10 challenging perspectives on social media & the Vancouver riots
The past week has been a laboratory in the power and limitations of online dialogue. While I have been troubled by the number of simplistic, hostile or unconsidered posts and comments about crowdsourcing the identification of rioters, I have more often been astounded by the depth of comments, willingness to engage with complexity and especially, by people’s willingness to publicly rethink their initial response.
So how much of the iPhone is actually made, not just assembled, in China? According to the WSJ article, not much: only 3.6% of an iPhone’s components are built in China. In fact, nearly twice as much of the gadget’s parts are made in the United States (6%), where of course Apple is located and where the product was developed. Most of the iPhone, it turns out, is made in Japan (34%), with 17% being built in Germany, 13% in South Korea, and 27% being made elsewhere.
FILLING THE ORDERS
Nike also overhauled its supply-chain system, which often left retailers either desperately awaiting delivery of hot shoes or struggling to get rid of the duds. The old jerry-built compilation strung together 27 different computer systems worldwide, most of which couldn't talk with the others. Under Denson's direction, Nike has spent $500 million to build a new system. Almost complete, it is already contributing to quicker design and manufacturing times, and fatter gross margins -- 42.9% last year, up from 39.9% five years ago. Nike says that the percentage of shoes it makes without a firm order from a retailer has fallen from 30% to 3%, while the lead time for getting new sneaker styles to market has been cut to six months from nine.
The Nike Story? Just Tell It!
By: Eric RansdellDecember 31, 1999
The best way for a company to create a prosperous future is to make sure all of its employees understand the company's past. That's why many veteran execs at Nike spend time telling corporate campfire stories.
The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"
Documentation and narration is a core part of social media culture. There's nothing wrong with social media users snapping photos or video as part of their organic experience of an event. Whether it's for a Facebook update now or a blog post you're writing tomorrow, posting live images is a routine part of telling a story online.
But it's one thing to take pictures as part of the process of telling your story, or as part of your (paid or unpaid) work as a citizen journalist. It's another thing entirely to take and post pictures and videos with the explicit intention of identifying illegal (or potentially illegal) activity. At that moment you are no longer engaging in citizen journalism; you're engaging in citizen surveillance.
The Vancouver riot aftermath gives us a sobering glimpse of the future of the Internet, some commentators are noting. Has society created the court of Facebook? First there was the phenomenon of riot tourism photos – people taking pictures of themselves in front of burning cars. Bleacher Report notes that technology has outpaced crowd violence researchers. Compared to the pre-social media 1994 hockey mob dust-up, it was a tale of two riots. Twitter gave the incident global legs, arguably stoking increased international coverage.
But now social media has taken on a new surveillance role. A Facebook photo page has given rise to what some are calling online vigilantism, leading to complaints of harassment. Self-deputized citizens have created wanted posters. No wonder the now-famous kissing couple is media shy! As for the role of professional journalism, one commentator welcomed the riot for, if nothing else, switching off the spin zone and getting reporters back on the news beat.
Simon Fraser University’s public affairs department has provided a list of faculty and students available for comment on the riot. The Victoria Times Colonist has posted a gallery of global front-page coverage.
Document summary:
When we shape the future of the Internet, we are also shaping the future of the world as a whole. Today we still live in a world that defines "real life" as what happens offline, but it won't be long before our online lives gain equal attention. We are transitioning towards a significantly -- perhaps even primarily -- digital society, and during that transition we will go through a series of critical junctures that define our understanding and norms of what can and should be possible online.
A Facebook page has been started and there are already hundreds of photos and almost 60,000 likes. The Vancouver Police have also used social media and sent out Tweets asking for photos where they can identify the people.
Take a look at just a few selected images below with faces clearly identifiable. Do you have any pics of your own? Why not upload them now and help get these people off the streets?
Here are some of the photos:
On the online mob, she writes:
I honestly think that the reason why people are so strongly targeting people like me is because people are upset. They are drunk off of emotions, and want to do everything they can to fix their city. I completely understand that and like I said, am not proud of myself! Collaborating to clean up the city? Excellent way to remediate the mess. IDing people? Very helpful for the VPD – saves time and money for the cops and in the end for our city. Harassing people, ruining their lives, and finding unlawful punishments? Not at all helpful. It gives the cops more things to deal with, and is in a way a form of anarchy. The laws were made for everybody to follow: criminals and spectators alike. So for you to disregard the laws makes it seem like you are an anarchist…starting a mob…based on social media…starting to get the picture yet?
Anyways, long story short, venting your anger on people does not make the situation better, so feel free to ID people and help in ways that you can, but don’t ruin our lives!
The worst anybody could possibly do in Vancouver right now is defend any of the actions represented in the Vancouver hockey riots last Wednesday. But have people in this city been taking on vigilante roles in condemning, and in some cases threatening, people depicted in these photos?
With the number of cameras wielded by people in the streets, we've arrived at a point where surveillance has become ubiquitous in the public. For years, people condemned the surveillance cameras that were being installed in public places, but now, people wield them with a sense of pride and responsibility. With the widespread use of this technology, and the potential for exposure in social media, community members have a lot of power in regulating the behaviour of others.
Alexandra Samuel, the director of the Social and Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, said that while she’d like to see “every last one of these folks prosecuted”, she’s concerned about the public way in which riot participants are being identified.
Facebook and Tumblr pages have sprung up encouraging users to upload photos of riot instigators and identify them.
“I think we need to differentiate between using social media to hold law enforcement and to hold abuses accountable, and using social media as an extension of the state’s role in law enforcement,” Samuel told the Straight by phone.
The answer, I think, is that networked communications were necessary, but not sufficient, to a successful Egyptian uprising. The emails and tweets and status updates coming from Tunisian revolutionaries inspired their comrades in Egypt (some of whom they'd met face-to-face in regional meetings organised by the likes of the Open Society Initiative, but whose social connections were continued and reinforced by the net).
In justifying U.S. involvement in Libya, the Obama administration cited the "responsibility to protect" citizens of other countries when their governments engage in widespread violence against them. But in the realm of cyberspace, the administration is ignoring its primary responsibility to protect its own citizens when they are targeted for harm by a foreign government.
Robot lawyers obviously can’t replace human intuition, or perfectly predict the outcomes of individual cases. Nor can they totally replace the experience of human lawyers. But Prof. Katz argues that a computer that can chew through reams of cases, judgments and judges’ citations – more than any human lawyer could ever digest – and spit out a percentage chance of success could be very useful to clients who are looking for a second opinion.
“The real weakness of human reasoners is aggregation or scale. You can’t do these things at that level. No person can,” he said
For Canadian companies, winning market share means adding value. Here’s a look at how Transformix Engineering, based in Kingston, achieves that while handling a key project: building a high-speed machine to assemble a four-part valve for the soft-drink industry.