日曜日, 11月 12, 2006

Environmental Groups

Following are some of the major environmental groups around the world.
  • Earth First
  • Global Resourece Action Center for the Environment
  • Friends of the Earth
  • Greenpeace International
  • National Geographic Society
  • Internationa Society for Environmental Ethics
  • Scientific Commitee on Problems of the Environment
  • Environmental Investigation Agency
  • Project Earth
  • World Wildlif Fund

Guidelines for Comments

This homepage welcomes your comments as a means of sharing your experiences, knowledge and suggestions to maintain and improve the homepage.
To keep the homepage focused, comment guidelines are set as below.
  • Do be friendly. Any language that is taken to be flaming,offensive, insulting, or personal attack is not allowed.
  • Do be original. Write things that no one has already explained or commented on.
  • Do cite the references of sources clearly. This homepage obeys the law of the intellectual property rights.
  • Do comment concisely and clearly. Time and space is valuable for you and other readers.
  • Do stay on topic. Any comment not related to the environmental issue will not be posted.
  • Do not sell products. Anything related to commercial activity will not be allowed.
This homepage is moderated and all comments are reviewed before being posted. Negative or contrary opinions are welcome as long as they don’t violate the common rules of netiquette.

金曜日, 11月 10, 2006

IE Home Page: Part Three

I have posted the last part of the IE posts on Xanga.

日曜日, 11月 05, 2006

IE Home Page: Part Two

The endangered primates in Brazil tropical rainforests One of the leading causes of rainforest destruction is logging. Research has found that the number of species found in logged rainforest is much lower than the number found in untouched primary rainforest. The destruction of the tropical rainforests is depriving many animals’ homes. Primates, humanity’s closest kindred, are also being endangered. Take Brazil rainforest for example, at least 7 primates are in danger of extinction。The post is made based on the information on Animal Info - Information on Endangered Mammals, <http://www.animalinfo.org/country/brazil.htm>.

How to be a Great Host

Having a motive, preparing a place, inviting a group of friends, sharing a good time, booking next getting together, and no troublemaker coming is the process of a successful party, which depends on work of host. The author, Gladding, smartly compared a community network as a party in his “how to be a great host” and gives advice for how to make a good community.

We should make our homepage decent that suit the context of our community and the registration to the community should not be intensive so that everyone can easily participate. After the preparation is done well, we start inviting guests. Once people are here, we should be a friendly host, make guests feel welcome and introduce guests to each other, and always provide fresh conversations. To make the community have a proper direction, we can make some rules and write the rules clearly and simply. To keep the guest interested, we must supply a great deal of unique content, update on a regular basis and respond to the comments of the guests. When the community grows, we can ask for some members to be co-moderators to draw their attention and to encourage them to exert their energy.

In conclusion, the community is a place to share information, to get acquainted with people, and to create deep friendship with each other. As the community network grows, three characteristics: complexity, challenges and attractions accompanies. We should make effort to activate and make the community enjoyable.

土曜日, 11月 04, 2006

Revised: Summary of Kahn and Kellner (p.183-185, p.190-198)

Summary
Authors introduced the background and present states of online communities and internet activism, and retheorized on “virtually democratic of internet” from a standpoint that is both critical and reconstructive. The occurrence and development of online communities are induced and supported by a variety of groups and movements, which can be mainstream and/or oppositional, reactionary and/or democratic, global and/or local. Especially different opinions and polices circling the Terror war in 2001 have encouraged the technopolitics. Internet has played a great role in “globalization-from-below.” Internet activism has a positive effect in propagating oppositional ideas, defending social justice, equality, civil liberties, universal human right, and a healthy planet, but it should not ignored that “hacking” can be utilized by terrorists and criminals in every area of politics, economy, military. Blogs and Wikis are two successful cases in online community. Blogs is relatively easy to create and maintain even for nontechnical web users. Wikipedia, a free, globally collaborative encyclopedia project has grown to include approximately 162000 always-evolving articles in English and the database grows with each passing day.
Reaction
Everything has two sides. For example, automobile is the most important traffic tool, but many people are killed in traffic accidents; atomic energy is a huge source of energy, but atomic bomb can extinct the whole earth. Similarly, internet, one of the biggest achievements in technology, has brought human great benefits, making communication faster, but misuse of the Internet can result in a fatal shock to the internet community.
Globalization-from-below is a new combined word, and was a new concept for me, which is contrary to the combined word: globalization-from-above. Globalization from below and above are two different powers. If the two powers are one direction, additional effects can occur, if the two powers are different direction, antagonism will occur. Therefore cooperating the two forces is a great challenge to human civilization and intelligence.

Revised: Summary and Personal Reaction to "Six Degrees of Separation" (Barabasi p 25-35)

Summary
Six degrees of separation is a theory that any two people on Earth are connected to each other through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries. The hypothesis was first proposed in1929 by a Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes in a short story called “Chains”, and was first confirmed in 1967 by a Harvard professor Stanley Milgram. Milgram performed experiment by sending letters to randomly chosen people to find out the distance between any two people in US. The result was that the median number of intermediate person is 5.5. To find out how many links are between webs, Barabasi’s group conducted experiment to obtain the data that any two documents is on average nineteen clicks away from each other. Barabasi emphasized that small separations are common in almost every network, by giving the examples that species in food web are separated by 2 links; molecules in the cell are separated on average by 3 chemical reactions; scientists in different fields of science are separated by 4 - 6 co-authorship links; neurons in the brain are separated by 14 synapses. Barabasi also used mathematical formula to verify the small separation in networks.

Reaction
It is surprising to know that the medium between any two persons is only six people. This is a very important idea or theory. The positive side of the "small world" is that “every person is a new door opening up into other worlds”. The negative side of it is that confidential information could easily be spread and misused. Making friends as many as possible is broadening a person’s view and possibility. However, we should also be aware to protect ourselves from damage of losing privacy in the modern network times.

My issue in the Theme Writing class is about HIV. AIDS is one of the most serious health and social problems in the world today. The latest statistics on the world epidemic of AIDS and HIV shows that 38.6 million people are living with HIV, 4.1 million became newly infected with HIV and 2.8 million people died of AIDS in 2005. I think that the theory of “six degrees of separation” can partly explain the rapid spread of the infection. Moreover this theory reminds people that the spread of epidemics is much faster than we think.
Also we are trying to send our sticky message now. Based on the theory, if I send message to 10 people and assume that they send it to 10 other people, repeating this for 6 times, we get 10^7 (10 million) people. Therefore I got confident in the IE project. My sticky message is to protect the environment, which is very important for everybody. So I think it can be understood and accepted by many people and be spread widely.

日曜日, 10月 29, 2006

IE Home Page: Part One

Topical rainforest is one of the biomes on earth which covers 6% of the land surface. More than 50% of all the world's plant and animal species live there. On one tree in Peru Amazon, the number of ant species is 43, which is equivalent to the species of ants found in Britain. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of earth's oxygen, soak in carbon dioxide, and help to maintain global weather patterns and precipitation. However, due to human impact, tropical rainforest is disappearing at an astonishing speed. The most severe threat to the rainforest is human intervention for timber, grazing land and agriculture. From year 1990 to 2000, 142,000 km2 of tropical rainforests had been lost, which is equivalent to 5000-8000 m2 every minute of trees being cut. If this goes on, rainforests would disappear in 40 years. We have to stop destroying forests and depriving animal's home.
----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:----:--
I am working on making a series of posts on my IE homepage, Xanga. Due to over deforest, many animals have lost their places to live. Therefore my sticky message will begin with the presentation of a picture, titled "Where is our home?". I posted my research and visual picture on Xanga as above.

My Xanga home page URL is http://www.xanga.com/MichelleHu.

金曜日, 10月 27, 2006

Social Software for IE

I am going to use Mixi, one of the SNS sites in Japan, for my IE homepage.

<Explanation from Wikipedia>
Users can send and receive messages, write in a diary, read and comment on others' diaries, organize and join communities and invite their friends.There are more than 4 million members and 490,000 communities. (May 2006)
・A community is a place for people to share their opinions through an online forum and a way to express tastes and hobbies.
・A footprint ashiato (足あと, ashiato) is a function that allows a user to see who has visited their page.
・mixi is an invitation-only service, meaning that one can only join via an invitation from a current member of the service. However, once invited, membership is free and open to anyone over 18.
・The word mixi is a combination of mix and I, referring to the idea that the user, "I", "mixes" with other users through the service.

月曜日, 10月 23, 2006

Issue Entrepreneurship Framework

1. Identify developing issues
I will send out the message: “protect the environment.” Even though human has become the most powerful resident on earth, we are only one of 1.4 million identified animal species living on the planet. From invertebrate to vertebrate to homo sapience, various organisms coexisted for more than 20,000 years. But the balance among lives is being destroyed by the unstopping increase of human population and activity. In this IE, I will focus on the present state of tropical rain forest destruction to send an alarm on the environment crisis due to human impact. I will suggest saving paper to stop the destruction of forests.

2. Research and analyze issues
Topical rainforest is one of the biomes on earth which covers 6% of the land surface. More than 50% of all the world's plant and animal species live there. On one tree in Peru Amazon, the number of ant species is 43, which is equivalent to the species of ants found in Britain. Tropical rainforests produce 40% of earth's oxygen, soak in carbon dioxide, and help to maintain global weather patterns and precipitation. However, due to human impact, tropical rainforest is disappearing at an astonishing speed. The most severe threat to the rainforest is human intervention for timber, grazing land and agriculture. From year 1990 to 2000, 142,000 km2 of tropical rainforests had been lost, which is equivalent to 5000-8000 m2 every minute of trees being cut. If this goes on, rainforests would disappear in 40 years.

3. Stake out a public position - your sticky message
My sticky message is "Protect the Environment." My focus will be on saving and recycling paper. I spread the message targeting on young people especially students who are one of the biggest consumers of paper.

4. Build social network
My organizational base is my friends, classmates and relatives. I will send E-mail through both computer and cell phone to friends at ICU and friends from elementary to high school. I will send E-mail by computer to my relatives who live in different parts of the world. Therefore my message will be spread to five countries, Japan, China, USA, Canada and France, through four different languages. In addition SNS called Mixi and the class blog will be my organizational base, so that more people can receive my message.

5. IE homepage: Stake out a personal public presence
I will make a poster by Gliffy writing my message and background information. I will post this on the class blog and Mixi. Also, I will send the poster with my blog URL by computer email. I will send the URL of my Gliffy poster with the URL of my blog to cell phones through mailing list. In order to connect me and nodes, nodes to nodes, I will make a “commenting space” on my blog to invite the readers to react on this issue and to encourage their interaction with each other as well.

日曜日, 10月 22, 2006

Revised: Summary and Personal Reaction to "Linked" (Barabasi p 1-8)

Summary

In the book, Barabasi mentions the importance and powerfulness of networks. He compares MafiaBoy, a fifteen-year-old boy who hacked the Internet, with Paul, a clergyman who spread Christianity to the Western world. Even though, the former being a destroyer and the latter a builder, there is one significant common feature in their actions: the effective use of networks. Their success in giving a large influence to the world was due to the existence of strong interconnectedness among people. Barabasi writes that all networks surprisingly have an underlying order and follow simple laws. Scientists are mapping networks in a wide range of scientific disciplines, proving that social networks, companies, and cells are more similar than they are different, and providing new insights into the interconnected world around us. Barabasi criticizes reductionism that divides the whole into combination of simple parts. Because everything is linked to everything else, nothing happens in isolation. In order to understand a phenomenon as a whole, we must pay attention to all the connection it has. Barabasi’s sticky message in this chapter is “think networks.”

Reaction

Barabasi writes, “The challenges doctors face when they attempt to cure a disease by focusing on a single molecule or gene, disregarding the complex interconnectedness of living matter."

According to Western medicine, human body is defined as a system consisted of different organs, which are composed of different tissues and cells. Western cure focuses on organ, tissue, cell, even a bio-molecule, which is the concept of dividing a whole into small pieces. The treatment policy is based on targeting directly at the point of disease by giving drugs or performing operation. Usually such treatments are harmful to other parts of body because of the ignorance of the fact that human body is a system just like a network.

In the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), human body is considered to be a part of nature based on a number of philosophical frameworks including the theory of yin-yang and the five elements refering to wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Therefore, diagnosis and treatment are conducted with reference to the above concepts, and interrelationship beteen human body and environment are emphasyzed. Chinese medicine focuses on the balance and connection among organs and tissues. A dose of Chinese medicine is usually composed of more than 20 herbs, which contains hundreds even thousands of chemical components. Even though most of the components are unknown, the Chinese medicine is proved to be effective by the practice of more than 2000 years and by the modern technology of sciences.

In conclusion, the two medical systems, Western medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, have a different view on human body. The former focuses on parts of body, whereas the latter focuses on the network linking human body and natural environments.

金曜日, 10月 20, 2006

月曜日, 10月 16, 2006

Answer to Questions: Agre, p. 201, pp. 211-214

1. What is the central problem for citizens in democracies?
The central problem is finding out in what ways can a citizen's voice be heard among millions of people and participate successfully in a society .

2. What skills do citizens need?
The skills needed are to build social capital and participate in collective production and circulation of political arguments. Also it is important for citizens to associate themselves with issues.

3. What term does the author use to describe the process citizens use to promote their concerns about an issue?
The author writes that citizens could make it in "entrepreneurial fashion by identifying issues that are coming to prominence, researching and analyzing them, staking out public positions on them, and building social networks of other citizens who have associated themselves with related issues, especially those whose positions are ideologically compatible."

4. What steps are the four steps in this process?
The process has four dimensions which are
・Vertical dimension: a person staking out an issue on the national level will connect with people who stake out the same issue on global or the regional level
・Geographic dimension: a person staking out issue in a given geographic jurisdiction will connect with their counterparts in other jurisdictions
・Institutional dimension: a person staking out an issue within one institutional context will connect with those who stake out the same issue in other institutions
・Ideological dimension: a person staking out ideologically related positions on different issues in similar institutional locations will connect with on another
The four dimensions are definite network stucture and requires a large number of particular negotiations and a great deal of issue-by-issue coalition- building stabilized by ideology.

Write two of your own questions on the ideas and issues raised in this section. Lead a class discussion next session.

5. By making what kind of attempt do you think your voice can be heard in the society?

6. The author wrote that "individuals can stake out issues and build political networks with in their professions, their churches, their unions, their industries, or their political organizations." Where will you begin with to build your networks and how will you do that?

7. Based on the ideas and issues raised on these pages, what additions, deletions, or modifications suggest themselves to you in planning and implementing your Issue Entrepreneurship? Tell about your ideas.

As the author stated in the last paragraph, "democratic republicanism is a stroy not of perfection but of progess" reminded me that the attempt to spread an issue through my network is taking a part in the democratic community and offer some influence even if it is just a little bit of change I can make. Therefore, I will try to propagate my message by as much ways as I can think of and through as much net work as I can make.

Mapping My IE Network


I have decided my sticky message to be "Protect the Environment." My focus will be on saving and recycling paper. I will spread this idea in the slogan of "Save one piece of paper from you and me!"



I will try to spread the message to as many people as possible, especially targeting on young people. Therefore, I have chosen several major pathways to propagate my idea by the means of E-mail, cell phone, and oral.

・Spread the message to ICU students beginning by using the mailing list of ELP section, Karate club, Social dance club, and biology major, and ask them to spread to their friends by the network they have

・ Spread the message to my friends from elementary, junior high, and high school, by sending e-mail to elementary friends, posting on the junior high school homepage we have, sending e-mail to high school classmates by mailing list

・Ask my parents, who are teachers in university, to spread the message to their students

・Ask my grandfather, who is a professor in China, to spread the message to his graduate students

・Ask my aunt, who is a teacher in college in Beijing, to spread the message to her students and colleagues

・Ask my cousins, who are university students in France, Canada, US, and China, respectively, to spread the message to their friends

・Post the message on SNS called Mixi and ask my friends to access to my blog and if possible post the slogan on their homepages as well.



Finally, because I will use 3 languages to propagate my message and my relatives will use the language of the country they live in, the message will be spread in 4 different languages (Japanese, Chinese, French, and English ) that hopefully will have impact on many people around the world.

金曜日, 10月 06, 2006

Summary of Kahn and Kellner (p.183-185, p.190-198)

The book talks about how online communities can promote democracy and social justice on local and global scale. For example, during the Iraq War, political groups such as MoveOn and A.N.S.W.E.R used Internet to circulate antiwar information and promoted a global antiwar activities. The public demonstration of millions of people calling for peace on February15, 2003 awakened us to realize that the Internet has become a new tool for democracy.
The online community has enabled people who are interested in politics and culture to participate and exchange ideas. The development of this new media is reconfiguring politics and culture and promoting participatory democratic politics in everyday life.

日曜日, 10月 01, 2006

Answers to Barabasi: The Sixth Link pp25-35

1.What is the principle of six degrees of separation? What number of social links does any one person need to be connected to global society?

The principle of six degrees of separation is that despite our society's enormous size, it can easily be navigate by following social links from one person to another. Being connected to global society requires barely more than one social link per person.


2.How is the fabric of society today different from pre-internet society?

It is different in that we can get more information and get them quicker.


3. How many more links separate any pair of web pages compared to people in society? What can explain the difference?

Web pages are separated by nineteen links whereas people are separated by six links. This is because web pages have access to links connected to the same topic.


4. So far, what ranges of separation have network scientists discovered in different kinds of networks?

They have discovered that species in food webs are two links away from each other, molecules in the cells are separated on three chemical reactions, scientists in different fields of science are separated by four to six co authorship links and that the neurons in the brain of the C. elegans worm are separated by fourteen synapses.


5. What does research suggest about the fundamentals of networks?

The research used mathematical formula to suggest that average separation is very sort in most networks.


6. What is your estimate of your personal number of connections to society? What connections are your strongest?

My strongest connection would be with university students. Most of my friends are students, including people in other countries as well.

火曜日, 9月 26, 2006

Reply to Mio's Issue Entrepreneurship

I agree with Mio's point that English education should be started from primary school. As with language I think that it is "the earlier the better."

Posting Mio's message in the web pages related to education is a good idea. May be Mio could also post on web pages that parents are likely to see, so that they could ask schools and the government to start English education earlier.

金曜日, 9月 22, 2006

Issue Entrepreneurship

What is your sticky message?
-Things related to environmental issues

Who is your strategic social group?
-Mainly university students

How will work to create your organisation base?
-I will post my message on popular SNS widely used by students, such as mixi

Summary and Personal Reaction to "Linked" (Barabasi p 25-35)

Summary
Frigyes Karinthy was the first person to give the perspective that "people are linked by at most five links" and this lead to the concept known as "six degrees of separation" today. In 1967, Stanley Milgram set out an experiment to find out the distance between any two people in the USA and came to the result that people are separated by 5.5 people. Through this experiment he gave out the message that "our world is small because society is a very dense web" and that the social links among people are quite tight.
To find out how many degrees are between webs, Barabasi worked with Reka Albert and Hawoong Jeong to reach the answer that any document is on average only nineteen clicks away from any other.

Personal Reaction
It is surprising to know that the medium between any two person are only six people. Although there could be exceptions because Milgram based the result only on 42 cases, the idea of finding out the distance between two strangers is very interesting. It is easier to think that the medium between webs are nineteen because every web sites has numerous and various links to other sites.

水曜日, 9月 20, 2006

Reply to Takako's Personal Reaction

I too thought the reading was very interesting by comparing such different people-Paul and MafiaBoy, one being a builder and the other a destroyer, one is contributing to the world and the other committing crime.
Also I agree with you that we are living a world connected by many links yet we hardly realize or pay attention to these networks. Without these networks we could not do anything. Everything we have today, from food to schools, is contributed by many different connections among people. Perhaps we really should have better knowledge and pay more attention to the networks we are in.

火曜日, 9月 19, 2006

Reply to Emi's Summary

I think Emi 's summary was clearly written. Also Emi ended by writing "The aim of this book is getting you to think networks, and step out the box of reductionism and explore" which gives reader an overview of the book and know what information to expect from the book.

月曜日, 9月 18, 2006

Summary and Personal Reaction to "Linked" (Barabasi p 1-8)

Summary
In the year 2000, Yahoo's computer system was attacked by a fifteen year old boy, the MafiaBoy. Instead of serving customers flocking the Internet search engine, the computers in Yahoo's headquarters of Santa Clara was busy responding to the message "Yes, I heard you " sent by scripted computer language. Two thousand years ago from the MafiaBoy, Paul was using theology and social networks effectively to spread the Christianity to the world. There is one common thing in the two seemingly different men: they were "masters of the network." MafiaBoy took over the network of computers and Paul utilized the social and religious links of that time. They were successful because we live in a world of interrelatedness.

Personal Reaction
It is interesting to compare MafiaBoy and Paul even though one is a destroyer and the other is a builder. MafiaBoy became the master of the network taking only one day, whereas Paul accomplished the network taking his whole life.

日曜日, 9月 17, 2006

Techno-Biography

I am joining the SNS(social network service) called mixi. I use the e-mail service in it and read my friends' blogs.