networks

Computer networks (computers or other devices that are connected via wires or wireless connections) have changed the way that people work and socialize. New developments in network technology such as mesh networking show promise for even more innovative ways that networks can support communities and civic engagement.

Our projects

Between the Bars

Between the Bars is a blogging platform for one out of every 142 Americans---prisoners---that makes it easy to blog on paper, using standard postal mail. It consists of software tools to make it easy to upload PDF scans of letters, crowd-sourced transcriptions of the scanned images, and the usual full-featured blogging tools including comments, tagging, RSS feeds, and notifications for friends and family when new posts are available.

How might communities use it?
We are designing this system for prisoners in the US, a growing population that is routinely denied access to broadcast media. We hope that prisoners will be able to use this platform to tell their stories, to maintain social connections to the outside world, and to retain a sense of identity and humanity through the process of their incarceration.

Source code will be freely available in a public repository, as well as documentation on how to use the code.

At what stage of development is it?
Early code available on local server; networking with prisons still in early stages.

Next steps include:

* Finishing the core functionality of the code and to improve the visual presentation of the site
* Networking with local prisoner support organizations who can help evaluate the design and connect us to initial users (expected to be accomplished within 6 months)
* Bringing the site live to the general public (expected by year's end).

Project team: 
Benjamin Mako Hill
Project team: 
Charlie DeTar

GoodApp

GoodApp is a cloud environment for the development of applications that are socially responsible, open and transparent.

How might communities use it?
It supports the creation of civic apps targeted at specific communities through the use of this shared infrastructure. This infrastructure includes development tools hosted in the cloud and hosted application deployment. At the same time it promotes a number of goal features: transparency, sharability, education and openness programmatically.

At what stage of development is it?
GoodApp is in the proposal/development stage but with a working prototype that is the engine behind Center projects Webcomix and Hero Reports.

In the short term, we plan to complete the infrastructure with regard to version control and initial libraries while deploying existing applications on the infrastructure. In the long term, we will focus on developing shared libraries, developing case studies from new users, and introducing it to a larger application development community.

Project team: 
Matthew Hockenberry

Project Einstein

Project Einstein is a "digital penpal" participatory education program linking Burmese and American high school students. Newly arrived Burmese youth will work alongside their American classmates to exchange images of their lives with one another and with Burmese youth in refugee camps in Thailand and India, connecting communities that are otherwise inaccessible to free communication and information with home-country immigrant and refugee communities in the United States.

How might communities use it?
Teachers can share curriculum materials across distances; the platform also allows for groups of people to share and discuss multimedia material.

At what stage of development is it?
We're currently developing the website, working with outside developers to fix bugs in Open Atrium code; deploy (mid-October 2009) in two separate high schools in Indianapolis and two refugee youth communities in Thailand and India.

Project team: 
Audubon Dougherty

Comm.unity

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Comm.unity is a platform implementing a wireless, device-to-device information system that bypasses the need for centralized servers, coordination, or administration. A key feature of this platform is the fact that it combines knowledge, awareness and learning of the user's social relationships and integrates this information into the communication protocols and network services. Comm.unity is designed to work on as many devices as possible, and with as many different radios as possible (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc.).

How might communities use it?
People could go on a trip and createan ad-hoc group with those they happen to be traveling with. Any picture anyone takes could be immediately distributed to all of the group’s devices.

Strangers could chat on the plane, or a friend sitting ten rows in front of them in a lecture hall.

People could be notified when friends and family are nearby.

More globally, it could act a communication system for emergencies and disaster scenarios, which allows news and critical information to be distributed among people in the area without the need for existing infrastructure (which is likely to be down...).

It could be a system for professional or civic journalists operating under oppressive regimes.

All of this would be done for free, no service charges, over an open platform that would allow any developer to enhance and add new features and applications.

At what stage of development is it?
Comm.unity is in development and is perhaps the most technically challenging project at the Center, involving complete rewrites of low-level communications technology. Next steps include releasing an open source toolkit API for rapid development of close proximity communication and social applications; expanding the number and types of devices that can run Comm.unity. Currrently working to get full functionality on Nokia S60 phones; creating a fully usable end-user application on top of comm.unity; and testing it around MIT campus.

Project team: 
Nadav Aharony

Open Park: a model for collaborative online news production

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The Open Park project looks to define an 'ideal' or at least improved model and practice for online collaborative news-reporting and -writing.

As newsrooms across the country and beyond are grappling with the new economic realities of reduced budgets and news media professionals are busy drafting and testing plans for new models of news production and distribution, the little-explored practice of 'Don't compete, collaborate!' is well worth considering.

Collaboration and the sharing of skills and resources have already proved in other professional spheres that it is a winning formula--one especially well adapted to these economically demanding times. It is thus only logical to explore what this new practice could do for the future of journalism.

At what stage of development is it?
Currently being developed, with field-testing due to start in the fall '09 semester with journalism students. Further development of online collaborative news-reporting tools for OP users, selection of candidates [journalism schools] for testing OP, building of journalism students' teams, development of four case studies for them to cover.

Related Tools & Resources: 
Ellen Hume on the Future of Journalism
Project team: 
Florence Gallez
Project team: 
Nadav Aharony

Community Partners & Projects

Citizen Media Law Project

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The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) provides legal assistance, education, and resources for individuals and organizations involved in online and citizen media. The CMLP also provides research and advocacy on free speech, newsgathering, intellectual property, and other legal issues related to online speech.

The CMLP is jointly affiliated with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a research center founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development, and the Center for Citizen Media, an initiative to enhance and expand grassroots media.

The CMLP seeks to build a community of lawyers, academics, journalists, and others who are interested in facilitating citizen participation in online media and in protecting the legal rights of those engaged in speech on the Internet.

For more information, please visit our website at http://www.citmedialaw.org/.

Printcasting

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Printcasting will make it possible for anyone to create a local printable newspaper, magazine or newsletter that's supported with local ads. No money, tools or design will be required -- only passion!

The Printcasting system turns traditional "terrestrial" publishing roles upside down and inside out so that anyone in the community can participate in one or more of them. We're partnering with the community to help us grow niche audience and revenue organically.

Citizens Market

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Citizens Market, Inc. is an exciting new nonprofit organization in Cambridge, MA, that is developing a user-generated website for ethical consumption, where information about corporate behavior is organized into scores that consumers can see while they shop.

Citizens Market will invite anyone to contribute information – i.e., a review and a rating – for any company’s performance on a certain issue, such as treatment of minorities, political lobbying or toxic emissions. Submissions will be reviewed and rated for quality by peers, so that persuasive reviews have a higher impact on the company’s final score. For each company, the website will automatically generate a “report card” of issue scores. Each company’s profile will be linked with its brands and products’ barcodes. We’ll post our algorithms and code base to ensure total transparency and encourage feedback.

Rye Reflections

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Can a citizens' publication work in a community of 5000?

Rye Reflections started in June, 2005, in the New Hampshire seacoast community of Rye. It publishes monthly, and members meet once a week for two hours at the Rye Public Library.

Recent blog posts, discussions, and resources