Networks

UPDATE 23 MAY 2007:
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Last saturday I facilitated a session at the Personal Democracy Unconference, which took place at Pace University's downtown NYC campus.

To those who don't know what means unconference, the concept is an interesting take on the old formula. People come in with a topic or set of topics they'd like to talk about. All the topics are placed written on a piece of paper and placed on the wall, next to an empty schedule grid. Once the organizers give it a go, facilitators place on their preferred time slot and/or negotiate with other facilitators the timing of their session.

The session I facilitated was titled, Reframing Net Neutrality as a Civil Rights Issues. I honestly wasn't expecting more than a few people but was amazed when about a dozen strong came to the corner where I was set up. Nancy Scola, Aldon Hines, Cheryl Contee, Ruby Sinreich, Ed Cone, Heather Holdridge and so many other amazing people came to discuss this important issue that has been amazingly bogged down by too much geek speak.

What's at the core of Net Neutrality? There's people who can put this better than me, but at the heart of the debate is the issue that internet providers should have the right to distinguish all sorts of bandwidth usage in order to better manage their resources and provide better service. The concern is that companies like YouTube may literally clog the internets and it's tubes.

Let's explore blogging, personal web pages, buildings and a web Integrated World 101?

Last Spring (2006) MySpace announced the marriage of 60,000,000 personal web page customers with a traditional TV and movie channel in MyTV (not to mention one if not THE premier world wide provider of traditional news delivery). This has / had the potential to do what had not been done before. For those who don't know it, Rupert Murdoch pioneered satellite delivery of worldwide communications. Oh yes did we establish that he sells a few newspapers too?

Anyway CNN/Time Warner and AOL tried to merge the two domains of Web content and traditional news and entertainment legacy media to HUGE SEVERE financial outcome (Ted Turner lost something on the order of over $6 BILLION US in that deal).

Rupert and NewsCorp bought about 30,000,000 MySpace accounts for around $580,000,000 US and that account base nearly doubled within 6 months (read that as ad revenue doubling in six months) or 100 PERCENT GROWTH in AD SALES in first 6 months if one follows the numbers in simplistic fashion.

Current MySpace account base currently reported as over 143,000,000.

To look at this deeper we will need to explore the netherworld basics of Login security, the likely next big thing of Biometrics, and also the behind the scenes manufacturing and utility and energy automation infrastructure in the digital automated world, and the inherent vulnerabilities that go along with it. (Follow up with this later).

Tonight I have the opportunity to talk about blogs, feminism and the Web 2.0 revolution at Barnard University's Center for Research on Women, and frankly, I'm quite excited.

You see, I've been in panel after panel where "blog experts" throw around platitudes about how blogs are revolutionary, yet nobody seems to be able to explain why. I can't even remember hearing someone like Joe Trippi explain it ... and he's written a whole book about it! (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything)

So the question that hangs always in conferences like Blogging and Feminism : (Web)sites of resistance is, what are we calling a revolution and what is it exactly about blogs that made the revolution happen in the first place.

I have been thinking about this long and hard for a while. Actually, a few years. And every time I look at the actual structure of blog software, I end up going back to the ideas of "tricks of the weak" or Tretas del debil described by Josefina Ludmer's seminal analysis of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. In that article she describes how Sor Juana Ines uses her spaces of weakness --whether they be the nunnery, the kitchen or even the imposition of silence-- to defy the social, political and religious order that demanded of her not to have knowledge, not to express knowledge and, in the process, not to gain Power.

Peter Daou has given me permission to post his response as to why not one black or latino blogger was invited to the meeting in Harlem:

From: peter@daoureport.com
Subject: RE: There are no black bloggers in New York City or Harlem
Date: 15 September 2006 06:53:51 EDT
To: blogdiva@culturekitchen.com

Hi Liza - several bloggers were invited who couldn't attend, including
Oliver Willis (who you didn't mention in your post). Also, I was told =
that more events like that are planned, and there will be an opportunity to
invite bloggers who didn't attend the first one.

So respectfully, you may have reached a conclusion without all the =
facts.

Best,
Peter

P.S. Feel free to publish this email as an update to your post.

Grock! I totally forgot Oliver Willis and I read him every day.

Here's the deal: I am not the political consultant, he is. As a campaign consultant I would actually find interesting that most of the top colored bloggers in the nation are opposed to Hillary Clinton. I would be all over that one because it is a fact that Bill Clinton, Hillary's husband, was given an honorary ghetto pass by people in the colored community ---do I have to bring out Chris Rock's skit to prove this one? Bill is the quintessential WIGGAH and we love him for it.

Because she is fantaboulously playing the (oh-so-dead) liberal blogosphere for exactly what they have become : a motley crew of regurgitators of partisan politics and even pettier echo chamber.

Just to bring home why I think Jane Hamsher is but a symptom of the disease plaging the "lefty" blogosphere; here are three of the best liberal bloggers doing exactly what they criticize their right-wing counterparts : they've brushed aside the real issue (which is Jane Hamsher's use of a photoshopped pic of Lieberman in black-face), to turn it into a pile on the much despised hatemonger, Michelle Malkin.

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger"

The Mahablog | About That Graphic

Orcinus | Bottom Feeders

There are many, many reasons to pile on Ms. Unhinged but this time was not one of them. Call out the racist shit in your own people and move on. Acknowledge the problem and make sure it does not happen again.

Photo Courtesy of George Kelly

Notwithstanding the flight from hell, the two days of gastrointestinal upheaval, the virtual dehydration due to the lack of readily available fresh water, a broken carry-on bag, lack of non-allergenic foods and the ensuing sixteen hours of allergy, dehydration and hangover induced headache; I can comfortably say it was good for me to go to BlogHer.

As y'all know I was stranded in the Mineappolis Thursday night. Friday morning, my flight to San Jose was delayed two more times; but maybe for a reason. Nancy Scola ended up in my flight! She and I had roomed in Austin during SXSW and keep on bumping into each other in a lot of tech and media conferences. So, knowing she's going to kill me for publishing this, I have officially declared us conference wives. I claim tops!

Imatellya ... the women who go to BlogHer are my peeps, my tribe, my community.

It was actually healing to have so many mommas looking after me. I was not on any panel this year and since a lot of BlogHers knew of Lydia's passing, the love was overflowing. I had women come to me with tears in the eyes to share their stories of loss. It was increadible and really overwhelming but this is why we build communities. We need this love, we need this sharing. I can't express how much I needed to be around people who understood why even though I am grieving I chose to be there.

Which is why I was in such a tribal and community building frame of mind.

I am not sorry to acknowledge my tribalism here at the moment, but outside of the fact that BlogHer is an estroswarm (the estrogen version of a blogswarm) of huge proportions, it shares with South by Southwest the distinction of being one of the few tech and media conferences I have gone to that strive to have a good dose of melanin-enriched and ethnic diversity.

The BlogHer triumvirate with the aid and abbetting of their lovely advisory board (which, btw, is unexplicably non-existent on the BlogHer site) has worked to make diversity not just a panel but an intrinsic part of what the conference is all about. They're efforts are moving in the right direction (although there is more to be done).

Which is why I called for a birds of a feather meeting of the digital ethnorati. At BlogHer and SXSW I've had the delight of hanging with my peeps Lynn and Tiffany as well as the fabulous George Kelly --one of the two or three token brothers at the conference ... HA! But I am totally excited because I got to finally meet Professor Kim Pearson, Kety Esquivel, Melanie Morgan or The New Media Collective, Kim Wickham of Mocha Momma, and Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks and Zadi Díaz of the Jet Show.

I also met Lakshmi Pratury, a former venture capitalist and digifeminist extraordinaire who created the Digital Equalizer project, an initiative to bring computers to the have-nots of India. I also met Annette John-Hall of Philly.com; Tarita Thomas, who is working to get her Bay Area famous "Pussy the Seminar" to a podcast near you. Last but not least, I was happy to reconnect with Mini Kahlon, Director of innovation for Level Playing Field, an NGO focused on promoting "innovative approaches to fairness in higher education and workplaces by removing barriers to full participation." She was there with Sean Aquino, a Creative and Technical Associate with the institute.

What an amazing slice of the digital ethnorati. I mean, let me show you how colored and ethnic technologists and early adopters are uber-connected.

The encounter with Karen was hysterical. I was introduced to her partly because she's a trini and ... you know ... carib people always stick together --and I am not being sarcastic. I swear, all the Trinidadians I have met --separately and independently from one another-- end up being from the same circle of friends. What's scarier is that Barbara, my soul sister, ends of being be connector. I am talking about one woman being the network of dozens of trinidadians I've met in politics, media, technology, entertainment and 'just because' social settings.

So I had to ask. "Do you know Barbara Prevatt?" No she said. "Well, that's because she doesn't blog. Then who have to know Georgia Popplewell, who runs Caribbean Free Radio. Bingo! Georgia is a very good friend of Barbara and she's been my acquaintance for ... ahem ... 20 years (Georgia, you're the one getting old, not me). Georgia knew I was going to BlogHer and told Karen she'd be meeting me there. Instanetworking. I'm telling, those trinis ... it's a mafia.

Speaking of mafias ...

With Peter Daou's hiring, Hillary Clinton sends a very loud and clear message that she is running for President. It also demonstrates that, if she is going to run, she needs to destroy the Liberal Blogosphere as we know it.

Long live the liberal blogosphere.

It was good while it lasted.

From A Well-Known Political Blogger Is Hired by the Clinton Campaign - New York Times:

WASHINGTON, June 26 -- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has hired Peter Daou, one of the most prominent political bloggers in the nation, to help disseminate her message in a forum that has not always been that hospitable to her.

The move underscores the degree to which bloggers --the authors of Web logs, or blogs-- have begun to transform American politics. In many cases, candidates have even set up their own blogs, with staffers answering questions, presenting policy proposals and posting campaign literature and videos. Mrs. Clinton, who is up for re-election this year and is a possible presidential candidate for 2008, has been a frequent target of bloggers, particularly liberals who are angry over her refusal to disavow her vote in 2002 to authorize President Bush to use force in Iraq.

Link

With Peter, "I'm down with triangulation" Daou, we have proof positive that the so-called blog revolution as witnessed in the Liberal Blogosphere was a manufactured by lower level political consultants with access to big media yet shut out by consulting turf wars on The Hill, and after the groundbreaking Howard Dean and Wesley Clark campaign. Yeah, I'm counting the Clarkites because unfortunately a lot of people don't give credit to the technological and networking innovations of the Clark campaign.

I mean, c'mon. Daou worked for John Kerry in 2004. Markos and Jerome with Dean. There are many more prominent bloggers who came out of the various 2004 campaigns but I'm being lazy at the moment to name them all.

The point being : It does not matter if you are a good or bad political consultant. The point is these people are not really "the grassroots". We are not yet the grassroots.

[via Net Neutrality - Google Video]

Chris Burke is digital artist who's been around for a looooong time on the net, all the way back when netart seemed to be unstoppable. Chris is also the creator and producer of This Spartan Life, one of two of the best machinema shows created using HALO. The other is Red vs. Blue.

Chris has created an incredibly funny visual explanation of why telephone and cable companies want to use the ruse of the "free market" to justify discrimination as a way to make money.

PS : If you need a more business-like video, check Public Knowledge's excellent public service announcement :