I have been traveling in the last couple of weeks, so I couldn’t write (or even post some drafts) here a lot.  So, at this point, I just wanted to wish everybody reading this a Happy New Year and best wishes for all the holidays that took place in December.

Wishing you a Happy New Year, it turns out that our happiness resides mostly in our own hands.  So, instead of a traditional holiday card, here is a video with a TED Talk that “reveals” the mechanism of happiness:

And if you have even more time, here is another talk on the subject:

As I wrote before, I find Queen Rania’s YouTube project very interesting and apparently thought and conversation promoting.  Also, as I wrote before, I do have a comment at least about one item published under her project (have not watched them all yet :).

It is a video about the stereotypes Middle Easterners encounter in the US, which is done with a lot of humor featuring young people sharing their thoughts. Here it is:

I can really relate to people interviewed in the video in a sense of being tired from dealing with stereotypes. When people hear that I am from Israel, one of the most common responses (perhaps the most common) is “So, have you served in the army?”, which projects a very particular image of the entire people.

What I cannot relate to, is the way people in the interviews picture the way they would like to be treated.  All of them want everybody else to thank them for some positive (yet still stereotypical) characteristics or ancient achievements of their people.  For me that is a rather disappointing dream.

In my utopian world, the nominal labels attached to you, such as race, religion, nationality, etc., are really not important.  What important is what you put into these labels as a person.  I believe that I treat people first of all for what they and this is how I would like to be treated.  I wish the people in the video would simply asked to be treated for what they are.

I realize the constraints in which Rania’s project is operating as well as its stated purpose of “breaking down stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim worlds.”  I also realize that this is just a video amidst a myriad of other information and initiative related to the subject.  However I do think that she is in a more influential position than many other people.  This is why I think continuing framing the issue in terms of “us” and “them”, trying to show “them” that “us” are as good as “them” if not better, is not necessarily the best way to “bridging the East-West divide.”  I wish Queen Rania could raise above the regionalism and promote a more inclusive framework of tolerance and inclusiveness.

What do you think?

Just to follow up quickly on a little confession about Google I posted a couple of days ago.  Apparently I am not alone.  David Carr of NY times put it in much better words than I did in my post, yet the idea is stunningly the same: “If Google owns me, it’s probably because I am in favor of what works.”

(Article via The Googalization of Everything)

In his recent weekly address, Obama revealed parts of his economic recovery plan.  Interestingly, one of the main points he chose to reveal was actually about the “digital divide” even though he is not using the term.  Here is his address:

In case you skipped the video, here are the MICT related highlights:

Third, my economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.  We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.

As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.

Even though Obama is not using the term “digital divide”, on its face we can see both components of the debate present in his speech.  First, he is talking about access (emphasizing the bandwidth as the key issue).  Second, he is talking about education, which refers to the skills aspect of the “digital divide”.

In a recent study, Erik Nisbet and I found that the skills frame of “digital divide” usually leads people attribute the problem to individual.  In simple words, if you frame the “digital divide” as an issue of access, people will expect the government to solve the problem.  However, if you frame the “digital divide” as a matter of skills, people tend to hold the individual responsible for lack of knowledge.

This is why it is really interesting that Obama is framing the issue in a rather sophisticated way.  In his plan, it is not an issue of children lacking skills, as much as it is an issue of the school systems lacking the infrastructure.  In other words, the issue of skills is being transformed into an issue of infrastructure - if we bring the technology to schools, the students will figure out how to use it in the best possible way.  Re-framing the issue in terms of access definitely makes it more amenable to a centralized solution and rationalizes future government spending on public works, however, I wonder if it actually adequately addresses the issue of promoting digital literacy.  At the end of the day, we do need computers in schools, but we also need the manpower and an educational paradigm in order to empower the next generation through their use of MICT.

I think I’ve been somewhat hypocritical about Google.  On the one hand, since I started blogging, I voiced occasional criticism of Google, concern about it collecting all this information about us, and the fact that its search algorithm is turning into a lens through which we comprehend reality.  On the other hand, I am using many of Google’s services, because, what can you do, they create great products.  The result of this self search - I am not really doing what I preach.

I tried to think about all the Google products I use (from the most to the least used I think)…  Google, Gmail, Reader, Picasa, Youtube, Google docs, Google Calendar, G-Talk, Google Analytics… so whom am I kidding about being a careful user of Google’s products?  Just about a year ago, II used to log off my Google account when I did not need it, but I noticed that I am not doing it anymore.  So maybe it is time to stop pretending and simply embrace it?

What would it mean for me to embrace it?  I guess it would mainly mean dropping some of my clients and switching completely to Google application.  Today, I use Gmail with MS Outlook client and I refer to Google calendar or Google docs only for group projects.  “Embracing” would probably mean skipping MS Outlook and relying solely on the web applications.  I think I would also start using i-Google.

My main concern in this case is backup.  A while ago, I had a very unpleasant encounter with Google, when I got locked out of my Gmail account for almost a week.  There was nobody to talk to, because Google does not have a costumer support in a traditional sense and was really bad with getting back on the service requests submitted through its online support.  If that happens when Google is my main organizational tool, I will be in big trouble.  But maybe there are backup solutions that I am not aware of?

What do you think?