The Internet

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 – 08:21 CEST

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cfarivar/375720916/

Topic: Identity
Schedule: Week 10 (August 24 - August 31)
Art Project: Microblogging (Pitesti, Romania)

The Internet is the world’s largest telecommunications network ever built and is the fastest way to transfer any type of data between any two points on the globe. Originally known as the ARPANET while still a research project at the University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1960s, use of the Internet became much more common in the 1990s with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. As of January 2009, approximately one in every four people on the globe has access to the Internet.

Posted in Places, The Internet

Mobile phone service comes to Nauru

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 – 13:28 CEST

It’s hard to believe that even in late 2009, there are still countries, full-fledged independent countries, that do not have mobile phone service.

That list got smaller this week as the Pacific island nation of Nauru finally got access to…

Internet addiction center opens in a Seattle (USA) suburb

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Friday, August 21st, 2009 – 16:00 CEST

After Internet addiction centers have opened up in South Korea, China, and Japan, now the United States has just opened its first facility in Fall City, Washington, in Pacific Northwest region of the country.

The institution, formally called reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery…

Austrian, Mongolian partner to unearth buried Buddhist artifacts

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Friday, August 7th, 2009 – 08:37 CEST

Last weekend, Austrian online media producer and amateur archeologist Michael Eisenriegler (above) and his Mongolian colleague, Zundoi Altangerel, uncovered two crates worth of irreplaceable artifacts, including manuscripts, Buddhist statues and clothing.

It was shown live and online last weekend at the Hauptplatz in…

Reminder: Participate in Online Storytelling!

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Thursday, July 16th, 2009 – 09:42 CEST

In the online world, where our identities are mostly unknown, people don’t always have a chance to meet each other in person. However, we can still create something together.

So, let’s write two stories together in English!

Whether it’s a love story…

North Korea as Revealed by Google Earth, Citizen Activists

Posted by Florica Vlad, Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 – 16:12 CEST

For many years, citizen activists have been pooling information about North Korea in order to reveal the locations of hidden prisons and other sites of interest in the humanitarian effort to effect greater transparency on the isolated regime.

However, according to…

Facebook Creates Online Civil Society Clashes in Iran

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Monday, May 25th, 2009 – 22:53 CEST

There’s been lots of online activity in the run-up to the Iranian presidential election, which is coming up on June 12.

There’s a four-way election currently going on between the two main conservative candidates, including incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mohsen Rezaei,…

New Scientist: Eight things you didn’t know about the internet

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Thursday, May 7th, 2009 – 23:12 CEST

The internet is a tool that we all use every day. It’s arguably one of the greatest inventions of the last half century. But it’s had a profound impact on the way that we interact with each other and with society…

More bandwidth coming to Africa

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Monday, May 4th, 2009 – 11:09 CEST

There’s been much discussion lately about how Africa’s bandwidth is too little, and too expensive. I’d argue, in fact, that this bandwidth problem, coupled with insane bureaucracy and corruption have kept prices in Africa largely artificially high.

OLPC News makes the…

Cornell researchers use geotagged Flickr photos to create maps

Posted by Cyrus Farivar, Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 – 13:08 CEST

Occasionally when I upload a photo to Flickr, I’ll add some geotagging information if I have it readily available. Geotagging, for the uninitiated, is way to to tell Flickr where (down to the intersection) you took a particular photo. Basically,…