Tag: socialchange

Smart Swarm

  • August 30, 2010 at 7:58 am

  • How can ants help us solve complex problems but, using the same technique, end up walking in an endless circle for the rest of their lives? Why can crowds be much smarter, and at the same time more stupid, than any individual? In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed [...]

Could foursquare empower people to break commercial advantage?

  • November 24, 2009 at 10:22 am

  • A while ago I chewed over the problem of making it easy for members of the public to leave useful contextualised information for others in spite of opposing commercial incentives. Whether their developers intended it or not, foursquare could be the solution. I had been incensed by a cashpoint in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. It [...]

Digital users are volunteers as well as consumers

  • June 26, 2009 at 4:35 pm

  • In his Digital Britain Final Report, Lord Carter sets out his plan to keep Britain “at the forefront of the digital revolution”. But a revolution needs revolutionaries, who are driven by passion and not just economic incentive. Has this report overlooked the importance of people as volunteers, and the impact on their social contributions of [...]

Tweets from Digital Britain Report event in Birmingham

  • June 23, 2009 at 1:52 pm

  • Last week I went to hear Lord Carter discuss his Digital Britain Final Report in Birmingham. I took a laptop and tweeted a little. As a crude record of what I wrote, what follows is my Twitter stream for that event. All I’ve done is take the html from Twitter Search and pasted it here [...]

OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles

  • May 6, 2009 at 4:03 pm

  • Excellent post by Tim Davies. He argues that when it comes to governments and large organisations engaging with technology for social change, there is not one big challenge but lots of little ones; and that as those multiply, the ability to engage effectively shrinks. He then lists 50 key challenges that he's encountered so far this year: so now we know they exist we can do something about them; and – hopefully – improve the chances of technology to support social change effectively.

    Visit OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles

Podcasts for citizenship teachers

  • August 2, 2006 at 6:10 pm

  • I’ve just come across these (can’t listen to them though, as I’ve no speakers on this machine!). First is a list of ‘podcasts for general studies and citizenship‘. Second is the Grassroots Channel, inspired by the Birmingham Community Empowerment Network, which “tells the stories of ordinary people who decided to change the world around them”.