Science Library Pad

Facebook and privacy in Canada

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has released their final agreement with Facebook, in which Facebook notably agrees to change the API to third-party applications, enabling much more granular control of the personal information you share with them.

News Release - Facebook agrees to address Privacy Commissioner’s concerns - August 27, 2009

(announced via the the @PrivacyPrivee Twitter feed, incidentally)

This is an issue that has concerned me for some time, so it's great to see it being resolved in a positive manner.

Here's a question I asked about Facebook in 2007, when I was blogging the OECD Participative Web forum

QUESTION: Hi, Richard Akerman from the National Science Library of Canada.

One of the things that I've seen in the discussion is we are talking mostly about silos, but Web 2.0 is about mashing sites up, about linking sites together, about crossing between sites and combining them together.

Not to pick on Facebook, but Facebook has a fabulous feature, which is Facebook Applications. However, in order for me to give my informed consent, I have only one choice. To use this application, I share my information with a third party.

I think that is a valid option, but the question, the broader question, the policy question is: How do we deal with privacy when we expect that sites will want to interlink like this, that people will want to connect their information like this? How do we control the spread of the information?

Are there technological ways to do that? Are there policy ways to manage it? If I share with a third party, how do I stop the third party from sharing on?

So I'm interested obviously particularly in the Facebook experience but the broader panel as well.

Thank you.

and here's the panel discussion that ensued - the cast of characters is Mozelle Thompson from Facebook, John Lawford from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, and Gary Davis from the Irish Internet Data Authority, with Hugh Stephenson from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairing.

MR. THOMPSON: I think that question is there for a reason. I mean, when I say that, when it warns you that in order to use this application, you have to share some information with that application, it's because if you don't want to share your information with that application, you should not download that application.

One of the things, you are absolutely correct we have over 5,000 applications. And aside from the applications that are created by Facebook itself, it is very difficult to police every single other one for what everybody else does.

For example, if Amazon has an application that you can download on Facebook, then you are going to have to be guided by Amazon's policy.

That being said, do we have certain standards about data mining and other things? Absolutely.

We tell sites that if they want to create an application and they want to ask you for information, that's great. We are not going to give you information about our users. We leave it then up to the user to determine whether they want to use this application or not. And that has to do with a trusted site relationship.

MR. STEVENSON: Thank you.

John, I think you wanted to get on this, and then Gary, and then one more question.

MR. LAWFORD: The way you dealt with that in legislation, you just ask for someone's consent, right, and that should be the end of it. If you don't want to use that program, you don't consent, except that what you are getting for that application is they are asking for more personal information probably in your sign‑up than they need to to provide that application to you.

They've already got the fact that you have been referred from Facebook and now they are asking for additional personal information.

That's where we are saying that for a Web 2.0 type statute, whether internationally or nationally, you should be able to ask for the plain vanilla transaction. So you have name, address, if you need it, and I get my application, not all this other stuff.

MR. THOMPSON: That's a little bit misleading in the following sense: that is you are Amazon and you have an application on Facebook or some other company has an application on Facebook, if it's Expedia or Travelocity, they are going to need some information from you in order for them to do a transaction with you. That's your relationship with them.

We are not collecting that information. That third party is collecting that information. That's the purpose of the warning. Not because we need that information. We already know what we need to know because you are our user. You are absolutely right.

But we put the warning there so that if you are using a third party application, you know that they are collecting information about you. It's a benefit to consumers.

MR. STEVENSON: Thank you.

Let's give Gary a chance to intervene on this and then I think we have one more question.

MR. DAVIS: Just from a data protection perspective, I don't know the actual characteristics of Facebook applications and there could be anything else.

One of the principles is the purpose limitations. So if I give my information for one purpose, which is to sign up to that, the third party, then if they anything else with it other than the reason for which you gave it, then you would have a valid complaint to us as the Data Protection Commissioner's Office and we would investigate it.

Also, and again understanding the nature of the relationship that exists, if Facebook applications could be deemed to be handling the information on behalf of Facebook, well then there's a contractual obligation there. And one might say that a privacy standard would be that the contract that is entered into would specify between Facebook and whoever manages Facebook applications, that they may not use the information for any other purpose.

I would expect to see that. If you weren't seeing that going forward, well then that's a privacy point that one would expect to be articulated.

MR. STEVENSON: Thank you.

from OECD transcript

Britain's Science Minister uses Twitter for two-way discussions

Quite a few politicians have a presence on Twitter -- Barack Obama among them -- but most see it as a tool for advertising their activities rather than interacting with voters. But Lord Drayson, Britain's Science Minister, is different.

Times Online - Science Minister takes to Twitter - June 10, 2009

You can follow him: @lorddrayson

World Science Festival (New York) 2009

The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a star-studded gala tribute to the Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson at Lincoln Center Wednesday night. Over the next three days the curious will have to make painful choices: attend an investigation of the effects of music on the brain with a performance by Bobby McFerrin, or join a quest for a long-lost mural by Leonardo Da Vinci at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Learn about the science behind “Battlestar Galactica” with actors from the show, or head to one of various panels of scientists and philosophers arguing about free will, alternate universes, science and religion, time and what it means to be human?

New York Times - Science, the Extravaganza - June 11, 2009

It runs June 10-14, 2009 in New York City. See http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/ for more information.

downtown location for new central Ottawa Public Library?

The proposed location is currently mostly a parking lot, on Lyon, between Albert, Slater and Bay. (It's not clear if the library will cover just the currently open area, or the entire square block.)  This is the view looking EAST (the clearest view as buildings block the other angles).

See in Virtual Earth.

This is the Google Maps view looking down, with the location in the centre top of the map.


View Larger Map

You can also see in Yahoo Maps.

This location is really good news.  Ottawa has a lot of wide streets and surface parking.  I was just walking down Lyon the other day on the way to ICSTI 2009 at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and thinking what a dismal street Lyon is as you enter this part of what I would call the Central Business District (which I guess is also called Upper Town).

The former Ottawa official plan says

In the future, Upper Town will contribute significantly to the vitality of the Central Area and especially the Core, as an attractive, livable urban residential neighbourhood which focuses on a unique heritage district and enjoyable pedestrian environment.

Which if you've ever walked down the car-friendly, pedestrian-boring Lyon or Laurier in this area is pretty hilarious.  And quite sad given the density of people jammed into the hideous concrete towers on Laurier.

This location has a lot of advantages:

• it is actually central, unlike the ridiculous "Ottawa is big so let's put the central library out in the suburbs" plans previously mooted
• it is right on the major transitway routes downtown, and apparently near the planned downtown tunnel as well
• it will bring some people and street life into this pretty dead urban space
• as an added bonus, there is a big and (as far as I can tell) totally unused green space just a block away, bounded by Bay, Laurier, Slater and Bronson.  I don't know if it even has a name, Google just shows it as an empty green block.  It's actually one of the biggest greenspaces in the downtown area and currently vastly underused.  I look forward to "library in the park" events there.

The only loss in this whole equation is the Scone Witch, which was always a bit of an odd location and building - OttawaXpress put it well: "Among the parking lots and commercial buildings of Centretown's business district lies a little eatery called The Scone Witch."  But presumably it can remain nearby and benefit from much larger traffic once the library is built.

I did find it a bit odd that they announced the location (finally) because they had always said they didn't want to announce it before securing title to the land, in order not to get stuck paying inflated prices.

Many of the news outlets reported a similar story.  Here are the key points from the CBC story (which features a nice photo of the current hideous brutalist library jammed into a corner downtown):

• Jan Harder, the councillor for Barrhaven and chair of the library board, said it plans to ask the city for $26 million to go toward buying the land.
• The library's board said it plans to build a new $180-million library building in the city block bordered by Albert, Lyon, Bay and Slater streets.
• Harder said the board was hoping to have the doors to the new building open by 2014.

Here's more info from the Citizen

• at least 300,000 square feet
• the library would likely be a building of about six storeys
• the city would seek a deal with the CS Co-op, which owns most of the land, and other smaller owners
• there would be lots of room in the block of land to also build offices, stores and apartment housing.

The only thing that worries me in an otherwise positive commentary article "It's more than books" is the idea that this might be a so-called world-class iconic building.  Please people.  Stop trying to redo Bilbao.  It's been done.  Just build a nice, airy, light, functional maintainable building.  One that can handle Ottawa's extremes: -30°C winter with metres of snow, and +30°C summer.  One that can be a great gathering place for citizens, not just some tourist stop.

It is a shame that neither the library plan nor the transit plan are going to be ready in time for the current round of government infrastructure stimulus funding.

And in case you're like z0mg, $180 million dollars?! I will point out that that's less than the infrastructure money going into shiny asphalt roads in the Ottawa suburbs in a single round of stimulus funding (and just in case you think I'm ranting, the exact quote from the Citizen is "[part of the funding] will be spent on $192 million worth of road projects, including several new and bigger suburban roads.")

As I've said before, if you wondering why we have no great public buildings, it's because the money for them is all beneath the wheels of your tyres, in endless expensive ribbons of asphalt.

I've had a lot to say previously about the importance of a great central library:
July 22, 2008  the public library is for: the public
December 21, 2007  the central public library is a key civic space
August 25, 2007  America, land of the grand library

data.gov, Whitehouse open gov, Rewired UK Parliament and whither Canada

Data.gov is live.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data.

But there's more.  Much, much more.

In the Whitehouse (yes, The Whitehouse) Open Government blog http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/blog/ they have announced a national consultation on open government.  Note the very aggressive timeline.

Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking on the White House website. In a sea change from conventional practice, we are not asking for comments on an already-finished set of draft recommendations, but are seeking fresh ideas from you early in the process of creating recommendations. We will carefully consider your comments, suggestions, and proposals.

Here’s how the public engagement process will work. It will take place in 3 phases: Brainstorming, Discussion, and Drafting.

Beginning today, we will have a brainstorming session for suggesting ideas for the open government recommendations. You can vote on suggested ideas or add your own.

Then on June 3rd, the most compelling ideas from the brainstorming will be fleshed out on a weblog in a discussion phase. On June 15th, we will invite you to use a wiki to draft recommendations in collaborative fashion.

These three phases will build upon one another and inform the crafting of recommendations on open government.

There are more details from the Collaboration Project

Today, the National Academy of Public Administration, in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has launched an Open Government Dialogue to solicit ideas from the public on how the government can become more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. This online brainstorming session which is now open through 1pm on Thursday, May 28th, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government, including innovative approaches to policy, specific project suggestions, government-wide or agency-specific instructions, and any relevant examples and stories relating to law, policy, technology, culture, or practice.

We would like to ask you to participate by doing the following:

1. Go to http://opengov.ideascale.com/ to participate in the dialogue, and

2. Follow @ogovbrainstorm on Twitter to keep up with the highest rated ideas.

They are hashtagging things #ogov

But wait, there's more...
Sunlight Labs has announced Apps for America 2

I'm pleased to wave the green flag on Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge. This is a development and visualization challenge to see who can come up with the best application and visualization for data from Data.gov. These are exciting times for us-- the walls between Government and Developers are starting to shrink, and we here in Sunlight Labs are terribly excited to get to work on doing great things with the data that's coming out. Government has made a move in the right direction-- now it is time for us to show them what we can do.

and in the UK at a grassroots level the Rewired State project has announced Rewired Parliament is coming up, along with many hacking events.

above info from Twitter - edsu, ideascale, citymark and rewiredstate

There are no comparable Canadian federal initiatives.

Nothing even close. The only thing even remotely along these lines is the internal-only IT Innovation Campaign.  (Which, don't get me wrong, is an amazing development - just not on the scale and without the public visibility and engagement of the Obama administration's initiatives.)

There are some municipal level activities, such as the recent Vancouver open city announcement (see it on YouTube being read into the record), but nothing on a national scale.

My tiny little group is trying to bring up a site with some data about the budget (StimulusWatch.ca), but just that is a huge challenge.

We need Canadian open government leaders at all levels of government.  We can do some from the grassroots (as we just demonstrated at ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009), but we need our political leaders to embrace this vision.  Even if you don't care about the tech bits, here's the takeaway: opening up government and government data will create tremendous opportunities for technological innovation and efficiency, and increase the wealth and competitiveness of Canada.

Previously:
March 5, 2009  data.gov is coming - Vivek Kundra named US Federal CIO

ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009 - from circle to grid to circle

Just a quick post to capture a sense of ChangeCamp Ottawa yesterday.  This a deliberate echo of my SciFoo 2007 posting, as SciFoo is where I learned about unconferences.

The basic format is you all gather around a common interest, but there is no set agenda - the participants at the event draw up the schedule (in ChangeCamp terminology "The Grid") of sessions and then facilitate and participate in them.

Opening Circle

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536145033/

Opening Circle (the community gathers)

CC-BY-NC-SA Richard Akerman

The Grid

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536168537/

The Grid (live action version)

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536997430/

The Closing Circle - at the end of the day, we came back into the circle again

CC-BY-SA http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlq/3538191922/

Together - apart - together.  A constant dynamic.  This is the nature of the new communities we are forming online and offline.

There was also lots of video captured - there are over 50 videos up on YouTube and as well Gwen captured a lot of video on Ustream.  There was a fair amount of audio coverage too, there are a few "audioboo" interviews from Ian, as well Apartment613 was going around with a mike and Robin Browne was there with his cool microphone/recorder thingy.  There are over 300 photos up on Flickr.  The tag to look for is cco09

The "virtual grid" of sessions is up on the wiki, but there is still a fair amount of work to get all the notes integrated.  (We had some technical challenges with the particular wiki software.)

We had some good discussions about open government and open data.

Overall very successful for a first event in Ottawa.  And yes, we're already talking about next year...

Previously:
May 13, 2009  ChangeCamp Ottawa - May 16, 2009 - sold out

ChangeCamp Ottawa - May 16, 2009 - sold out

ChangeCamp Ottawa is sold out.  This unconference about citizens re-engaging with government and with each other, enabled by technology, will be this Saturday May 16 (2009).

Here's a kind of bookend from my perspective (I'm sure it's different for all the organisers):

http://friendfeed.com/scilib/f3bdb183/some-changecamp-ottawa-history

this tweet I sent was actually a question, but somehow turned into the plan - from @scilib (me): @thornley So that's #changecampottawa planning at say 6 PM at http://www.clocktower.ca/ on Bank on Monday February 16? http://twitter.com/scilib/status/1203041472

from @scilib (me): last big ChangeCamp Ottawa planning meeting tonight May 11. Event itself will be this Saturday May 16. #cco09  http://twitter.com/scilib/status/1762070027

In case you're wondering what the point of Twitter is, it was a key enabler that helped to make possible all of the connections between people who had never met.  From tweets in February, to a sold-out event in May.

You can find us on the web:
* the (closed but public) social network for the event, courtesy of one of our sponsors, Pathable
* the main changecamp.ca site
* Twitter hashtag #cco09
* tag cco09 anywhere else
* I've also made a FriendFeed aggregator which should be a good place to track live reporting / uploads during the event.  (Unfortunately due to the FF redesign, it kind of looks like all the items come "from" ChangeCamp Ottawa - they're actually just being pulled in from various sources on the web.)

Apartment613 has an interview with Mark Faul, and CHUO Around the Block interviewed Morgen Peers.  (To some extent Morgen and I helped to sustain the event through its initial growing pains - we were the only two people in common between the first and second organising meetings.)

UPDATE: I see Mark Faul has written a post (rather more thoughtful and insightful than my just-the-facts approach above) - and he has also made a NetVibes aggregator for the event.

UPDATE 2: I should mention that ChangeCamp is also in Facebook, if you like that sort of thing.

Acfas - La science en français

L’Université d’Ottawa est heureuse d’accueillir, du 11 au 15 mai 2009, le 77e Congrès de l’Acfas, et fière de contribuer ainsi plus que jamais à l’avancement et à la mise en valeur du français dans tous les champs de la connaissance. Notre institution bilingue fait sa part en se classant 5e au Canada en termes d’intensité de la recherche scientifique. Aux portes du Québec et au cœur de la capitale canadienne, l’Université d’Ottawa vous invite à explorer un campus où se vit tous les jours la dualité linguistique de notre pays. Cliquez ici pour en savoir plus: http://www.acfas.ca/ ou http://www.acfas.ca/congres/a_propos.html ou http://www.acfas.ca/congres/2009/pages/grilles.html

via email from / par courriel de Jacynthe de Saint-Hilaire

Some Ideas on the Future of Government Science - May 14, 2009 - Armchair Discussion - Canada School of Public Service

This is just copied verbatim (with minor format changes) from the Facebook notice.

To register to attend in person:
http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/cat/det-eng.asp?courseno=S225

To register to attend the webcast:
http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/cat/det-eng.asp?courseno=E225

(It's for public servants, so if you don't have a PRI #, I don't think you can sign up.)

Host: Canada School of Public Service - École de la fonction publique
Type: Education - Workshop
Network: Global
Date: 14 May 2009
Time: 08:30 - 09:45
Location:
CSPS Headquarters
65 Guigues Street
Ottawa, ON

Phone: 6139435632
Email: Dean.Landry@csps-efpc.gc.ca

Description

Learn about the evolution of government science and the challenges facing science-based departments and agencies, and science managers, in the current environment. This discussion will focus primarily on public policy and will be especially beneficial to people working in science-based departments and agencies or who are involved in the management of science, policy and related programs in government.

After working as a university lecturer for many years, in 1978, Jim Mitchell began a government career where he had experience in the analysis and resolution of complex public policy issues. He was also a principal advisor on the 1993 reorganization of the federal government.

After leaving the public service, Jim Mitchell became a founding partner of the policy-consulting firm Sussex Circle. Now as a consultant, Mr. Mitchell provides policy and organizational advice in virtually every area of federal responsibility including defence, science and agriculture. In his lecture, Mr. Mitchell will be drawing from this experience to talk about the challenges and opportunities facing government science and the science community.

Speaker: Jim Mitchell, Founding Partner, Sussex Circle

Web APIs explained on CBC Spark - and Open Data Under Construction

(I almost wrote Spark CBC, since that's their Twitter name.)

Spark Episode 76 (audio link available directly in the post, as well as various podcast options)

At 22:02 or so in, they take on the challenge of explaining web APIs, or more specificially, they ask Jer Thorp to help walk them through the concept.  It's always interesting to hear the descriptions people use.  For example, I would generally say "machine-to-machine", which is probably way too abstract.  I also tend(ed) to describe APIs in the context of Service-Oriented Architecture, which probably confused the issue (and the audience).  I don't generally talk about computer programs communicating with other computer programs.

I think in general what's presented on the show is a pretty good explanation: websites are opening up their information using APIs, so they can leverage open innovation - outside developers.  We are a long long way from a completely interoperable web of standard APIs though.

Here's the Twitter-sized explanation I had proposed (taking quite a lot of my space to talk about how there wasn't enough space):

scilib: @sparkcbc I don't think that will fit in a tweet. Basically standard interfaces (APIs) allow data to flow between sites, which = mashups.

I would argue as well that web development has gotten sophisticated enough that, while APIs are ideal (at least if well constructed), you can actually get a lot by opening your data, which is the key first step.  Open data enables mashups, APIs just make mashups easier.  Open data means sharing the information your organisation has, out on the web - ideally your default becomes to share.

We're still in early days of open data.  The Guardian calls their approach "Data Store - Facts You Can Use".  I've written previously about the US Data.gov initiative, which currently has the world's simplest website (a giant box reading "coming soon"), but I think is supposed to launch this month.  It's similarly challenging to point to open data cities, because while the Twitter-enabled Toronto @MayorMiller announced toronto.ca/open at Mesh, it also reads simply "Under Construction".

What will be possible is mashups, visualizations, APIs, analysis and much more.

I believe the long term success of projects like StimulusWatch Canada and ChangeCamp Ottawa will depend on open data, and (eventually) on all levels of government having open APIs as well.

Which circles me around to the opening topic of the podcast, about whether online activism ("slacktivism") can actually translate into meaningful real-world activity.  The answer, I think, is tied in with the segment about lurking... the web is mostly lurk, only maybe 10% participate.  Some tiny fraction of those online participants might translate into offline actions.  Maybe one in a thousand?  But nevertheless, it does happen.

While I generally refuse to join these "click your support" Facebook groups (in part because I don't like FB much anyway), they can be low barrier entry points, in particular since so many Canadians (who may otherwise not be very social-web enabled) are in FB.

The kind of canonical Canadian example is the Fair Copyright for Canada group, with its (at time of posting) 90,071 members.  It was brought up in the House of Commons.  It did translate into some offline activism.  And the sheer numbers did, I think, get both attention and generate concern for the party proposing the bill.  There are still lots of issues with that number.  Lots of people around the world care about copyright.  For all I know, that's 81,000 copyright-concerned Americans, and 9000 Canadians.  Such is the global web.

I do think "feel-good clicks" are a bit dangerous, they give you the perception of action without actually doing anything.  I've long been concerned by this kinda of almost mystical power ascribed to online organising.  In my review of Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, I said

Don't get me wrong, I think the Internet has a role to play in reasoned discourse. A small role. A useful tool for pointing attention to falsehoods and referencing inconvenient truths. But electronic communications have a fatal allure of virtual action.

Concerned about the environment? No need to go outside and walk in the woods, or clean up a polluted lot in your neighbourhood, or knock on your representative's door and explain the urgency of your position.

No, instead you can just fire off an email, write a blog posting, and then turn up the air conditioning and the lights and stretch out on the couch and read a good book.

That being said, I have myself translating the online into real world action on a number of occasions.  As I wrote in the StimulusWatch blog, it was an online posting that led me to an event that started a chain leading to the creation of the project.

That same event, and online chatter about a local conference, also led me (as partially outlined in my posting Making government data visible - and is Change coming to Ottawa?) to ChangeCamp Ottawa, a very real event happening at City Hall on May 16, which I have been helping to organise, an event which of course has a substantial online presence including a social network for the specific event, as well as being part of the larger ChangeCamp group on Facebook.

Similarly, a local news article in a free neighbourhood paper (yes, in print, with ink and everything) about a small garden/park space led me to a Facebook group which led me to an offline meeting which led me to create http://www.savethegarden.ca/

And of course, on a much more spectacular scale, the Obama campaign used (and continues to use) online organising as a tool, but they were very clear that the purpose of online was to drive a very extensive (and successful) ground game, people talking and knocking on doors, calling on phones, out in the real world.

So I think when it works best, the online world leads you offline, and offline leads you back online.  It's an ongoing discussion that flows across place and time.

Discussions enable meetings, data enables websites, websites enable more meetings, meetings come to consensus on APIs, APIs enable mashups... round and round it goes.

Ursula K. Le Guin tells me if Americans are Still Afraid of Dragons

Two years ago, I wrote a post about running across an article called "Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Day by day, month by month, the traffic comes in to that post.  For example, in my stats for today, the search phrase

why are americans afraid of dragons

is the third most popular phrase in incoming searches.  I have tried to figure out what's driving this traffic (other than curiousity) but I can't find any one source.

So when I saw Le Guin was coming to the Ottawa Writers Festival, I knew I had to go and ask her about her thoughts, 35 (!) years after her 1974 article.  (Plus, of course, I have enjoyed her books.)

With some preamble, in particular mentioning the popularity of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, I asked: Are Americans Still Afraid of Dragons?

Her answer, as I understood it, was twofold.

Firstly, that fantasy is still dismissed by the dominant business culture as "stories for children".

Secondly, however, that authors of science fiction and fantasy are increasingly being recognized by the mainstream of literature, that the genres are blurring.  (She mentioned a particular author who had won a particular mainstream award, but I don't remember the details.)

I should also mention that during the Q&A before the audience questions, there was also a lot of talk about finding truth through fiction, and about the dubious "facts" that capitalism and American businessmen prefer.

On the issue of blurring of genres, I can certainly comment on my amusement that mainstream lit and critics had to invent a "new genre" of speculative fiction, so that it could avoid calling literary giants like Margaret Atwood fantasy writers.  The only difference between fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction appears to be who writes it, not the actual content.

So I think in conclusion the answer to the question is: somewhat less than they used to be, but the dismissal of fantasy and fiction in general is still a very real aspect of our society.

I don't know how much of the festival will go online, but it's possible that
* audio of her talk may show up at http://oiwf.squarespace.com/listen/
* video clips may show up at http://oiwf.squarespace.com/festival-on-youtube/

Sidebar: I just remembered one discussion in the Q&A where things went a bit off track.  Sean Wilson asked her about hard science fiction versus soft science fiction.  The answer was that hard science fiction is about the hard sciences, physics, chemistry etc. which is not the usual definition of hard SF.  The difference as I have always understood it is about the nature of the imagined world.  In soft science fiction, you're allowed to bend the rules of what is currently known to be possible.  You might have time travel, or faster than light travel, or telepathy, or teleportation.  As they say, you can "play with the net down".  If you drop the net way down, you edge into fantasy, where the rules of the physical world may be dramatically different from what we currently know to be true.

Hard science fiction, on the other hand, is about obeying the rules of the physical world.  In the hardest of hard SF, you can't break any currently known scientific laws or go too far beyond current known technology limitations.  No faster than light, no teleportation, no super laser guns that fit in your pocket, etc.  But that's not to say hard SF can't be very character driven.  It often isn't, but something like Battlestar Galactica is actually quite hard SF - they do allow FTL for the purposes of moving the story along, but they fire bullets and missiles from their space ships, and they use nuclear weapons.  No ray guns.  They even try to do some reasonably realistic physics for the space fights.  All of that hard SF is however, only background detail, because BSG is actually all about the characters, not about the technology.

END SIDEBAR

CISTI seeks external feedback

<marketing-mode>

Your comments on CISTI needed - deadline extended to May 7, 2009

CISTI would like your feedback on the following questions via the CISTI Committee on Health Sciences Information.

Email feedback to vice-president@chla-absc.ca by May 7 on these questions:

Question 1 – What is the role of a Canadian national science and health library in the 21st century?

Question 2 – From your perspective:
 - Who would be the new CISTI's key clients?
 - What are the target services/offerings/solutions for these key clients?

Question 3 – What top 3 of your needs do you see a Canadian national science and health library filling?

via CHLA - Dianne Kharouba's blog
</marketing-mode>

Dean Guistini has already posted his responses in his blog.

Usual disclaimer: This blog is not an official communication channel for CISTI.  Please use the regular CISTI Enquires or Media Relations channels if you have any questions.

library and publishing contests to develop software and innovate

Current Contests:

* OCLC launched their third Research Software Contest on April 13, 2009.
* The second repository Developer Challenge will be at Open Repositories 2009 (May 18-21, 2009)

Past Contests:

* The Elsevier Grand Challenge just wrapped, reflect.ws was the winning entry
* CISTI's internal Innovation Challenge wrapped up on March 19, 2009.  The winner was "Research in the News" (you can read more on the site).

This is only a brief survey and I'm sure I have missed some, but I'm blogging on the tiny keyboard of my netbook, so I am only doing a short posting.  Please let me know of any others.

Recovery.gov crowdsources ideas for using IT to open government

I continue to be very impressed at the commitment of the US national government to maximize what are very new technology platforms and concepts to connect with the expertise of their citizens.

Recovery.gov has launched, for a very narrow window (April 27 to May 3, 2009) a "national dialogue" with the question

What ideas, tools, and approaches can make Recovery.gov a place where the public can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds?

It then continues on to say

Making Recovery.gov a useful portal for citizens requires finding innovative ways to integrate, track, and display data from thousands of federal, state, and local entities. With this online dialogue, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board is reaching out to the public, state and local partners, potential recipients and solution providers to help fulfill the commitment to a transparent and accountable recovery.

The Obama team have been using these kinds of "ideas market" approaches to gather feedback quite a bit.

The National Dialogue also have a presence on Twitter - @natldialogue

and on Facebook

via GovLoop - White House to Host Dialogue Solutions for Recovery.gov (you may need to be logged in to read, I'm not sure)

This is very timely because I'm working on a volunteer project to do something similar for Canada called StimulusWatch.ca (albeit from a grassroots level, so we have nowhere near the scale of Recovery.gov)

We're still not yet at alpha, but you can read a bit about the background of the project in our blog and about page.

Ottawa Tulip Fest 2009 - Celebridée events with science content

I don't have any details about these, but from my reading of the schedule, the science-y ones look to be

The Environment: Individuals Making A Difference (In English) 

Sunday, May 3 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission) 

The Perimeter Institute: The Physics of Innovation (In English)

Tuesday, May 5 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

UPDATE 2009-05-05: Andre sent me some descriptive text

With Dr. Richard Epp of the Perimeter Institute Outreach Team

Where does technology come from? Because computers, cell phones, DVD players and countless other innovations are completely integrated into our daily lives, few of us stop to think how such technological marvels are possible. The answer, of course, is physics! Since all technology is ultimately subject to the laws of physics – the “gears and wheels” of how our universe works – the better we understand those laws, the more powerful and beneficial the technologies we can create.

ENDUPDATE

For Physics event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

The Environment: What Should We be Doing? (In English)

with Elizabeth May

Wednesday, May 13 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$10 (Adult)

$8 (Student)

$20 (Reserved Section)

For Elizabeth May event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

This is not at all to say there aren't many other interesting talks - as you might imagine, there are a few on the financial crisis, this one seems particularly apropos:

Tulipomania: The Dutch Tulip Bulb Crisis of 1637 (In English)

with Jules Muis and Mike Dash

Saturday, May 9 @ 10 a.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission)

The ubiquitous Michael Geist will also be speaking  

Surveillance (In English) 

with Michael Geist and/et David Lyons

Sunday, May 17 @ 7:30 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

For Surveillance event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

NYPL is calling all widget builders

Our first widget is going to be a List Building Widget that will include platform integration for iGoogle, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and web pages, and/or desktops.    The widget will allow users to:

• Build lists of favorite book, movie, music, game, etc. lists
• Build lists of materials needed for homework projects
• Share lists with friends

We are looking for open source designs that can be made available to and repurposed by other organizations seeking to engage young people. The widgets will be developed as part of a 2008 National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services titled Homework NYC Widgets: A Decentralized Approach to Homework Help By Public Libraries.

Read the RFP.

The project team will accept and answer questions about the proposal via comments on the NYPL Labs blog. 

See the blog post for more information, including contact information.  Deadline to submit proposals is May 1, 2009.

It's great to see libraries reaching out to their community, to build technology that will benefit lots of organisations.

Cochrane national license for Canada

The Cochrane Library provides a comprehensive collection of evidence-based medicine.

What's new? All Canadians now have one-click access to The Cochrane Library!

Canadians are one click away from the best available evidence on which health treatments work, which ones don’t, and which may cause harm. As of April 15 [2009], everyone in Canada with Internet access will be able to view the full content of The Cochrane Library, which provides evaluations of health treatments.

This nine-month pilot project provides a national subscription for Canadians to have access to the wealth of information in The Cochrane Library at www.thecochranelibrary.com. Until now, The Cochrane Library has only been available to some Canadians through a patchwork of networks and libraries across the country. Listen here for our podcast announcement!

from the Canadian Cochrane Centre.

There are a lot of players involved including CIHR and CHLA, but in some ways this could be considered the first major initiative of the National Network of Libraries for Health.

Thanks to Jessie McGowan for this information.

PS Not to be confused with Zephram Cochrane.

CLA preconferences: Democracy and Emerging Technology

Just highlighting a couple of the many Canadian Library Association preconferences, before the main event in Montreal.

* Democracy & Technology (DemTech) - May 29, 2009 - Off-site: J.A. de Seve Cinema, J. W. McConnell Library Building, Concordia University (note this is NOT at the main event site)

DemTech 2009 will showcase cutting edge projects that use information technology to encourage citizen access and foster democratic participation. DemTech is a pre-conference of the 2009 Annual Conference and Trade Show of the Canadian Library Association, sponsored by Apathy is Boring, VisibleGovernment.ca and members of the CivicAccess.ca community.

You can see the DemTech.ca site, as well as some information on the CLA site.
I have been gathering some information related to this topic in my FriendFeed Open Government Canada room, and there will also be a local event, ChangeCamp Ottawa, on May 16, 2009.

* Emerging Technologies Interest Group (ETIG) Library Camp - May 29, 2009 - Palais des congrès

The morning sessions will include presentations by John Fink (McMaster University), Jason Hammond (Regina Public Library), and Jessamyn West (yes THE Jessamyn West of librarian.net) The afternoon will be an "unconference", where participants will share and learn on a variety of topics pre-determined by the group. (Note: this is not a "sage on the stage" afternoon – come armed with a curious nature and a will to participate.)

There is a FriendFeed room, a wiki, and a blog in addition to the CLA site.

Registration deadline for both these events is Friday, April 17, 2009.  You can register by faxing in the form, or by signing up on the CLA site and submitting your info online.

I will be attending DemTech.

Science in Peril in Canada?

TVO's The Agenda had a focus on science policy yesterday.  There were two reports:

• The reverse brain drain: Carmen Charette's report card on the Canada research chair program.
• "Funding the future in Canada and in America: the cross-border war over science dollars."

The video is available online; I have embedded the second report below (minus the invisible web bug that gigya added)

Ottawa Writers Festival Spring 2009 - Science and Big Ideas

There are lots of authors coming to the Spring Writers Festival, I am just highlighting the science ones below.  You can see the full programme at

http://www.writersfestival.org/events.html

You have to pay, except some events are free for Carleton students.

Wednesday April 22, 2009 - 7 PM - Earth Day - New Science Series: Washing the Water

Alanna Mitchell discusses Seasick: The Hidden Ecological Crisis of the Global Ocean;

Wayne Grady discusses The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region

Thursday April 23, 2009 - 7 PM - The Big Idea: Carbon Shift

Join editor Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down, and contributor William Marsden, author of Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care) for a conversation on their new book Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

Sunday April 26, 2009 - 2 PM - New Science Series: How Mathematics Orders Our Lives - with Jason I. Brown, hosted by Stephen Brockwell

Thursday April 30, 2009 - noon - Masterclass Series: Why Poetry Antimatters - Metaphor, Entanglement and Particle Poetics

Join two stellar poets for a team Masterclass on poetry. Jeramy Dodds, recently shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, and Matthew Tierney, author of The Hayflick Unit and Full speed through the morning dark, for an exploration of the intersection of science and poetry.

Saturday May 2, 2009 - 4 PM - New Science Series - Cyburbia: Consciousness, Communication and Community in the Digital Age

The way we live has apparently been transformed by new ways of communicating. But where did these trends start? And if they can change our behaviour, can they also change the way we think? In Cyburbia James Harkin describes how the architecture of our digital lives was built over seventy years.

I have also added these events to LibraryThing, you can see them e.g. attached to the Saint Brigid's venue:

http://www.librarything.com/venue/40511

It was a bit of a pain transcribing all this stuff - organisations need to get smarter about providing information in machine-readable formats.  I can't think of an easier standard format than calendars.  Jon Udell is trying to address some of this with his community calendar project.

Mathew Ingram at Third Tuesday Ottawa

First to get some administrivia out of the way - yes, in words I think I can attribute to Douglas Adams, as his trilogy grew to four books and more - "there was a miscounting" and Third Tuesday was indeed on the 5th Monday.  But regardless... thanks to Joseph Thornley, CNW and everyone involved for bringing Mathew Ingram of the Globe to talk in Ottawa.

I think as part of his role of engaging the community Mathew has been giving this talk a lot, but it was still good - he covered a range of topics including the Public Policy Wiki and Twitter, with unexpected praise for CoverItLive (which I didn't know was Canadian) and TweetDeck as powerful tools.  I have to admit that while I had skimmed through the TweetDeck interface options, I hadn't tried them all - the Twitscoop tag cloud integration is a way to keep an eye on the realtime news topics streaming by - Mathew said he found out about the Mumbai attacks when he noticed Mumbai getting larger and larger in the word cloud and clicked through to see what was going on.  (See my posting on Twitter modes for a bit more about TweetDeck.)

There was time for a number of questions (it's always good to see a presentation that makes time for this) - I won't go over them all - you can see the--what are we supposed to call it--liveblogging? livetweeting? of the event under hashtag

#tto

He had a posting earlier this month The Guardian ups the ante on APIs and if you've been reading this blog, you know I'm all about the APIs, so I was glad to have an opportunity to ask him a question about it.  It would be great if the Globe could offer this kind of capability.  In my opinion the winners in the online space are going to be the ones who figure out how to be open, machine readable, and (somehow) monetized.  (Maybe we all buy tshirts that say "I love the Globe API", I don't know :)

UPDATE 2009-03-31: Brief summary with links to audio of presentation and Q&A now available.  Via Twitter/FF.  ENDUPDATE

SIDEBAR on the space and on technology: It was a good meeting space, although there's no free wifi.  I'm getting increasingly tempted to get a Rogers Rocket Stick 3G USB network stick, but I don't think I could justify the cost - I wish they had a pay-as-you-go version, I'd use it all the time.

Since my tiny netbook got attention again, I'll mention it's the Asus Eee PC 4G, it's a first-generation device and handy to throw in a backpack or shoulder bag, but it has a few issues: small screen, tiny keys (I'm lucky that my fingers are small), limited battery life (maybe 1.5 hours) and limited storage 4G "hard drive" - internal flash drive.  People asked if it was slow but it's actually not compute limited for basic web surfing tasks, even using WinXP - that's one of the lessons netbooks are teaching us - you can even play full motion video on it.  You can add an SD card in a built-in slot for more storage, it appears as a second drive.

I think you're probably better off with a second-generation device, say 9" to 10", with better keyboard, longer battery life, and 160GB internal HD, something like an Acer Aspire One.  There's a good comparison chart of netbooks in Wikipedia (although look at the raw weight numbers only, not the colours, since they've made an eccentric decision to colour the weight ranges differently depending whether it's measured in pounds of kilograms).  END SIDEBAR

CISTI in Google Scholar and Facebook - official news

I always have to walk a fine line because it takes a while for official messages to be approved in the Government of Canada. We've got some approved releases, so therefore I'm happy to now be able to safely enter

<marketing-mode>

Ottawa, ON, March 23, 2009 – NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) is meeting the research community where they work through our new collaboration with Google Scholar.

CISTI Media Room - Google Scholar

Ottawa, ON, March 23, 2009 – In an effort to generate awareness about the products and services offered by NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), NRC-CISTI is now on Facebook.

CISTI Media Room - NRC-CISTI on Facebook

</marketing-mode>

Clay Shirky on newspapers

Clay Shirky has a great post for any organisation trying to navigate the Digital Chasm (I know we usually say "digital transition" as if it was all going to be nice and smooth and continuous, but that's part of his point, it isn't).  Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

I want you to think about that.  Here's what I wrote as a FriendFeed comment on the item: "Fundamentally it's an issue of the mental models of the pre-digital world not transferring over. In the physical world you may steal something because you want it, but more likely, you steal it because you want to make some money. People who steal may have no interest in what they're stealing, other than money. When the digital Law of Infinite Perfect Copies applies, there is no money in copying. That means the people who copy your content most passionately are people who LOVE YOUR PRODUCT."

I don't think media in particular has gotten its head around this.  In the digital world, when people like your product, some will buy, but many will share.  Both of these are expressions of engagement with your content.  People may switch seamlessly between buying and sharing - they may buy the DVDs, but BitTorrent episodes that aren't available on DVD yet.  They may watch legal clips online, and carry ripped content around on their iPods.  They.  Don't.  Care.  The industry has been trying over and over and over again to convince us that the person who in one instant is buying the DVD is a noble upstanding citizen supporting industry, and the EXACT SAME PERSON who an instant later copies some music and gives it to a friend is an evil pirate who hates capitalism and is stealing food from artists' children.  This is insane.  This is not true.  Stop doing that, it doesn't work.  What part of Infinite Perfect Copies do you not understand?

More from Shirky

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse. This shunting aside of the realists in favor of the fabulists has different effects on different industries at different times.

If digital blows up the library, the solution is not to say "the library is really really important, this can't be happening".  The solution is to provide real services in the real world that patrons actually use.  Not the services you think they should use, services that they actually want.

Three years ago, I wrote "is the research library obsolete?" and its followup "paved paradise: the future of (a particular type of) research library?".  The point of which is: if your main business is serving up digital content (PDFs of articles from licensed journals) remotely to researchers sitting at their desks -- which I realise is certainly not the case if you're a public library, but which is the case for my library -- then the entire enterprise you've built up, the big building designed for visitors who no longer come, the carefully protected stacks full of paper, that entire enterprise is dying and you'd better have a plan for what your library does next in the real world.  Trying to pretend that basic discovery and access to digital content are a differentiator (let alone ascribing value to stacks of print) in a world of Google Scholar and ScienceDirect is fantasy, not reality.  If you don't provide more than publisher sites + free search can offer, you're dead (a situation which now faces an organisation I am rather familiar with).

To conclude with some forceful words from Shirky

When someone demands to be told how we can replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

via FriendFeed

SIDEBAR: It's important to mention that one of the reasons for the current newspaper crisis, beyond the macroeconomic downturn, is that many of them, whether directed by moguls or corporations, were highly leveraged.  Empires built upon debt.  This sort of financial manuevering looks brilliant when credit is cheap and the economy is growing and the classified ads look like a license to print money.  No doubt each buyout and takeover was lauded in its day.  And it was of course just part of an overall pattern that loaded almost every part of the economy down with debt.  But nevertheless, when credit is hard to get and the economy is shrinking and the ad-based newspaper model is under threat, it looks idiotic.

UPDATE: One of Canada's two national newspapers, the Globe and Mail had a major feature on this topic today - Is democracy written in disappearing ink?

My comment on FriendFeed was: I'm concerned that, just as in the words of Churchill "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." that it is possible that "the mainstream media are the worst form of journalism except all the others that have been tried". Unfortunately, just because blogging *may be* worse, that doesn't mean blogging won't replace MSM.

Large Hadron Collider at Carleton Science Cafe

I didn't know Carleton had Science Cafe events.

There's one today (March 11) about mold.

The next one is

The Large Hadron Collider: A particle smasher designed to answer the fundamental question about our Universe
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Louise Heelan, PhD candidate, department of physics

Even better, it's at the Wild Oats Cafe at Bank and 4th (817 Bank), which is closer (to downtown) than the Carleton Campus itself. 6:30 - 7:30 PM.

View Larger Map

via Apartment 613

data.gov is coming - Vivek Kundra named US Federal CIO

Vivek Kundra on data.gov and the Imperative to Distribute Data

VK: One of the things we want to do is embark on launching data.gov which would democratize data and give data access to the public and based on that challenge whether it is citizens, NGOs the private sector to help us think through how we address some of the toughest problems in the public sector.

VK: Data.gov will publish data feeds, so we'll have a vast array of data, and the way I like to think about this is that if you think of two forms of data that have been published in the federal government that have fundamentally transformed the economy. One example is the National Institute of Health working with other world bodies when they published the Human Genome Project data online. What that did is it created an entire revolution in personalized medicine where you ended up having over 500 drugs that were created and that are in the pipeline coming into the FDA.

VK: Second, is what happened in the geospatial community when the defense department decided to release data around satellites you created this GPS revolution where now you could go to your local car rental company and get a GPS device or your iPhone and get directions.

Vivek Kundra: Federal CIO in His Own Words - O'Reilly Radar - March 5, 2009

So... who is Canada's Vivek Kundra?

UPDATE 2009-05-22: Data.gov has launched.