.
This is info about a new course that might be of interest to you. The information is in Swedish and I the course seems to be in Swedish too so I won't bother to translate the text.
Nov 15 is the deadline for applications - only 24 students can take the course and KTH students are limited to only 8!
/Daniel
Hej lärare på CSC
Vi vill ha er hjälp att välkomna studenter till den första OpenLab kursen (pilotversion). OpenLab är den stora projektkurs, 15 hp som ges under VT 2013 och som bygger på behovsdrivna utmaningar. Kursen ska skall kunna väljas av studenter från KTH, SU och KI. Det som nu behövs är ett antal studenter från utvalda skolor som skulle vilja delta i kursen och det behövs en aktiv rekryteringsinsats. Det rör sig bara om 8 KTH-studenter i denna version och det finns intressanta projekt från Stockholms stad resp Stockholms Läns Landsting som skall genomföras av tvärdisciplinära studentgrupper. Vi tror det är bra att kunna välja studenter som särskilt gärna vill vara med!
Det behövs en mer aktiv insats från er studierektorer eller lärare i lämpliga ämnen.
Kort introduktion till kursen nedan, för mer information ligger det också en länk på www.openlab.se.
----------------------------
Hur kan samhället bli bättre?
Svåra problem kräver ofta nytt tänkande. Och nytänkande är svårt inom gamla ramar med etablerade tankemönster.
Därför startas kursen ”Innovationer för den växande staden” – en ny multidisciplinär projektkurs inom OpenLab på Valhallavägen 79 i Stockholm. OpenLab är en plats för kurser i innovation och nytänkande, där studenter och lärare från KI, SU och KTH möter uppdragsgivare från Stockholms stad, Stockholms läns landsting och Länsstyrelsen i Stockholms län, för att tillsammans skapa innovativa lösningar på stora samhällsfrågor. I projektkursens terminsuppdrag lär sig studenterna hur man arbetar i innovativa processer över olika vetenskapsfält. Och uppdragsgivaren får nya idéer på hur man kan lösa viktiga samhällsfrågor som kommer att betyda mycket för alla människor i samhället.
Kurserna vänder sig till dig som redan har en kandidatexamen. Du kan ha läst ekonomi, humaniora, juridik, medicin, samhällsvetenskap eller till ingenjör. Du kommer att studera tillsammans med människor du kanske aldrig skulle ha träffat annars. Du vill lära dig att hantera samhällets utmaningar och prova nya arbetssätt. Kursen kommer att vara krävande och stimulerande.
Du kommer att arbeta med riktiga uppdrag som kan påverka andras liv i en nära framtid. Regionens politiker och beslutsfattare väntar på dina förslag till lösningar.
.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Meta: Daniel's reflections on the course
.
I happen to know a few people in the "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" (ASPO Sverige). They asked me to come and talk about the DM2573 course and my thoughts about it. If you want to, you are welcome to join this Swedish-language meeting on Sunday (Oct 21).
Time: Sun Oct 21 between 16-19.
Place: The restaurant/pub Pelikanen (Södermalm), Blekingegatan 40
Since ASPO would like to have an idea about how many people will come to the meeting, please fill in this Doodle if you would like to come!
/Daniel
----------------------------
I happen to know a few people in the "Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas" (ASPO Sverige). They asked me to come and talk about the DM2573 course and my thoughts about it. If you want to, you are welcome to join this Swedish-language meeting on Sunday (Oct 21).
Time: Sun Oct 21 between 16-19.
Place: The restaurant/pub Pelikanen (Södermalm), Blekingegatan 40
Since ASPO would like to have an idea about how many people will come to the meeting, please fill in this Doodle if you would like to come!
/Daniel
----------------------------
Daniel Pargman, lektor i medieteknik, KTH
Titel: Peak oil på högskolan?
Daniel berättar om sina tankar kring att utforma delar av en ny kurs om "hållbarhet och medieteknik" kring teman som "begränsningar" och resursutmaningar. Vilket var utfallet när civilingenjörsstudenter på KTH fick höra att hållbarhetsproblematiken och resursutmaningar inte representarer abstrakta frågor som "någon annan" får lösa, utan potentiella ödesfrågor som kommer att komma att få en konkret inverkan på deras egna liv? Vad händer när unga människor ("future captains of the industry") börjar väga möjligheten att pågående problem (EU, USA) kan vara tecken inte på en tillfällig svacka utan på en oundviklig kollaps?
David Webb talk at KTH Oct 25
.
During the course wrap-up (Oct 10) several students said they would have wanted David Webb to give a lecture in the course. While the course has now ended, you actually do have the chance to listen to David talk at a seminar at KTH next week.
Due to the fact that David is invited to a seminar (not a lecture), space is limited and we unfortunately thus have to limit the number of students to maximum a dozen (12). So I have created a Doodle where you can indicate if you want to come (or if you don't want to come).
Please only state that you will come to the seminar if you really will come to the seminar!
/Daniel
-----------------------
Date: To 25 oktober kl 15-17
Place: Seminar room 1537 (house E, floor 5)
Guest: David Webb, Retired financial analyst, investment banker and hedge fund manager.
During the course wrap-up (Oct 10) several students said they would have wanted David Webb to give a lecture in the course. While the course has now ended, you actually do have the chance to listen to David talk at a seminar at KTH next week.
Due to the fact that David is invited to a seminar (not a lecture), space is limited and we unfortunately thus have to limit the number of students to maximum a dozen (12). So I have created a Doodle where you can indicate if you want to come (or if you don't want to come).
Please only state that you will come to the seminar if you really will come to the seminar!
/Daniel
-----------------------
Date: To 25 oktober kl 15-17
Place: Seminar room 1537 (house E, floor 5)
Guest: David Webb, Retired financial analyst, investment banker and hedge fund manager.
Title: Paradigm Collapse
Talk: Beginning with a chronicle of the unprecedented increase and scale of financial exposures in the United States, we will discuss evidence that the banking power of the United States is indeed collapsing. We will discuss available historical precedent, and some unexpected implications including the prospects for interest rates, commodities, deflation vs. hyperinflation, the devaluation of the dollar, and the involvement of China. The relative merits of Sweden and the Scandinavian region will also be discussed.
About: David Webb is the founder of Origin Investments AB, which has applied to the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) for permission to manage a market neutral long/short equity strategy designed to serve as a core holding for institutional investors. Mr. Webb was the founder of Verus Investments, where he managed long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $600 million. Previously, Mr. Webb was a Senior Managing Member of Shaker Investments where he was the sole manager of long/short equity hedge funds with AUM in excess of $1.3 billion. Mr. Webb has served as an Associate with the venture investment arm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., Inc., and as an Associate with the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. Mr. Webb moved with his family to Sweden a few years ago to escape the impeding collapse of the US banking sector.
On the future of this blog
.
The deadline for the home exam has passed. I think it is pretty logical that the time to write blog posts here and get bonus points for them in the course has passed too.
However, you are welcome to continue to post stuff here - I will continue to subscribe to the blog and I hope some other people will do that too. I might post some stuff myself here now and then.
More specifically, this is what will happen to the blog:
- You will still be able to post stuff.
- A year from now when the course starts again, we might continue to use this blog and thus build upon your blog posts. At that time, I will kick you out and a new crop of students will get invitations to contribute to the blog.
Do note that this blog post is followed by two blog posts about events during this coming week that might be of interest to you - even though the course has ended.
/Daniel
.
The deadline for the home exam has passed. I think it is pretty logical that the time to write blog posts here and get bonus points for them in the course has passed too.
However, you are welcome to continue to post stuff here - I will continue to subscribe to the blog and I hope some other people will do that too. I might post some stuff myself here now and then.
More specifically, this is what will happen to the blog:
- You will still be able to post stuff.
- A year from now when the course starts again, we might continue to use this blog and thus build upon your blog posts. At that time, I will kick you out and a new crop of students will get invitations to contribute to the blog.
Do note that this blog post is followed by two blog posts about events during this coming week that might be of interest to you - even though the course has ended.
/Daniel
.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Sustainability indicators
As this wasn’t part of the lesson, I
thought it might be interesting for others as well. I wondered how the progress
of sustainable development is measured and visualized. Because of this I
searched for some actual systems.
The “Committee of Sustainable Development“
(CSD) introduced a set of basic indicators in 1997. Since then, 22 countries
(e.g. Germany) are testing these indicators. As the basic indicator set doesn’t
fit the need of all participating countries, each participant defined their own
set of indicators. Because of that, a comparison of the different countries is
extremely difficult. I will use the report of the Federal Statistical Office of
Germany as a base for this blog entry.
The report is divided into four parts. As
there are more than 30 indicators, I will mention only the most interesting The
first part handles the Intergenerational equity, which includes resource
conservation, climate protection, the usage of renewable energy sources and
other environmental issues. The quality of life is part of the second part,
this includes mobility, air quality, crime rate and healthcare. The third part
is about Social cohesion, examples for that are the employment rate,
integration and equal opportunities. The last part deals with the international
responsibility and includes only two indicators: Development cooperation and Opening
markets.
The report is published every two years. In
every report, the collected data is compared to the previous reports. These
trends are compared to the climate & sustainability goals of the
government. In the report of 2012, which is available online (see link), more
than the half of the indicator developed in a positive way. 20 indicators are
developing weaker than expected, the defined goals might not be achieved. The
remaining 8 indicators had a very high deviation of the target value.
This example shows the effort of some
countries in setting transparent goals for sustainability. On the other hand
these goals are relatively weak, as the government tries to set achievable
goals. There are several other criticisms as well, but as these indicator
systems are “new”, they might need some time to develop.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Sustainable stadiums
I found a quite cool site about some eco-friendly, sustainable, unic and certainly beautiful stadiums around the world. We have already seen some of these huge arenas recently like the Olympic stadium in London this year during the summer olympics and we will be more familiar with some of them in the near future, like for instance the 2014 Winter Olympic stadium in Sochi, Russia. They contribute differently to a sustainable future which you can read shortly about. Some of these are for example covered with huge solar panels, photovoltaic panels or rainwater harvesting systems. Maybe we have a few preconceptions about stadiums in general because of bad influences on the environment? These comparatively green arenas are supposed to change our point of veiw I guess.
http://www.greendiary.com/worlds-most-beautiful-eco-friendly-sports-stadiums.html
http://www.greendiary.com/worlds-most-beautiful-eco-friendly-sports-stadiums.html
Friday, October 12, 2012
Stockholm - European green capital 2010
We often hear a lot of bad things about how our society looks today from a sustainable poit of view. A few days ago i read about a conferens that will take place at Kistamässan, october 19th. I went to their home page and found out that Stockholm became the first ”european green capital” in 2010. At European green capitals home page their are some funny information about Stockholm from a sustainable point of view that I think is worth reading. For example all inner city buses and trains runs on renewable fuels and the green house gas emissions have been reduced by 25% since 1990. Sometimes I get the impression that we are going in wrong direction but after reading the review of Stockholm it seems that we (the city) actually making improvemenst all the time.
Link to the conference at Kistamässan:
Link to European green capital:
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/winning-cities/stockholm-european-green-capital-2010/index.html
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Futurama on the topic of sustainability
Today I came acress a hilarious episode in the cartoon called Futurama. The episode is basically a parody of our need-the-new-gadget culture. It touches upon a lot of the topics discussed in this course. I find it both funny and very true, and a quite interesting point is being made in the end.
You can watch the whole episode here:
http://www.watchcartoononline.com/futurama-episode-603-attack-of-the-killer-app
You can watch the whole episode here:
http://www.watchcartoononline.com/futurama-episode-603-attack-of-the-killer-app
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
TED: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives
Here's a TED-talk I mentioned during the seminars today, it goes somewhat in the same lines as the paper (Climate Change as Culture Wars) for the seminar. Even though it is more about the moral roots of people in general and issues around this, I think it has some interesting points for this course as well. Enjoy!
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
Preppers
The recent episode of Swedish cultural program Kobra is about "preppers", people preparing for some kind of judgement day. It's very interesting, and suits well for everyone taking this course, since a lot of discussions on the seminars has been about how one should prepare if and when some kind of collapse happens.
It's OK if you don't know Swedish, the major part of the program is in English. Also, it only runs for 30 mins.
http://www.svt.se/kobra/se-program/article331233.svt
(I tried to post this as a commentary on the canceled lecture post, but apparently failed, or the moderator is too busy.)
It's OK if you don't know Swedish, the major part of the program is in English. Also, it only runs for 30 mins.
http://www.svt.se/kobra/se-program/article331233.svt
(I tried to post this as a commentary on the canceled lecture post, but apparently failed, or the moderator is too busy.)
Monday, October 8, 2012
10 sustainable buildings
Recently, I
found an interesting site about 10 sustainable or green buildings in the
United States. These buildings are mainly water and energy sufficient out of
environmentally friendly materials and the purpose is to show encouraging examples
of different green building methods. Unfortunately the buildings are quite expensive
but in the long run, the cost may be equal because of the lower water and
energy bills. There is a lot of detailed information about each building and
the structures vary enormously between each others. For
instance some of them are constructed by renewable resources like bamboo, recycled mild steel or scrap materials from bordering
buildings and a great part of the wastes that resulted from the construction were
also recycled. On the other hand you can argue about if all of these solutions really are sustainable? See the link below for more information.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
How much energy do you use?
I read an article about electricity consumption in "Ny teknik" a couple of weeks ago. The article consited of a few peoples opinion on their electricity usage, and what they thought were their biggest "electricity thief" in their homes. One of them specifically drew my attention since he said that the computers that he had in his home were the biggest "thiefs". He said that the consumption from the two desktop computers that he had pulled nearly 8kWh per day. I found that to be a lot and compared it to my own electricity bills. With the 8kWh per day that he used for his two computers (240kWh per month) I used the same amout for my whole appartment (including 2 laptops), and mostly I don't even use that much. One interesting fact with this example (if the numbers that he pulled are true) is that it's definitely much better with a laptop than a desktop computer! How much are you consuming?
Friday, October 5, 2012
The politics of trolling
.
I know this is a stretch to publish this here, it doesn't have that much to do with sustainability, but it has to do with media technology and since we listened to a podcast on "patent trolls", I though this could be of interest to you:
-----------
Hi all,
Apologies for cross posting. One last reminder on this CFP for the Fibreculture Journal.
The politics of trolling and the Negative Space of The Internet
http://fibreculturejournal.org/cfp-special-issue-for-the-fibreculture-journal-the-politics-of-trolling-and-the-negative-space-of-the-internet/
A great deal of thinking about the Internet and politics is still structured by a desire for deliberative democracy. From 1993 - when Howard Rheingold enunciated one of the Internet’s key founding myths - the virtual community - scholars have sought and found communities characterised by a mutuality of interests, a common purpose, a collaborative striving to renovate the democratic ideal, a tendency towards the “regulative idea” of the ideal speaking position, and an acknowledgement of the obligations of citizenship within the political association. For so long the Internet has continued to function, in Barbrook’s formulation, as a “redemptive technology”. Social media is just the latest in a long line of technologies which may, on a certain vision, rescue liberal democracy, with its decaying civic life and corrupt media, from itself.
There is, proportionally, too little attention to the everyday conflicts that haunt all such communities. Some conflict is temporary, and can be accounted for in terms of long-standing democratic theory. But some conflict is persistent, intractable. Some of it is gratuitous, and deliberately disruptive. Online, those who bring it about are often subject to normative disapprobation. Sometimes people call them trolls.
”Troll”, as a term of moral opprobrium, indicates an online actor who is not interested in deliberation, but in derailing it. Trolling is not apt to be captured by network maps or visualisations of online publics, because these teachniques cannot discern which nodes in a conversational network are created in bad faith, or in a spirit of disruptive play. Trolls are not interested in redeeming democracy through deliberation, and they mock attempts to do so. Trolls respect no procedural rules, though they may be generative of them. Trolls are the constitutive outside of online communities of political discussion, they are the intolerable of the most tolerant communities. Trolls are usually someone else, defined from our own position and interests. When they are not, and we inhabit trolling, we discover that trolling requires know-how, close reading, experience, sometimes sympathy with those we would disrupt.
What are the consequences to seeing trolling and other forms of affective behaviour as the norm, rather than the aberrant? The discourse of digital art has long since told this story, but the intellectual desire for open and constitutive democracy has overridden the 'actually existing democracy' of bullying, trolling, threats, inane memes and low signal-to-noise ratios. What would happen if we started to think of trolling as the central practice in online discourse? What if trolling is the Internet’s signature mode of discursive politics? What if we started to think about trolling as a practice which is generative rather than destructive?
This special issue of fibreculture seeks a range of perspectives on trolling, online conflict and incivility. Twenty years on, it looks to interrogate the founding myth of virtual community with accounts of generative conflict, strategic incivility, and productive trolling.
We seek papers on a range of topics not limited to
- Trolling, activism and politics
- The persistence and ubiquity of online conflict
- Trolling as a business model: the mainstream media and clickbait
- Gendered aspects of trolling and incivility
- 4chan and trolling; activism and meme factories
- Trolling and cyberbullying
- Complaints about trolling and the “hatred of democracy” – are complaints about trolling really an attempt to re-gentrify political debate?
- Cultures and rituals of trolling – troll culture and the celebration of lulz
- Trolling and “cyber-bullying”
- The Internet and agonistic politics
- Trolling and counterpublics
- The grammar of trolling
- Trolling as the glitch in social network analysis and “big data”
- Popular culture, trolls and the democratization of politics
- Tabloid media, professionalization of trolling and the economics of opinion
- Trolling as cyber-bullying, internet as masochistic survivalist playground
- The pleasures of trolling
- Trolling the trolls
- The art and ‘new aesthetics’ of trolling
- The gamification of trolling
—–
Please note that for this issue, initial submissions should be abstracts only
abstract deadline: October 15, 2012 (via email, to Jason Wilson, email address below)
article deadline: January 15, 2012
publication aimed for: April/May, 2013
all contributors and editors must read the guidelines at;
http://fibreculturejournal.org/policy-and-style/
before working with the Fibreculture Journal
email correspondence for this issue:
Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au><mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au>>
Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au<mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au><mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au<mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au>>
Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au><mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au>>
—–
The Fibreculture Journal (http://fibreculturejournal.org/) is a peer reviewed international journal, associated with Open Humanities Press (http://openhumanitiespress.org/), that explores critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability.
I know this is a stretch to publish this here, it doesn't have that much to do with sustainability, but it has to do with media technology and since we listened to a podcast on "patent trolls", I though this could be of interest to you:
-----------
Hi all,
Apologies for cross posting. One last reminder on this CFP for the Fibreculture Journal.
The politics of trolling and the Negative Space of The Internet
http://fibreculturejournal.org/cfp-special-issue-for-the-fibreculture-journal-the-politics-of-trolling-and-the-negative-space-of-the-internet/
A great deal of thinking about the Internet and politics is still structured by a desire for deliberative democracy. From 1993 - when Howard Rheingold enunciated one of the Internet’s key founding myths - the virtual community - scholars have sought and found communities characterised by a mutuality of interests, a common purpose, a collaborative striving to renovate the democratic ideal, a tendency towards the “regulative idea” of the ideal speaking position, and an acknowledgement of the obligations of citizenship within the political association. For so long the Internet has continued to function, in Barbrook’s formulation, as a “redemptive technology”. Social media is just the latest in a long line of technologies which may, on a certain vision, rescue liberal democracy, with its decaying civic life and corrupt media, from itself.
There is, proportionally, too little attention to the everyday conflicts that haunt all such communities. Some conflict is temporary, and can be accounted for in terms of long-standing democratic theory. But some conflict is persistent, intractable. Some of it is gratuitous, and deliberately disruptive. Online, those who bring it about are often subject to normative disapprobation. Sometimes people call them trolls.
”Troll”, as a term of moral opprobrium, indicates an online actor who is not interested in deliberation, but in derailing it. Trolling is not apt to be captured by network maps or visualisations of online publics, because these teachniques cannot discern which nodes in a conversational network are created in bad faith, or in a spirit of disruptive play. Trolls are not interested in redeeming democracy through deliberation, and they mock attempts to do so. Trolls respect no procedural rules, though they may be generative of them. Trolls are the constitutive outside of online communities of political discussion, they are the intolerable of the most tolerant communities. Trolls are usually someone else, defined from our own position and interests. When they are not, and we inhabit trolling, we discover that trolling requires know-how, close reading, experience, sometimes sympathy with those we would disrupt.
What are the consequences to seeing trolling and other forms of affective behaviour as the norm, rather than the aberrant? The discourse of digital art has long since told this story, but the intellectual desire for open and constitutive democracy has overridden the 'actually existing democracy' of bullying, trolling, threats, inane memes and low signal-to-noise ratios. What would happen if we started to think of trolling as the central practice in online discourse? What if trolling is the Internet’s signature mode of discursive politics? What if we started to think about trolling as a practice which is generative rather than destructive?
This special issue of fibreculture seeks a range of perspectives on trolling, online conflict and incivility. Twenty years on, it looks to interrogate the founding myth of virtual community with accounts of generative conflict, strategic incivility, and productive trolling.
We seek papers on a range of topics not limited to
- Trolling, activism and politics
- The persistence and ubiquity of online conflict
- Trolling as a business model: the mainstream media and clickbait
- Gendered aspects of trolling and incivility
- 4chan and trolling; activism and meme factories
- Trolling and cyberbullying
- Complaints about trolling and the “hatred of democracy” – are complaints about trolling really an attempt to re-gentrify political debate?
- Cultures and rituals of trolling – troll culture and the celebration of lulz
- Trolling and “cyber-bullying”
- The Internet and agonistic politics
- Trolling and counterpublics
- The grammar of trolling
- Trolling as the glitch in social network analysis and “big data”
- Popular culture, trolls and the democratization of politics
- Tabloid media, professionalization of trolling and the economics of opinion
- Trolling as cyber-bullying, internet as masochistic survivalist playground
- The pleasures of trolling
- Trolling the trolls
- The art and ‘new aesthetics’ of trolling
- The gamification of trolling
—–
Please note that for this issue, initial submissions should be abstracts only
abstract deadline: October 15, 2012 (via email, to Jason Wilson, email address below)
article deadline: January 15, 2012
publication aimed for: April/May, 2013
all contributors and editors must read the guidelines at;
http://fibreculturejournal.org/policy-and-style/
before working with the Fibreculture Journal
email correspondence for this issue:
Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au><mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Jason.Wilson@canberra.edu.au>>
Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au<mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au><mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au<mailto:Christian.mccrea@rmit.edu.au>>
Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au><mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au<mailto:Glen.fuller@canberra.edu.au>>
—–
The Fibreculture Journal (http://fibreculturejournal.org/) is a peer reviewed international journal, associated with Open Humanities Press (http://openhumanitiespress.org/), that explores critical and speculative interventions in the debate and discussions concerning information and communication technologies and their policy frameworks, network cultures and their informational logic, new media forms and their deployment, and the possibilities of socio-technical invention and sustainability.
Interesting Open source project!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/622508883/global-village-construction-set
Found this project on kickstarter and got to think about the copyleft discussion. Here is a good example when Open source does good for the enviroment! :)
Found this project on kickstarter and got to think about the copyleft discussion. Here is a good example when Open source does good for the enviroment! :)
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Evil technology?
.
We had a discussion in our seminar group about the merits or drawbacks of technology and innovation. Here's an interesting case study, a good review of a new book, "Addiction by design: Machine gambling in Las Vegas". From the review:
Addiction by Design is a nonfiction page-turner. A richly detailed account of the particulars of video gaming addiction, worth reading for the excellence of the ethnographic narrative alone, it is also an empirically rigorous examination of users, designers, and objects that deepens practical and philosophical questions about the capacities of players interacting with machines designed to entrance them.
[...]
Schüll asks readers to consider the insidious dependencies that arise between machine designers, casino owners, and gamblers, especially “problem gamblers,” whose struggle to control personal spending generates 30 to 60 percent of casino revenue. Schüll’s Addiction systematically builds on her basic argument that, “just as certain individuals are more vulnerable to addiction than others, it is also the case that some objects, by virtue of their unique pharmacologic or structural characteristics, are more likely than others to trigger or accelerate an addiction.”
[...]
There is no single devil here, and no particular exorcism can right the wrong, but there is something devilish about the way designers’ intentions and users’ neurology meet up to make video gaming so devastating for some and so profitable for others.
We had a discussion in our seminar group about the merits or drawbacks of technology and innovation. Here's an interesting case study, a good review of a new book, "Addiction by design: Machine gambling in Las Vegas". From the review:
Addiction by Design is a nonfiction page-turner. A richly detailed account of the particulars of video gaming addiction, worth reading for the excellence of the ethnographic narrative alone, it is also an empirically rigorous examination of users, designers, and objects that deepens practical and philosophical questions about the capacities of players interacting with machines designed to entrance them.
[...]
Schüll asks readers to consider the insidious dependencies that arise between machine designers, casino owners, and gamblers, especially “problem gamblers,” whose struggle to control personal spending generates 30 to 60 percent of casino revenue. Schüll’s Addiction systematically builds on her basic argument that, “just as certain individuals are more vulnerable to addiction than others, it is also the case that some objects, by virtue of their unique pharmacologic or structural characteristics, are more likely than others to trigger or accelerate an addiction.”
[...]
There is no single devil here, and no particular exorcism can right the wrong, but there is something devilish about the way designers’ intentions and users’ neurology meet up to make video gaming so devastating for some and so profitable for others.
Carbon footprint of spam e-mail
.
This is sort of an answer to Gustav's post 2 weeks ago. Instead of commenting his blog post, I post it here and hope that more persons will see it!
Here's from a text I wrote three years ago on the carbon footprint of spam e-mail.
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the numbers from this report (pdf) claims that each spam mail ending up in your mail box on average generates 0,3 grams of CO2 emissions (the same amount as if you drive your car 1 meter). Since the number of spam e-mails sent during 2008 was approximately 62 000 000 000 000 (62 trillions), the total amount of CO2 emissions caused by spam is not insignificant and more precisely corresponds with the amount of CO2 emitted by a car driving around the world 1,6 million times. If we assume that there are about 800 million cars on Earth, then all the spam sent during 2008 corresponds to the accumulated CO2 emissions from all the world’s cars driving 80 kilometers each. I am not sure whether this is much or little in a big-picture perspective, but I have no problems being judgmental and deeming spam e-mails 100% unnecessary, and now for yet another reason. Where are the technological and social solutions to stop them`
I saw a reference in January 2008 stating that a "bizarre" record was broken one day in October the preceeding year (2007). During that one day, more than 160 000 million spam e-mails - roughly two dozen per man, woman and child on Earth - were sent. Comparing this number with the total number of spam e-mails send during 2008 (see above), we find that the record from 2007 is actually lower than the daily average of spam e-mails sent during 2008...
This is sort of an answer to Gustav's post 2 weeks ago. Instead of commenting his blog post, I post it here and hope that more persons will see it!
Here's from a text I wrote three years ago on the carbon footprint of spam e-mail.
--------
the numbers from this report (pdf) claims that each spam mail ending up in your mail box on average generates 0,3 grams of CO2 emissions (the same amount as if you drive your car 1 meter). Since the number of spam e-mails sent during 2008 was approximately 62 000 000 000 000 (62 trillions), the total amount of CO2 emissions caused by spam is not insignificant and more precisely corresponds with the amount of CO2 emitted by a car driving around the world 1,6 million times. If we assume that there are about 800 million cars on Earth, then all the spam sent during 2008 corresponds to the accumulated CO2 emissions from all the world’s cars driving 80 kilometers each. I am not sure whether this is much or little in a big-picture perspective, but I have no problems being judgmental and deeming spam e-mails 100% unnecessary, and now for yet another reason. Where are the technological and social solutions to stop them`
I saw a reference in January 2008 stating that a "bizarre" record was broken one day in October the preceeding year (2007). During that one day, more than 160 000 million spam e-mails - roughly two dozen per man, woman and child on Earth - were sent. Comparing this number with the total number of spam e-mails send during 2008 (see above), we find that the record from 2007 is actually lower than the daily average of spam e-mails sent during 2008...
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
TEDxHornstull change trhough cooperation
It is time for this year's TEDxHornstull. This year the main theme is change through cooperation, which relates in certain way with the topic of our sustainability course. If you feel like listening people like Anna Nygård representing planka.nu, or Rebecka Carlsson, the spokesperson for the youth organization of the green party in Sweden, this is the perfect opportunity!
For more information, make sure to visit:
http://www.tedxhornstull.se/2012/?lang=en
Rebound effects resources
.
In looking for a good picture to for today's lecture about rebound effects, I found an interesting blog post (and also with further links to other blog posts) about a variety of rebound effects:
- household energy conservation behavior
- using photovoltaic panels
- recycling
- sunscreen (to avoid sunburn)
- preventive health care
- long-distance driving instead of taking the airplane (post 9/11 American behavior)
- bicycle helmet laws
.
In looking for a good picture to for today's lecture about rebound effects, I found an interesting blog post (and also with further links to other blog posts) about a variety of rebound effects:
- household energy conservation behavior
- using photovoltaic panels
- recycling
- sunscreen (to avoid sunburn)
- preventive health care
- long-distance driving instead of taking the airplane (post 9/11 American behavior)
- bicycle helmet laws
.
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