On Democracy in Peer-to-Peer systems

The information flow inside a P2P network is highly dependent on the network structure. In order to ease the diffusion of relevant data toward interested peers, many P2P protocols gather similar nodes by putting them in direct contact. With this approach the similarity between nodes is computed in a point-to-point fashion: each peer individually identifies the nodes that share similar interests with it. This leads to the creation of a sort of "private" communities, limited to each peer neighbors list. This "private" knowledge do not allow to identify the features needed to discover and characterize the correlations that collect similar peers in broader groups. In order to let these correlations to emerge, the collective knowledge of peers must be exploited. One common problem to overcome in order to avoid the "private" vision of the network, is related to how distributively determine the representation of a community and how nodes may decide to belong to it. We propose to use a gossip-like approach in order to let peers elect and identify leaders of interest communities. Once leaders are elected, their profiles are used as community representatives. Peers decide to adhere to a community or another by choosing the most similar representative they know about

Identity and Democracy: Linking Individual and Social Reasoning

Following Amartya Sen\u27s approach, John Davis and Solange Regina Marin look at individual and social reasoning when examining the complex relationship between identity and democracy. They characterize democracy as a process of social or public reasoning that combines the individual reasoning of all citizens. Identity is explained in terms of personal identity, social identity, and individual identity. They argue that democracy in combining the individual reasoning of all citizens responds to individuals’ different personal identity concerns and needs, reflects their shared social identity interests and goals, and accords them rights and responsibilities associated with their many different individual identities

Hyperbolicity Measures "Democracy" in Real-World Networks

We analyze the hyperbolicity of real-world networks, a geometric quantity that measures if a space is negatively curved. In our interpretation, a network with small hyperbolicity is "aristocratic", because it contains a small set of vertices involved in many shortest paths, so that few elements "connect" the systems, while a network with large hyperbolicity has a more "democratic" structure with a larger number of crucial elements. We prove mathematically the soundness of this interpretation, and we derive its consequences by analyzing a large dataset of real-world networks. We confirm and improve previous results on hyperbolicity, and we analyze them in the light of our interpretation. Moreover, we study (for the first time in our knowledge) the hyperbolicity of the neighborhood of a given vertex. This allows to define an "influence area" for the vertices in the graph. We show that the influence area of the highest degree vertex is small in what we define "local" networks, like most social or peer-to-peer networks. On the other hand, if the network is built in order to reach a "global" goal, as in metabolic networks or autonomous system networks, the influence area is much larger, and it can contain up to half the vertices in the graph. In conclusion, our newly introduced approach allows to distinguish the topology and the structure of various complex networks

Minding our ps and qs: Issues of property, provenance, quantity and quality in institutional repositories

The development of institutional repositories has opened the path to the mass availability of peer-reviewed scholarly information and the extension of information democracy to the academic domain. A secondary space of free-to-all documents has begun to parallel the hitherto-closed world of journal publishing and many publishers have consented to the inclusion of copyrighted documents in digital repositories, although frequently specifying that a version other than the formally-published one be used. This paper will conceptually examine the complex interplay of rights, permissions and versions between publishers and repositories, focussing on the New Zealand situation and the challenges faced by university repositories in recruiting high-quality peer-reviewed documents for the open access domain. A brief statistical snapshot of the appearance of material from significant publishers in repositories will be used to gauge the progress that has been made towards broadening information availability. The paper will also look at the importance of harvesting and dissemination, in particular the role of Google Scholar in bringing research information within reach of ordinary internet users. The importance of accuracy, authority, provenance and transparency in the presentation of research-based information and the important role that librarians can and should play in optimising the open research discovery experience will be emphasised

Are We “Reading the World”? A Review of Multicultural Literature on Globalization

Given its commitment to “reading” the social context, how is multicultural education accounting for the shifting context of our globalized world? A conceptual review of multicultural journals reveals limited engagement. However, a more sustained analysis could fuel re-articulations and contestations of the purpose of education in the 21st century

The Information Commons: a public policy report

This report describes the history of the information commons, presents examples of online commons that provide new ways to store and deliver information, and concludes with policy recommendations. Available in PDF and HTML versions.BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE at NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Democracy Program, Free Expression Policy Project 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor New York NY 10013 Phone: (212) 998-6730 Web site: www.brennancenter.org Free Expression Policy Project: www.fepproject.or