Category Archives: Technology

The ‘first broadband environment channel’ - green.tv has been online since the start of the month, and busy racking up the hits and enjoying lots of media attention. Backed by the UNEP, designed by large blue in collaboration with the espians, {featuring the first application of the ‘Protoplex’}, green.tv broadcasts environmental videos drawn from a wide range of sources - including the Environment Agency, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. One of the ideas -I believe- is to showcase independent films and the work of environmental activists/grassroots work/what’s actually happening on the ground, alongside raising awareness of the ‘big issues’.

If you’re a filmmaker or an organization producing environmental videos and would be interested in contributing your content, please visit their blog for more information. They are also currently in the process of developing the community angle further - if you have any ideas, again please get in touch.
{There is also a pledgebank connected with this - open till 15th May}

With regards to building up the community side of the site, and generally ‘stickiness’ a couple of thoughts come to mind. A wiki would be a great way to encourage collaborative effort - find out what everyone’s thinking - about the content that’s up there, and related to that - how they might want to get involved in the various different projects that are out there in the world today.

On a local level it would be great, if for example one saw a film made by some Southwark kids talking about their environment and their issues etc., and one could then check out the community zone and find out what initiatives are happening in Southwark right now, what the state of recycling is ( and boy does it make a difference depending on what local authority area you’re in! More on that to follow later – yes the state of recycling in London is shocking) or any other relevant happenings- now that would be brilliant. Of course, this is from the perspective of someone who works for an environmental charity – perhaps others will have different views depending on who they are and what they do.

As often is the case, Institutions ( especially big ones - or the ones with clout) can be somewhat overpowering - they like publicity, the hype, the advertising potential –> and there’s always the chance that this can squeeze out what individuals have to say: hence collaboration is key. Generally this is the situation with television and the broadcast industry nowadays .. familiar to anyone who’s taken a passing interest in political economy issues of media. So whilst it is technically interesting to have seamless video streaming on the net –- still, the usual issues of ‘broadcast’ vs. ‘interactive’ remain. push vs. pull and all that old business.{ and boy! talked about for so long:that great-buzzword-since-the-late-90-‘s “video-on-demand”, and nowadays - Over IP Video - OIPV and IPTV etc.}

No need to get into that particular bit of discourse right here and now, suffice to say that I feel that given the success of this green.tv project will depend on how interactive it actually turns out to be. It’s a fabulous concept, and a great opportunity. Particularly for the folks out there – environmental activists and ordinary people making changes in their lives - instead of just ‘talking the talk’ - this is a great opportunity to be ‘heard and seen’ and if we can all ‘push’ it in the right direction – then it will be fabulous indeed.

what green.tv has to say for itself:

“With green.tv we’ve brought together the audience pulling power of television with the chatroom and blogging interaction of the internet to create a truly powerful new medium, one that reaches out to a global broadband audience - an audience which, importantly, consumes most of the Earth’s valuable resources”

you may have noticed a new addition to my links over on the sidebar - my del.icio.us

I”ve just started it recently, so it”s very short and sweet - but watch the space as it will be growing exponentially, i”m having lot”s of fun with it.

is a good way of putting it. so now my hand”s been bitten, my custom”s going somewhere else. Bye Bye Google Bye Bye..

oh yeah and i daresay if anyone has any bright ideas re: protests outside google”s offices in London - this is where they are:
Belgrave House
76 Buckingham Palace Road

Just think -for argument”s sake - if anything happened and somehow those poor offices end up being defaced - ah well, i suppose we”d never find out would we? they won”t be able to get “justice” - why? well who”s going to bear witness to it? ….;-) see no evil, hear no evil..

the second phase of the UN World Summit on Information Society convened by the International Telecommunications Union - has just concluded last weekend - in Tunisia. the ITU is a UN agency, and the first phase of the WSIS was held ages ago ( alright in 2003) in switzerland.

the point of these fancy sounding summits was to discuss the concept of information society in general, how to ensure it is inclusive; and then lay the foundation such that issues like the digital divide are addressed, and then of course, the thorny problem of internet governance ( and money..who’s gonna pay?)
( ha ha! what a simple remit)

things have moved on somewhat since 2001 when we discussed these issues in a law class i happened to be taking at the time focusing on Internet Governance : but you know what - they ain’t really moved on THAT much! ICANN is still around..and is there actually much understanding of the governance issue? well we’ll have to see - depending on what the outcomes of the latest Tunis summit. There is a lot of research to be done to find this out - given the bureaucratic nature of these ’summits’ - and who even gets to go to these summits? a bunch of politicians/national-y representative-y sort of folks, i bet. who probably don’t know anything about the internet… probably don’t know how to use it. you know how these things are - they send their most important person - who turns out to be some old bloke in a suit. Wouldn’t matter so much if they knew what they were talking about - but summits usually have idiots attending them. they like to keep the real stakeholders - people like you and me and individuals - out of the game.

at any rate: one thing is clear - the usual spotlight on the Host Country - in this case Tunisia, which i think we can safely say isn’t very friendly to cyber-dissidents. ( well dissent in general!) More on that to come as well, but it seems to be clear - as is usually the case - that the Tunisian human rights community/activists were barred from the global conference and their attempts to meet independently didn’t really succeed.

typical - let’s leave out the people we say we want to ‘include’. PAH!