Liberating Spaces

What does someone do in a bunker? And in a train station? The answer seems quite straightforward. The bunker guy protects himself, the station guy buys a ticket and catches a train. But they are also doing something else more relevant to the transformations that the new information environment is making possible.

The people in the bunker are isolated from the world. Their primordial value is security. They want to protect themselves and their property. In principle, they have everything they need inside the bunker. Whenever they need something else they know where to get it. They quickly get out of the bunker, go to the predetermined place, get what they need and go back straight after. All the information they get is contained in the bunker, and in the few trips to their “trusted sources”. They live in a self-inflicted closed information environment, with nearly zero occurrence of serendipity.

And at the train station?

keep reading »

Ismael Peña López has shared in his blog the notes on Pekka Himanen’s lecture on The Hacker Ethic in the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya / Internet Interdisciplinary Institute on November 9, 2009. They are quite thorough and include the Q&A session.

Just watched on CNN’s World’s Untold Stories the Jihadi Code. A code of more than 400 pages, in which the members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) renounced to violence, declaring it unislamic. They denounce Al Qaeda’s tactics and call radical islamic extremists to use peaceful means for their cause (Al Qaeda’s Zawahiri claimed in a video released in November 2007 that the LIFG had joined their ranks!). According to the program, this code is the product of the efforts of Colonel Gaddafi’s son Sayf al-Islam Gaddafi and Noman Benotman, ex-head of the LIFG.

The CNN says that this code could be a turning point in global terrorism; for it is the first time since 9/11 that Al Qaeda is challenged from “inside”. Though it is a confusing story. Sayf al-Islam (on the video) appears as the peacemaker. He really shows a very good face to the world, in favour of freedom and democracy. Noman Benotman talks about deradicalisation as the process to make terrorism fade away. He is now in Washington lobbying for a deradicalisation agenda. Meanwhile, the members of the LIFG who wrote the code were recently freed from a Tripoli prison.

On the net, I found the following people talking about this interesting story that seems to be ignored by the mainstream media, except CNN.
keep reading »