On this day, June 13th, 2008, the news brings to our attention Chinese hackers, praise for collective action, the future of civic media, “filthy” Coca-Cola, and much, much more.

• How is IT helping and hampering movements?
• NYTimes coverage of the Webby’s (pretentiously hilarious!)
• Frustrated Chinese blogger will not touch “filthy product” after Coca-Cola perceivably shows love for Tibets (and other perspectives from the Chinese blogosphere).
• US Lawmakers: Chinese hacktivists sneaked into our computers.
• The is G8 coming together to fight Internet organized crime.
• Neo-individualism and praise for collective action.
• And finally, many cool examples of what the future of civic media might look like.

-Filed in News

On this day, May 21th, 2008, the news brings to our attention a generation raised online, Hillary’s direct appeal to bloggers, The Onion’s Twitter question, Zimbabwean protest singers, the slowing of Chinese Internet censors, and more.

• What to do with all these terrorist videos on Google? Sen. Joe knows!
• Frontline featured “Growing Up Online” last night.
• Are you on “the list”?
• Hillary appeals directly to blogs.
• Estonia Cyber War (awesome comic/movie name?): One Year Later
• The Onion asks – What are we Twittering?
• Zimbabwean singer uses Internet radio to evade censorship.
• Earthquake slows censors, allows Chinese bloggers (temporary) free reign.
• And finally, rest assured — The Internet will fix pretty much everything.

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“What do you read? Time? Newsweek? Those are for people who can’t handle a real news magazine like the one I read. That’s because you’re not as smart or sophisticated as me.”

I love references to The Onion.

So I spent the day flying and in airports yesterday which means that I read one of the three issues of The Economist (and the New Yorker) I’ll read and cite at parties for the rest of the year. You might even meet me at a Christmas party later this year and I’ll make reference to an article “about labor struggles in Egypt that was published — oh — when was it?” And I’ll put my hand up on my head like I am trying to remember which of the thousands of articles that I have read and what I am really trying to do is remember the last time that I flew and read the economist by default. “Oh yes. It was in an issue published in the middle of last April. That was it.”

Be sure to kick me in the shins.

Said issue spends a lot of energy describing and deconstructing societal movement to Digital Nomadism. The special report is a fascinating one and a lot of attention is spent on how this movement is affecting organization, election monitoring, and revolution. Spoken with is Katrin Verclas (who we will be speaking with tomorrow) of MobileActive.org, remembered is the 2001 text message-driven uprising in the Philippines and imagined is the not too distant future of the SMS revolution.

On their site, Jan Chipase, a writer who worked on the piece, spent a week recording his experiences in Tokyo and Seattle. The presentation can be seen here.

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