Notes from WSIS High Level Panel on ICTs for post-conflict reconstruction

Notes from WSIS High Level Panel on ICTs for post-conflict reconstruction
"Prof. Ezzine from Tunisia looked at the dynamics of the revolution and how ICTs were inextricably entwined with the dynamics of social and political struggles for democracy and freedom from dictatorial rule. He flagged the importance of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as platforms that enabled social discussion and mobilisation that resulted in thousands taking to the streets to demand change and reform. Prof. Ezzine said that now the challenge was to strengthen the education system to embrace ICTs to augment social innovation, livelihood development and in sum, to re-engineer ICT policies and practices to make it an engine of growth. ICTs had, Prof. Ezzine noted, radically changed the dynamics between the governed and those in government."

Bizzaro Budgeting and Public Sector Innovation « Civic Innovations

Bizzaro Budgeting and Public Sector Innovation « Civic Innovations: "In addition, if we can create new incentives within the public budgeting process to reward innovation, we will build pressure to reform other government processes that stifle innovation – like the procurement process."

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New cybernetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New cybernetics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: ""unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups, and the practical and reflexive consciousness of the subjects who produce and reproduce the structure of a political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regards to the expression of political consciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves""

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Power of the iMob | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs

Power of the iMob | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs: There are some grand claims for the movements. As The New York Times said: ‘Dot-org politics represents the latest manifestation of a recurrent American faith that there is something inherently good in the vox populi. Democracy is at its purest and best when the largest number of voices are heard, and every institution that comes between the people and their government – the press, the political pros, the fund-raisers – taints the process.'

Education in Peru: Error message | The Economist

Education in Peru: Error message | The Economist: An evaluation of the laptop programme by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found that the children receiving the computers did not show any improvement in maths or reading. Nor did it find evidence that access to a laptop increased motivation, or time devoted to homework or reading. The report applauded the government for providing much-needed hardware: less than a quarter of Peruvian households had a computer in 2010. But it now needs to improve teacher-training and the curriculum, said Julian Cristia of the IDB. Above all, the classroom environment needs to change.

We have argued that a sociologically plausible model of the micro-mechanism underlying complex network emergence needs to meet the
following criteria. First, the locus of decision making about network changes should be at the level of individual actors. Second, individual
decisions should be derived from the optimization of individual goals based on bounded rational decision heuristics. Third, individual agents
should use only local and imperfect knowledge of network characteristics to make decisions. Finally, the model should not trivialize conflicts
between agents' interests with regard to the network changes they prefer.


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ASC: Foundations: Defining 'Cybernetics'

ASC: Foundations: Defining 'Cybernetics': "Cybernetique= the art of governing or the science of government"