Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities: We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction
p of randomly distributed
committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value
pc ≈ 10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time,
Tc, taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
[.pdf] [more inside]
posted by troll
on Jul 26, 2011 -
56 comments
Collusion is a firefox add-on that visualizes in real-time which data collection companies track you across different websites on the web and what they're learning about you.
Atul Varma describes
how this project came about. Safari meanwhile has
ghostery, an extension that gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.
[more inside]
posted by krautland
on Jul 25, 2011 -
17 comments
Cybersyn (or Synco, in Spanish) was computer network constructed in 1970 by an English/Chilean team headed by cyberneticist
Stafford Beer (his
papers). Cybersyn was an electronic nervous system for the Chilean economy, linking together mines, factories and so on, to better manage production and give workers a clear idea of what was in demand and where. The network was destroyed by the army after the 1973 coup. Later that year Stafford Beer drew upon the lessons of Cybersyn to write
Fanfare for Effective Freedom, a eulogy for Allende and Cybersyn, and
Designing Freedom, a series of six lectures he gave for CBC, outlining his ideas. Besides the first link in this post, the best place to start is
this Guardian article from 2003. If you want to go more in-depth, read Eden Medina's
Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile. And if nothing else, just take a look at the amazing
Cybersyn control room.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 21, 2010 -
32 comments
Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States, according to a
new poll [.pdf] of 1,151 Americans conducted by
Public Policy Polling (a polling firm with a mostly Democratic and progressive
list of clients), the most trusted news network among Americans is FOX News, which was trusted by 49% of respondents (beating out CNN, MS-NBC, CBS, NBC, and ABC (though PBS was not included in the survey)).
The pollsters conclude:
“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most
neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. “But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more
toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”
posted by washburn
on Jan 26, 2010 -
126 comments
Two recent papers examine networks among Republicans: one among lawyers and the other among judges.
Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization concludes that conservative lawyers, and particularly the Federalist Society, occupies a structurally important core bridging the gap between the religious and business constituencies on the right, which otherwise wouldn't interact. Meanwhile,
Do Republican Judges Cite Other Republican Judges More? concludes that judges tend to base outside-circuit citation decisions on the political party of the cited judge, tend to cite judges of the opposite political party significantly less, are more likely to engage in biased citation practices in certain high stakes situations, and cite disproportionately more to those judges that cite back to them frequently.
[via Professor Bainbridge and Empirical Legal Studies]
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Jul 18, 2006 -
10 comments
It's all one's and zero's eh? The complex patterns of the natural world often turn out to be governed by relatively simple mathematical relationships. A seashell grows at a rate proportional to its size, resulting in a delicate spiral. The gossamer network of galaxies results from the simple interplay between cosmic expansion and the force of gravity over a wide range of scales. As our catalogue of natural phenomena has grown more complete, more and more scientists have begun to look for interesting patterns in human society.
posted by Unregistered User
on Jun 10, 2006 -
17 comments
"Every war becomes a proving ground for new tactics and new technologies." ... "...The Pentagon began this war believing its new, networked technologies would help make U.S. ground forces practically unstoppable in Iraq. ... But now, more than three years into sectarian conflict and a violent insurgency that has cost nearly 2,400 American lives, an investigation of the current state of network-centric warfare reveals that frontline troops have a critical need for networked gear—gear that hasn’t come yet. " [more inside]
posted by paulsc
on May 20, 2006 -
26 comments
...With the end of the cold war and the emergence of global networks in which goods, ideas and people circulate outside the language of citizenship, the fundamentalist fight for ideological states has lost influence... Muslim radicalism, by contrast, has moved beyond the language of citizenship to assume a global countenance, joining movements as different as environmentalism and pacifism in its pursuit of justice on a worldwide scale. Such movements are ethical rather than political in nature: they can neither predict nor control the global consequences of their actions...
Spectral brothers: al-Qaida’s world wide web Snapshots of Faisal Devji's Landscapes of the Jihad are to be seen within
posted by y2karl
on Dec 8, 2005 -
17 comments
NSA gets patent on locating the physical location of web surfers "There are still many advantages to knowing the physical location of a party one is dealing with across electronically switched networks. For example, in the realm of advertising, knowing the geographic distribution of sales or inquires can be used to measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions." Advertising, mmm hmmm.
posted by jeremias
on Oct 13, 2005 -
25 comments
A Long Look Ahead: NGO’s, Networks, and Future Social Evolution The information revolution favors the rise of network forms of organization, so much so that a coming age of networks will transform how societies are structured and interact. ...In the years ahead, the [environmental] movement's strength (and sometimes its weakness) will continue to be asserted through social network-based wars against unresponsive, misbehaving, or misguided corporate and governmental actors. …Ageing contentions that “the government” or “the market” is the solution to environmental or other particular public policy issues will give way to new ideas that “the network” is the optimal solution. The rise of network form of organization and strategy will drive long-range social evolution in radical new directions.
David Ronfelt’s explorations of
information and society are based on a
framework of societal evolution involving tribes, institutions, markets and networks.
Modes of conflict with participants networked (as opposed to hierarchically structured) are called
netwars. Many of the recent
domestic and
international terrorism conflicts are being fought as netwars. The civil society approach to politics and diplomacy in the network age may hinge on
noopolitik, a strategy of information.
posted by warbaby
on Jun 22, 2005 -
8 comments
What is it with the
London Underground and the internet? As many MeFi posts have noted
before, no other subway system in the world has quite as many websites and applications devoted to it (why is this?). Until now the bulk of these applications have been based around maps, but the 'tube' has just got an independent site that is story-based. The brand new site at
www.yourstation.co.uk wants you to write stories about the networks famous stations. Each gets its own homepage, you fill it with stories or simply read those that have gone before. Want to know how
Mudchute got its name? You now know where to look.
posted by MrMerlot
on Apr 5, 2005 -
20 comments
flickrgraph Dynamic visualization of flickr contact networks [java, flash, assorted technical jiggery-pokery]
posted by carter
on Feb 12, 2005 -
8 comments
Al-Jazeera, best known in the West for reporting on the Taliban and US-Iraq war, has, today, been
approved to broadcast in Canada, amidst complaints from Jewish groups, such as the
B'nai Brith, who are worried the content may be anti-semetic. What makes this interesting? Al-Jazeera will be one of the few news stations in Canada specifically warned by the Canadian government that it must censor itself for content.
posted by shepd
on Jul 15, 2004 -
38 comments
WiFi Against Bush is an interesting twist on viral marketing aimed at our neighborhoods and the occassional warchalker — let everyone in within range of your router know what you _really_ think of the President.
Via the venerable Shifted Librarian.
posted by silusGROK
on May 12, 2004 -
11 comments
The US government recently released a draft of the
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, essentially it advocates ensuring security through consensus, with vendors, government agencies and consumers taking responsibility for the tools they use. That's not enough for Marcus Ranman who in the
TISC newsletter advocates passing legislation
mandating consumers and ISPs to install firewalls and anti-viral software. At what point does an individuals (corporate or consumer) chosen level of computer security become a concern for the federal government?
posted by cedar
on Oct 17, 2002 -
7 comments
Log onto an unsecured wireless LAN, go to jail. This frightening story involves a computer security expert doing a bit of
war driving. The fact that he didn't access any of their files, and that they shut down the network instead of simply reading the manual on basic WEP security didn't stop them from claiming $5,000 in damages and bringing charges, with possible fines up to $250k and up to 5 years jail time.
posted by mathowie
on Aug 1, 2002 -
12 comments
Don't let child pornographers share your connection! Now that sharing your Wi-Fi connection with the unwashed masses has become so popular - the BigCo's are trying to shut it down. We've talked about this
here and
here but I was blown away by this marketing speak from a AOL Time Warner VP
"By having an open transmission, it leaves you really vulnerable," Digeso said. "If you have a Wi-Fi connection in a public park, what would stop, God forbid, a child pornographer or, God forbid, a terrorist using that network?"
Are terroists using your Wi-Fi connection?
posted by dhacker
on Jul 9, 2002 -
34 comments
Next move - nationalizing the internet infrastructure in Europe ? 300 staff and union officials have blockaded themselves at the network operations centre in Belgium following Dutch telecoms company KPNQwest bankruptcy filing. Stocked up on provisions, taking shifts unpaid to keep the centre fully operational. "If we leave, then in three to five days there will be the largest internet slowdown in European history." From the article - KPNQwest's infrastructure covers 60 cities around Europe, estimated between one third and one half of all European internet traffic.
posted by Voyageman
on Jun 7, 2002 -
10 comments
Did Max Bickford get a v-chip implant? "...the FCC ruined television throughout the 1990s by allowing mega corporations and multinationals to gobble up TV networks and distribution outlets, including cable and satellite companies..."
Now that the big corporations own the content, they obviously have the right to change it. It's capitalism, pure and simple, but it may also mean bad TV. Does the goverment have the right, responsiblity, or obligation to to re-regulate the industry, just so the quality of programming improves?
posted by bingo
on Feb 15, 2002 -
14 comments
AirSnort. The dangerous app with the unlikely name allows users to snatch data being passed over wireless networks, eventually capturing passwords to the network.
posted by o2b
on Nov 29, 2001 -
7 comments
