Project Liberation

I wanted to tell you all about a project I am starting next week. Here is the info:

'Project Liberation' is brought to you by Blue Key, Leadership Ethics and Values Dept and the International Justice Mission.

Human slavery. This terrible reality is rampant unlike ever before in our world's history. We have decided to focus on three specific issues: human trafficking, forced labor and child soldiers. In an effort to raise awareness on our campus and the surrounding areas, we have created three buttons with provocative words associated with these three areas of slavery:

VIOLATED (human trafficking)
CHAINED (forced labor)
ABDUCTED (child soldiers)

We have also generated business cards that express three quick facts about each issue and have quotes from victims. This is what each card states:

VIOLATED (human trafficking)
1.) The sex trade circulates 7 billion dollars a year worldwide
2.) 900,000 people are trafficked across international borders per year
3.) 14,500 to 17,500 sex slaves are trafficked into the US per year
"I paid a man 350 German marks to go to Greece since I had no papers. Instead, he brought me to Greece and sold me to a bar. He told me he would kill me if I left....We slept with a lot of men, ten a day. We were beaten if we tried to leave. I was beaten with a belt"
More info: http://www.ijm.org/

CHAINED (forced labor)
1.) There are 27 million slaves in the world today
2.) There were 13 million slaves shipped from Africa over 300 years of the Atlantic slave trade
3.) An average slave in the American South cost $40,000 in today's money. Today, a slave costs an average of just $90
"A man came to the refugee camp and chose us; I was taken in a car...to a house in a place called Khartoum. He would not let us out. We had to work all day...I had to do everything...I was beaten for every single thing"
More info: http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/

ABDUCTED (child soldiers)
1.) Today, there are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world
2.) Burma's resistance army of 350,00 is 1/5 composed of children
3.) Child soldiers are fighting in over 33 Countries worldwide
"Today, I am afraid. I don't know how to read, I don't know where my family is, I have no future. The worst is during the day when I think about my future. My life is lost. I have nothing to live for. At night I can no longer sleep--I keep thinking of those horrible things I have seen and done when I was a soldier"
More info: http://www.invisiblechildren.com/

All statistics were found from '50 Facts that Should Change the World' by Jessica Williams.

If you are interested in following this project, join us on facebook or on the blog.

We will be passing out buttons and cards all next week from 12-2 everyday. MWF in the Cage and TTH in Kaufman! Check it out!

The Hacker Has Been Hacked!

After so much discussion of Facebook in class and the attention to the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, through the film Social Network, I HAD to post when I found this article. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account was hacked! 

The hacker apparently made Zuckerberg’s status state:

"Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011"

I cannot believe this story! The hacker of all hackers has been hacked! It is beautiful! I cannot help but smile ear to ear.

According to the article, Facebook and Zuckerberg have not made a formal response. But the status has been removed. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Harry Potter Alliance!

I was very interested by our discussion of the Harry Potter Alliance today in class, so I decided to check it out for myself. I found the site very informative and interactive. There were over four campaigns a person could be actively involved in ASIDE from joining the email list and becoming a member of the Alliance. I did not feel inclined to actually become a member, but I wanted to see if there was something I could do right-then-and-there with the four campaigns. This is what I found: the Starvation Wages Horcrux. 

The Starvation Wages Horcrux is a petition that addresses a letter the Alliance wrote to Warner Brothers in November 2010 that demanded chocolate Harry Potter merchandise be solely fair trade. Warner Brothers refused. When this request was turned down, the Alliance decided to utilize the voices of their online community. As a result, any passing member can choose to put their information into a couple of boxes that will be sent to Warner Brothers, demanding that chocolate Harry Potter merchandise be strictly fair trade. 

As the President of International Justice Mission on campus, we are preparing a Valentine’s Day chocolate campaign where we will sell fair-trade chocolate Valentines on campus. While preparing for this event, I have discovered the atrocious truths behind slave-labor in the chocolate industry. It is ludicrous. So, when I came across this campaign on the Harry Potter Alliance, I was very excited and immediately filled out the information (after reading the petition statement, of course). If you feel comfortable, I encourage all of you to think about signing the petition as well. 

The only way change occurs in our consumer society is if the consumers demand change. Dream big: imagine a Valentine’s Day when all the chocolate we buy for our loved ones is free trade. For, as it stands now, the chocolate we eat probably came from the blood, sweat and tears of a slave laborer. A heavy price for our delicious candies.

Google addict, I am not

In class today, we discussed the immense power and presence of Google in our everyday, cyber-lives. As we began the discussion of ‘are we addicted to Google and too reliant on its services,’ Dr. Macek pulled up the internet for an example. First he had to get to Google. Giving a brief overview of what we would be talking about, he inadvertently gave us the best example he possibly could have hoped to present. From the North Central College homepage, he typed the word ‘Google’ into the Google toolbar at the top of the browser in order to get to the Google homepage. I could not help but giggle to myself from the irony. Strangely, no other laugh exuded from the class. Did no one notice? Or is the idea of finding everything from the Google toolbar such an ingrained idea that we don’t even think about the irony of navigating to the Google homepage from the Google toolbar? Either way, I just had to introduce this post with this timely example.

I would not say I am addicted to Google. I sometimes wonder if I am an old-fart living in a 22-year-old’s body. I am a Facebook addict. That I will not deny. But, aside from social networking, iTunes, blogging, Skype and researching for classes, my internet access is very narrow in what I use. I use Google if I have a question I can’t answer. Or if I need to find a bit of news. I would say I use the Google search engine once, or twice a day. So, for me, it isn’t that big of time-consumer in my life. BUT, I would say I have a particular reliance on the services of Google. If I have a question I need a quick answer to, or if I want to learn something in the news, I think of no other place to go to than Google. If Google were suddenly to vanish, I wouldn’t know what to do. I hate yahoo, msn and ask for no other reason than they aren’t Google. And because of the 2006 refusal of Google to turn over their search information. I thought that was admirable. But, in terms of the services for navigating the web that Google provides, I consider no other search engine. And, for that, I would admit to being reliant on Google for the services it provides.

China: Facebook's New Frontier

In December, Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six year old founder of Facebook, took an unexpected vacation to China. This is very interesting because China recently banned Facebook on the Country’s web. When investigators began to ask questions as to Zuckerberg’s intentions in China, no one has answers. The most obvious answer is that Mark Zuckerberg is hoping to work with the Chinese government to work out a deal that will open Facebook to the public. 

As of June, China had over four-hundred and twenty million Internet users. This number is greater than any other nation in the world. The number of users on Chinese social-networking sites is around one-hundred and seventy-six million people. Obviously this would be an outstanding opportunity for Facebook to access an unprecedented number of new users and expand advertisement exposure. China is the new frontier for profit. Unfortunately, this frontier is halted by a massive, government instated ‘block’ sign. 

When asked if ‘business talk’ is part of Zuckerberg’s trip, the answer is non-committal. The trip was announced as a vacation with his girlfriend. Zuckerman claims to work on his Chinese language skills for an hour a day. Either the man is passionate about learning another language, or he is accessing the tools he will need to breach this governmental block. 

Zuckerberg was observed walking into the headquarters of Sina Corporation, a leading Web portal in China. While there, he met with the CEO, Charles Chao. He was also observed visiting China Mobile Limited’s chairman, Wang Jianzhou, and Baidu Incorporated’s CEO, Robin Li, CEO. Considering the positions of power these men hold within the realm of Chinese Internet, it is foolish to believe arrangements are not being discussed. Facebook has made concessions before. In Germany, Nazi content is censored from Facebook. Arrangements and compromises can be made. And, considering the massive number of potential users waiting to be accessed, Facebook would be foolish not to make such arrangements and compromises. 

Zuckerberg is not going to be able to accomplish anything while on this vacation. He knows this fact, and that is why he is calling it a vacation. To call it anything else would be to allow defeat upon his return home. But the willingness of the Chinese government and Internet CEO’s to meet with Zuckerberg displays much hope for the future of Facebook in China. It will be interesting to follow this story and see what will happen.

Blogging: Hope for Global Unity?

There are several main points and concepts that stuck out to me while reading the interview with Trine-Maria Kristensen. The first is that blogging has become a business for Kristensen. She decided to found and manage a business called Social Square that helps organizations and businesses understand social media and how to access its many uses. During that time, her blog has been an outlet for her personal ideas that don’t have as much room to blossom at her work-place. From this personal insight displayed to the public, her website has become a valuable resource for many researchers and businesses looking for help in accessing the social media. She states that communication professionals from different companies find my blog and contact me in order to find out more about corporate blogging…and some of them end up as our clients in Social Square. Other ways that her blog has led to business adventures and a steady income include speaking gigs at conferences, seminars, universities and tech schools. Kristensen has become a well-known figure because of her expertise cleverly displayed via the blogging medium. She recently published a new book entitled Weblog as a result of this expertise and public attention. 

The other thing that stuck out to me while reading this blog was an overwhelming sense of humanistic idealism. When asked if Kristensen ever worries about abusive emails or comments. Her response really surprised me. In all the years she has written and been a public figure, she has never once received an abusive email or comment. This floored me. I think there is a fear from inexperienced bloggers that there are maliciously inclined viewers out there waiting to pounce on unsuspecting bloggers and tear them apart. Kristensen proves this fear to be unneeded. I found this reassuring. But another quote in the text made me think of this point from different angle. The quote stated that no one is going to accidentally stumble upon your site. They are only going to visit if they are interested in what you have to read. I concluded from this reality that most humans do not have the time to surf around blogs to leave malicious comments.

The other example of idealism I saw within the interview was when Kristensen was asked how blogging has changed her life. She responded:  I often say that the more I blog the more naive I become. I truly believe that people can and will work together to change the world (or at least change organizations), and that we will come up with even better solutions when we work together. I thought this was beautiful and very true. Blogging has created an online global community founded on conversation and knowledge acquisition. What greater medium for global discussion, compromise and consensus could exist? I thought this what an exciting thing to think about.