Week 8 - Politics and the Internet

How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

• Sign an e-petition:
I Signed a petition of the Griffith University Innocence Program, to allow for the DNA evidence to be retained in the matter of a man currently serving life imprisonment for a crime which he may not have committed.
http://www.griffith.edu.au/law/innocence-project/e-petition/request-for-access

• Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

• What is Barak Obama up to today?

• Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
Local: Mayor Ron Clarke for Gold Coast City Council
Information was found by a google search from http://www.councillors.info/
In term of where I live, the Local Representative is Body Corporate Sanctuary Cove.
Body corporate control everything from mail-outs to who gets to cut your grass. The Sanctuary Cove Resort Act 1985 is a document of government legislation which regulates the provisions of Sanctuary Cove. The act includes that the Executive committee's decisions are to be decisions of primary thoroughfare body corporate.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=sanctuary+cove+body+corporate&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Local, State and Federal Representation
State:
Broadwater - ALP
Croft Peta-Kaye, (Peta-Kaye) BA [Ms]
Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Services

Surfers Paradise - LNP
Langbroek John-Paul, Honore (John-Paul) BDentalSc(Hons) [Mr]
Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for the Arts
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/legislativeAssembly/members.asp?area=members&LIndex=1&Subarea=members

Federal:
The Federal Electorate is Fadden for my local Area - Sanctuary Cove
MP Stuart Robert (LP)
http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/LocalitySearchResults.aspx?filter=Fadden&filterby=Electorate&divid=159

• Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament. After many searches, I came across the Record of Prceedings for Thursday 8th October, 2009. It seemed to be the most current Hansard document for the First session of the fifty third Parliament. Main Speaker was AM Bligh about various topics, to name a few; Pacific Warning Tsunami Centre, Carrara Stadium, Celebrity Master Chef, The Tragedy of the Montevideo Maru...

Mr Langbroek spoke in Regards to blue collar workers and Queensland Rail.

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/legislativeAssembly/hansard.asp?SubArea=latest

• Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
It was hardly a speech - he just adressed a few issues about cattle and fair trading to AM Bligh and that is all.

• Read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics that you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.
The Podcast with Allan Carrington, talking the Prof. Steve Stockwell- Hacking for Global Democracy
Notes i took from the Podcast:
Steve defined the Hacker as someone who (via early chronicles) intervenes in information flow and also in regards to people who toy with networks and computers to understand how they work.The question was asked by Allan whether this is seen as a negative thing? While number of hackers engage in self benefiting activities such as getting information off credit cards etc. the positive thing about hacking is students getting most uses out of the internet. In terms of information sharing, Steve believes that Information demands to be free. Allan intervened questoning should it? Steve responded on a spiritual level it should be. Copyright was then brought up. Has been around for a few hundred years- great that it has given authors a certain level of income support.
Boundaries of the internet as an issue-people need to be taught what is going to get them into trouble when hacking.
How to teach the next generation of leaders to manage information - university putting info in large databases.. and the existence of open source.
The idea that we need access...
Today's digital world impacting knowledge building - today's technology is giving us analytical tools to manage information - certainly more visual.
http://createworld2008.edublogs.org/2008/12/24/hacking-for-global-democracy/

My Ideas/ Thoughts/ Opinion:
Information is important to knowledge building. The idea of Steve's that information should be free and that we need access. My Ideas on this thought are while this is true the concept of censorship may become important because with every good comes a bad and there will be people out their using information in a negative way. To me it seems like too big of an operation, and hackers will always find a way around the system. With the sphere of information having become so much wider with the emergence of new communication technologies, at the same time there is debate that the future generation is dumbing down. If I broke down where I spend my time surfing the internet into percentages, this is the result (approximately):
Social Networking (Facebook) 30%
Checking Emails 10%
Youtube 45%
University Related 10%
Miscellaneous 5%
I think i limit myself in terms of learning. I rarely use any other search engine but google and Facebook and Youtube being where i spend most of my time is not allowing me really to explore the world of cyberspace. However the idea that Steve mentioned that learning is much more visible, Youtube has a variety of educational video available. I have benefited from watching video tutorials about film making including how to light properly and frame shots.
In regards to Steve's comment that we are hackers, I never thought of myself as a hacker because I've always thought of the term as a negative thing.

+ we ask:

What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???
My biggest concern is will it even work - and i mean is it possible to censor the world wide web because it is so big! After reading a little bit more about this concept from the following site: http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html i have learn't that the clean feed is for the protection of children and that the feed will be mandatory in every home. The question was raised what about homes with no children? This is a very plausible argument. The issues about what age will the internet be censored at !5, 10, 5 years? This is another issue for homes without children. The concept is a bit far fetched in my opinion. What ever happened to parental locking? Couldnt there be a better way to censor for children without intervening the internet freedom of adults

What place does censorship have in a democracy?
I don't think it has a place at all, because what is comes down to is who decides...? I don't think that another should decide for another which sites that visit on the internet, because simplistically thinking, that would be like somebody saying to me that i can't use facebook because they think its limiting me, while it does limit me, I believe it is about choice and i should make the choice about whether to use it or not regardless.