Wikiscanner: Wikipedia Uncovered

Wiki scanner is a tool in Wikipedia that allows anyone to trace the edit of a post to an IP address, which identifies the location, and title of the person responsible for the edit. Wiki scanner creates an outlet for propaganda while at the same time erodes secrecy. Anyone who wishes to propagate his or her agenda can use Wikipedia as a free and easy PR outlet, but anyone can use Wiki scanner to trace edits by typing in either the organization or the page itself.

            Alexander Litvinenko: Who To believe? The poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko has captivated the imagination of many. The majority of whom reside outside of Russia. Litvinenko, a political refugee from Russia, was poisoned in Britain for speaking out against the Kremlin. That is the story you are likely to find in Britain and through out most of the uncensored world circuit. Just not in Russia. The Litvinenko story begins in Russia, but does not make it back.

            In the Litvinenko case, IP addresses can reveal whether the edits made came from England or Moscow. Formerly anonymous editors of Wikipedia may attempt to exhibit seemingly neutral perspectives by quoting sources as opposed to dictating what is true. Yet choosing whom to quote is where neutrality can truly be decided. The neutrality standard set by Wikipedia is not safe from those determined to purport their viewpoint.

            The Alexander Litvinenko chronology of events cannot rival the chronology of Wikipedia edits to follow. The separation of theories found at the top of the page from allegations at the bottom can provide insight into the political affiliation of the creator or editor of the page. In order to receive notification of any further changes made to a page, one need only click flag. Flagging is for the determined Wikipediaist. Just as alarm bells in nuclear facilities warn of intrusion, flags send the determined Wikipediast scurrying towards revision.

            There are 604 edits on the Alexander Litvinenko page. The camps of editors clamoring to Wiki edits can be divided into two camps. Those who support either the Russian or British government. The edits in the Litvinenko case range from the accessibility of plutonium, the similarity between Litvenko’s death and that of other Russian dissidents, to theories of suicide. Claims have even been made that Litvinenko was killed to weaken Putin’s reputation. Had I posted those exact words, it is quite possible that my use of the word even may no longer exist the next time I logged on.

            Yet I have a place to duke this one out. If I had clicked flag this page after my change, I would immediately be able to dispute my right to make that claim with the rivaling editor behind the change. The talk page is where Wikipedia editors can challenge each other’s ideas. They toss out allegations of relevance and unreliable sources. Accusations of pure bullshit are turned into polite little acronyms. Right or wrong Wikipedia is a double-edged sword of propaganda and loss of privacy, and Wiki scanner is an oasis for meddlers.   To see my own wikipedia edit click here 

What’s His is Mine: A Case Study in Creative Commons Theory

“All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.” It was this witty anecdote that led to the following discussion between Carlo and I, which led to this subsequent blog entry, which led to — what I believe — is a perfect microcosm example of how the Creative Commons theory should work.

This conversation was born as Carlo and I sat in the library over the weekend, working on our respective blog entries — me writing my Wikiscanner entry and him drafting his semi-late copyright page.

I had chosen to write about the controversial case of former Russian KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko. As the blog session dwindled on, Carlo mentioned a visit by a former co-worker to Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, as part of a side procrastination conversation we were having over the Iranian nuclear situation.

Getting back to my Litvinenko article, I began crafting up what I felt was a clever analogy relating Wikipedia flagging and the intrusion warning system at the Lawrence Livermore testing site Carlo had mentioned during our conversation.

As I opened the Litvinenko post, writing . . . “Just as the alarm bells in Lawrence Livermore National Labs warn of intrusion”, I paused and asked Carlo how I might fold in the nuclear lab anecdote about the warning system at Lawrence Livermore into the Wikiscanner article.

After a few back and forths, and some minor stylistic tweaks, I wrapped up my Litvinenko leade with the line . . . “flags send the determined Wikipediast scurrying towards revision.”

While still oblivious that Carlo was drafting his own blog post in response to the Creative Commons – intellectual property question, I asked him just how much credit did he believe he would be entitled to, if our collaboration on my Wikiscanner blog leade had been between two journalists working on a story.

Initially, he was adamant that he should not only be credited for informing me about that little tidbit regarding the alarm at Lawrence Livermore, but also for his contribution to my work — in the way that news stories often carry either a double-byline or a “contributed to” line.

Then it clicked. What had started as a conversation over a colorful anecdote for my Wiki scanner blog post had developed into a perfect microcosm of the intellectual property debate

A little background . . .

The furor over intellecutal property, as with many of the arguements surrounding digital communications, came about after technologial advances — particularly peer-to-peer file sharing techology — surpassed people’s comprhension of such leaps in technology.

Beginning with the landmark case between the P2P filsesharing service Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the question over who owns what once it hits the world wide web remains one that is not easily answered.

Back to the conversation . . .

As we talked, Carlo made the point that I would not have had the sentence I wanted for my Wiki scanner post if it had not been for his nuclear facility factoid.

That said, I reverted back to the Creative Commons standpoint that ideas and information should not be seen as proprietary, but as a shared available resource. Carlo on the other hand, argued that such proprietary rights can and should at least be acknowledged.

We concluded that if knowledge was never shared than there would be no such thing as a Beatles remix , for example, since the remix would never have been possible with out the original.

As that remixed iteration of an original Beatles song cannot claim to be a purely original song, Carlo could not pretend that my analogy between the warning system at Lawrence Livermore and the Wikiscanner flag system was a purely original idea without contribution from an outside source.

After some debate, we agreed to recognize each of our contributions to my Wikiscanner post, acknowledging it as a collaborative effort that we would each post up on our respective blogs.

So there you have it, a collaborative blog entry. Do you agree with the approach — information use with acknowledgement? As I said before, “All knowledge and ideas should be universal, unless of course it’s nuclear.”

Post script: We also agreed on the collaborative use of the word Wikipediaest. The extent of that discussion was whether it should be spelled with an e or an a. Jimmy Wales beware. Better check those boxes.

Google’s Illusion of Options

I am a sponge. I wake up to Google. . every morning as I groggily flip open my Mac, my world registers to me through Google news. My reality is absorbed through headlines. Google covers everything I need to know with millions of options and one screen to let me know what those options are. Google tells me what is important and what to focus on.

The information superhighway is dominated today by one search engine. Need to know something? First you will type Google and likely follow that up with Wikepedia. Satisfaction right? Google gives quick answers and embraces every curious inkling a person might have with just one click.

Google masks limited options with thousands of the same stories. People feel like they have a lot of choices when they are offered what they are led to believe is a wide variety of online news sources. The Internet brings more information to more people than any form of communication ever has. Forget newspapers, online is easier. Online news may be saving the environment, but at the cost of information monopolization.

I am given little incentive to look for other online sources because Google has everything covered. After seeing the main headline regarding the election campaigns, I am offered all 1482 articles on how Hilary is surpassing Obama by a long shot. But do I scroll down to read every source’s version of this message? Of course not, I already have the fix I need to feel sufficiently up to date with world events.

When it is time for me to reflect on the world I live in, I turn to Google. It is to most, myself included considered to be the ultimate search engine. I can find the most important events taking place both home and abroad just by glancing at one categorical page of headlines. The problem is that the majority of Internet users, myself included, gage their focus through the lens of a single search engine. What I understand to be of the most primary importance in the world, I had no decision in selecting.

Google reaches the world:

In what languages and regions is Google News available? 

We have more than 40 regional editions of Google News in many different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Each edition is specifically tailored with news for that audience, so just scroll down and select the appropriate one from the list if the edition you are reading isn’t right for you. If we haven’t included the region or language you’re looking for, check back soon. Our goal is to offer Google News to all of our users throughout the world, so you can expect to see lots of additions over time.

Africa: South Africa
Asia: 中国版 (China) – 香港版 (Hong Kong) – भारत (Hindi) – India – 日本 (Japan) – 한국 (Korea) – 台灣版 (Taiwan) – ישראל (Israel) – العالم العربي (Arabic) – Россия (Russia)
Oceania: Australia – New Zealand
Europe: België – Belgique – Deutschland – España – France – Greece – Ireland – Italia – Nederland – Norge – Österreich – Portugal – Schweiz – Suisse – Sverige – U.K.
North America: Canada English – Canada Français – Estados Unidos – México – U.S.
South America: Argentina – Brasil – Chile – Colombia – Cuba – Perú – Venezuela

There will always be unknowns but Dylan Avery is not satisfied with that

You tube hit extraordinaire, Loose Change is a documentary based on Dylan Avery’s alternative account of 9/11. Loose Change derives it’s power to persuade a post 9/11frazzled audience by doing what a lot of conspiracies do, which is to take already acknowledged facts/half truths and use them to justify a theoretical interpretation of events. After being taught how to identify what I already know is a black box, I am meant to presume that Dylan Avery will keep on furthering my education as the film drags on.

The question I want answers to the most is not whether or not secret voice mimicking technology was used to stage phone calls from passengers on flight 93. The question I wanted to get to the bottom of while watching Loose Change is why people love conspiracy theories.

The word conspiracy alone denotes an instinctual grin and a shrug. I cannot pinpoint why I am so quick to dismiss the countless theories in opposition to the official government account of 9/11. Maybe because it is more time efficient for me to shrug my shoulders than it is to Google every little tidbit put forth on You tube as to what might have actually happened.

I have come to the conclusion that what keeps conspiracies alive is the fact that people simply like to be in on something. There is some kinda joy in rewriting history and turning fact into fiction that just might have an element of remaining fact. While both Avery’s and the U.S. government’s accounts of 9/11 should come under equal fire- its just fun to be starting the small ones.

Yet in the end, when it comes to blowing up major infrastructure and killing thousands of citizens, that many people just can’t keep a secret.

Wanna be a dissident?

You wanna be a dissident? O.k. Start saving. Find transportation to one of the few Internet cafes that are available in the capital city of Ashgabat. Now give the government-tasked guards at the door your identification before logging online. Alright its time to voice your thoughts and express yourself to the world.

Go ahead, speak your mind. Think about where you gained the knowledge, thoughts and ideas to speak of your dissatisfactions. Your local school? News that seems to have holes in it? The information available from which to rebel is what is made available. There is no independent media.

Turkmenistan is not a place to Google anything. Turkmenistan is a country where the few who are fortunate enough to have access to the internet must proceed with caution and use it carefully. For the usual reasons of- politics, power, security concerns and social norms, Internet usage is restricted to approved organizations, accredited foreign journalists and embassies.

Visitors to Turkmenistan must register with government administrators in order to log online, but even then they can only pull up websites with favorable views of the Turkmenistan government. Less than 1% of Turkmen citizens are surfing the web and those who are do so under the watchful eye of government. There is no home connection. Some argue that Turkmenistan cannot make the claim of being a country with access to the internet if the majority of the population cannot afford it.

In light of the strict monitoring of online activity, major news organizations such as The New York Times, BBC and CNN have managed to remain available in a country where access to the Internet is a scarce resource and the struggle for a true world wide web remains to be seen.

Finding your true taste- free from media intrusion is just one click away

Online marketing allows everyone to spend more (seemingly less) money, talk to less people in their local community and embrace the same unique identity alone in their room like everyone else. Retailers, unrestricted by the traditional boundaries of supply and demand are selling unique identities to the mass public, one song at a time.

Sitting at home on my computer I can find long lost obscure LP’s and movies that only I liked and that everyone else took off their shelves years ago; live Blue Oyster Cult albums, forgotten films from the eighties such as ‘The Adventures of Barron Munchausen’, the list goes on. The problem is- for reasons of time and money that the list goes on and on and on. Once satisfied with my purchase I will glance to the side or scroll down the screen to be told by savvy marketing retailers that if I liked Blue Oyster Cult than maybe I will also like the Traveling Wilburys, also out of stock at mainstream music stores. The problem is that I love the Traveling Wilburys.

The dilemma that I face, as I sit hunched over my Apple laptop (the latest one) till the wee hours of the morning, is that even though I am not being forced to drive to the store and wander the aisles until I locate an album by the band ‘In a Big Country’, a band once only familiar to those who had drivers licenses in the 80’s, and even though I will not have to lie in bed and get up to skip every song until the song I bought the album for comes on, I am still going to purchase that song online, only to spend another hour going through the 80’s ‘basic hits’ until I get to the complete collection followed by the ‘deep cuts’ that have not been on the radio in 20 years.

If you equate the time that I would have spent driving to and wandering the store versus the time I would have to spend and will spend holing up in my apartment with my I-Tunes, the equation may initially seem the same. But in the long run, my I-Tunes will be my only companion and the people that I had once exchanged the “ Hey, do you know where I can find the Electric Light Orchestra’s Time album – oh you love them too” type conversations, have now been reduced to power searches and sifting through a faceless strangers favorite songs from their Saturday night spent on My Space compilation.

Now lets talk finances. So I didn’t buy a few mistaken bad Tom Petty albums until I found the Traveling Wilburys, I still spent 30 bucks on other people’s collections of obscure, once marginalized hits.

Online mass marketing allows people, many of them, to feel unique and composed of their own special needs separate from television and radio. I-Tunes and Amazon love their bohemian hopefuls and embrace every single person’s unique identity by aiding them in their search for once obscure products which will lead them to newfound perspectives. Companies indulge consumer’s fresh identities by telling everyone who liked Peter Reich’s novel ‘Book of Dreams’, that they may also like Michael Creighton’s latest ‘unheard of’ bestseller. The consumer may then end up being led to purchase ‘Cloud busting’ a song by Kate Bush based on Reich’s novel. These links have no end.

In the end I am faced with the question of whether or not to drown in my capitalist woes, or indulge in my (expensive) bohemian outlets?

( For the record I would like to note that when running spell check through my Microsoft Word, amazon was changed to Amazon and my misspelling of Michael Creighton’s last name was also corrected for.)