In 2006, when I came to Calgary, Identity Thief was something that we all heard about. While, I did not have RFID sleeves for my credit cards yet, I was able to take precautions. When I took a cab in 2006 from the Airport to Downtown Calgary, I could take
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Politics and its Discontents: The Digital Life
The Disaffected Lib recently wrote a post expressing ambivalence about the ubiquitous role that technology plays in our lives. It is an ambivalence I think many of us, especially those of an older generation raised on typwriters, print and analogue television, feel. On the one hand it has been an
Continue readingTaylorOwen.com: The OpenGlobal Show #1
This week, in partnership with Google, we launched a new feature on OpenCanada.org called the OpenGlobal Show. Each episode, I will connect with a panel of friends/colleagues/experts on international affairs through Google Hangout. For the first episode, the panelists were: Ivan Sigal, Executive Director, Global Voices Joshua Foust, International affairs writer, analyst,
Continue readingTaylorOwen.com: Buzz Kill: The psychological impact of living under drones
Imagine that you are living somewhere in Pakistan, Yemen, or Gaza where the U.S. suspects a terrorist presence. Day and night, you hear a constant buzzing in the sky. Like a lawnmower. You know that this flying robot is watching everything you do. You can always hear it. Sometimes, it
Continue readingTaylorOwen.com: The Surveillance Arms Race
There is a new arms race emerging between people who want to communicate freely and securely and governments that want to monitor and limit this communication. In democratic countries, this government interference ranges from the mass monitoring of telecoms to flirtations with cutting off social media flows and shutting down
Continue readingTaylorOwen.com: Crisis Mappers ignite talk
Here is a video of an Ignite talk I did at the International Crisis Mappers Conference in DC. It is a short summary of the historical mapping research that I have done on the US bombing of Cambodia. This Walrus magazine article provides some further background to the project.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Education and the Digital World
The other day I wrote a post commenting on an article by Doug Mann, a University of Western Ontario professor who calls into question the wholehearted embrace of all things digital in the classroom, arguing that efforts should be made to curb its distracting potential. A good letter by David
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Psst! What’s The Latest On TMZ?
In the latter part of my teaching career, I had the feeling that those in charge of education, especially on the local level, were suffering from a kind of drift that was largely absent when I started my career. More and more, administrators were embracing technology, and the next ‘big
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