We are all overwhelmed by too much information. Either we feel burdened by thousands of unread emails, articles, and blog posts, or we generally feel out of the information loop, as if others have secret access to content that we’re not privy to. If we don’t develop systems to manage how we discover, make sense of, and use the information around us then either we begin to feel anxious or so overwhelmed that the information itself begins to lose its value.

We start freaking out.

This post is a detailed overview of how I personally manage media content in my life. (I won’t include how I manage other types of information like financial and contact information — that’s a whole other story.) I should emphasize that there is no single media management system that will work for everyone. Everyone has different types and amounts of information to process. Because of my job and my own interests I probably consume much more media than others, and so have developed a fairly intricate system that, though extremely automated, still requires more daily attention than most are probably willing to invest.

Finding and Consuming Media

There are three main factors that influenced how I designed this system:

1. Media types — above all else, I categorize media by whether it is text, audio, or video. Each has its own advantage. I love text because it is searchable and easy to copy and paste. Audio is fantastic because it is the only media type that allows me to multitask. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks as I bicycle to the office, work out in the gym, clean my apartment and wait in Mexico City’s round-the-clock traffic. Video, on the other hand, demands your full attention which is probably why it can make such a big impact on our lives. I tend to only consume video at night, either on my television or my iPad.
2. Device types — another strong consideration is that I consume media every day on four different devices. I want access to all my media from all four devices: 1) my iPhone where I listen to podcasts and frequently discover new media via Twitter, Google Reader, and email; 2) my iPad where I read books, feature-length articles, academic papers, and watch 10 – 15 minute videos from TED, PopTech, YouTube, and Vimeo; 3) my laptop computer which serves as the home base for all my media and documents; and 4) my television which is hooked up to a Mac Mini media server — this is where I watch most movies and documentaries, and occasionally where I listen to podcasts as I clean my apartment.
3. Info-snacking versus deep reading — after a while I came to realize that I consume media in two different ways: 1) info-snacking in which I scan a vast amount of content to get an overview of a particular topic or to get a feel for the day’s news; and 2) deep reading which usually takes place on my couch with a cup of tea or on a park bench in Parque México. Many observers like Nicholas Carr point out that we are increasingly spending more time info-snacking at the expense of the time we spend reading deeply and reflecting. While I think that Carr tends to exaggerate the inability of my generation to read deeply (just look at Goodreads), I do think it’s important to set aside a certain amount of time each day to commit to a single piece of media for at least 45 minutes to an hour.

Good Morning: Toast, Coffee, Info-snacking

Before I even get out of bed I reach for my iPad and start up my NPR app. As I listen to the five-minute morning news roundup, I look through all of the latest NPR stories and make a personalized 30-minute playlist of the four – six stories that interest me the most. I listen to this playlist as I shower and make breakfast. With my toast and coffee in hand I walk the ten feet to my home office (now green at the request of Tricia).

Every morning I spend about an hour to 90 minutes scanning various sources of media to get a general feel for the day’s news. During this time I never read anything longer than three paragraphs. First I read through my email and click on all the links to articles that people have recommended to me. If these articles are less than three paragraphs then I read them right away. If they are longer, and I determine that they are worth my time, then I save them to Instapaper to read later on my iPad or iPhone.

After email I look through my three Twitter accounts (@oso, @civicinfolatam, @infocivi) to see what articles my contacts have been recommending. Very few of the Twitter users I follow write about what they ate for lunch; rather the service is much more like a list of cleverly worded headlines written by individuals I trust. Each of those headlines then links to the main article. I probably read about 3% of the articles that my Twitter contacts link to. Still, I find it valuable to know what they find valuable on a daily basis. Of those articles I do read, if they are less than three paragraphs then I will read them right away; if they are longer then I save them to Instapaper to read later in the day. I use Nambu to read through my Twitter accounts on my laptop, the official Twitter app for my iPhone, and Twitterific for my iPad.

Next I read through the feeds in my RSS reader. I use Google Reader to store all of the most recent articles from the 307 feeds I am subscribed to. While all of the information is stored in Google Reader, I use NetNewsWire for my laptop, iPhone, and iPad so that I can continue to read the articles even when I’m not connected to the internet (which is often when I am traveling). Every morning there are an average of 600 – 800 new pieces of content waiting for me. As you can imagine I skim quickly through all of the headlines, but only read a small minority of the articles and blog posts. From a total of 800 new articles every day in my RSS reader I probably read around 15 short articles (less than three paragraphs) and two long articles on average.

In addition to long articles and blog posts that I save to Instapaper, I also often come across PDF reports and short video clips that I want to watch later. PDF reports I save to my Dropbox folder, which I can access automatically via my iPhone, iPad, and both of my computers. While the Dropbox applications allow you to read PDFs directly inside the apps, I prefer using GoodReader which has more functionality and connects automatically to your Dropbox and Google Docs accounts (in addition to other services). If I discover a 5 – 10 minute YouTube clip that I want to watch later, I drag the link to Evom which automatically downloads and adds the video to iTunes, which then syncs to both my iPhone and iPad.

The podcasts I listen to on a regular basis.

Lastly I open up iTunes where I am subscribed to around 25 different audio and video podcasts. Currently iTunes tell me that I have 75 episodes waiting for my attention, and that it will take me 1.4 days to listen to everything. I try to download podcasts selectively so that I realistically can listen to everything I download, but often I am only able to catch up when I take a long flight or road trip.

Deep Reading

Instapaper allows me to read long articles on any device with an interface that doesn’t tire my eyes. It removes all advertisements and unnecessary text from the articles.

After my morning routine of info-snacking I usually have around two to three hours of media content to consume throughout the rest of the day. I tend to do this in hour-long blocks. I listen to around 90 minutes of podcasts and audio books during my afternoon run and my time in the gym. I read for about 60 minutes on a bench in the park. Then I’ll read for another thirty minutes when I’m at home on my couch and before I go to bed. Often times I watch a documentary movie while I eat dinner.

I read e-books on my iPad, and occasionally on my iPhone. I use both the Kindle and iBook apps to read various books (though I prefer iBooks). Both applications synchronize what page I am on and my bookmarks so that if I finish off at page 113 on my iPad it will automatically start me at 113 on my iPhone as well.

Admittedly, I tend to info snack a couple more times throughout the day, though I am trying to spend more time reading deeply and less time info-snacking. I use Twitter, FlipBoard, NetNewsWire, and Google FastFlip to info-snack throughout the day, mostly from my iPhone and iPad.

Flipboard for the iPad feels just like a traditional magazine, but it’s content comes from recommended links by my Facebook and Twitter contacts. I can send longer articles to Instapaper directly from within the app.

Processing and Sharing Media

Everything so far relates to how I organize and consume media. But there is a more important guiding question: Why the hell am I reading/watching/listening to this? In part it is to become a better person: more informed, worldly, empathetic. But I am also aware of my place in the information ecology, and my role in spreading information across different communities. With each piece of content I consume, there are nine possible outputs:

• Do nothing – either delete the content (if I never ever will use it again) or store it in my media archive so that I can search for it in the future. This is what I do with 75% of content I consume. I use a program called Together to manage an archive of content I’ve read. Instapaper also keeps an archive (though there are no promises that it will be permanent.)
• Share via email – if the content is directly relevant to a particular person or small group of people then I will send an email with the link and the relevant excerpt(s).
• Share via twitter – I manage three different Twitter accounts – one personal and two for work. Twitter is a great social way to share information related to recent news, but it is especially bad at building an archive of well-organized bookmarks.
• Share via Delicious – when I need to organize bookmarks by category so that I can find them later on I use Delicious. I have both a personal and a work account, and they help me build bibliographies for future blog posts and essays. I use Pukka to easily post to both accounts without having to log in and log out. Pukka is also great for quickly searching past bookmarks.
• Share via Facebook – Sometimes I find information that strikes me as oddly intriguing, such as how porcupines have sex. This, in my opinion, is requisite reading for anyone I consider a friend. Many applications now have a “share via facebook” option. In my browser I use the Facebook bookmarklet.
• Share via Tumblr – though I haven’t been using Tumblr lately, an essay by Steven Berlin Johnson about the 18th century practice of keeping a commonplace book convinced me to start collecting scraps of content that influence the evolution of my thinking.
• Share via Goodreads – if it is a book. I usually also leave a small review with my thoughts and reflections.
• Create an outline – often times I choose to read/listen/watch particular types of content because I’m working on a blog post or research paper. I use MarsEdit and OmniOutliner to take notes on my laptop and Simplenote to take notes on my iPhone and iPad.
• Translate an article – I often feel that the most valuable output is when I decide to translate an article from Spanish to English or English to Spanish. I do this with the help of Google Translator Toolkit, which remembers how I personally like to translate key, common phrases.

That may seem like a ridiculous number of outputs and a lot of work, but it literally takes me about 10 seconds to share information via email/Twitter/Delicious/Facebook/Tumblr, and I hardly ever spend more than an hour a day writing blog posts.

Stepping Away From it All

At this point you probably thing that I do nothing more with my life than submerge myself with media. While it’s true that I probably spend more time consuming media than most, I never spend anytime watching advertisements and I don’t play video games. Still, I’m increasingly aware of the need to step away from media completely. @shirafu recently pointed me to the NY Times article “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime,” which really struck a chord with me. If we don’t step away from media we fail to engage with it meaningfully. At least once a day I try to spend time simply staring at the ceiling and/or going for a walk around my neighborhood. I am trying to spend more weekends out in the mountains away from connectivity. Cooking dinner has also been a recent source of calm for me.

Some Content Gems

Here is a list of some of my favorite sources of content (not all are legal):

• NetFlix – movies, television series, and documentaries.
• Avaxhome – ebooks, audiobooks, videos
• AAARG.org – academic papers
• iTunes U – university lectures
• MVGroup – documentary movies
• BBC Worldservice Documentaries – consistently interesting audio documentaries. I listen to almost all of them.

Bonus

I rarely watch television, but when I do, this is how. (Again, I never watch advertisements.)

Colophon

In traditional print publishing a colophon is a brief description of the printing and publication of the book. Early bloggers like John Gruber re-appropriated the term to describe a list of tools used to produce digital media. Below is a list of all the applications and services I have mentioned above.

Please feel free to leave a comment below to explain how you manage the river of media.

I’ve been thinking lately about fashion and class. It’s Mario’s fault. He’s the kind of friend you can sit down with for hours over a few microbrews to discuss the evolution of advanced capitalism through the lens of hipster fashion. I’m still not really sure what that means, but the man does have great taste in beer and threads, and he has me thinking about a thing or two. I live in Condesa, not far from the border with Roma, hipster mecca of Mexico City. It’s where you find people dressed like this.

It’s one of the few places where my little sister, looking like she does these days, fits right in. Like others in her aesthetic cohort, I’m amazed by the time, energy, and nonchalance that goes into perfecting the image. I love the creativity behind the impulse, and yet am frustrated by the vanity.

Did I mention that just about everything costs double in my neighborhood? Rent, food, a cup of coffee. This is a place for the middle-upper class, the young and the restless, the type of kids with enough money to spend entire days in thrift stores to be seen at parties looking like this:

Despite the working class, bohemian aesthetic, most of these kids are the sons and daughters of CEO’s and politicians. And most of them were raised in the gated communities of upper-class suburbs like Santa Fe. My theory is that growing up surrounded by suburbs and sitcoms is venom for the creative soul. It’s a plague that affected so much of my generation. So we moved from mass-manufactured, cookie-cutter houses to Silver Lake, the Mission, Williamsburg, West Oakland. But unfortunately, for so many, ‘creativity’ meant dressing up like this to go to parties, to create an ‘alternative scene’

If only a small percentage of that creativity could be channeled into something that goes beyond supporting beer and cigarette companies.

People have suddenly realized that there are so many things that they desire that they were not even aware of before. And the truth is that most of these television channels are commercially driven, and so the Bhutanese people are driven to consumerism. That’s inevitable. And that is, to some extent, unfortunate. But inevitable.

Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan’s Foreign Minister

Booger is here in Mexico City visiting me this week, but unfortunately neither of us are feeling 100%, which has meant lots of movies in the evening. Actually, it’s exactly what I’ve needed after weeks of stressful work and traveling. We started out on a Clint Eastwood kick, first with Invictus and then Gran Torino. Boogs very well might be the worst person in the world when it comes to making decisions so as she flipped through Netflix’s steadily growing selection of streaming movies last night I knew I would need to take over or else we’d spend the evening reading reviews.

We settled on the 2003 Travelers and Magicians, which, says Wikipedia, “is the first feature film shot entirely in Bhutan.” The protagonist of the film is Dondup, a young, chain-smoking government official who is obsessed with American culture … and leaving his country for the American dream.

Throughout the whole movie I was tripping out. God damn, homeboy looks just like my friend Tshewang. But I figured it couldn’t be. If Tshe had been in a major film production I would have known about it.

Tshe and Lisa, Camden, Maine, 2008

I loved the movie. It made me yearn to be back in the Himalaya, where I lived and studied for most of 1999. There is an authenticity to the movie that probably comes from the fact that the cast is made up of almost entirely non-professional actors. I highly recommend it to anyone who has Netflix Watch Instantly.

The movie finished, the credits rolled, and sure enough it really was Tshewang who I met while in Camden, Maine in 2008 as part of PopTech’s Social Innovation Fellows program. What else has Tshe been up to that I wasn’t aware of? I wondered.

Unrestrained Western culture was a force that the Bhutanese had long feared. Until 1999, television and the Internet were illegal in Bhutan. Royal decrees were intended to safeguard the country against what was feared to be an onslaught of Western values. Not until Bhutan could offer its own television service would Western digital media be welcomed into the Kingdom. So in June 1999, the country crossed the threshold of modernity on two fronts: television and the Internet were legalized, and the Bhutan Broadcasting Service (BBS) was born.

Alexis Bloom, Documentary Filmmaker

Tshewang became one of the first Bhutanese journalists to travel around the country with a camera and microphone and appear to appear on only television channel, the state-run Bhutan Broadcasting Service. But he lacked the technical production skills, and so he traveled about as far as possible, to Berkeley, California where he enrolled in the documentary film program at the Graduate School of Journalism. There he met a fellow foreign student, South African-born Alexis Bloom, and the two headed back to Bhutan in 2002 after their studies to produce “The Last Place“, a ten-minute piece for Frontline World that looks at the impact of satellite and cable TV on the country.

The quote from Bhutan’s Foreign Minister at the beginning of this blog post comes from the Frontline piece, but it could just as easily sum up “Travelers and Magicians” which Tshewang must have started working on immediately following his return to Bhutan from Berkeley.

“Expectations create anxiety,” quips the talkative yet endearing monk who follows Dondup on his hitchhiking tour to get to the United States. It is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Everyone reading this blog already has everything he and she needs in life. Yet our lives are still filled with anxiety. We need to make more money, launch more projects, see more places, have more to show for our lives.

“The Last Place” is a fascinating and well-produced piece, and a reminder of the strangeness (and evilness) of Western television programming. It underlines Clay Shirky’s assertion that far too many of us wasted the 80’s and 90’s watching terrible sitcoms.

From my own elitist ledge, I think that importing foreign television programming into Bhutan was a net bad. Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley says that the one positive effect of bringing television to Bhutan is that the Bhutanese began to realize just how peaceful their country is compared to most. But it also led to youthful fanatics of WWF and a quick transition from isolated Buddhism to capitalist consumerism.

But what about the internet? From my same elitist ledge can it be judged as a net good or net bad for the country? I have no idea. I’ve never been to Bhutan. But I am intrigued by the thoughts of Sonam Ongmo, Global Voices’ inspiring Bhutanese author. She was born and raised in Bhutan where she worked as a journalist and then moved to New York where she is now, in her own words, “a displaced stay-at-home mother of two.”

In 2006 – just six years after the internet first arrived to Bhutan and the same year as freedom of press was guaranteed – she published a piece in the Bhutan Times that speculated how the country would react to the network of networks. She recently re-published that piece on her blog.

In a country with limited resources like ours, individuals will have to play a more decisive role in managing Television and Internet but the State has to help them. The west as a long media history and the public are very familiar with how a free press functions and it impacts them. Their people have matured with it and so management of the media has come with a certain amount of education and exposure to it. While we often claim to be in a position to learn from other’s mistakes we have seen that it is only when the elephant is in the room that we are scrambling for solutions.

Nearly four years later and it seems that Sonam still doesn’t know how to weigh the positive and negative effects of the internet on Bhutan. Like most of us, she feels that there is simply not enough time to reflect on all the information that passes by us:

Bhutan has seen drastic changes within society – good and bad – but the fact that it is happening all very fast is indeed very disturbing. Much of the time the problems that have come with such exposure have made the problems run ahead of themselves allowing hardly any time for thought. We are a nation now, in some ways, like a deer caught in headlights.

For Sonam’s own life it is clear that the internet and social media has been a blessing, but she’s also aware that there is too much of a good thing, and that we need to step away to regain our balance, to regain ourselves.

I agree. I told myself that I would stop using my computer and ipad after 10 p.m. But last night I broke that rule. So enchanted was I by “Travelers and Magicians” that I read through every link I could find on Global Voices about Bhutan. I got to know Tshokey, “Penstar“, Dorji Wangchuk, Tshering Tobgay, and Unagi. I was amazed by how thoughtful the discussions were in the comments that followed. It reminded me of the good old days of blogging in 2004 and 2005 when the majority of posts would inspire in-depth conversations with 15 or 20 or more comments. More than a sense of conversation, there was a sense of lasting community. These days we hardly have enough time to align our lives for long enough to participate in one coherent conversation. More than half the people who started reading this post don’t have the attention span or the interest to make it this far. I hope that Bhutan’s blogging community isn’t headed down the same path.

I also hope that Tshewang considers making a documentary about the impact of the internet on Bhutan. It is something that the BBC would surely fund, and I know that he’d do an amazing job producing it.

(For now I highly recommend the fascinating 2008 “Bhutan Media Impact Study” carried out by the Ministry of Information and Communications with financial assistance from UNDP. Another worthwhile read is “Bhutan Goes Online” by Geoff Long, which provides a more historical and technical perspective of the internet’s arrival to Bhutan.

When I finally finished reading through all the blog posts I drifted asleep thinking about how much I’d like to one day visit Bhutan. But I am trying to travel less, both for my own health and the environment’s. Fortunately I can count on documentary filmmakers like Tshewang and bloggers like Sonam to help me become more familiar with their country from afar.

I met Tshewang at PopTech where he was a fellow for his work training a new generation of Bhutanese journalists in digital media production. Gideon and I trained the fellows how to create a 5-minute video using their Nokia N95 phones and iMovie. Perhaps with the sole exception of Erik who breathes technology, Tshewang picked up the digital editing process faster than anyone else. (Surely from all his filmmaking experience.) But he didn’t have his own Apple laptop to continue producing the videos when he returned to Bhutan. I had just purchased a new MacBook myself so I said, “go ahead, take mine, just don’t use any incriminating photos against me.”

I had visions of Tshe taking the laptop back to Bhutan and training a new generation of digital storytellers who would do for their country what California is a Place is doing for California. I’ve unfortunately lost touch with Tshe and so I’m not sure how the training program is going, but I can’t imagine anyone better suited to lead it. Here’s his presentation from PopTech. If you notice, the computer that is giving him problems as he flips through his slides is my old, stickered, white MacBook.

The following is my translation of Alberto Escorcia’s post, “Ley General de Población, una SB-1070 a la mexicana“, which was originally published on Pateando Piedras under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike license. Photographs are by Don Bartletti of the Los Angeles Times, a photojournalist I’ve long admired.

Mexico’s “General Population Act” is similar to, or at least as racist as, Arizona’s SB-1070

The powerful arrival of SB-1070, even in its now more moderate form, represents a setback regarding the respect for human rights for those seeking work in other countries because of a lack of opportunities in their own. Stopping someone for merely appearing to be a “migrant” (who knows what that means or how it’s determined) is to be condemned because it represents an act of discrimination.

In Mexico we have protested against this law, and we are willing to demonstrate in the streets, but we haven’t even stopped to question our own treatment by local and federal authorities of migrants who pass through our country on their way to the United States.

Have we taken the time to review our own “General Population Act”, which has some of the same parameters as Arizona’s SB-1070?

The General Population Act (LGP) and its regulations governing the stay of foreigners in our country, requires that every authority must verify the immigration status of aliens applying for a process or service. Our foreign friends who have attempted to open a bank account or work even part time without carrying their documentation with them can confirm the enforcement of the act.

Groupo Beta undercover police agents grab a youth near an immigration checkpoint in Chiapas, Mexico. Along the rail line, Beta agents pursue robbers who prey upon hapless migrants. ( Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times )

Just like in Arizona, getting a job in Mexico is risky if you’re undocumented. Article 74 of the Act states that:

No one should give employment to aliens who have not first verified legally in the country and without obtaining specific authorization to provide that particular service.

Supposedly only the National Migration Institute (INM) can detain those who do not prove their status, but just like in Arizona, they can solicit the help of local police and, if necessary, place the migrants in prison according to Article 94:

The authorities of the Federation, states and municipalities, will be auxiliary to the Interior Ministry in functions that correspond in terms of population registration.

Just like in Arizona, police are given the possibility to question immigrants anywhere in Mexico, and if they find any violation of the law, they are “the authorized personnel to carry out their duties for public safety,” says Article 152 of the General Population Act:

If in the course of the investigation a violation of the provisions of the Act is revealed, the regulations that merit their expulsion abroad of migrants will be carried out by the authorized personnel [including police].

The “charge” of appearing Central American

In Mexico operations against undocumented immigrants across the country who are classified in a discriminatory manner by having “Central American features” are common. They are persecuted, harassed and, if even if they are Mexican but have a strange accent different from that of the center of the country, they are classified as “non-Mexicans.”

It’s depressing the stories of the abuses subjected by citizens who travel “The Beast“, the freight train from Chiapas in the south to the border with the United States. Rape, extortion kidnappings, and if for some reason they ask help of the police, then they are doubly extorted.

Undocumented Central Americans crowd the tops of freight train cars in Mexico. They will be treated as lawbreaking foreigners if caught, but cargo rail lines have become a major passageway north to the U.S. border. ( Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times )

We should pause a bit to think as we protest the treatment that they want to give us in Arizona, why are we not outraged by the treatment we give to immigrants across our country or those who settle here, such as our Argentine friends, in search of a better future.

Mexican Twitter users poked fun at their politicians back in April when congressman Nazario Norberto Sánchez of the Revolutionary Democratic Party sponsored a bill to more closely monitor and regulate the use of Facebook and Twitter with the aim of disrupting the use of online social networks by drug cartels and organized crime. “The bill would make sharing information that helps others break the law or avoid it a criminal act,” writes Alexis Okeowo in Time.

Mexican Twitter users reacted with laughter and scorn when they heard about the bill, with many saying that the proposed legislation was just an excuse for the government to act as Big Brother. Instead of cracking down on Twitter and Facebook use, some analysts say that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies should adapt to the new technology by creating fake identities on the sites to track criminals down instead of seeking to regulate the sites.

Twitter is back in the controversial spotlight today after journalist José Cárdenas used his Twitter account (30,000 followers) to release the contents of a letter allegedly written by kidnapped former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos along with an accompanying photograph. Both the picture and letter are circulating widely on Twitter among the political class:

However, to put everything into context, the news about Diego Fernandez de Cevallos’ letter can still not compete with “#martesdechucknorris“, a weekly tradition among Twitter users in Mexico to creatively discuss Chuck Norris’ superhuman abilities:

La siguiente es una ponencia que di en el Segundo Encuentro de Web 2.0 de Espacio Público.

Hoy vamos a hablar sobre las nuevas tecnologías y su potencia para hacer cambio progresivo en nuestra sociedad, pero vamos a empezar en el año 1435, en el norte de Francia, donde Jean Mielot, un sacerdote y intelectual francés comenzó a trabajar como el escribiente para Felipe el Bueno, el duque de Borgoña.

A veces todo cambia

Hoy en día, cuando tenemos una sobreabundancia de información es difícil recordar que desde la invención de los rollos de papiro en el Antiguo Egipto los libros fueron publicados así. Cada libro que existió fue hecho a mano, uno por uno, con una pluma y tinta. Como se puede ver en esta foto, Mielot estaba copiando palabra por palabra de un libro para crear otro.

Los textos que los escribientes copiaron casi siempre tenia que ver con la iglesia, la institución más poderosa en Europa durante el segundo milenio. Las monarquías y la iglesia decidieron cuales libros podían ser publicados y cuales no. Ellos tenían el control de como se difundía la información por palabra escrita.

Cuando Jean Mielot recibió su nuevo puesto de trabajo en el año 1435, ser escribiente fue algo prestigioso, en la misma manera que hace cinco años ser periodista fue algo considerado muy prestigioso. Pero lo que Jean Mielot no sabía, lo que seguramente no esperaba, es que el próximo año en 1436 un orfebre alemán que se llama Johannes Gutenberg comenzó a trabajar en su nueva invención. Gutenberg tomó inspiración de las prensas mecánicas que facilitaron la producción de aceite de oliva y el vino, y inventó la imprenta de tipos móviles.

Hay una gran ironía que Johannes Gutenberg es más conocido para su creación e impresión de la Biblia de Gutenberg en 1450. Anteriormente, cada biblia fue copiado a mano, y sólo los sacerdotes y los príncipes tenían acceso a lo que se consideraba el gran libro de la sabiduría.

Otros europeos dependían de los sacerdotes a transmitir el contenido de la Biblia durante sus sermones semanales. Digo que hay ironía en la publicación de la Biblia de Gutenberg, porque la imprenta de Gutenberg fue finalmente responsable por la caída del poder del Vaticano y la Iglesia Católica en europa.

70 años después de la Biblia de Gutenberg estuvo bastante común que los elites europeos publicaron sus propios libros. Martín Lutero, un sacerdote y profesor alemán, fue un autor que lo hizo. En 1522 publicó una traducción de la Biblia en alemán en lugar del estándar Latín. Era un desafío directo al poder de la Iglesia Católica. En lugar de depender de los pocos sacerdotes y elites que hablaba latín, la Biblia ahora fue accesible a todos los alemanes.

Más tarde Lutero publicó sus 95 tesis que se difundió rápidamente por toda Europa, y así empezó la reforma protestante, y la caída del Vaticano como el centro del poder en Europa. Sin la imprenta de Gutenberg, la Reforma Protestante no podía haber pasado.

Tampoco la revolución científica del siglo 17 o la Ilustración del siglo 18. Ambos movimientos dependían de la difusión rápida y amplia de ideas como las del Copérnico, Galileo, y Isaac Newton. De hecho, tal vez la revolución científica se hubiera realizado mucho más antes si la imprenta ya había existido. Lamentablemente, antes de la imprenta, no había manera de publicar, compartir, y agregar las ideas de otros.

La imprenta de Gutenberg se transformó la sociedad mundial. El periodismo, la democracia representativa, y las universidades modernas – todos llegaron a existir gracias a la imprenta de Gutenberg.

Hacia La Autoría Universal

Antes de la imprenta, los europeos dependieron de los sacerdotes para saber lo que había dentro de un libro. Hoy simplemente abren el libro y empiezan a leer. Es una diferencia fundamental y revolucionaria.

Pero los escribientes protestaron. Dijeron que, con la imprenta de Gutenberg, es tan fácil publicar y distribuir libros que una persona ya no podía confiar lo que leyó en un libro, que la gente no sabía como elegir lo que debería leer. Incluso Martín Lutero, la persona que benefició más que cualquier otra persona de la imprenta gutenberg dijo: “La multitud de libros es un gran mal. No hay ninguna medida de límite a esta fiebre por la escritura.” Son las mismas reflexiones que escuchamos hoy con respeto al internet.

La imprenta de Gutenberg, dio lugar a una europa que hoy tiene un nivel de alfabetismo que es casi cien por ciento.

Dos académicos estadounidenses, Denis G. Pelli y Charles Bigelow, muestran que estamos marchando lentamente por un camino hacia la “autoría universal.”

En su investigación, comparan el aumento de los autores de libros publicados al año desde 1400 hasta hoy con el aumento de autores de blogs, los autores de Facebook, y los autores de Twitter. Como se puede ver en el gráfico, se tomó 600 años para llegar a un millón de autores de libros al año. Por el contrario, sólo tardó cinco años en llegar a un millón de autores de los blogs, tres años para llegar a un millón de autores de Facebook, y dos años para llegar a un millón de autores de Twitter. Hay que preguntar, que viene después de Twitter?

El mundo ha cambiado fundamentalmente gracias al alfabetismo y ya sabemos que va a cambiar fundamentalmente por la “autora universal.”

Cuatro observaciones sobre el Web 2.0 para el cambio social

Quería revisar la historia de la imprenta porque me parece un recuerdo importante que el cambio social siempre llega mucho más después de la invención de una nueva tecnología. El impacto de cada nueva tecnología siempre depende en los usos y las reglas que nosotros creamos. La radio puede enseñar a un pueblo como protegerse de la malaria. O puede contribuir al genocidio como sucedió en Rwanda. La agricultura industrializada puede alimentar a todos o puede causar la obesidad. Siempre depende de nosotros.

Así que hoy, brevemente, quiero revisar cuatro observaciones básicas del Web 2.0 y unos proyectos que ejemplifican lo bueno y malo de cada observación.

Primera observación: Los nuevos medios bajan el costo de producir, remezclar, y distribuir contenidos de alta calidad.

Vimos esto en marzo cuando Greenpeace en Inglaterra hizo un video muy bueno, pero también barato, para difundir información sobre el hecho que Nestle usa productos de aceite de palma que contribuye a la deforestación en Indonesia y Malasia. Como todas las empresas grandes, Nestle tiene una pagina en Facebook y miles de personas llegaron a su pagina para dejar comentarios de protesta. Al principio Nestle respondió borrando los comentarios y criticando los usuarios de Facebook. Unas semanas después y Nestle pidió disculpas y anunciaron que ya no van a usar productos que vienen del bosque lluvioso. La lección de esa campaña es usar creatividad, difundir la información por canales múltiples, y coordinar acciones a nivel local y mundial.

Por supuesto anunciaron la nueva política como si fuera su idea, pero eso no es lo que importa.

La campaña contra Nestle muestra el bueno de que hoy es tan fácil producir y distribuir contenidos de alta calidad. Pero la tendencia tiene un peligro también. Por uno, es demasiado fácil crear campañas que no resultan en nada. Por ejemplo, firmar una petición que no va a hacer ningún cambio. O cambiar la imagen de tu perfil de Facebook o Twitter para mostrar tu apoyo a una causa. Esas acciones no hacen daño, pero no hacen cambio social tampoco. Segundo, ahora es tan fácil crear una campaña por nuevos medios que muchos recibimos más que 20 correos al día sobre varias campañas. Y lo que pasa es que no prestamos atención a ninguna.

Segunda observación: El Internet es una plataforma (casi) sin fronteras:

Vimos esto el mes pasado cuando Jason Sadler, un americano, hizo una campaña por Twitter llamado One Million T-shirts, o un millón camisetas. La idea fue pedir usuarios de Twitter por sus camisetas usadas y enviarlas a Africa, un proyecto muy tonto, pero con buenas intenciones. Cuando algunos usuarios de twitter en africa se enteraron de la campaña, las pocas personas que andan en dos culturas, que hablan dos o mas idiomas. Son los puentes importantes que cruzan las brechas que nos dividen.

Tercera observación: Hay una sobreabundancia de información pero no de conocimiento.

Nada está aumentando más en nuestro mundo que la información. Cada año los académicos estiman el crecimiento de información en el internet y cada año la cifra actual supera lo que habían esperado. Para comunicar información efectivamente hay que crear visualizaciones como esta que muestra el uso de transporte público en varios países. Con una gráfica se comunica la misma cantidad de información que tres paginas de texto.

Lamentablemente, lo que hacen la mayor parte de los sitios web con mucha información es simplemente agregar y presentar todos los datos. Como humanos no podemos digerir tanta información y vamos a otro sitio. Hay que aumentar nuestro conocimiento sin abrumar nuestro capacidad de comprender la información. Tenemos que ser más selectivo en lo que publicamos, lo que leemos, lo que compartimos.

Cuarta observación: El internet es para gatos, porno, peleas, y quejas.

Si creen que todos los usuarios del internet están conectados para mejorar el mundo, pronto van a estar deprimidos. Se van a dar cuenta que el internet es para gatos, prono, peleas, y quejas. Porque el internet somos nosotros, y nosotros somos humanos. Siempre es más fácil quejarse que resolver una problema. Por eso, cuando vamos a los cafés, y cuando comemos con nuestros familiares, todos se están quejando, pero pocos hablan de como están resolviendo los problemas.

Hay un sitio de Malasia que se llama Penang Watch. Es un lugar para reportar y coleccionar quejas a cerca del municipio y su gobierno. Los voluntarios que administran el sitio tienen un proceso definido de como gestionan las quejas que reciben. Más que 50% de las quejas se resuelvan. Es impresionante ver como un pequeño sitio web como este ha transformado y mejorado el gobierno municipal de Penang.

Siempre es más fácil ser cínico que trabajar duro. Pero hay que recordar que el cinismo es idealismo que no sabe como expresarse, que no sabe como implantar la visión que muchos queremos para nuestra sociedad. Nuestro reto es pensar profundamente de como podemos y debemos aprovecharse de nuevas herramientas para convertir el cinismo en acción sostenible.

El internet ha existido por 40 años. El web 2.0 ha existido por un poco mas que 5 años. Pero el impacto social apenas ha comenzado y depende en nosotros como será el impacto.

My time off: amazing. Beyond words. Every since: a disaster.

It seems that my computer just couldn’t deal with such a lack of attention. And so, mysteriously, while it wasn’t being used at all, the logic board gave out. I spent about three days troubleshooting everything it could possibly be, sure that by now I know how my computer works as well as anyone working at an Apple store.

That was a humbling experience. Finally, with my head hung low, I made my way through Mexico City’s labyrinthine arteries and one-way alleys to find one of three official Apple stores here. (Mexico and Brazil are the only two other countries in the western hemisphere with official Apple stores.) They’re taking care of business, but it means that I’m without my laptop or my data for the rest of the month.

I’m often bothered by my dependence on Google’s server farms, and the fact that they control so much of my data. But, on the other hand, when something like this happens I am grateful beyond words for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Calendar, and everything else that has kept me functional this past week. The tension between personal and corporate ownership of our data is something I think will keep playing out for the next few decades at least.

Venezuela

Tomorrow morning I am headed to Venezuela, this time without my laptop. And, given my last experience in Caracas, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Venezuela has changed in the past three and a half years since I was last there. It seems that there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism. President Hugo Chavez surprised many observers by more or less accepting defeat in a referendum that would have enabled his indefinite re-election. On the other hand, freedom of speech in the country has taken a big hit. On Friday the government issued an arrest warrant for Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, the last remaining television station that is openly critical of the Chavez administration.

On Global Voices Advocacy, Laura Vidal and Marianne Diaz have done an excellent job covering the rise of official online censorship in Venezuela. This has taken the form of legal threats, such as Chavez’s condemnation of NoticieroDigital.com; the somewhat-controversial blocking of access to some websites; and a government-led initiative of allegedly 30,000 youth meant as a counter-offensive to “imperialist messages” spread on social networks and blogs. (Though these 30,000 youth haven’t published a single blog post since April.)

However, compared to the Venezuelan government’s repression of opposition print and broadcast media, information can still flow relatively free online, and hopefully across the country’s debilitating partisan divide. I will be in Venezuela to give a presentation and workshop about digital media to effect social change. They are both part of Espacio Público’s second annual “Web 2.0: Ideas that Connect” conference.

Chicago

From Caracas I head to Chicago for British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020 meeting. Many thanks to Zadi for getting me involved. I’m looking forward to hanging out with old friends like Noel and meeting new ones like Trisha Wang and Raúl Ramírez.

The British Council was founded in 1934, between the two World Wars, and has been spreading the United Kingdom’s soft power ever since. It receives funding from the UK government, but most of its income actually comes from the English teaching classes and certification exams that it coordinates around the world. It’s mission, according to Wikipedia, is to “build mutually beneficial cultural and educational relationships between the United Kingdom and other countries, and increase appreciation of the United Kingdom’s creative ideas and achievements.” The UK is hardly alone in investing in cultural centers to spread its influence, culture, and language abroad. Germany has the Goethe-Institut. France has its Alliance Française. Spain has the Instituto Cervantes. And Italy has its Società Dante Alighieri.

But there are two new, interesting players in the field: China and India. Over the past five years China has nearly 300 Confucius Institutes in 88 countries to teach Chinese language and promote Chinese culture. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations has similarly established new cultural centers abroad and plans to launch many more. In fact, a center is planned to launch soon here in Mexico City. I highly recommend a two-part radio documentary from the BBC on how both countries plan to use these centers to increase their soft power around the world.

But back to the British Council. The Transatlantic Network 2020 grew out of a research study the British Council commissioned in early 2008 to better understand how Europeans and North Americans perceive one another. As far as research studies go, this one is a a pretty entertaining read.

• “46% of Europeans seeing the US as having a negative influence in the world today. This compares with just 20% of Americans seeing the EU’s influence as negative and 57% seeing it as positive.”
• “Europeans were also more likely to have strong negative stereotypes of Americans with 55% seeing Americans as being manipulative, 47% seeing them as selfish and 45% seeing them as aggressive. The most positive character trait Europeans saw in Americans was bold and daring (48%). American views of Europeans were rather more positive with 36% seeing Europeans as respectful; however 34% of Americans viewed all Europeans as snobbish.”
• “Despite the intervening ocean, Canadians and Americans tend to feel closer to most European countries than the latter do to each other.”
• “Several nationalities, including Americans, British, French, Germans and Europeans generally, are considered “keen consumers.” However, both the French and British are also seen to be particularly “snobbish,” while the Americans are considered “manipulative,” “bold” and “aggressive.” Of all the characteristics discussed, respondents around the world were least likely to think that Americans are “sensible,” “respectful” or “reliable.”

Acknowledging the cultural and perceptive rift between North America and Europe, the British Council created the Transatlantic Network 2020, with an inaugural summit in Ireland last year. Every year a new class of young leaders from North America and Europe is added to the network, and each year another summit is convened, its location alternating between Europe and North America. The hope is that these young leaders will discuss mutual problems, collaborate on projects, and help spread more transatlantic understanding.

The over-arching theme of the week-long meeting in Chicago is “Using Technology to Create Social Change,” a topic I just can’t seem to get away from. I will be part of the “immigration and integration” track. I’m curious to see how Chicago’s government and non-profits address its immigration and integration challenges. I think there will also be some fascinating conversations with the European members about the differences between American and European integration. The media has been covering the topic a lot over the past couple years, and the general rhetoric is that America is successful in its assimilation of immigrants while Europe has failed in its multicultural segregation. That idea was echoed over and over again in a recent New York Times profile of former Amsterdam Mayor, Job Cohen, “The Integrationist“:

Marcouch represents an interesting possibility for the European future — one that might mirror the American immigrant story in some ways — in which newcomers internalize the ways of their adopted land and apply them with an intensity that natives may have lost.

It’s true that many first-generation immigrants are the most patriotic of American citizens. And it’s an idea that appeals to me, but I have a feeling that our explorations through Chicago’s immigrant neighborhoods will reveal a city that is much more segregated and divided than a New York Times journalist living in Europe would like to admit.

Mexico

I’m getting settled in Mexico City, but it’s been more of a challenge than I had anticipated. It’s been six years since I last lived in Mexico. I had forgotten about its Kafkaesque bureaucracy, about my strong distaste for anyone who wields power from a rubber stamp. If all goes well then later today I will sign the contract for my new apartment in Condesa, a trendy Art Deco neighborhood that was once a racetrack and is now filled with old money and young expats. It’s a rather predictable neighborhood for someone like me to settle in. All the cool kids are moving west to Roma, but I don’t think I’m ready for the transnational-hipster-ethnic-class-gentrification conversations that are so central to living in places like Roma, Williamsburg, and downtown LA. For now I’ll enjoy Condesa’s leafy avenues, even if its means paying $2 for a morning coffee.

I haven’t had a chance to connect with old friends here yet or meet many new ones. And I have missed out on what seem like some pretty cool events. Really wanted to make it to Postopolis, but neither time nor energy were on my side. Saturday’s naked bike ride looks like it was a blast too.

So I’ll be back in two weeks to start my new job, watch the last six games of the World Cup, and do some photo-walking with De La who will be in town. Word.

“Global Voices is …” – A description of Global Voices, from the voices of the community itself. Filmed at the 2010 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile.

I have already said so many goodbyes that it is starting to feel like I’m dragging this on. But I realized that I have yet to mention my departure from Global Voices here in my own little carved-out corner of cyberspace. It has been five years since I first started working on Global Voices as the regional editor for Latin America and three years since we launched Rising Voices.

It has been the most amazing experience of my life …

I am staring at my computer screen, at a complete loss for words. There is just no way for me to articulate the meaningfulness of the friendships that have formed, the projects I have seen flourish, the small moments with so many inspiring and talented people all across this globe. I get choked up every time I wander down the path of nostalgia, every time I look through my pictures on Flickr, every time I read the overwhelmingly generous notes of support and incredible video messages I’ve received over the past few weeks.

It is enough to make me wonder if I’ve made a terrible decision. But in order to continue growing we sometimes need to step outside of where we are most comfortable to face new challenges with new groups.

What’s Next

In the past five years I haven’t spent more than three consecutive days offline. That hyper-connectivity has allowed me to maintain meaningful relationships around the world, but I think that it has also taken away part of my humanity; my ability to reflect, to appreciate art, to literally and figuratively disconnect. Starting tomorrow I will spend the next two weeks completely offline. No email, no web pages, nothing. Just a few books and my journal.

When I re-emerge next month I will begin the next chapter of my life. I will turn 30. I will be living in Mexico City, where I will attempt to forge a glocal life. I will be working with Open Society Institute’s Latin America and Information programs to help them think strategically about the use of technology by civil society in Latin America.

I’ll have much more to say about all of this come next month, but now it’s time for me to close this laptop and keep it closed. It’s time to hit the road.

Over the past few months I’ve read somewhere around 200 academic papers related to transparency, accountability, and e-governance. Over that time I’ve reached several conclusions, all of which I am documenting in a series of posts on Global Voices. But the conclusion that has determinedly raised its hand more than any other is this: graduate school corrupts effective communication.

This morning, in preparation for today’s post on parliamentary informatics websites, I re-read Arthur Edwards’ 2006 paper “Facilitating the monitorial voter: retrospective voter information websites in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.” It provides some useful context to a few case studies of voter information websites. But the 30-page paper should really be a three-paragraph blog post. Between those few paragraphs of helpful context, I have to suffer through pages and pages of paragraphs like this one:

According to institutional theories of political action, political actors make their choices within an institutional context of certain rules of conduct, codes of rights and duties, and methods constituting a ’logic of appropriateness’ (March and Olsen, 1996:252). A part of the institutional context of ICT design and usage in democratic practices is the political system (Hagen, 2000). Political institutions include formal and informal constitutional rules, including the electoral system, the party system and executive-legislative relationships. Against the backdrop of these political system properties, we can evaluate the ‘appropriateness’ of information-seeking by voters and choices made by the designers of political websites (see also: Hoff, 2000). In this section, I address the two dimensions of voters’ information needs and relate these to political system properties. What follows also serves as the basis for the selection of the cases.

In case you’re having a tough time deciphering just what Edwards is getting at, let me help: absolutely nothing. Or how about this for slurred obviousness:

The idea of responsiveness is captured in the cyberneticians’ classification of essential capabilities of a control system. Such a system requires instruments for effecting change in the state of the world (generally referred to as ‘effectors’) as well as ‘detectors’ for providing data about the state of the world. Transparency in its fullest sense thus requires that citizens be able to exert an influence on (to ‘control’) the way that public services are provided, based on their views or preferences about how they are provided, as well as knowing about the decisions that are made.

That comes “Transparency Mechanisms: Building Publicness into Public Services” by Lindsay Stirton and Martin Lodge.

Why, one might ask, can these highly educated individuals no longer write in standard English? And why does it take them so many words – and so many syllables – to make such simple observations? While I have no concrete evidence that Edwards, Stirton, and Lodge wrote with clarity before they enrolled in graduate school, my hypothesis is that there is a strong culture of calculated confusion in academia that deliberately isolates graduate students from The Real World.

I don’t know how to battle against the disease, or which noble warriors are waging the war, but perhaps a “Journal of Comprehensible Writing from Academics” could help highlight and celebrate the woefully under-represented examples of clarity and effective communication in academia?

Update: I realized that it’s in bad form – and even hypocritical – of me to only complain about poorly written scholarship without pointing to the good stuff. So, two examples of clearly written, well researched, and insightful papers about transparency:

• “The uncertain relationship between transparency and accountability” by Jonathan Fox
• “Corruption and the Watchdog Role of News Media” by Sheila S. Coronel

That’s all.

Nothing defines a road trip like its soundtrack. Tomorrow Alejandro is driving from Reno to Albuquerque and was in the market for some musical accompaniment. There are different types of road trip mixes, of course. Some are meant to wake you up, to inspire some air drumming on the steering wheel. Others are meant to rouse reflection, ideally as you pass through the vast expanse of nothingness from Death Valley National Park to the creeping condo hell of the outskirts of Las Vegas.

This one is the latter, a mellow mix that perhaps even dares the question, now what do I want to do with my life? De La, when you pass through Flagstaff don’t forget to drop in on Macy’s and give ‘em a wink for me.

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