The "panic button" will send out a text message to everyone in the user's address book, then erase both that address book and the phone's call history. This will be an important tool, given how thoroughly governments comb through dissident's communications technology as a matter of course these days.

"The initiative is part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's push to expand Internet freedoms," wrote the Mail, "because of the crucial role Facebook and Twitter has had in fueling pro-democracy movements in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere."

Since 2008, the U.S. government has spent $50 million on firewall workarounds and other tools for defying censorship. Whether it's been of any real on-the-ground value, is another discussion.

Contests, both military and philosophical, have moved onto geek ground for good and this is one aspect of the U.S.'s reaction to those conflicts.

Panic button photo by star5112 | other resources Dan Rowinski, Government Computer News

The nomination of WikiLeaks was put forward by parliamentarian Snorre Valen, saying that the site was "one of the most important contributors to freedom of speech and transparency."

"By disclosing information about corruption, human rights abuses and war crimes, WikiLeaks is a natural contender for the Nobel Peace Prize," Valen said.

Expanding the Definitions for Peace Prize Nominees

According to Alfred Nobel, who established the prize in his will, the award should go to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

The nomination of WikiLeaks is a nod to the expanding definition of what constitutes "peace" for the Prize Committee. It's clearly not just the absence of war, but a more complicated definition that includes human rights activism, for example.

But it's also notable that it isn't Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been nominated, but rather the site itself. That's an indication not just of the importance of the whistleblower website itself, but also of the role of the Internet in social change and social justice movements - as tools for communication, collaboration, and mobilization.

The Nobel Committee accepts nominations from members of all national parliaments, professors of law or political science, and previous winners. It declined to comment on the WikiLeaks nomination or on any of the other proposals it received.

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced in October.

As you may imagine, the Internet is already abuzz with its reactions.

Gladwell's Tipping Point book described the power of "Connectors" - those people whose knack for making friends and acquaintances amass them social networks containing over a hundred connections. Connectors link us up with the world, he said. Others with special "social gifts" were described as either "Mavens" (aka "information specialists") or the powerful persuaders known as "Salesmen."

And yet, in his current essay, Gladwell doesn't apparently seem to think that those same types of personalities can impact the world when they use their "gifts" on social networking sites in order to enact social change. Revolutions, activism, protests and the like that take place via social media are not like those in the past, he says, because "the platforms of social media are built around weak ties." 

Weak ties aren't necessarily a bad thing, though, Gladwell explains:

"Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That's why you can have a thousand "friends" on Facebook, as you never could in real life. This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties...," he says.

"But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism."

High-Risk Activism Won't Come from Tweets, Facebook

To illustrate this point, Gladwell pitted historical protests , like those from the Civil Rights era against modern ones, like he "Save Darfur" Facebook movement and the Iranian elections with its accompanying "Twitter Revolution."

In the Civil Rights era, says Gladwell, the high-risk activism that took place was based on strong ties and close relationships. It was rife with danger and often met with violence. 

But today, the so-called activism that takes place on social networks isn't nearly as risky nor impactful. For example,  the 1,282,339 members of the "Save Darfur" Facebook page have committed an average of 9 cents each to the cause.  The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of 35 cents. "Help Save Darfur" has 2,797 members have have given, on average, 15 cents, Gladwell writes.

He explains that "Facebook activism" succeeds by "not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice."

As for the Twitter revolution surrounding the Iranian elections? It was more of a product of shoddy Western journalism than any real activism. Gladwell cited Golnaz Esfandiari's article in "Foreign Policy" which stated, "Western journalists who couldn't reach--or didn't bother reaching?--people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection. Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi."

There are many more examples in the article itself, but they all point to the same conclusion: activism that takes place on social networks just isn't the real thing.

"We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro," says Gladwell, referring to the historic moment on Monday, February 1, 1960,  when four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina and ordered a cup of coffee - the example that kicks off the lengthy essay.

Do You Agree?

In the article, Gladwell takes on social media activists, including Clay Shirky, author of one of the social media movement's bibles "Here Comes Everybody" plus Andy Smith and Jennifer Aaker, whose new book called "The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change" tells the story of how a Silicon Valley entrepreneur used social media to find a bone marrow match when he came down with leukemia.

Gladwell says that social media enthusiasts don't understand the distinction between this latter scenario and real activism:  "They seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960," he writes.

The article is already being criticized for missing the mark, most notably by David Helfenbein on The Huffington Post, who says the piece is "generationally insulting." Gladwell is saying that "older generations knew how to create real, palpable movements; younger generations simply know how to push buttons," says Helfenbein. "But Gladwell, younger generations can do both," Helfenbein explains. "They have: they were in the Facebook groups for President Obama and then they showed up by the thousands to the rallies and then they voted for him. And in the end, whatever you believe politically, Obama won. This was one significant, high-risk movement."

Of course, one could argue that voting for president isn't really all that dangerous - it's a movement, sure, but was it "high risk?" Perhaps it's Helfenbein who is missing the point?

For those that only skim headlines, the article and the accompanying analysis makes for a nice tweet: "Gladwell gets it wrong (link)." But to those who still read longer articles like Gladwell's essay (or heck, this blog post summarizing), there's definitely food for thought here.

Feel free to share yours in the comments.   

In this post I highlight some of the presentations, workshops and outcomes from MobileActive08.

Unlocking the potential of mobile

There are over 3.5 billion people currently connected with mobile phones, meaning penetration worldwide is in excess of 50%. In the developing world mobile penetration exceeds even internet penetration. Take South Africa as an example - internet penetration is around the 10% mark, while mobile penetration currently sits at 95%. Many people in the developing world do not have access to computers or the internet, but they do have mobile phones.

Here are some of the most interesting workshops I attended:

Mobile Internet use by Low-Income Youth (Tino Kruetzer)

I found this presentation by Tino Kruetzer, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, extremely interesting. It was based on the interim results of a pilot study on mobile internet usage by low income youth in Cape Town. Some of the key findings were:

• Mobile internet usage was far higher then computer based internet usage, 83% had used internet on a mobile compared to 20% on a computer for the previous day.
• Close to 100% had used a mobile phone as often as yesterday, while the next highest item used was an (Ipod/Mp3 player) and computers were 3rd with under 10%.
• SMS messaging exceeds even voice calls, with 65% having sent at least one message on the previous day.
• Instant messaging is the most popular application with 47%.
• 56% of the youth surveyed used their mobile phones on the previous day to take a picture.
• Mxit was the most popular mobile instant messaging application.
• On average about 50% of their money was spent on mobile services, R30 (3-4 $) a week.
• Even though there are cheaper options for voice calls like community (public) phones, there is a social stigma attached to calling each other from public phones. They prefer using their mobiles even with higher prices.
• They do not think that using applications like IM or Facebook as being on the internet; when asked if they had used the internet, they say no even though they answer yes for having using IM.

How mobile advancements are creating new opportunities for news reporting (Safdar Mustafa)

Safdar Mustafa from Al-Jazeera spoke on how mobile technology is assisting journalists and the news room. Nokia 95's are used with GPS to tag the locations and the video quality is sufficient enough for broadcast. He covered two very interesting trials by Al-Jazeera into the use of mobile technology. The first, a bomb blast in Chad in which the reporter did not have his camera with him. He had gone out to purchase something when the blast occurred. The reporter recorded everything with the N95 in one hand and his press badge in the other. The video reached the newsroom in under 20 minutes and was put on air, faster then any network.

For the second trial, reporters went into the Sahara equipped with n95's capturing images of Tuareg rebels. All the images were Geo tagged, and an interactive map was created on Al-Jazeera Labs of the journey taken of the reporters, with images overlayed. Safdar also discussed some of the custom applications they have built to send data back to the news room. A greenpeace activist questioned if these tools would be made available to other organisations who also have a need for such tools. Safdar also indicated they were investigating citizen media and creative commons licenses.

Innovations in mobile social marketing (Gustav Praekelt, Robin Miller, Jonathan Donner)

This presentation covered a case study from South Africa for promoting a product to lower income groups. It asked the question: How do you reach lower income groups? Choosing the right technology to reach these people is the most important factor. For this particular case they made use of the "Please call me" service, which is offered by South African mobile operators. The service allows a customer to send a free SMS to anyone requesting a call back. Every day 30,000,000 of these messages are sent, mostly by lower income groups or people without prepaid credit. The campaign inserted a short advertisement in each message. Customers had to respond by sending an SMS to a dedicated number with the lure of winning prizes. This resulted in 500,000 messages per a month. Similar campaigns could be run for campaigns like HIV awareness, but the key is to have a wide variety of smaller prizes.

Online Markets and using mobile to assist the informal sector (Ismail Dhorat, Swati Mylavarapu, Juliana Rotich)

This session was hosted by StartupAfrica to brainstorm ideas around using mobile technology to assist the informal sector and micro enterprises. Some of key ways that mobiles can assist micro enterprises are:

• Information via mobile (SMS/WAP), Examples would be price information, weather, quotes
• Micro Payments / Accepting of micro payments via mobile
• Mobile markets to sell products, source raw materials and services
• Co-ordination between different micro-enterprises
• Linking of different markets and vertical industries via mobile
• Some examples: Cell Bazaar, Kazi 560, M-Pesa

Some of the key action points that were borne out of discussions and workshops at Mobile Active

• The formation of an Open Mobile Consortium (Working name), the aim is to bring together all the companies who have solutions in this space. The aim is to provide a standard, formulate best practices and bring together the fragmented solutions.
• This first MobileCamp hosted in Africa is being planned.
• The creation of a mobile researchers network.
• The creation of a mobile bill of rights.
• Project Diaspora, Networking the African Diaspora.
• Using mobiles for Crime Prevention in South Africa.
• Creating a primer on Citizen Media and the tools that are available out there.
• Students To Develop Mobile Phone Applications to Empower Business Women in Senegal (Wiki)

This is a guest post by Ismail Dhorat from ignite^2. You can find him blogging about Technology in Africa and also blogging random musings about life. Every so often he also blogs at Techleader. He is also passionate about the possibility of internet and technology and it's ability to institute social change.

Mobile technology is most likely to be used in Asia or Africa, where wired infrastructure is less common. Indeed, seven of the eleven case studies included with the report detailed mobile use among organizations working in African nations.

"Well over 3.5 billion mobile phones are in use around the world and organizations are harnessing this technology to help overcome humanitarian challenges," said Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation in a press release. "Modern telecommunications, and the creative use of it, has the power to change lives and help the UN solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. It can connect families separated by disaster, help emergency relief workers respond more quickly, empower health workers with data to help combat disease and epidemics, track the impacts of climate change, and even help in the resolution of civil conflicts."

By far the most common use of technology is voice, followed by text messages. But more sophisticated uses such as photo and video messaging, mapping, data collection and analysis, and inventory management are on the rise. NGOs said that the use of mobile devices has allowed them to save time, transmit data more quickly and accurately, more quickly mobilize individuals, gather data, and reach audiences that were previously unreachable.

The case studies cover the areas of public health (such as connecting health workers to one another in Uganda), humanitarian assistance (such as alerting Iraqi refugees to food aid drop offs in Syria), and environmental conservation (such as using text messages to raise awareness about deforestation in Argentina). The entire report is available for download in PDF format from the UN Foundation web site.