The cost of electricity is a huge barrier to ICT adoption in the developing world. Rolling blackouts are common in cities, while in peri-urban and rural areas, there's no grid electricity infrastructure - its all solar or generator power. Yet petrol or diesel generators are hard to maintain and solar power is expensive - $10+ per Watt.

From the early days of computerized publisher, Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains the mystical thing they did with the rock: "For years, Tor had one computer: an IBM PC AT with an amber monitor. Towards the end of its life, in the late 1980s, it could only be rebooted by smartly hitting its CPU on the side with a particular rock. Several people shared the computer and each person had his or her own style of rock banging, and over time, the side of the CPU gradually bowed in due to repeated impacts. Claire Eddy still has the rock, kept in a high place of honor in her office."

Wait, what?

Outdated gender roles + a technology still trying to find its market = hilarity

Professor Karrie Karahalios is a current Berkman fellow, joining us from UIUC where she teaches computer science. Her talk at Berkman today is titled “Text and Tie Strength”, and begins with a reminder that “What attracts people most is other people”, a quote from sociologist William Whyte. Whyte pointed out that people flock to spaces where they can hang out – places with seats. As we design online spaces, we need to consider building spaces with seats.

But do they have fluorescent plant and animal life?

Ushahidi and the Snowpocalypse

Disconnection Panels

Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.