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The Death of Mr Practical: The Practical man and Globalisation

(An article I wrote in 1995 and published on my blog in 2003…follows from the previous post)

There is a prevailing historical connection between Australia’s colonial experience and our dominant intellectual tradition. Throughout the nation’s short history of settlement, most of our leading intellectuals and rulers have displayed a certain ‘practicality’ that is an Australian adaptation of a British creation. This practicality disguises its hegemony through the doctrines of ‘commonsense’ and ‘factual truth’. Practical thinking has its roots in a form of Utilitarianism that is perpetuated by and primarily beneficial to a powerful Anglo elite (link)


Soap Box Project

This project led by Dr Sally Young at the University of Melbourne will be of interest to those who wish to understand the history of political advertising in Australia.

Politicians and members of the public would once stand atop a soapbox in order to shout their message across to an audience. Now they use a wide range of media including TV ads, social networking websites and all manner of radio and television appearances. This website will harness a range of materials ─ including photographs, texts of speeches, transcripts of debates and political ads ─ to allow visitors to see (and assess) how Australian political actors communicate.

Election campaigns are usually focused on the short-term – the hectic 3 to 6 weeks of the formal election campaign. This website instead allows you to see elections as a continuum; to look back over time to see what the parties and their leaders have said (and promised) in the past. The website includes material dating back over a hundred years so that visitors can recall recent campaigns or compare current events with historical ones (link).


Shoreditch and Brick Lane under threat


Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference: Second Call For Papers

Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference: Second Call For Papers

Hosted by the New Political Communication Unit, Department of Politics
and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London.
http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk

April 17-18, 2008.

http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/politics-web-2-0-conference/

Second call for papers

Has there been a shift in political use of the Internet and digital new
media - a new Web 2.0 politics based on participatory values? How do
broader social, cultural, and economic shifts towards Web 2.0 impact, if
at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the
communication of politics and policy? Does Web 2.0 hinder or help
democratic citizenship? This conference provides an opportunity for
researchers to share and debate perspectives.

Read the rest of this entry »


The World Universities Forum

13 October 2007 is the proposal deadline in the call for papers for the:

The World Universities Forum
Davos, Switzerland, 31 January to 2 February 2008
http://universitiesforum.com

The World Universities Forum was created in the belief that academe must better engage today’s most crucial questions, and that higher education itself must be included as part of the wider discussion of global change. The Forum encourages the participation of university executives, administrators, scholars and research students, as well as journalists, policy makers, business and political leaders, and others who understand that the importance of the university extends well beyond campus.

All presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed Journal of the World Universities Forum. If you are unable to attend the Forum in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for review and possible publication in the Journal, and provide access to the online edition of the Journal.

To submit your proposal, please visit the Submit Proposal link on the Forum website http://universitiesforum.com

We look forward to receiving your proposals and hope you will be able to join us in Davos in January 2008.

Yours Sincerely,

Professor Fazal Rizvi
Department of Educational Policy Studies
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois, USA
For: The International Advisory Board of the World Universities Forum


Online Democratic Deliberation in a Time of Information Abundance

This article of mine recently appeared in the journal, Fast Capitalism.

The intensified use of the Internet by civil society groups and governments for political purposes has left many questions unexplained—especially in terms of the Internet’s effects upon deliberative democratic processes. The Internet was first imagined as a means to revitalize deliberative processes. However, poor design and lack of usability research meant that many ambitions went largely unrealized. With a new wave of Internet technologies, ‘deliberative design’ has become even more important to stem what many claim is a trend towards political fragmentation and disaggregation. In a time of ‘information abundance’ mounting political communication online may also undermine collectivist, deliberative democratic processes, distinct from the ambition to renew these processes. There is therefore a pressing need to design Internet technologies that serve deliberative democracy, rather than unwittingly undermine it (link)


Pollies embrace Google for the ‘e-election’

From the Melbourne Age

John Howard says the internet is “not some sort of gimmick” and has invited voters to have a conversation with him on YouTube.

Peter Garrett believes the web will play a “really really critical role” in the upcoming election, which Joe Hockey has dubbed the “e-election campaign”.

The Prime Minister, opposition environment spokesman and Workplace Relations Minister broadcasted the comments over YouTube this morning in glowing endorsements of Google’s new federal election website. (link)


Only one party’s in the game for attention in cyberspace

From the Melbourne Age

Kevin Rudd has a genuine presence on the web. The Coalition seems to be lagging, writes Catherine Deveny.

LET’S be honest here, it’s a bit hard to sex up Kevin Rudd. Sure, he’s probably a good bloke. Actually, he must be a good bloke seeing that Howard and his mates have done their best to dig up dirt on him, and all they found out is that he speaks Chinese. The H Team kept opening closets hoping skeletons would fall out and all they found were doilies, neatly folded linen and a tea towel that read “WANDILIGONG! IT’S ABORIGINAL FOR PARTY!” (link)


Australian Conservatives give MySpace a wide berth

From the Melbourne Age. And Ironic considering that MySpace is owned by the biggest Australian Conservative of them all.

The Federal Liberal Party appears to be snubbing MySpace, after the social network publicly criticised the Liberals’ response to its new Impact political channel.

The channel - which MySpace says facilitates direct communication between politicians, non-profit organisations and voters - officially launched last Thursday, with profiles for 20 individual politicians.

It is understood the Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to create his own profile page because he did not want to lend his identity to a commercial organisation. (link)


The world’s most hated blogger

The man known on the internet as “the world’s most hated blogger” is cooling his heels at an undisclosed location near Sydney, working on a way to climb back out of the very deep hole he now finds himself in (link)

From the Melbourne Age


Wolfenden50: Sex/Life/Politics in the British World 1945-1969

2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Wolfenden Report, a British government inquiry into homosexuality and prostitution which profoundly shaped public debate on the regulation of these sexualities (and others), in Britain and beyond.Most famously, the Report recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private ought not to be an offence and 2007 also marks the fortieth anniversary of the passage of this recommendation into law in the Sexual Offences Act of 1967.This seems like a suitable moment to look at the ways in which minority/deviant/ marginalised/vilified/ sexualities have been lived, understood, regulated and constructed in the post-War period, and to that end a conference is being held at King’s College in London in June 2007 (link).


Statement from The Russell Group on UCU motion on Israeli boycott

The Russell Group of the UK’s research-intensive universities today (Wednesday 30 May) strongly condemned the motion passed by the University and College Union for branches to debate the Israeli boycott.
Professor Malcolm Grant, Chairman of the Russell Group and President and Provost of UCL, said: ‘We reject outright the call for an academic boycott. It is a contradiction in terms and in direct conflict with the mission of a university. It betrays a misunderstanding of the academic mission which is founded squarely on freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech. Any institution worthy of the title of university has the responsibility to protect these values, and it is particularly disturbing to find an academic union attacking academic freedom in this way (link).


The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

This year is the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire. There are a lot of exhibitions and events taking place around London at the moment. Here is a timely new resources from the Arts and Humanities Data Service (btw. this is just the database files you download).

The database is freely downloadable from the AHDS.

The trans-Atlantic slave trade remains a major field of academic enquiry and public interest. This new database of over 34,000 slaving voyages is the largest single resource of information available for the study of pre-colonial African history and a major asset for the study of Atlantic history and race relations.Deposited

by Professor Philip Richardson of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull, the database builds on previously published information resulting from three decades of work from numerous scholars. It has just been made available via AHDS History.TheThe

The new enlarged database includes information on some 7,000 previously unknown voyages and additional information relating to over 10,000 voyages. The resource provides details of the itineraries and characteristics of ships involved ttrade.It.It.

It also covers the human dimension, including information such as the numbers of slaves embarked in Africa and disembarked in the Americas and the owners and crews of the ships involved ttraffic.It.It.

It provides details of the geography of the trade, notably ports of provenance and return of ships, trading destinations in Africa, and ports of slave embarkation in the Americas, together with the time schedules involved in completing the various phases of voyages. The database comprises voyages of British, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese (including Brazilian), Spanish aorigin.TheThe

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A revised and enlarged database 1500-1867


Who are Civic Actions?

Another wonderful ‘virtual’ organisation spread across Europe and the US who are active in the Drupal (Content Management System) community is Civic Actions.

We believe that our works should be available for the larger good. Whenever possible, we work to share our innovations with other consultants and organizations. We believe in growing the size of the universe, as opposed to subscribing to a model of scarcity. We are active in the Drupal community, have recently began to participate in sharing best practices with other firms, and are actively working to drive the education of independent consultants to create a larger field of skilled practioners for all firms including ours, as well as our customers.This website is a work in progress, and will always be, because our work is. Please take a look at our People, our Clients, and our Projects and let us know if you have any questions (link)


UK Government Restrictions on Street Photography

(the software for No 10 was developed by MySociety.org)
Signing up to ask the Prime Minister to Stop proposed restrictions
regarding photography in public places

The UK Govt are about to propose restrictions on photography in
public places which could make street photography and documentary
photography against the law. There's a petition on the Downing St
website against the Government's proposals to restrict the use of
photography in public areas. Sign up to the petition now. (thanks to Nettime for the link)

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

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