Wireless Play and Unexpected Innovation

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected. This chapter considers play as leading to unexpected innovation in advanced wireless technologies. It concludes that much of the potential for new media to enhance innovation actually echoes much older patterns, as evidenced by comparisons to wireless history. These are patterns of privilege, particularly class and gender privilege, reinforced by strict intellectual property protections. Detailed case studies are presented of the "wardrivers," young male computer enthusiasts who helped map wi-fi signals over the past decade, and of earlier analog wireless enthusiasts. The chapter offers a solid critique of many present-day celebrations of technology-driven innovation and of the rhetoric of participatory culture

Debunking Internet Myths: slow, centralised and local reality

The UK Government remains consistent in its commitment to roll out “superfast” broadband across the country. But what does superfast broadband mean and will having superfast broadband in the UK really give the increased in capacity and access to global content that it should. A July report from Ofcom on internet speeds and research presented at the Annenberg/Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute paint a surprising picture of what speed consumers really get and the other limits to online capacity and access. It turns out that the network we rely on is often much slower than advertised and extremely centralised, despite the common mantra of a global and widespread infrastructure

Spectrum Miscreants, Vigilantes, and Kangaroo Courts: The Return of the Wireless Wars

Symposium: Rough Consensus and Running Code: Integrating Engineering Principles into Internet Policy Debates, held at the University of Pennsylvania\u27s Center for Technology Innovation and Competition on May 6-7, 2010. It is axiomatic that government licensing is a foundational requirement for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Yet in some bands there is no licensing requirement, providing an empirical site that can be used to examine wireless coexistence without licenses. This Article draws on ethnographic work with wireless Internet Service Providers to report on the extralegal means that are used to share or allocate spectrum in these license exempt bands. Operators use a variety of informal arrangements there, including jamming and extortion. It concludes that wireless may be increasingly subject to extralegal allocation, and the outcomes of federal spectrum policy may in fact rest in local hands

Política de comunicações dos Estados Unidos pós-convergência

Communication systems are now converging, but communication policy has evolved to treat different media with different doctrines. Most solutions for a post-convergence communication policy are adjustments to inherited regulatory categories. Instead, this article revisits the underlying goals of policymaking across all media. First, this article presents a conceptual model for the communication policy process as one of inertia punctuated by crisis. Second, it applies this model to a very brief history of policy in the US, considering print, post, telephony, broadcasting, and the Internet. Third, from this analysis it suggests useful approaches in a converged environment, distinguishing three underlying goals for policy: the right to publish, the right to private exchange, and the right to design communication platforms.Communication systems are now converging, but communication policy has evolved to treat different media with different doctrines. Most solutions for a post-convergence communication policy are adjustments to inherited regulatory categories. Instead, this article revisits the underlying goals of policymaking across all media. First, this article presents a conceptual model for the communication policy process as one of inertia punctuated by crisis. Second, it applies this model to a very brief history of policy in the US, considering print, post, telephony, broadcasting, and the Internet. Third, from this analysis it suggests useful approaches in a converged environment, distinguishing three underlying goals for policy: the right to publish, the right to private exchange, and the right to design communication platforms.Os sistemas de comunicações estão convergindo, mas a política de comunicação tem evoluído no sentido de submeter as diferentes mídias a diferentes doutrinas. Muitas das soluções para uma política de comunicação pós-convergência são ajustes às categorias regulatórias herdadas do passado. Em vez de seguir com essa tendência, este artigo revisita os objetivos subjacentes de formulação de políticas públicas de todas as mídias. Em primeiro lugar, este artigo apresenta um modelo conceitual para a política de comunicação como um processo de inércia marcado por crises. Em segundo lugar, ele aplica esse modelo a uma brevíssima história dessa política nos Estados Unidos, enfocando a imprensa, os correios, a telefonia, a radiodifusão e a internet. Em terceiro lugar, a partir dessa análise, o artigo propõe abordagens úteis num ambiente resultante do processo convergente, distinguindo-se três metas políticas subjacentes: o direito de publicar, o direito de intercâmbio privado, e o direito de conceber plataformas de comunicação

Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook

Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite their separate origins and different features, we demonstrate in this article how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of current digital media. We use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how communication and expression are both enabled and constrained by new digital systems and new media. In these environments, platform-based services acquire characteristics of infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or reorganized on the logic of platforms. We conclude by underlining the potential of this combined framework for future case studies

Whose Tweets are Surveilled for the Police: An Audit of Social-Media Monitoring Tool via Log Files

Social media monitoring by law enforcement is becoming commonplace, but little is known about what software packages for it do. Through public records requests, we obtained log files from the Corvallis (Oregon) Police Department's use of social media monitoring software called DigitalStakeout. These log files include the results of proprietary searches by DigitalStakeout that were running over a period of 13 months and include 7240 social media posts. In this paper, we focus on the Tweets logged in this data and consider the racial and ethnic identity (through manual coding) of the users that are therein flagged by DigitalStakeout. We observe differences in the demographics of the users whose Tweets are flagged by DigitalStakeout compared to the demographics of the Twitter users in the region, however, our sample size is too small to determine significance. Further, the demographics of the Twitter users in the region do not seem to reflect that of the residents of the region, with an apparent higher representation of Black and Hispanic people. We also reconstruct the keywords related to a Narcotics report set up by DigitalStakeout for the Corvallis Police Department and find that these keywords flag Tweets unrelated to narcotics or flag Tweets related to marijuana, a drug that is legal for recreational use in Oregon. Almost all of the keywords have a common meaning unrelated to narcotics (e.g.\ broken, snow, hop, high) that call into question the utility that such a keyword based search could have to law enforcement.Comment: 21 Pages, 2 figures. To to be Published in FAT* 2020 Proceeding

Blinded by Simplicity: Locating the Social Dimension in Software Development Process Literature

The software development process is a complex human, intellectual and labor-intensive activity and human related factors have shown to be the most significant contributors to software system failures. Lacking the ability to identify or quantify these factors, software practitioners will not learn from the failures caused by them. Although, social factors give rise to high failure rates in software development projects they tend to be ignored. Business continues as usual. The inability for software engineers to attain a holistic and inclusive approach will leave the social dimension out and undermine the realization of a fully sustainable software development process.This paper builds on the master’s thesis with the same title completed in December 2019 at Stockholm University. The thesis demonstrates how research literature on software development processes addresses (or not) the social dimension of sustainability from a holistic point of view. The results indicate that the practice of dealing holistically with complexity including the social dimension is still underdeveloped. Further research is suggested regarding the development of adequate supporting tools, social skills, and managerial attitudes and behaviors

The Expression of Power in ICT's Knowledge Enterprise: An Empirical Illustration of Computing's Colonial Impulse

ICT globalization continues to spread hardware, software, and accompanying technologies, so too does knowledges and trainings on those ICTs. This knowledge migration process has been linked by scholars to a ‘colonial impulse’ inherent in computing as a knowl- edge enterprise, which incorporates into broader colonizing forces. Through simultaneous explorations of dual case studies with a tribal ISP in California and an educational organization that works with indigenous First Nations communities in British Columbia, we depict how power circulates in this process, both empowering and disempowering communities. We then offer a brief argument for the need to foreground methods and approaches to disentangling these contradicting forces

Sustainability and Community Networks

Community networks are IP-based computer networks that are operated by a community as a common good. In Europe, the most well-known community networks are Guifi in Catalonia, Freifunk in Berlin, Ninux in Italy, Funkfeuer in Vienna and the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network in Greece. This paper deals with community networks as alternative forms of Internet access and alternative infrastructures and asks: What does sustainability and unsustainability mean in the context of community networks? What advantages do such networks have over conventional forms of Internet access and infrastructure provided by large telecommunications corporations? In addition what disadvantages do they face at the same time? This article provides a framework for thinking dialectically about the un/sustainability of community networks. It provides a framework of practical questions that can be asked when assessing power structures in the context of Internet infrastructures and access. It presents an overview of environmental, economic, political and cultural contradictions that community networks may face as well as a typology of questions that can be asked in order to identify such contradictions

Glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome: the expanding clinical and genetic spectrum of a treatable disorder

Glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome is caused by mutations in the SLC2A1 gene in the majority of patients and results in impaired glucose transport into the brain. From 2004-2008, 132 requests for mutational analysis of the SLC2A1 gene were studied by automated Sanger sequencing and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification. Mutations in the SLC2A1 gene were detected in 54 patients (41%) and subsequently in three clinically affected family members. In these 57 patients we identified 49 different mutations, including six multiple exon deletions, six known mutations and 37 novel mutations (13 missense, five nonsense, 13 frame shift, four splice site and two translation initiation mutations). Clinical data were retrospectively collected from referring physicians by means of a questionnaire. Three different phenotypes were recognized: (i) the classical phenotype (84%), subdivided into early-onset (<2 years) (65%) and late-onset (18%); (ii) a non-classical phenotype, with mental retardation and movement disorder, without epilepsy (15%); and (iii) one adult case of glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome with minimal symptoms. Recognizing glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome is important, since a ketogenic diet was effective in most of the patients with epilepsy (86%) and also reduced movement disorders in 48% of the patients with a classical phenotype and 71% of the patients with a non-classical phenotype. The average delay in diagnosing classical glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome was 6.6 years (range 1 month-16 years). Cerebrospinal fluid glucose was below 2.5 mmol/l (range 0.9-2.4 mmol/l) in all patients and cerebrospinal fluid : blood glucose ratio was below 0.50 in all but one patient (range 0.19-0.52). Cerebrospinal fluid lactate was low to normal in all patients. Our relatively large series of 57 patients with glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome allowed us to identify correlations between genotype, phenotype and biochemical data. Type of mutation was related to the severity of mental retardation and the presence of complex movement disorders. Cerebrospinal fluid : blood glucose ratio was related to type of mutation and phenotype. In conclusion, a substantial number of the patients with glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome do not have epilepsy. Our study demonstrates that a lumbar puncture provides the diagnostic clue to glucose transporter-1 deficiency syndrome and can thereby dramatically reduce diagnostic delay to allow early start of the ketogenic die