Online Petitions

A colleague sent me a link to a Recall David Emerson Petition which got me thinking about online petition software. Can one set one up easily? Do they work? What are the ethical issues? How do you know you really have signatures? Here are some preliminary answers:

What sites offer online petition systems? I looked at three that seemed reasonable, PetitionOnline.com, iPetitions, and PetitionThem.com.
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Digital Pens, Again

About a year ago I posted a note about Digital Pens (Anoto, io2, and Fly). An old friend Terry Jones came across the entry and says this about his experience:

The paper is about $8 cdn delivered to your door so its expensive but compared to the cost of a tablet you can buy a LOT of paper.

The really cool thing I like about it is that each page is unique. So in my notebook when I update a page here and a page there and go back to this page and then crerate a new page etc… when I park the pen each of the documents I updated on paper gets updated online. There is also a timeline function in the viewer that lets me see when the various pieces of “ink” appeared on the pen page! I like to be able to write someone a note while I am working on their computer and then when I get back to the office I have a copy too (in the pen) even though I have left them the paper copy. I like the fact that on the subway I don’t feel like a total geek and a target writing on a tablet. I am just writing in a notebook with a pen that is only a little fatter than some modern pens. I like the fact that a notebook boots instantly so to jot down a quick reminder is NOT a 5 minute process of booting a tablet PC, making a note and shutting down.

I bought mine cheap on eBay ($51) and since then bought 3 more at around $60 on eBay and so far every person that has tested them out isn’t giving them back. They come back after a couple of office with their wallet instead of the pen… its been quite funny!

Terry, besides being organizing barefoot waterskiing competitions, is one of the most intuitive experts I have ever worked with. What he describes is ubiquitous computing the way it should be – not about what toys you show off or how you should change for technology, but developing technologies that fit our workstyles.

Turntablism: Radical Phonograph Effects

Katz, in chapter 6 of Capturing Sound writes about “The Turntable as Weapon” and how DJs battle each other making music by scratching older records. The art has been called Turntablism and it is a radical example of how a “phonograph effect” where a recording technology like the phonograph has effects on that which is records. In the case of turntablism, the phonograph has the radical effect of becoming an instrument for new music to be performed. See also BBC: History of Vinyl.

Ironically on the djbattles.com site they have a PDF on how to transcribe turntable moves – a system for scoring and annotating what is supposed to be a live and combative art.

Katz: Capturing Sound

I supervising a reading course with Sean Luyk on Music Technology where we read Capturing Sound by Mark Katz. Katz proposes a frame work for understanding what he calls “phonograph effects” which are the effects on music by technologies like the phonograph. The framework is built around the physicality of performance and looks at:

  • Portability: phonographs change how music can travel
  • (In)visibility: recording technology makes the performers invisible
  • Repeatability: phonograph records and later digital sampling allow a performance to be fixed so that it becomes canonical – repeatable – influencing even the original performer. Recording fixes performances and with sampling allows new music to be made out for samples
  • Temporality: technology changes the length of tunes as artists fit their music into the medium like the 10 inch 78-speed record that could hold a max of 3 minutes 15 seconds.
  • Manipulability: recording technologies then allow users to create new sounds manipulating recordings

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Jefferson on free ideas and light

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

This quote, from a letter by Jeffereson to Isaac McPherson, appears widely in discussions about copyright and technology. Interesting how it connects ideas, instruction and light (not to mention “tapers” or tapors.) See for example, LIBREria.org’s Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. I also came across it in Mark Katz’s Capturing Sound where he discusses MP3s and Napster-like technologies. (See page 163). Katz in turn finds it in an article by Barlow. In short, the image of lighting one taper from another provides a metaphor for “nonrivalrous resources” – resources where possession and consumption by one person doesn’t diminish access by another.
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Mental agility and video games

“The people who were video game players were better and faster performers,” said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. “Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best — particularly at the most difficult tasks.”

According to a story in The Globe and Mail on February 9th, 2006, research at York shows that playing video games has a similar effect on mental abilities as bilingualism. The story by Carolyn Abraham, Better living through video games?, is based on research by Professor Bialystok that will be published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Biology. The research looked at 100 university students in Toronto.

Prof. Bialystok suspects video gamers, like bilinguals, have a practised ability to block out information that is irrelevant to the task at hand.

This explains why my kids don’t hear me calling them for dinner.
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