The Codebreakers

FOSS: Technology For Free / Open Access To Informations

Investigatation about how poor countries are using FOSS applications for development, and includes stories and interviews from around the world.

FOSS contains 'source code' that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. It has been around for over 20 years but most PC owners are not aware that the Internet search engines and many computer applications run on FOSS.

"It's not that FOSS has had a bad press, it has had no press because there is no company that 'owns' it," says executive producer Robert Lamb. "But we found that in the computer industry and among the afficionados, it is well known and its virtues well understood."

The crew of the independent producers who made the film went to nearly a dozen countries around the world to see how the adoption of FOSS presents opportunities for industry and capacity development, software piracy reduction, and localization and customization for diverse cultural and development needs.

Stories from The Codebreakers include computer and Internet access for school children in Africa, reaching the poor in Brazil, tortoise breeding programmes in the Galapagos, connecting villages in Spain, and disaster management in Sri Lanka. The documentary also includes interviews from key figures around the world.

Intel, IBM, Sun and Microsoft all seem to agree that FOSS is a welcome presence in computer software. According to Jonathan Murray of Microsoft "The Open Source community stimulates innovation in software, it's something that frankly we feel very good about and it's something that we absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft."

The Truth According To Wikipedia

Direction: IJsbrand van Veelen
Interviews: IJsbrand van Veelen / Marijntje Denters / Martijn Kieft
Research: William de Bruijn / Marijntje Denters
Production: Judith van den Berg
Run Time: 48 minutes


Google or Wikipedia? Those of us who search online -- and who doesn't? -- are getting referred more and more to Wikipedia. For the past two years, this free online "encyclopedia of the people" has been topping the lists of the world's most popular websites. But do we really know what we're using? Backlight plunges into the story behind Wikipedia and explores the wonderful world of Web 2.0. Is it a revolution, or pure hype?

Director IJsbrand van Veelen goes looking for the truth behind Wikipedia. Only five people are employed by the company, and all its activities are financed by donations and subsidies. The online encyclopedia that everyone can contribute to and revise is now even bigger than the illustrious Encyclopedia Britannica.
Does this spell the end for traditional institutions of knowledge such as Britannica? And should we applaud this development as progress or mourn it as a loss? How reliable is Wikipedia? Do "the people" really hold the lease on wisdom? And since when do we believe that information should be free for all?
In this film, "Wikipedians," the folks who spend their days writing and editing articles, explain how the online encyclopedia works. In addition, the parties involved discuss Wikipedia's ethics and quality of content. It quickly becomes clear that there are camps of both believers and critics.
Wiki's Truth introduces us to the main players in the debate: Jimmy Wales (founder and head Wikipedian), Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia, now head of Wiki spin-off Citizendium), Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy), Phoebe Ayers (a Wikipedian in California), Ndesanjo Macha (Swahili Wikipedia, digital activist), Tim O'Reilly (CEO of O'Reilly Media, the "inventor" of Web 2.0), Charles Leadbeater (philosopher and author of We Think, about crowdsourcing), and Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia Britannica). Opening is a video by Chris Pirillo.

The questions surrounding Wikipedia lead to a bigger discussion of Web 2.0, a phenomenon in which the user determines the content. Examples include YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Wikipedia. These sites would appear to provide new freedom and opportunities for undiscovered talent and unheard voices, but just where does the boundary lie between expert and amateur? Who will survive according to the laws of this new "digital Darwinism"? Are equality and truth really reconcilable ideals? And most importantly, has the Internet brought us wisdom and truth, or is it high time for a cultural counterrevolution?

Anthroplogical Introduction to YouTube

Presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008.


0:00 Introduction, YouTube's Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What's on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and "networked individualism" (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is ("context collapse")
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube's Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg...
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV's "The Message" and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

The Numa Numa quote is from *Douglas* Wolk (not Gary Wolk as was mistakenly said in the talk).

Obama's Advices about Use of Facebook

Arlington, Virginia - September 8th, 2009 - Associated Press:



President Barack Obama met with high school and advised them to "be careful what you post on Facebook."



And he added: "Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life."

Facebook and YouTube Five Years from Now

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington asks YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg what their respective companies may look like five years into the future.


Social networking applications and sophisticated mobile devices are combining elements of the real and virtual worlds, and delivering an augmented experience of reality.

How is this digital experience changing consumers and communities? - World Economic Forum

Chad Hurley is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the popular San Bruno, California-based video sharing website YouTube.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer known for creating Facebook, an online social directory, with the help of Harvard roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. The site is used by over 12.5 million people at over 2,200 universities, 22,000 high schools, and 2,000 companies around the world.

J. Michael Arrington is a entrepreneur and was the maintainer of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the internet. In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook's Founder

An interview with Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg in which he talks about the origins of the social networking giant.


According to facebook official website, Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook, which he founded in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook's service and development of its core technology and infrastructure.


Mark attended Harvard University and studied computer science before moving the company to Palo Alto, California.Time Magazine added Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People of 2008. He fell under the Scientists & Thinkers category for his web phenomenon, Facebook, and ranked 52 out of 101 people.


Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, families and coworkers. But his CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been the subject of controversy for the origins of his business and his wealth. As a Harvard student, he created the online social website Facebook with fellow computer science major students, and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.


And that leads to the big controversy: who is the real inventor of the social service Facebook?