Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 70 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. They are interested in an “organized fun” and in seeing the public reaction to their appearances (that’s why is improvising, although all their missions are pre-arranged they never know how the public will react and consequently how tasks will be performed).

One of their missions, the so called “freeze” craze started by the Frozen Grand Central and has now reached 70 cities in 34 countries and 6 continents. For me is like a flash mob, but not for them. They explain in their FAQ that Improv Everywhere was created about 2 years before the “flash mob” trend: “While some of our missions may have certain similarities to a flash mob (large numbers of people appearing in a public place and then disappearing suddenly), we really don’t have anything to do with flash mobbing. Some missions use just a few folks while others might use hundreds, depending on the idea and depending on how many people show up to participate.”

An example of a “freeze” mission:

Check the mission’s world map (http://frozen.piskvor.org/).

Interesting, mainly in a sociological perspective 🙂

According to the Globe and Mail information, hackers attacked the website of a French magazine this month, trying to influence an opinion poll on the Beijing Olympics and change the site’s content.

Jean-Joel Gurviez, publisher of the magazine, said the website of the business magazine Capital was first hit in March, when it opened a poll on whether France should boycott the Games’ opening ceremony in China.

“On the first day, we had about 300 responses, which was normal for this type of poll, and they were 80 per cent in favour of a boycott. The next day there were 20,000 responses, with 80 per cent opposing a boycott,” he said. Almost all of the responses arrived via Chinese servers, leading technicians to primarily think the invasion was driven by Chinese sites directing patriotic fans to vote.

“But a few days later we had hackers operating off servers in China try to change our content, and there were 2.5 million attempts to access protected files. We had to shut down the site temporarily,” Gurviez explains.

Guerviez said the magazine had no direct proof Chinese hackers had directed the attacks, but it has filed a complaint with the police. “The attacks came after the torch protests, many were attempts to post pro-Chinese slogans, and all came from computers in China, so I think it’s pretty clear”, he states.

Pictures’ Credits: http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1831

Gharabiya, a Israeli PhD student, found a new phenomenon among Bedouin teenage girls in the unrecognized towns of the Negev (Israel): On Fridays, when Arab schools do not hold class, they go to school, kilometres away from their homes, just to use the Internet, where they enter chat rooms or talk via IM.

He also observed that 60 percent of the youth from permanent communities have an Internet connection. “In the past, these youths surfed the Web mainly at school and at the community centre, or via cell phone,” he says. “Now there are homes with wireless Internet. Some homes run their computers via a generator or through a solar receptor. The Bedouin population is young, and young people are more open to new technologies.”

Like many other teens, Bedouin teens use instant messaging programs mainly to communicate with teen friends. However, “The Bedouin are usually isolated and cut off also from the rest of Israeli society, from the rest of the Arab sector, which lives mostly in the north, and from Arabs in other countries. Chat rooms open a window.”

What is interesting to notice is that the Internet made the greatest change in the lives of young girls. “In Bedouin society there is rather strict separation of the sexes, and a chat room is the only place where they can talk with members of the opposite sex,” says Gharabiya. “It is especially significant for the girls, because their social circle is even smaller, and their freedom of movement is limited. Not all of them can leave their parents’ community. Unlike the boys, girls are not allowed to go to town after classes, or to visit friends. In this respect, technology is very important.” In many Bedouin schools, it is not acceptable for girls to take part in sports classes. Therefore, they are sent to the computer room, where they are supposed to prepare assignments….however, they take advantage of it to surf the web.

In fact, chat rooms allow them to avoid customs and prohibitions and to overcome the severe limits in traditional society, chiefly the separation of the sexes and the strict restrictions imposed on women.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960450.html

A clandestine network of young rebels with digital cameras, USB disks and illegal connections to the web are challenging Cuban authorities, broadcasting news that the official state media try to hide and all sort of censored videos, articles and images.

Last month, students from a well known computer science’s University recorded live an incident with Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, where he was confronted with students asking why they couldn’t travel abroad, sleep in hotels, have better wages or use search engines like Google. This video was largely broadcasted all over Cuba. Other similar episodes were broadcasted and spread in the web. Cuban authorities are limiting public access to the Internet and to digital videos, taking off no authorized satellite antennas and reducing the number of cyber cafés available to Cubans. In old Habana, we can only find one cyber café, while two years ago we could find more three. They were converted into “postal services”, allowing sending electronic messages through a close network in the island, with no connections to the Internet. There’s a small room in Capital, the official café, that charges 3, 25€ (a third of an average Cuban month income) for an hour.

However, the government actions and intentions of controlling Internet access are becoming ineffective. The young rebels create and assure a prosperous black market that gives Internet access to some thousand Cubans. They use illegal satellite antennas, sell movies and short films recorded in CDs; take advantage of the enterprises Internet connection; share USBs; employees with permission to connect to the web sell their usernames and passwords, so others can use it by night. In fact, human imagination has no barriers when obstacles need to be overcome.

Even the main computer sciences school of the country, Facultad de Ciencias de la Información, used previously by the Cuban secret services is now used as the rebel’s headquarters. Students download and broadcast wherever they can get, spreading it all over Cuba; create blogs and websites using foreign ISP and servers. The Internet became the only field with no regulation, being used as a struggle medium, to resist and to mobilize. It’s amazing how Internet is a source of censorship and surveillance, but simultaneously a new source of battle and (who knows) revolution. It is a tool, used for both good and ill.

Yesterday I found on facebook an interesting ad, directing you to “Who’s your City” maps by Richard Florida. This particular facebook ad was targeted to singles, showing maps of U.S.A. states with more singles according to different genders. You can also check the extravert (we know from the Big 5 personality traits,that the correct word is extravert :-)) maps or the 10 top cities to live if you are gay or lesbian. You can find maps for every taste or purpose, namely superstar cities, real estate or the income map: http://creativeclass.com/whos_your_city/maps/.
So, if you’re thinking of moving, better think again and assess this. Although the majority of maps are from U.S., there is also available mega-regions in Europe and Asia.

But, besides this funny note, the book and Florida’s research has definitely more juice. In spite of the globalization and this idea that where you live does not matter, because of the wide scope of ICTs, Richard shows that place it’s more important than ever. Nevertheless, this is not a new idea, numerous researchers have been emphasizing that place is fundamental. Even in the cyberspace, a space with no boundaries, place is crucial, as it gives an identity to, a sense of delimitation. There is why the urban metaphor, the city, agora, square and so on have been successfully used on the WWW. And this we could clearly observe in our digital cities study. It’s the so called digital paradox: where physical is essential.

Following my previous post and according to Le Monde, the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority (PTA) announced today, 26th of February, that all Internet providers were instructed to re-establish YouTube access, as the incriminating content was deleted from the website. YouTube Society said yesterday that this Pakistani blocking was responsible for a world wide block to the website for, at least, two hours last Sunday. Although, this amend represents a positive change for all of us, especially for Pakistan, where e-censorship is increasing, the most important issue here is that governments and their associates have more power that we would expect. They seem extremely advanced technologically to have this ability to interfere with websites access all over the world….this seems even more concerning. However, by the end of the day, freedom is still a beautiful word. Will we be ever able to make it a beautiful reality?

Full story available at http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2008/02/24/le-pakistan-bloque-ses-acces-a-youtube-a-cause-de-videos-blasphematoires_1015161_3216.html#ens_id=1015172

Picture credits: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/graphics/2008/02/19/eatiger119.jpg