Janet Haven

I'm very late to the discussion on Ethan Zuckerman's blog about the efficacy/validity of Second Life's Camp Darfur. Many excellent points on all sides have been made in the comments, and so I'll keep this brief. Basically, I'm with Ethan on this one, but for slightly different reasons than he's articulated. It's not just Camp Darfur that I find a bit off-putting; it's most "renactments" of tragic circumstances in the name of education or awareness-raising. The problem I have with them comes down to control. One of the most prevailing aspects of life in the United States nowadays is control over your environment: you can visit the supermarket, pick up your dry cleaning, watch a video, read the New York Times, or talk to your friends at nearly any time of day or night. Your choices are, in essence, overwhelming. Games like Second Life are even more about choice than real life; the whole point is that you choose your personality, profession, tools, finances, indeed, your very state of being.

My experience in refugee camps and with refugees has been limited, but probably more direct than that of many Americans. I volunteered at a refugee camp on the Hungarian/Romanian border for a while, visiting to play games with rooms full of the children of eastern Europeans, Africans, Asians who had been picked up trying to enter the European Union. I've visited with Palestinians in Jordan who grew up in refugee camps and whose families still live in them. Some of my closer friends have worked for years with refugees from the various countries that make up former Yugoslavia. None of this makes me an expert by any means, and yet it seems clear to me that the main characteristic of a refugee existance, and the main source on ongoing, constant anxiety, is the lack of control. In a camp, an individual can make few decisions for self or family. Life is about boredom, listlessness, lost opportunity, and fear of a totally unknown future. To be sure. the camps in Sudan have the additional horror of unexpected physical attack, which presumably drives anxiety through the roof when combined with the crushing nothingness of everyday life. I believe that it is human nature to try and better one's situation (and indeed, games like Second Life exist largely to meet this desire). In a refugee camp, that tendency is thwarted at nearly every turn. Most refugees can simply do nothing but wait, passively, for someone else, be it a international agency, their own government, or a man with a weapon, to make the decision that will change their lives. Or, like the Palestinian refugees still in Jordan, they simply wait, and wait.

This is why I find the idea of any kind of reenactment of these spaces so frustrating; it's a false emotional situation. As people who are choosing to visit a virtual world, we have all the control; we can come to Camp Darfur, look around, and then leave. Then we can come back. Maybe there will be someone interesting there, or something interesting happening. Then we might stay, and explore. Or leave again. Or sit and think. It's our choice. And because that choice always exists for us, but rarely or never for the refugees whose experience we seek to understand, I think Camp Darfur and other projects like it miss the crucial element that they wish to convey.

Posted by Janet at 04:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Kenyan Parliament is pretty non-transparent. It's dificult for even the dedicated to discover what the Parliament is working on, what bills are under discussion, and what the performances of individual MPs are. Two young Kenyans, Ory Okolloh of Kenyan Pundit and "M" of Thinker's Room, felt that a volunteer project that kept citizenry up-to-date on the activities of Kenyan parliament would be useful; even more useful was a forum that encouraged citizen participation, shifting the position of Kenyan voters from passive recipients of Parliamentary decree to active watchdogs of government activity. Ory and M have launched Mzalendo, site which will attempt to track Parliamentary happenings, bills, MPs, districts, and so forth. It will also provide a space for citizens to pose questions to the government, and will help to direct them to the correct MP.

One of the many things I love about this project is the technology -- Ory and M are using WordPress to run their site. WordPress is open source, easy-to-use blogging software. They've gotten someone to help them configure it, but for the most part, it's pretty straightfoward what they've done. I think it's fantastic that we've reached a point where technology is a very small hurdle to an individual citizen's effort to push transparency in government (or other areas). I'd be interested to hear more about the customizations they've done; it would be great if they wrote a bit more about that on the Mzalendo site or their own blogs so that others working on grass-roots anti-corruption projects might use it in their own efforts.

Posted by Janet at 03:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My family isn't hugely into traditions, but the ones we have stick: Thanksgiving at my aunt Ruth's in Laguna Beach, Yorkshire pudding once a year on Christmas night, decorating the tree with ornaments my brother and I made in early years that my mother has kept carefully tucked away. Etcetera. I like these traditions, and find them to be more than habit -- they have meaning for me and others that go beyond simply doing things the same way every time because its easier than coming up with something new. They create a thread of continuity for us which is very satisfying. And so often I look, with my good friends and family, for new traditions that we can start and keep to over time.

I'm pleased to report that two of my favorite people and I have started a new tradition. My friends Kathleen and Steven, who I manage to see a few times a year (which is still not enough) went on my request tonight to Palm Too, a steakhouse in New York. I've never been to a proper, over-the-top, red leather banquette, wood panelled steakhouse, and I knew that Steven was the man to sort it out for me. Steven is a native of the city, and despite a recent move to Connecticut, his heart still lies in Manhattan. To be more specific, his heart lies on plate, next to a 24-ounce ribeye cooked medium rare with a side order of buttery green beans and crispy fried onions. In short, the man knows where to eat.

Palm Too was spectactuar, exceeding my steakhouse fantasies. As we hacked our way through the bounty, Steven mentioned to me that there are dozens of excellent steakhouses in the city, and we pondered, over our grilled meats, the tragedy that our short time together prevented any further exploration of the New York's restaurant beef. But there is an obvious solution, with an eye to a new and beautiful tradition: we agreed that each time I came to the city in years to come, we would visit a new steakhouse together. And really, I can't wait.

For posterity, here's what we ate tonight:
Clams Oreganata
Shimp Bruno
Shrimp Cocktail
Tomato and Onion Salad
24-ounce rib-eye (Steven and me)
10-oz filet mignon (Kathleen)
Steamed leaf spinach
Fried onions and potato slices
Green beans with garlic cloves

Posted by Janet at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The arrest and detention of Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam by Egyptian authorities following a peaceful protest in Cairo on Sunday is being well-covered in the blogosphere. Everyone from Instapundit to Elijah Zarwan is writing about it, and Global Voices Online is promoting a googlebomb campaign to direct "Egypt" google queries to freealaa.blogspot.com. Human Rights Watch has a press release out, and Alaa appears to be blogging (somehow) from his prison cell -- in English, he says, so his cellmates won't read over his shoulder.

Given the welcome flurry of angry attention directed at Egypt, I don't have much to add -- except to wish strength and peace to Alaa and Manal, and to the others in dentention and their families. I hope the Egyptian authorities come to their senses quickly and realize that jailing peaceful protesters for exercising the right to free expression (in this case, in support of judges persecuted for their anti-corruption stance, a huge issue in Egypt) is not, in the long run, a viable option.

Posted by Janet at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (233)

I've written on this blog several times about how mapping and GIS technologies -- particularly those that are usable by non-experts -- can help to make a stronger case when advocating a cause. These tools have been used to great effect by the environmental movement, as well as by groups with interests as diverse as natural resource plundering iin the developing world and using chemical weapons against civilians. As tools like Google Maps put the possibility of mapping data into the hands of many, we're also seeing that collaborative projects can be undertaken with mapping as a focal point for tracking and clarifying information coming in from a range of sources. In other words, maps are being used to do, rather than simply to explain an end result.

Just recently, OSI's Information Program (where I work), released a set of case studies on this topic. Researched and written by Stephanie Lindenbuam, the set of documents includes a useful overview from the layman's perspective on what mapping means in an advocacy context. This is followed by a nine short papers (each 3-4 pages) that detail individual stories of how mapping is being used within an organization or campaign. The papers can be downloaded individually in pdf format. Take a look if this is something you're thinking about in your work.

Posted by Janet at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm very happy to see the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Media and Democracy launch Congresspedia, the "citizen's encyclopedia on Congress that anyone can edit". The happy news is that Congresspedia is easy to use (based on the Wikipedia model), encourages citizen participation, and clearly isn't a joke. Anyone (US citizen or not) can go into any of the hundreds of pages already on Congresspedia and edit information about America's lawmakers...all 535 of them from the House and the Senate. The claim is that the site is non-partisan and encourages the beloved Wikipedian neutral point of view (or n-pov, for those in the know); most likely the major challenge will be whether they'll be able to maintain that. Given the squirmy battles in the regular Wikipedia over politicians' pages, one can't help but wonder.

But this raises a larger question about the offspring of Wikipedia; Congresspedia is essentially a sub-set of Wikipedia, hived off and put under its own name. But there's a bit of a problem of replication here. Richard Burr, the junior Republican senator from North Carolina, has a page on Wikipedia with one set of information. Richard Burr also has a page with a slightly differnt set of information on Congresspedia (and more fleshed out information, by the way, as it's a specialty Wikipedia child). Which one is definitive? Presumably, given that specialization is presumed to be better, Congresspedia's entry on Richard Burr is going to be definitive. But where does that leave the original Wikipedia? My guess is that over time, specialized Wikipedia child sites will become more popular: I've had half a dozen conversations over the past year with organizations about the utility and feasibility of a Wikipedia installation focused on a specific issue: NGOs, public health, and so on. I'm sure there are already others out there. I don't think this necessarily dilutes the utility of Wikipedia as a whole, but I'm wondering whether there will be any effort to synchronize content between Wikipedia children and the main site...either on a volunteer basis (as Wikipedia itself is written) or through some kind of Wikimedia automation. It's also a social question; will Wikipedia contributors get the same satisfaction and sense of community out of working on Wikipedia children, or will the main site continue to be the community draw? As always, the brave new world of wikipedia is worth keeping an eye on. The problems they have to solve now seem pretty clearly to be forerunners of those that a wide range of media will face in the coming years as the participatory becomes the default.

Posted by Janet at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I happened across the Serious Games Initiative today, a project which appears to be parked at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in DC. Despite the Monty Python-ish name, the SGI has outlined a challenging (and real) mission for itself:

The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.

As Wired advised us last month, gaming is the new black: versitile, slimming, and goes anywhere, be it to college, to war, or to the boardroom. Given that, taking games seriously as a force for social change seems worthwhile -- at least in parts of the world where processor speed and connectivity make it a realistic avenue for online interaction. I'll be curious to see whether the third annual Games for Change conference in New York next month addresses any of the "internationalization" issues that shadow much of our work at OSI: language, bandwidth, appropriate hardware and software. The obvious answer is that "games for change" follow games for fun; wherever fun games work, social change games can probably be played. But would they be, outside of a specific training situation? A gaming novice like myself assumes that games are escapist, first and foremost, and educational or empowering much further down the line.

Two areas where it looks like "serious games" have made inroads are heath and education. One example is Pump Expeditions, a game created for kids and teenagers living with diabetes; the game's activities teach the importance of monitoring insulin levels and keeping track of overall health. Another popular game in the serious category, funded by the Sloan Foundation, is Virtual U, a game that lets the player pretend to be a university executive, deciding how to grow an educational instituation. Again, I wonder how possible it is to mix the viral popularity of non-serious games with serious topics. Virtual U looks to be a very useful template for learning about the difficulties of running an educational instituation, and yet the gaming scenarios outlined on the FAQ don't exactly make one want to give up on Grand Theft Auto just yet:

Scenario 1 Pay Faculty Better
Scenario 2 Allocate New Money
Scenario 3 Teach Better
Scenario 4 Improve Research Performance
Scenario 5 Win Games
Scenario 6 Reduce Tuition
Scenario 7 Respond to Enrollment Shifts
Scenario 8 Enroll More Minority Students
Scenario 9 Hire More Minority Faculty Members
Scenario 10 Balance the Budget

Well, it's probably more fun to approach it as a virtual world than it is to read a handbook by your human resources department about those topics, right?

So my question about these kinds of products is whether they work as *games*, in the sense of something that people do of their own free will, that engages creativity and releases the kind of "fun" endorphins that Tomb Raider clearly does -- or do they only work as simulated learning tools, which seems like a related but somewhat different category than "serious games". Perhaps my definition of games is simply too narrow, and games, in the computer sense, are any kind of graphical, digital interaction where decision-making takes place (which was, essentially, Wired's argument last month about the broader social value of games: their prevalence has created a generation of quick, good decision-makers). "Games for social good" is surely not a new concept, but it will be interesting to see at the meeting next month and beyond if a corner has been turned that puts these kinds of tools both in reach and in interest range of broader social movements.

UPDATE: A good example of a joint fun game/teaching game is A Force More Powerful, a joint venture of The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), York Zimmerman Inc., and game designers BreakAway Ltd. From the website:

A Force More Powerful is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance.

Posted by Janet at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)