Diversity is Our Strength: SJSU & Social Justice

On my way to work as a faculty member at SJSU, each day I pass the Carlos & Smith Memorial Statue. John Carlos and Tommy Smith, aside from being two of our greatest USA track stars, put their lives on the line at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, protesting the unfair treatment of poor and disenfranchised people in the US. Watch an incredible documentary here.

Each day I am reminded of the larger legacy of social justice at SJSU and our collective pursuit of socioeconomic and cultural equality.

San Jose State has a vibrant diverse study body and professoriate. The strength of this heterogeneity was evidenced today at the #BlackThursday rally held on the SJSU campus organized by the SJSU BSA. Students, staff, and faculty marched in response to the news that broke today about hate crimes allegedly committed on the SJSU campus by three Anglo-American students directed at an African-American student. The rally was a public call to the SJSU community to reaffirm our commitments to inclusion and to refocus attention onto issues of power and identity. Check out the twitter feed with the hashtag #BlackThursday to engage in the dialogue.

The SF Chronicle reported that “prosecutors said the abuse began in August when an 18-year-old African American student was named “Three-Fifths” by his white roommates as a reference to way the U.S. government, during its early history, counted blacks. When the freshman, protested, they proceeded to call him ‘Fraction.’ The roommates then allegedly hung a confederate flag in the dorm, wrote the N-word on a dry-erase board and later fastened a bicycle lock around the man’s neck. The victim’s parents saw the Confederate flag and the dry-erase board with the racial epithet and reported it to housing officials.”

Read more about the alleged hate crimes here. It is powerful reading that inspires anger that we must turn toward critical thought and then action.

In a letter to the campus community, SJSU president Mohammad Qayoumi stated:

Diversity and a commitment to social justice are in SJSU’s institutional DNA. Our library is named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; many of us pass daily by the sculpture of Tommie Smith and John Carlos or under the Cesar E. Chavez Arch. This deeply disturbing incident reaffirms that we must protect and steward our values. I am proud of all who marched today in support of them.

As a cultural studies professor, I am uniquely placed to drive a dialogue around these issues and to facilitate ways that the SJSU campus can come together to heal and act. We can create systems where all students are safe and empowered to follow their personal, academic, and professional dreams.

The legacy of Carlos and Smith is still alive, and we must keep it so. We are all part of the dialogue and the solution. These incidents remind us of the importance to be ever-vigilant. We are agents of change and have the power to affect the institutions and systems that govern us.

Social Justice is a process, not an outcome, which (1) seeks fair (re)distribution of resources, opportunities, and responsibilities; (2) challenges the roots of oppression and injustice; (3) empowers all people to exercise self-determination and realize their full potential; (4) and builds social solidarity and community capacity for collaborative action. Advocacy and intentional student development further support this definition.

Video Source: jojojobebe.

Turning Water into More Water: OrbSys & Smart Showers

Fresh water is an essential resource for life. It is no secret that the world is becoming increasingly fresh-water stressed as global demand continues to grow.

Writing for CNN, Stefanie Blendis and Monique Rivalland advise that “according to the U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA), 1.2 trillion gallons of water are used every year for showering in the United States alone. And yet, rather disturbingly, across the world more than three times the population of the States lacks access to any clean water at all.”
 

According to the EPA, there are approximately 155,000 public water systems in the United States. Scientific American reports that, “…in just the first decade of the 21st century, we've extracted underground water sufficient to raise global sea level by more than 2 percent. We suck up 25 cubic kilometers of buried water per year.” It has also been reported that, in the US, we use 125% percent more water than in 1950.

Growing Blue provides an interactive online tool here to check out water-stressed areas around the globe.

Technology plays a critical role in helping to relieve fresh-water issues. In the post-industrial world, this might take the form of more efficient water recycling-purification systems in the home.

Orbital Systems, a Sweden-based design start-up, has developed a smart shower that points us in the right direction. Their “shower of the future” includes a recycling and purification process that makes it possible to re-use the heat of the rinsed water. Purification and heat recovery occurs in real time producing water quality ensured to be above drinking quality level.

It is the brainchild of industrial designer Mehrdad Mahdjoubi. CNN notes that Mahdjoubi’s “…concept formed part of a collaborative project with NASA's Johnson Space Center, which looks to drive design concepts that could potentially assist space expeditions.”

OrbSys suggests that this technology can save 90% water consumption due to the efficient water recycling system. The inventors also claim that the technology can reduce energy consumption up to 80%. 

These are significant numbers and significant savings and worthy of consideration.

Check out a video about the makers here.

Video Source: CNN.
Image Source: Orbital Systems Diagram.
Image Source: Orbital System Diagram.

Images and videos are used for educational purposes and are not the copyright of Nodes, nor are these materials sold or re-purposed in any way.

Loucura Móvel: Mobile Data Streams & the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil

The telecommunications demands (in particular from mobile users) for the FIFA 2014 World

Cup will be massive. Social media will be at the heart of the techno-user World Cup experience. Brazilians are leading the charge in a region where mobile devices and social media use are growing rapidly.

It will be interesting to see how FIFA positions itself in the open-access arena of social media, and what kind of copyright protocols will be put on media content, from official interviews to matches to user-generated videos and images.

2014 Brazil stands to be the most shared World Cup in history. The global event will be that much more connected with the growth of global social media platforms that even just four years ago in South Africa were not as robust and ubiquitous.

FIFA and many other companies will certainly be looking to capitalize on the local and global mobile market as the entire world turns it economic, social, and technology desires toward Brazil. This fact has not been lost on FIFA media officials, who have launched a YouTube channel called FIFA TV, which is already up and running with features, highlights, news, and match action from previous World Cups.

In a press release, FIFA President Sepp Blatter stated, “FIFA is keen to engage with football fans beyond our competitions by sharing our rich visual content with them, and for this there is no better platform in terms of reach and penetration than YouTube. We want to provide YouTube users with the greatest moments of FIFA World Cup history but also invite them to share theirs with us.”

Not only will the 2014 World Cup be the most shared in history, it will be the most streamed in history as well. And that is a lot of data charges yo.

Writing for ME, Zen Terrelonge noted that consumers might face some sticker shock when it comes to streaming video on mobile. “Sandvine reckons the World Cup 2014 in Brazil will be the most streamed event in history, which will create the most widespread case of bill shock as a result. To put it into context, a three-minute YouTube video would use about 10MB of data, which isn't a lot ordinarily, but it will cost an average of €7 while roaming in Europe.”

The Brazilian government has been ramping-up. State Secretary of Sport and Leisure (SEL) and coordinator of the Steering Committee of the 2014 World Cup RS, Kalil Sehbe, said “We want to hold the Smart World Cup.”

According to Nitin Dahad, for UK Trade & Investment, “The government has mandated that the 12 cities hosting the FIFA 2014 World Cup must have implemented 4G LTE networks by around May 2013 …with contracts awarded for infrastructure by the operators to Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel Lucent.”

Dahad continues, “…mobile penetration is high in Brazil, at almost 130%, with the use of

smartphones and tablets increasing. Combine this with the third factor, the use of social media: Facebook penetration alone is very high, with 60 million users in Brazil, representing a penetration of 30% (figures as of November 2012). Most Brazilians (around 60%) already use social media to research products before buying, so the influence of social media cannot be underestimated.”

There have already been some bumps in the road, with the Soccerex Global Convention scheduled for Rio canceled under acrimonious circumstances. Read the Soccerex press release here.

Brazil's national tourism board launched Brasil Quest, a mobile game app to familiarize visitors with the 12 World Cup host cities. Going to Brazil? Get the app as a free download for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

It will be equally interesting to see how major technology giants position themselves to access the FIFA human-media circus.

In a comprehensive report on telecommunications in Brazil, a group of authors from CPqD (Brazilian national innovation agency) noted: 

“The scale and dimension of the infrastructure demanded by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to host the 2014 World Cup games is a real challenge. The enormous influx of people coming to the host cities vastly increases the need for various basic services such as transportation, telecommunications, water distribution, sanitation, electric power distribution, financial services and health care. These systems are interdependent, and an incident in one area can have critical consequences on the others. The concept of critical infrastructure protection, used to identify the critical telecommunications services during the 2007 Pan‐American Games in Rio de Janeiro, will be vital for the 2014 World Cup.”

“During the 2014 World Cup, the most critical situation will very likely be covering the stadiums and surroundings, where there will be a very high concentration of subscribers, most of whom will be heavy service users. With some reasonable estimates for user density in the vicinity of the stadiums, the demand is expected to reach17 Mbps per cell area.”

Might we see an organization such as Google partner with tel-comm giants to create Hot-Spot Fan Pavilions near stadiums offering local communities and World Cup attendees free mobile access? It would be great to see pavilions where tech companies showcase the intersections of technology and soccer.

Too pedestrian? Maybe something along the lines of Project Loon, where engineers float soccer-styled tech-net balloons that provide temporary mobile internet access in host cities.

Some critical steps:

• Structuring partnerships with organizers of similar events
• Planning capacity and traffic demands
• Planning for innovative new services
• Partnerships between private sector and government
• Allocating frequency spectrum

…And these are just a few of the considerations. Seriously, the telecommunication IT infrastructure concerns here are huge. The real hope here is that investment in Brazilian IT infrastructure will be long-lasting after the World Cup leaves, and that infrastructural growth will benefit the largely working class communities that inhabit the host cities. This is the “people’s game” after all.

What are some creative ways to meet the mobile access demands that are sure to come with the 2014 World Cup?

Go here for a detailed overview of telecommunications in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup.

A list of starter apps for Brazil 2014.

Click here for a succinct run-down of telecommunications issues for the 2014 World Cup. 

Hindås 3 June 1958. The Brazilian World Cup players Vava, Gilmar, Garrincha and Moseir playing the board game Ludo at their training grounds in Hindås.

Image Source: FIFA (By EA Sports (http://www.ea.com/intl/football/fifa) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Image Source: Brazilian Stamp (By Brasil Correio (Selo Postal) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Honking Saxes: Big Jay McNeely's Thinkin' About Something

“There is Something on Your Mind,” recorded by saxophonist Big Jay McNeely in 1959, stands apart from other slow-cruiser songs of the 1950s. The raspy final notes of Little Sonny Warner’s vocal lines add melancholic but defiant depth to a track that would become the biggest hit for both McNeely and Warner, reaching #44 on the charts. The song has been re-recorded by a number of artists including Bobby Marchan, B.B. King, Etta James, Freddy Fender, The Hollywood Flames, Gene Vincent, and Albert King.

McNeely popularized a sax style known as honking, which came to define a period of late 50s rock-n-roll. Incidentally, go here for a great list of 1950s rock-n-roll films. Hillarious to think what used to shake-up the establishment. 



Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll notes McNeely "...was famed for his playing-on-his-back acrobatics and his raw, hard-swinging playing" He was known to "leave the stage during the act, walk across the top of the bar, and sometimes walk out the door of the club, often with a line of people following him." Classic. Angelo Moore from Fishbone might be a modern example in terms of stage bravado, ironically both sax players.


The track was recorded at Checker Record, a subsidiary of the Chess based in Chicago. Checker produced some golden artists that covered “a wide range of genres including blues (Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson II), rhythm and blues (Sax Mallard, Jimmy McCracklin), doo-wop (The Flamingos, The Moonglows), gospel (Aretha Franklin, Five Blind Boys of Mississippi), rock and roll (Bo Diddley, Dale Hawkins), and soul (Gene Chandler).”

There is something really excellent about how the baritone-tenor saxes sync with the burlesque blues-stomp back-rhythm. Listen closely for the influences of Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young.

Dig it.



Video Source: (brownprideoldies)

All videos are used for educational purposes and not the copyright of Nodes.

Talking Green Tech: Phonebloks, Motorola's Ara Platform, & Sustainable Devices

If you love tech and are concerned about the environment chances are the constant waves of new smartphones and tablet devices spins your head. These “upgrades” (sometimes excellent, more often perfunctory) often relegate previous iterations to the deviceheap of shame. The NYT estimated the total weight of cellphones thrown away in the United States from 2006 through 2010 at approximately 85,000 tons. It has been well documented that a majority of this waste is exported to developing world countries, and the local health fall-out across the lifespan is going to be devastating.

“Upgrade yesterday to this marginally better product today!”

“Upgrade now to this thing that does that one thing at a marginally faster rate than the previous thing.”

One small component burnout or breakdown or crack on your handheld device? Better toss the whole thing then. WTF. Environmental impact be damned. It’s not good enough.

In short, we have to find ways to make smartphones and tablets more environmentally friendly and recyclable. Enter Phoneblok. The idea that device components can be modified, chopped and changed, possibly adding shelf life to devices lessening environmental impact.


I love the idea of mix-and-match and personal-device-modification at fundamental levels, yet it seems there are some significant challenges from idea to application here.

Yet, I am intrigued with Motorola’s new ARA platform. The idea is to “develop a phone platform that is modular, open, customizable, and made for the entire world.” Sustainable, low-cost, longer-lived devices that operate in open spaces.These are goals to care about and work toward.

It is an awesome idea, and whether Ara is technically-plausible and sensible in terms of design to market, it is the larger discussion about green-tech and sustainability that these types of engineering challenges develop in public discourse that is critical here. It helps refocus our attention to “green” considerations.

Open source modifiable Lego-like devices might create a whole new market of small businesses producing various mods-to-order. Custom mods developed for different professional or personal needs. A massive Maker community could develop and mobilize around this idea…maybe.

Nothing is a panacea. Dan Zhang opines on the marketing materials, “It’s important to differentiate marketing spin from specifics. Note how they never mention anything about the components within an SoC or its main memory! My guess is that this SoC (e.g. an NVIDIA Tegra 4) must be upgraded in an all-or-nothing fashion, replacing the Tegra, VRMs, heatsinks, and DRAM within the same module. You can augment the features of the SoC through the application-specific processors and other peripherals.”



Read here for Dan Zhang’s min-technical rundown of the ARA platform.

Motorola blogs about ARA here.

Image Source: (Quora)

All images and videos are used for education purposes only, and are not of the copyright/ownership of Nodes blog. 

In the Cut: Brenton Wood, Dr. Dog, & Phyllis Dillon

There is something fantastic about 1960s laid-back soul.  A hybrid sound that found a home in Los Angeles and Philly in particular. Not surprisingly, locales positioned at the epicenter of social change during the 1960s. 

On their recent release, B-Room, Dr. Dog’s opening track, Truth, offers a lovely homage to this sub-genre of soul.  And I can’t get enough of this track or the genre. Atmospheric effects lay a canvas for the lovely forlorn vocal phrasing. The strings give the melody an ethereal counterpoint. Dreaming. Cruising. 

 (Video Source: AntiRecords)

Brenton Wood’s work helps put this track in perspective.  Check out his discography here. Find his bio here.

(Video source: uklangang)

This style of music gets a lovely hybridized make-over with Phyllis Dillon, and the Jamaican roots-rock-soul genre.  Check out her discography here. Find her bio here.