Pro'Am (r)evolution

Emergencies, people and medias

2008-05-01T14:26:00.002+01:00

A study that will appear in tomorrow's New Scientist magazine found that social media sites, blogs, and instant messaging services were better at connecting people and providing warnings during emergencies than traditional sources of such information, according to the Telegraph. Dr. Leysia Palen, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado, led a research team that studied uses of social media during last fall's wildfires in California and last spring's shootings at Virginia Tech for the report.

During the wildfires, the team found that people were using Twitter to spread updates about where the fires were to friends and family, and Google maps mashups were hacked together to keep people informed of new fires and schools and businesses that were closed. This information was was being disseminated far more quickly than via official governmental channels, according to the report.

Source: article from readwriteweb.com

Open-Source, Multitouch Display

2008-05-01T11:29:00.003+01:00

"Engineers are building inexpensive, tabletop, touch-screen displays and sharing the instructions online."

An article from Technology Review:
Open-Source, Multitouch Display

Projects like these illustrate two important trends in technology, says Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, the publishing company whose Make and Craft magazines put on the Maker Faire. First, the falling cost of hardware enables people to play with high technology without taking a large financial risk. Second, people are forming online communities, such as Instructables.com and wikiHow.com, to share their ideas, solve problems, and start collaborative projects.

Traditionally, O'Reilly says, the open-source community has focused on software, but in recent years, there's been a push to share more information about hardware. "What we're seeing is, hackers are engaging in the world of things in the way that they used to in the world of software," he says. And the more people are able to contribute to building and improving technology, the more chance there is for innovation.

User Created Content is Key for 3D worlds

2007-05-17T09:54:00.000+01:00

"Counter Strike", still the most played FPS today, was develop as a "half-life" video game mod by two college students...

This demonstrate the incredible value and creativity that amateurs can produce if they are given the right tools (often called a SDK "Software Development Kit" which come with some games).

Not surprising that "Valve Software's Doug Lombardi has stated his strong belief that user created content is a very important part of games in the near future"

See the slashdot news and article.

I would add that in the 3D world it goes now far beyond videogames.
"Second Life" popularity come in good part of the objects the users can create (and even sell). Also Google Earth and Sketchup enable individuals to easily become 3D architects who then add a new "dimension" to Google Earth (see 3D Warehouse).

Open Access to research

2007-03-01T12:19:00.000+01:00

Internet law professor Michael Geist takes a look at a fundamental shift in the way research journals become available to the public

" Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication. [...]

Several readers wrote in with news of the momentum gathering behind free access to government-funded research. A petition "to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe" garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organizations from around the world. The European Commission responded by committing more than $100 million towards support for open access journals and for the building of infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories able to store the millions of academic articles written each year.

News agency and citizen journalism

2007-02-12T09:18:00.000+01:00

AP partners with citizen journalism site

The Associated Press has partnered with a citizen journalism site, NowPublic.com, to integrate user-generated content into the wires. AP bureaus will work with NowPublic communities in selected locations on ways to enhance regional news coverage, and national AP news desks also may tap the network in breaking news situations where citizen contributors may capture critical information and images.

More informations here (cyberjournalist.net)

(The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency, the world's largest such organization.)

Also, "CNN to boost citizen journalism initiative"

Amateurs brain power to the rescue

2007-02-05T21:50:00.000+01:00

This post is about the disappearance at sea and search of James Gray (a computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998)

From the wikipedia article:

After a short solo sailing trip to the Farallon Islands near San Francisco to scatter his mother's ashes, his 40-foot yacht was reported missing on Sunday, January 28, 2007. The Coast Guard searched for four days using a C-130 plane, helicopter and patrol boats but found no sign of the vessel.

On February 1, 2007, the DigitalGlobe satellite did a scan of the area, generating thousands of images.The images were posted to Amazon Mechanical Turk in order to distribute the work of searching through them, in hopes of spotting his boat. View the HITs for more details.

What I find interesting here is the use of amateurs and web users to scan through huge amounts of pictures.

It's well known the computer can't match the brain for shapes recognition. I find the initiative of this "HIT" (Human Intelligence Task) very interesting since you don't need to be a professional to actually contribute to an important research task.

The HIT page for the search of James Gray (unfortunately the search area was partly clouded)

The HIT of Amazon (mechanical turk) Home page with others projects:

http://www.mturk.com and a wikipedia article about it.

EDIT 8 Feb 07:

The Blog Smart Mobs has now an interesting article on the subject.

Collective intelligence and satellite technology in the search for Jim Gray

"Flickr User Becomes Pro for Microsoft"

2007-02-05T21:23:00.000+01:00

Flickr user Hamad Darwish is one of a small group of flickr users who were approached by Microsoft for either use of their photos or commissioned to to create new images for the desktop backgrounds that are included in the new Windows Vista operating system.

This is an interesting example of the line blurring between professional photographers and amateurs/enthusiasts. Hamad, whose photos are indeed lovely, is not a pro nor does he intend to become one. Photo sharing sites like flickr make visible the photographs of amateurs in an unprecedented way. It is no longer only professionals whose work is exposed to photo buyers.

Read more of this story here:
Flickr User Becomes Pro for Microsoft

"The world is flat" ... and you.

2007-02-01T23:19:00.000+01:00

I've just finished chapter 1 of the "The World is flat" from Thomas L. Friedman.

He argues the world is now "flat" and he distinguishes three phases in the history of "globalisation". To summarize:

Globalisation 1.0 : Countries

Start: 1492 when Columbus open trade between the Old World and the New World
End: around 1800
World: "the world shrank from a size large to a size medium"
Main actor: Countries
Main need: where does my country fit into global competition and opportunities ?
Main engine: muscles, horsepower, wind power, steam power...

Globalisation 2.0 : Multinational companies

Start: 1800
End: 2000
World: "the world shrank from size medium to size small"
Main actor: Multinational companies
Main need: where does my company fit into global competition and opportunities ?
Main engine: falling of transportation and latter communication costs to give birth to a "global market"

Globalisation 3.0 : Individuals

Start: 2000
End: ? ;)
World: "... from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field in the same time" (the "flat world platform")
Main actor: Individuals
Main need: individuals to collaborate and compete globally for diverse reasons
Main engine: Personal Computers, Fiber optic cable (web, ...) , work flow software ...

I think the wikipedia is a typical example of Globalisation 3.0 (not supported by a country or a multinational but by individuals).

The author gives plenty of example in this first chapter to support his view of a "flat world platform". An interesting read so far. :)

Geo-localisation boom and future historians

2007-01-21T07:35:00.000+01:00

Flickr users broke the 10 millions geotagged photo milestone few days ago.

This is already impressive given the manual process users have to go through (drag and drop the pictures on the map or using Picassa + Google Earth + Flickr upload for example).

As GPS + Bluetooth chips are coming soon for 1$ it is obvious that future mobiles phones and camera will automatically and accurately geotag and date all the pictures we take.

As more and and more people share their pictures on site like Flickr our history will be able for data-mining in a way historians never had before. Also as folksonomy continue to spread the meta-data available improve the usefulness of these data.

For an historian looking at the 21st century it will be much easier to understand how a place changed though time (environment, architecture, wealth, etc.) or find the evolution of particular objects or see any important events through the eyes of their witnesses.

All this is possible thanks to amateurs tagging and geotagging their contents in a public way which can be mutualized by sites and API like Flickr.

Oh by the way ... amateurs can also then access these data to become historians ...

Other links:

Geotagged pictures on Flickr
My geotagged pictures on Flickr

"Wikipedia and Knowledge Communities"

2007-01-20T16:13:00.000+01:00

While assemblying an Ikea shelf ... my ears discovered another interesting presentation which landed on my iPod (my main M-learning tool) :

"Wikipedia and Knowledge Communities" is a presentation of Mitchell Kapor available on Open Source conversations.

Wikipedia is probably one of the most impressive Pro'Am project and there's plenty of interesting thoughts and informations in this presentation.

The Wikipedia is having a dramatic and unexpected impact as an open source-based, community-driven method of creating and disseminating valuable knowledge and information on a global basis. How is a free and open online encyclopedia, entirely written and edited by its users, managing to outstrip conventional media in audience, breadth, and depth? What are the implications for other kinds of content, for publishing, and for information technology, especially open source-based business models in general?

Mitchell Kapor, President of the Open Source Applications Foundation discusses the controversial aspects of the Wikipedia, particularly the fact that anyone can edit any article at any time. He believes that while the user-written model has problems, it can succeed with the right mix of community and peer review. He states that it is not necessary for someone to be in charge. In the end, he says that the Wikipedia can't possibly work... but it does.

User generated online video boom

2007-01-16T11:14:00.000+01:00

According to Sreendigest (a media analyst firm):

London 15th January 2007: The user generated online video market (UGOV) exploded in 2006 and by the end of the year, user generated videos made up 47% of the total online video market in the US. By 2010 more than half (55%) of all the video content consumed online in the US will be user generated, representing 44 billion video streams.

Although accounting for more than half of all online video content consumed – user generated videos will make up just 15% of total revenues. These are the latest findings from Screen Digest, the media analyst firm, which today releases its latest report on the UGOV market.

Source: screendigest

Unsigned band make chart history

2007-01-15T13:49:00.000+01:00

Another example of emergent success without the help of the big labels.

Essex rock band Koopa have made chart history by becoming the first unsigned band to land a UK top 40 hit.

Koopa, from Colchester, have been together for seven years in various forms and have built up a fanbase on the internet and on the live circuit.

The BBC article.

"Amateur Means You Do It For Love"

2007-01-14T19:52:00.000+01:00

... is the title of an interesting presentation I found on my iPod (from IT Conversations feed):

The presentation (from Dave Slusher)

Learning boost with M-learning

2006-12-26T01:10:00.000+01:00

M-learning is the delivery of learning to students who are not keeping a fixed location or through the use of mobile or portable technology. The rapid growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) makes it possible to develop new forms of this education.

More explanation about M-learning in this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-learning

This article rings a bell for me. It's been two years I have an iPod. It's filled with conferences, lectures, ICT news and educational podcasts.

I mainly listen to them when I'm not in front of a computer and alone (jogging, commuting, shopping ...).

I've noticed that I actually can't listen very long to audio or video contents when I'm sat in front of the PC which always recall me for interactivity. Without M-learning I would probably never listen to them and it would be a great lost.

With the quality contents now freely available it definitely is a boost to my learning capability (extra-time to learn and also stimulating my audio memory).

No doubt to me that this nomad tools will catalyse even more the amateurs learning capabilities.

One of the podcast I listen to for example is IT conversations which enable me to listen to more conferences that my boss will ever be able to travel to.

I also stay up to date with ICT news, I learn now some german and japenese, some computer and network security, etc ...

Links:
- megopod (a web tool to convert PC contents for iPod usage)
- a description of mogopop from weblogg-ed Blog (read and write in the classroom)
- podtube a Mac tool to transform YouTube video to the iPod device.
- a french Blog where I first discovered the M-learning concept and the above links.

Pro'Am 'emergent' financial power ?

2006-12-23T11:03:00.000+01:00

Lots of people would take for granted that 'amateurs' don't have the financial power for funding or buying expansive projects by themselves.

This was probably true before the democratisation of the web but now :

- more than a billion people already have a web access
- it's easy and quick to contribute small amounts of money
- exposure to the ideas of Free Culture (wikipedia, Creative Commons,...) and Free Software (Open Office, Firefox, Linux ...) continuously increase

To my knowledge this understanding arose when NaN (the company behind the 3D software Blender) went bankrupt in 2002.

Lots of simple users collaborated together through the web to buy the sources and the rights for 100 000 €.

Since then Blender has a very dynamic development and is now as powerful as the most expansive 3D tools of the professional industry.

This example is not an exception.

Right now, the company behind the MMORPG "The Saga of Ryzom" went bankrupt and ... guess what ?
Users and open source sympathizer are trying to buy it back.
In few days the pledges already overcome 150 000 € and rising.

I also notice how successful certain donations campaign are (like the one for the Wikipedia).
It means these projects are not just successful because they are free like in beer but that many users/amateurs are ready to pay for other forms of freedoms.

Some vertical financial powers will probably have to understand this and hopefully adapt. And remember, who are for the first time person of the year ? ;) ...

Wii remote revolution

2006-12-17T17:38:00.000+01:00

Nintendo Wii video game console is I believe a little revolution in the game industrie.

It is also a new powerful tool in the hands of Pro'Ams and I'm amazed by the number of people who are now tinkering with it.

I think this affordable input device will trigger lots of original and unexpected usages ranging from cheap virtual reality applications, sports coaches, kinaesthetic arts, etc ...

A first example with Google earth :

source

A selection of technical links

'You' named Time's person of 2006

2006-12-17T10:07:00.000+01:00

The BBC website has an article about 'You'.

Eeach year Time select "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill".

The magazine said naming a collectivity rather than an individual reflected the way the internet was shifting the balance of power within the media through blogs, videos and social networks.

and also from the Time article:

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Renaissance 2.0: the CAV revolution!

2006-01-10T21:00:00.001+01:00

Renaissance 2.0: the CAV revolution!
(in french here)

Fatal meeting

It all began on a winter's night just like any other. The contents of the net parading endlessly across my screen like so many connected individuals. A click here, a click there, just the usual. And then this bizarre meeting, this inexplicable feeling of « déjà vu » yet somehow so « different ». It is the story of this « meeting » and its consequences that I must now confess to you.

She is called « My life ». At the beginning I didn't suspect anything, even with a name like that .... Despite her successive changes of appearance, I tracked her, then trapped, undressed and penetrated her with my piercing ears to better understand her: the truth is indeed out there ....

« My life » is a CAV (Creative Artistic Virus), one of the first numeric specimens of an emerging renaissance. I prefer to tell you straight away, « My life » and her companions are and will remain totally free. I am writing to you with butterflies in my stomach, even if the CAVs are still in an embryonic state, is humanity, for the first time, at the dawn of a CARVMC???!!! (Creative Artistic Revolution via Mass Collaboration)

The source

The story of the CAV « My life » began in Brooklyn in June 2003. There, lost in the mass of 2.5 million other souls, lived Colin Mutchler, a young and slightly idealistic artist. At a first glance, Colin, with his guitar and camera seemed to be an inoffensive young man. And yet ....

In the era of internet and its networks, our Colin wanted to open himself up to the world. Held back by his largely walled and linear environment, fed on the vertical, preformatted media, Colin became strangely but progressively conscious of « the Oracle » (network name: CC or « Creative Commons).

Far from the mainstream media, Colin began his OWN journey, discovered HIS life and composed HIS piece of guitar music, which he called « MY life »..... Nothing out of the ordinary you say, and yet .....

To share « My life », Colin chose the internet site opsound.org which gathers music under one of the most liberal Creative Commons licences: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0

Convicting evidence:
Photo of Colin Mutchler, an innocent young man?
The piece of music « My life »
An oracle called « Creative Commons »

The first mutation

One month later, Colin received an unexpected e-mail from one Cora Beth, a young American violinist evolving in a completely different environment. The latter thanked him for having published his music under a CC licence allowing derivative work. Having discovered the guitar of « My life », Cora had had an irresistable desire to sensually merge her violin with it and since the licence invited it.... She called this first mutation « My life changed ».

Convicting evidence: Music « My life changed »

It was on closer examination of this licence that I really understood its « life potential »: this licence allows not only « free diffusion » but also « modifications » as long as these satisfy the same conditions. Subsequently, we find here a potential specific to life: reproduction (« free diffusion »), inheritence and mutation (« modifications ») and the « virality » of life (the new creations should also allow reproduction and mutation).

And so, in reality, under the cover of opsound.org, hides an immense planetary catalyser to accelerate the copulation of the CAVs! Any artist can place his offspring there, nature (CC share-alike licence), other artists and time will do the rest ....

The propogation of the CAV « My life » is a textbook case and will, from now on, continue to develop inevitably far beyond the American borders.

The globalisation of the CAV « My life »

December 2004, while Christian families were preparing for Christmas, a new victim of the CAV « My life » was detected in the land of the rising sun in the person of rjmarshall (his network name).
My investigation taught me that he is an English sound technician and musician. Looking for work in London, he instead found himself in Japan, teaching English to the Japanese: a language and culture that he didn't know. From his Nippon base, he also frequented Opsound.org and discovered there « My life » and « My life changed ». Like Cora Beth, he soon had the same symptoms, the infamous UCI (Uncontrollable Creative Impulses).

With his penchant for pop/rock, he added a more modern aspect and a rythmic base with his synth. He called his Creative Crime (CC) « Our lives are changing ».

Convicting evidence: Music « Our lives are changing »

I admit to having been intrigued by his use of the plural first person (« Our »), so I dug down deeper than usual. I then understood that the CAV had greatly evolved: we were no longer in the presence of a simple mutation but of a multiple inheritence!

As part of his Asian escapades, rjmarshall had, in effect, integrated 3 other CAVs of diverse origin, scarcely recognisable in « Our lives are changing »: a piece from Yosuke Hayashi, an outlandish japanese guy; a piece from « Zeezebra », a German puredata addict; and an interview with an anonymous man in the hottest quarters of Amsterdam.

Convicting evidence:
The rjmarshall site with his witness statement on the CAV « My life »
The « music » of Yosuke Hayashi and his site
The music of Zeezebra and his hiding place and a photo taken during infiltration
Interview of the anonymous man recorded by Chris Dooks

Threesome

At this stage, six artists were implicated in the family line « Our lives are changing » of the CAV « My life », and this was only the beginning ...

Probably to overcome his Asian solitude, rjmarshall allied himself with two other Opsound regulars (Andrew Vavrek in Seattle and John Holowash in Ohio). Together they form Tryad. From this trio, « Our lives are changing » was going to mutate again .... On the music side, John Holowash abandoned himself to his sampling and producing impulses, whilst Andrew Vavrek added a semi-angelic dimension with his lyrics and vocals... They would baptise their new offspring « Our lives change ».

Convicting evidence:
Music « Our lives change» and its characteristics
Andrew Vavrek's site
John Holowash's site
Tryad.org, the trio's site

I went back to the source, starting from Tryad's version, to make my French audio report on the « My life » affair. I was also obliged, when publishing my file, to put it in a « derivative format » under the same licence. Frankly, that didn't worry me; I kept it to myself and didn't tell the other artists implicated in this affair.

My official report, in French, of 13 March 2005:

Format Mp3, 25 minutes, 22 Mo: my_life_to_tryad_story.mp3
Format Ogg, 25 minutes, 22 Mo: my_life_to_tryad_story.ogg

A personal affair

Then, out of the blue, Vavrek's mail came and I understood that I was completely screwed, that life would never be the same again. Some extracts of my remixed voice now found themselves in another CAV! An audio remix of the CAV « Language of my reality », produced by Tryad's John Holowash.... At the source of this CAV, a poem written and read by .... Colin Mutchler. The circle had closed and yet it's only the beginning ....

Today our artists continue to create with total freedom! I cannot help myself from following their tracks on the network, but even there I find my limits - the propogation has now also become physical ... Not content with propogating numerically, Colin Mutchler is going from university to university spawning new CAVs with his freeculturetour.org !

Convicting evidence:
The remix of « Language of my reality » by John Holowash
The remix project « Language of my reality » by Colin Mutchler
Colin Mutchler assaulting American students (freeculturetour.org)

Emerging future

For my part, I already feel the first signs of UCI (Uncontrollable Creative Impulses). Who knows where this story will end .....?

One thing is sure, even though still at a primitive stage, the CAV revolution has inevitably begun. As in spring, they are sprouting everywhere. Even more so than the P2P, the CAV revolution will be the worst nightmare of the vertical mono-neural mono-culture.

Welcome to a world of creativity and musical diversity for everyone and by everyone
Welcome to the Renaissance version 2

When you come into close contact with a CAV, you'll become one of us..... in fact, how is « your life »?

This document is under CC-by.

Some comments (taken from my old blog):

# 2005-4-17 @ 10:04:36 pm
vavrek: most excellent writing! thank you so much. can't wait to see where things go from here.
# 2005-4-18 @ 2:04:41 pm
Colin Mutchler: Very cool. Thanks for putting our stories in such eloquent form. Keep it going...
# 2005-4-19 @ 11:04:00 am
rjmarshall: Beautifully crafted summary of the fantastic things going on here. Many thanks. Roll on the CARVMC!!!

About this blog

2006-01-05T10:28:00.001+01:00

Internet and Communication tools connect millions of individuals.
A critical mass of "amateurs" of all kind collaborate with "tools to think with", share knowledge, create projects.

This blog is mainly about witnessing and exploring these horizontal and emergent ways.

What does "Pro'Am Revolution" means ? In an official report for the British government one can read:

" From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organisations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it.

The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought.

Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse range of Pro-Ams and containing new data about the extent of Pro-Am activity in the UK, this report proposes new policies to support and encourage valuable Pro-Am activity."

Source:
http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy/
http://www.proamrevolution.com/

This Blog is the continuation of a previous one where you can find "old posts" (not present here) :
http://francois.schnell.free.fr/wordpress/