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The “Draw Mohammad Day” Brouhaha

When I first saw the poster for “Draw Mohammad Day,” I admit, I was amused. In reaction to Comedy Central’s decision to censor South Park, Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris had drawn up a poster asking people to draw the Prophet; the poster, below, was humorous and whimsical, with the Prophet depicted as a toaster or [...]

19.05.2010

8 Comments

Facebook Deactivations: No Appeals

I was CC’d on an e-mail this morning regarding a deleted account on Facebook. In fact, over the past 24 hours, I’ve been sent a lot of e-mails about deleted accounts. Whether it’s a glitch this time or not I can’t say, but here’s something alarming: Two of the people who contacted me CC’d me [...]

19.05.2010

6 Comments

On Street Art

As a (very) amateur photographer with a too-cool-for-words camera, one of my favorite pastimes is tracking down, and photographing, graffiti and street art.  The habit started in Senegal, where even the interiors of some university buildings were subject to spray-painted political slogans, and continued during my years in Morocco, where straight-up graffiti was less common [...]

18.05.2010

5 Comments

Change Facebook or Change Ourselves?

As a result of Facebook’s ongoing privacy debacle, a number of conversations have emerged as to whether or not privacy matters in this so-called “new world.”  As the story goes, we (particularly those of us who are members of Gen. Y) have become used to putting our lives online: We tweet about what we ate [...]

16.05.2010

5 Comments

Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere

As I’ve written before, Facebook has, in numerous cases in various countries, deleted accounts, groups, or content put on their site by activists. From Hong Kong, where activists have written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg complaining of Facebook’s harassment and deactivation of activists, to Morocco, where some activists have been deleted from the site, asked for identification in order to reinstate their accounts, then received no assistance upon sending said identification, Facebook users are fed up.

15.05.2010

7 Comments

Reflections on Santiago

I’ve just returned from 12 days in Santiago, Chile, for the Global Voices Summit 2010, and while I know that it’s technically impossible to have jet lag whilst traveling within one’s home time zone, my body is ignoring that fact…I’m exhausted. I remember having the same feeling two years ago as I arrived home from [...]

13.05.2010

2 Comments

To 28

I left my country for the first time when I was 14.  Actually, 12, but I’m not sure that I knew that Canada was a separate country.  So at 14, I left, on a school trip to the UK, for which we raised our own money and traveled in packs. At 19, strolling through Binghamton’s [...]

03.05.2010

4 Comments