement under the guise of a major bank. In this statement he claimed that the bank had refused credit to a mining company because of concerns over their environmental record. This was in turn picked up by the media and in turn by segments of the share trading public. They proceeded to get rid of their stock and it dropped in value, until such time as trading was suspended. There's a lot of reporting going on around this topic but it seems from what I've read that Moylan was trying to create the impression that a major bank was speaking out against mining and environmental destruction. Oh and he did all this from a protest camp in a forest with indifferent wifi...

Let's look at this another way; Moylan who is a nobody, at least in the grand scheme of banks and mining companies realised he wasn't exactly going to make a big splash sitting in a tree blocking bulldozers (my interpretation). So he impersonates a somebody, or in this case a banking institution somebody and makes a statement that adheres to his environmental beliefs. He does this reasoning that Jonathon Moylan doesn't get much attention but maybe major bank will.

Problem is he's a little too clever. If he'd just stayed chained to a tree or whatever the hell he was doing it would all be fine and he'd only be pissing off some poor day worker trying to get the job done. Instead he ignited a stock run, got the politicians polarised and worst of all, dared to tamper with peoples money!

The leader of the Australian Greens, Christina Milne, declared Moylan's act a part of a great tradition of civil disobedience in Australia. Possibly she was having a slow day and worried that she hadn't suffered any recent vitriol as the leader of Australia's third party released an honest, unambiguous statement. The statement got both her and party comments that make unflattering references to mental illness. But she raises a good point about the presence and role of civil disobedience and protest within Australian society.

Protest generally seems to get negative publicity in Australia, or perhaps more correctly the protests that get the most attention are the ones that end in confrontation and violence. This is unfortunate and I don't intend to speculate on journalistic integrity in reporting these issues prominently or rogue activists turning peaceful protest violent. What I would like to raise is the philosophy of civil disobedience within a society and specifically what role it might fill in Australian society.

Myself, I think civil disobedience definitely has a place. At the core of it's philosophy is questioning and taking action against unjust laws. I don't think any society can claim to be free from the stink of such laws and it is not always the legislators who are motivated toward change.

This will be my taking off point and I will endeavour to explore further the role of civil disobedience in a modern society like Australia. In the mean time I will be having a think about some of the changes that we can see right now that came about as a result of people standing up: female suffrage, the Franklin River's conservation and the acknowledgement of indigenous people immediately spring to mind. Can we add further environmental protections and rights for refugees in the future?

The Product?

If you're not paying for it then you're the product.

I keep hearing people talking about social media and the online world in these terms. Usually not very far into the conversation issues of privacy and access are also being mentioned and the argument can start to sound part civil rights issue and part conspiracy theory; that somehow the online illuminati are staging mass identity theft/profiling of us all.

I'm still not sure what to make of it all and so I dutifully ensure my privacy settings are set high and perhaps more importantly I self censor rigorously (which for some people might just mean not going near a computer whilst drunk!). Still though, I find it quite strange after searching on a whim for a flight somewhere that I soon find advertisements for holidays on my FB and other pages.

Am I savvy because I know this or a retard for not yet adequately getting around it and protecting my online life? I have no idea what the answer to that question is or even if it's the sort of question that can be answered at the moment. Whenever we use an app, whether to shop, search, poke, check in or any of the functions they offer, there is potential for data to be mined from us and sent back to the developer. What it might be used for is likely still being explored but I pause when I think someone could know what I'm thinking (from status updates and tweets), what I'm reading (from purchases) and where I go and when (check ins and the like). Thank goodness I don't live in a repressive state where that sort of information can get you in trouble.

In my last post I was wondering out loud about the potential for mobile applications and social media to change our thinking about parts and peoples we don't know or understand that well. Consider the African continent where smartphone penetration is closing in on 20% or one in five people. It's higher in Northern and Southern Africa and pretty low in Central Africa. This compares with almost 40% in Australia.

(here's a nice site for some stats http://www.mikekujawski.ca/2012/05/30/finally-some-2012-statistics-for-the-african-mobile-phone-market/)

This can have amazing impacts as was shown throughout the Arab Spring uprisings but it also brings up questions about the rights of people acquiring smartphones and the information they share. An external company may have incentives to develop and offer free software and applications for people in this developing market, which they can then transition into a data mining, money spinning operation (Facebook I'm looking at you). On the other hand there are great initiatives like Apps4Africa (http://apps4africa.org/) that encourage local developers to target problems and needs at a local level.

I did a quick Google search using the terms 'ethics of app development' and I got very little. All the top hits were for people wanting to write an ethics application for a research project or associated endeavor.  Curious, I did another search, this time with the search terms 'ethics of software development'. This time I got a lot more success which was comforting, at least people are thinking in the general area. The thing was that of the top hits I saw the most recent was from 2009, a little early for the current app revolution. Now this was an admittedly tiny search, using only narrow terms but I was really hoping for a little more thinking out there about the potential benefits and harms of our mobile, online life and how to address them.

The way I see it is the information economy is growing at a huge rate and this is largely driven by mobile internet usage. This usage is in turn driven by the development and use of apps on people's mobile phones. As this development occurs our thinking in turn must keep pace with the changing nature of content development and sharing. This is predominately going to require innovative thinking about the way to deal with all the incidental content development that happens when we're not thinking about it (location services and the like). Information shared by people online is intimately connected to their identity, their livelihood and sometimes their safety. The key to addressing the issue is probably as always education, but of what nature and how? 

...

I proofread this before I posted and got a little worried that I sounded a bit doom and gloom about spreading technology, which I'm really not. My thoughts tend towards wondering about future scenarios and I often play the devil's advocate. Anyway, here's another article I read while researching this that discusses the amazing potential and achievements mobile access can have in a development information economy... http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/13/world/africa/mobile-phones-change-africa/index.html