Why governments must embrace the new global digital reality
The essay below was in the Globe and Mail on April 10th. On Jan. 28, 2011, in the middle of a popular uprising, the president of Egypt turned off the…
Taylor Owen
Disruptive Power Book Site
I have a new site up for the book, with details on events, reviews, media and articles. It’s at: www.disruptive-power.com/
Disruptive Power Book Website
I have a new site up with all of the book information, event details, writing and media: www.disruptive-power.com
The promise and peril of digital diplomacy
The following oped was in the Globe and Mail last Friday. It is a response to the news of a new digital diplomacy initiative at the Munk School of Global…
Disruptive Power
The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age Anonymous. WikiLeaks. The Syrian Electronic Army. Edward Snowden. Bitcoin. The Arab Spring. Digital communication technologies have thrust the calculus of global…
Disruptive Power
My forthcoming book, Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Official launch is March 1, and will be touring…
New Virtual Reality Journalism Project
Cross posted on www.towcenter.org Long a figment of technophile imagination, a confluence of technological advances has finally placed in-home virtual reality on the cusp of mainstream adoption. Media attention and…
Twitter as public space, and related problems
Last weekend, the Globe and Mail published two articles on Twitter, both of which were dismissive of the platform and were written by authors who do not actively use it.…
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…
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…
Two books on Human Security
I have two books on human security coming out this year, which have both just gone to production. The first is a Sage Major work on Human Security, which is…
What the Tesla Affair Tells us About Data Journalism
Consider for a moment two scenarios. One, a malicious energy reporter tasked with reviewing an electric car decides he is going to fake the review. Part of this fictional narrative,…
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…
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…
Liberal Baggage
David Eaves and I have a review of Peter C Neman’s When the Gods Changed, in this month’s Literary Review of Canada. We use it to continue to explore the…
For the Liberals, it’s time for the path not taken
A short essay for the Ottawa Citizen a few weeks ago: Before becoming leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair wrote a pamphlet for the august thinktank of the British…
Conferencing in Halifax while Rome Burns?
Cross-posted on CIC Dispatch Blog Billed as the Davos for Security, the Halifax International Security Forum – funded by the Department of National Defence (DND) – sought and accomplished to…
The Risks of Building the Afghan Army
Below is an oped that appeared in the Globe and Mail. The regional military training centre in Herat is a desolate and harsh place. On the outskirts of an Afghan…
How the New Yorker Goes Viral
Crossposted at opencanada.org’s Dispatch blog For years I have read The New Yorker as a non-US print subscriber. This meant that somewhere between a few days and a week after…
Have the Taliban Changed their Tune on Women’s Rights?
Crossposted at opencanada.org’s Dispatch blog I find that the subject of women’s rights in Afghanistan is a difficult one to engage with. To some, the shocking standard to which women…