joshua fouts › Comments

Linked on FF. - joshua fouts

Fantastic show tonight!! On the Copper Robot. Mitch Horowitz was excellent. Grats @mitchwagner - joshua fouts

Thanks, Joshua - and thanks for coming. - Mitch Wagner from email

WTF? - SuezanneC Baskerville

All I know is that the soundtrak veered eerily in the direction of Futurama ... - joshua fouts

I don't get it. - SuezanneC Baskerville

You need to follow @triphibian ... - joshua fouts

Rita J. King, a/k/a "Eureka Dejavu" in Second Life, asks the question: "Does the digital culture cheapen our human connection?" She wants your answer. Here's mine: Twitter and Facebook can either bring us together or alienate us, depending on how they're used. People make real-life social and business connections on social media, it happens all the time. On the other hand, you also see people standing alone in a crowd, ignoring the flesh-and-blood humans around them while tapping away on their iPhones. That happens all the time too. - joshua fouts

James Glassman, then America’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, fielded questions from an audience of Egyptian bloggers from within a large, transparent cube. An imposing pyramid and several obelisks dotted the surrounding desert landscape. But this meeting wasn’t happening in Egypt—or, for that matter, anywhere in the physical world. Instead, it took place in the digitally simulated universe of Second life, inside a “virtual newsroom” built for the American University in Cairo’s journalism center by the New York- based company dancing Ink Productions. Attendees participated through their “avatars,” from the raven- haired maiden representing Rita King, dancing Ink’s creative director, to a suited simulacrum of Glassman himself, sporting a virtual red tie. - joshua fouts

Thoughtful (long!) exploration by David Samuels of the culture - and business - springing up around marijuana decriminalization. Much of the focus is on the particularly open culture in Venice, California (where I live.) - Anthony Citrano from Bookmarklet

Love me some DJ Krush - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

Great column by Rita J. King about Louisiana's efforts to create 21st workforce skills and cultural preservation through their new Digital Workforce Initiative. Also, a call to action! - joshua fouts

Great article by Rita J. King about business enterprise use of virtual worlds: Slowly, companies are leaving the physical world behind to cut costs, improve communication, and find new ways to collaborate. Sandra Kearney sat across from me during our first meeting in early 2007. Between us, a bottle of champagne bubbled and a platter of sushi beckoned. I had been interviewing dozens of IBM employees without permission from the company. Kearney (who has since left Big Blue) dropped in on me unexpectedly, wanting to know why I was snooping around; was I writing a book or an article? - joshua fouts

haha... - Zee.

Holy shit this is eight months old! LOL way to resurrect a dead thread! :) - Adam Turetzky

Alice Taylor reports on Raph Koster's speech at GDC: Access-everywhere worlds available to people with simple systems on small screens and via social networks is where you'll hit your Really Big Audiences. - joshua fouts

Chapter 8 by Rita J. King Post-Katrina Profiteering: The New Big Easy. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans leaving death and destruction across the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast counties. The lethargic and inept emergency response that followed exposed institutional flaws, poor planning, and false assumptions that are built into the emergency response and homeland security plans and programs. Questions linger: What went wrong? Can it happen again? - joshua fouts

As Rita J. King and I outlined in our Carnegie Council report "Digital Diplomacy," communication in the twenty-first century will be about dialogue, not messaging. And the heart and soul of such communications must be authentic and ethical, otherwise it's just more propaganda. - joshua fouts

In the online world of Second Life, “residents” design their own avatars and engage in unscripted encounters, making real religious dialogue a possibility. Rita King (and her avatar Eureka Dejavu), engaged in some tough discussions about cultural differences with Muslims, as reported in Dispatches From the Imagination Age. Eureka describes a time when the conversation broke down: “Unfortunately the language and culture barrier acted against me with Ingush [her Muslim conversational partner], who mistakenly read [her] question as one about jihad, not ijtihad. He thought I was being hostile, and the tension, despite the fact that I could have logged out as any time, was palpable.” - joshua fouts

The “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds” project, carried out by Joshua Fouts and Rita King of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs has been the most recent initiative with an immense public diplomacy potential. The two researchers conclude that “engaging with people in virtual worlds who self-identify as Muslim can be part of a broader public diplomacy strategy to foster inclusive perspectives on religion, society and coexistence”. When viewed in the context of the currently rising optimism about the US handling of Middle East issues, a project of this calibre suggests that US public diplomacy in Muslim countries is developing new approaches to Arab-Islamic culture. The project’s use of Second Life virtual experiences, where internet users can interact with each other through avatars to engage in intercultural dialogue, is indeed a pioneering initiative. - joshua fouts

"Government has always been driven by an effort to control information, but to be part of this conversation inherent in Internet culture is to let go of control of information and roll with it," Fouts said. "That's very challenging to the culture of government. Bureaucracy abhors that." - joshua fouts

Carnegie Council page about UI: The Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project specifically endeavored to consider how the Internet can lead to a greater firsthand understanding of Islam for policymakers, diplomats, and people worldwide, and to explore how the Internet allows people to experience the culture of Islam in a manner conducive to substantive dialog between cultures. - joshua fouts

Throughout the war the internet was ablaze, with both sides of the conflict working through the different media forms to present their point of view. It was so tense that people started dubbing it War 2.0. Never before in a conflict has the internet had such an important role. "I think it's a whole new level of using information technology to augment your message," said Joshua S. Fouts, Carnegie Council fellow and chief global strategist for Dancing Ink Productions, a strategic creative content development and research company focusing on virtual spaces. - joshua fouts

disgraceful, and biased, and you should be ashamed for flogging such biased sites and calling yourself any sort of scholar or journalist. See my comment on that site if they don't take it down - Prokofy Neva

Syndicated from Religion Dispatches. Bill Berkowitz interviews Joshua Fouts about the January 29, 2009 release of the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project - joshua fouts

Religion Dispatches' Bill Berkowitz interviews Joshua Fouts about the January 29, 2009 release of the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project. - joshua fouts

Aram Zucker-Scharff reports on use of social media tools in the conflict in Gaza. Joshua Fouts and David Saranga quoted. - joshua fouts

The majority of regular Second Life users who've seen videos of PlayStation Home in action have laughed at the robotic avatars, the staid environments, and the overall uniformity of Sony's virtual space...which parallels the general gaming populace's notion of Second Life as a place for perverts and freaks to hand out. While there are admittedly a good number of twisted people hanging about, folks intrigued by the social aspects of Sony's service might actually find something worthwhile amidst the clutter of user-created curios littering the SL landscape. - joshua fouts

“I definitely think that Twitter is on the ascent,” said Joshua S. Fouts the chief global strategist for Dancing Ink Productions and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Fouts is is currently working on a report for the Obama administration on Understanding Islam in Virtual Worlds. “It allows busy people to check in and see their questions in a time space that is more in-keeping with their flexibility or availability.” - joshua fouts

The answer is straightforward: systemic high-quality education, disseminated to reach the entire territory, including the most remote and impoverished communities of this vast country, so that all Brazilians can acquire the means to become creative and critical thinkers, capable of developing their own opinions and becoming true contributors to solve the challenges involved in constructing a fair and democratic society. - joshua fouts

Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King will present findings from their Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project. After a year of exploring digital Islamic communities, Fouts and King conclude that engaging with people in virtual worlds who self-identify as Muslim can be part of a broader public diplomacy strategy to foster inclusive perspectives on religion, society, and coexistence. - joshua fouts

Art Kleiner at CCEIA -- This Workshop for Ethics in Business panel showcases three prominent experts and their predictions about the ethical implications of global political risk for 2009. Aimed at decision makers in corporate, government, and nonprofit sectors, the panel seeks to provide a stimulating preface to the critical global political, social, and economic shifts for the year ahead. Using Eurasia Group's Top Risks as a starting point for identifying the major global challenges in 2009, the discussion will examine the ethical aspects of each issue, and how best these dynamic and complex challenges can be met. - joshua fouts

On Muxlim.com, visitors can read Al-Jazeera news, listen to the Koran and chat with people, among other things. The site has some 1.5 million visitors per month from 190 different countries. Half of the visitors are from the United States. "The US and the UK are about 70 percent of our market, so we will not be looking at any other markets for the time being," El-Fatatry said. - joshua fouts

Unfortunately, it looks like they have had to restrict access to Muxlim Pal because of griefers. Here's the message on the site: Welcome to Muxlim Pal. As you know, muxlim.com are committed to providing all our users with a respectful, open-minded and family-friendly environment, in which to learn, exchange information, play and work. Unfortunately, we have had a short down time, as a small number of destructive elements were sabotaging the site for everyone else. [my emphasis] The site is now up again and users are enjoying it. With these attacks going on we have had to make the difficult decision to temporarily restrict access for new members. All new members are welcome complete this form (below) to trial the site or wait the standard activity and waiting period used for messaging features on the rest of the site. - joshua fouts

muvenation logoIn activity 9 of this section, we were given a list of tasks to choose from. It is still about identity and appearance. I chose to interview a strange avatar and take pictures of them for a temporary in-world exhibition. I wasn’t sure whether it was about a “strange looking” avatar or a stranger to me, so I have found two avatars who are both :-) Well, not any more. Blogging about this task is not a requirement but I found what my interviewees had to say so interesting that I asked them for permission to post it on my blog to share this with all of you. I didn’t want to summarize the conversations as I think most of what was said is relevant and I couldn’t possibly say it better than my interviewees. I also didn’t want to take things out of their context. However, I highlighted the bits that are directly related to my assignment and the questions if you want to read only those bits. - joshua fouts

Inability to Use Modern Communications Tactics. The State Department has been slow to adopt new communications techniques and technologies that are regularly exploited by the commercial sector and often by U.S. adversaries. In 2007, the GAO reported that the State Depart­ment failed to evaluate the impact of its commu­nications efforts on target audiences. Instead of polling target groups and analyzing focus group data to determine which messages would reso­nate, "State's measurement efforts rely on anec­dotal evidence and program outputs, such as favorable articles by foreign journalists."[30] With­out the ability to assess performance--which is common practice in modern public relations and marketing firms--establishing any type of mea­surable objectives is impossible. - joshua fouts