ITSRG

The post above, tweeted around 7 pm last night, set off a tweetstorm of LOLs, sarcastic advice, witty patois, and outright disbelief both inside the venue for the McCain dinner to honor Obama on the eve of the inauguration and outside across the twitter network of @ev. Some of @ev's twitter followers joined the fun within seconds:

"don't you just love it that politicians are so "with it" : - ) "

 "Very jealous of @gmc @konatbone @ev and @sacca right now... "
   
"LOL! tell him you have a great mid range system! "

"Tweeter is a much better name. Of course Stat.us was even better."

"You should've asked if he was excited about being Secretary of the Anterior in response."

@ev responded by tweeting: "Travis (@konatbone) is signing up Senator Wicker to Twitter via sms: @magnolia09," followed by a question about which senators are on Twitter. The responses came quickly: Clinton, Biden, Dodd, Franken, OBAMA and  countless links to congressional twitterer aggregators. With so many thousands of emails sorting the silos of political and technology knowledge bases, a few folks might have missed a really cool pic of @zappos in a tux, also attending the dinner.

It seems likely that Obama will keep his Blackberry, and for good reason. With CEOs of major technology companies all in a room electronically high-fiving their tweeps - while simultaneously mobilizing a just-in-time research force consisting of tech savvy and interested followers around the world - the movement of information through social networks has never been speedier and more able to transform the dynamics of a given space at a given time. 

Twitter followers of dinner participants were put in the place, albeit through the eyes of tech movers and shakers. Yet older established politicos and tech elite alike were exposed for the breathtaking quality of the information silos that shape their decision making worlds. The dinner space was subtly altered by the tweet heard round the tech-crunched world, even if only adding a bit of snarky levity to the milieu.  Yet through the digital footprint of the event, we gain yet another reminder of the profound ways in which social media are reshaping the creation of knowledge far beyond the boundaries of that room.

Michele Masucci
Director, ITSRG
Temple University

BITS student Ken Sprull designed the logo above in the summer of 2007 as part of his experience to engage in actions to improve local environmental quality in North Philadelphia.  He, along with other students in his group, strongly articulated the viewpoint that North Philadelphia environmental concerns are deeply connected to social ones. Their perspective was that those include the need to foster racial harmony and reduce violence in their daily lives. His logo and the group's sponsorship of community-building  events to raise local environmental awareness captured this sentiment.

With this, and many other similar exchanges in our experiences implementing the BITS Program during the past four years in mind, we followed with great interest the events of the presidential election campaign throughout last year. Our staff, the students and  families with whom we work, and Temple students have found the campaign season and Obama's story of community organizer to President-elect to be fascinating as well as inspirational. Our attention has been on the use of information technologies by the candidates, the shocking media attention paid to one of our own staff who was at the center of a national debate on journalistic ethics in a web 2.0 era, and Obama's visit to historic Progress Plaza in October, a site that students in the BITS Program have been depicting as part of our community geographic information systems (GIS) initiative during the past four years.

The logistical juggernaut of the upcoming historic Presidential Inauguration has been the topic of lively conversation during the past few weeks at ITSRG. We spent considerable time debating whether or not to attend, and if so how. We ultimately decided to follow events from the ITSRG Workroom, the spot that has been our vantage point throughout the past year.

We are pleased to share the news that the Office of the Provost of Temple University recently announced that classes in session on the first day of the semester - Inauguration Day - Tuesday,  January 20th may be canceled at the discretion of the instructor from 10:10 am through 1:00 pm so that students and faculty can watch the Inauguration Ceremony. Events will be shown on large screen TVs at five locations across campus:

Howard Gittis Student Center, Room 200, Main Campus
Mitten Hall, Great Court, Main Campus
Bright Hall Lounge, Ambler
Learning Center Auditorium, Ambler
Student Faculty Center, Health Science Campus

ITSRG will share perspectives throughout the day via our blogs and Twitter feed, including those of BITS students with whom we have worked over the years.

Michele Masucci, Director
ITSRG

Click here to view all photos
in slideshow by Chris Serik.

I have to admit, I was rather skeptical of the entire Park(ing) Day concept in the days leading up to the event.  I seemed like just another exercise in green futility: good intentions wrapped in the idealism of collegiate exuberance, distributed to like-minded individuals with extra care not to ruffle any feathers along the way.  Our banishment from the greater Philadelphia Park(ing) Day participants, due to our late arrival and associated liability concerns, did not help matters any.  It is always comforting to be a fool in the company of fools, rather than a lonely fool mimicking the activities of a bunch of fools across town who didn't have room on their release forms for our foolishness.   

In addition to these conceptual concerns, I was having trouble arranging a picture in my head of how these pieces were going to fit together into a cohesive unit that was both pleasing to the eye and compelling enough for people to take time out of their day to participate meaningfully.  On the day of the event, however, the many pieces of Park(ing) Day seemed to fall into place with little effort, like a jigsaw puzzle dumped onto the asphalt in perfect order.  The portions of the exhibit constructed by my classmates were light years beyond my expectations in terms of quality and relevance; and the park took on a deeper and more palatable shade of green thanks to the help of a local gardening center that loaned a majority of the plants within the exhibit.

These developments produced a profound change of heart and as the day wore on I found myself taking some pride in our efforts and engaging passersby with that sentiment worn conspicuously on my sleeve.  But the event did not reveal its full promise until late in the afternoon, when my wife and son arrived.

The local news cameraman in attendance was filming my son, Henry, tottering through our little park when I had an epiphany of sorts.  As I knelt down to steady my 10-month old, the blur of the passing traffic and din of their engines gave the impression that our little park was under siege.  My son, oblivious to all but the leaves and flowers at the tips of his tiny fingers, suddenly became a symbol of Innocence in a Paradise Lost.  It was almost as if he was seeking refuge from the storm of human progress swirling around him in our modest little oasis.

Not being particularly full of religion, I had always wondered what kind of wisdom I could pass down to my son, what kind of sage-like advice I could possibly muster while maintaining a straight face.  And here it was.   Respect for the natural world and its integral place within the human experience is a value of the highest order, one well worth passing on to the next generation.  The fact that people all over the country were simultaneously erecting protest parks in parking spaces was a clear symptom of the deep imbalance that human activities had imposed on the planet and its evolutionarily honed systems.

As I plucked my son up from the walkway, I made a solemn oath to teach him a better way.  To show him that progress is not always defined by economic growth or dollars and cents.  To teach him that the current paradigm of human progress will eventually crash headlong into the very real limits of a finite Earth, flipping civilization on its head and giving the impression that we had been descending all along.  To instill in him that every patch of green was worth saving from the lacquer of concrete and steel dripping across the earthly realm in complex gobs of greed, subsistence, and foolishness.

So what began as an exercise in futility approached with a cynically raised eyebrow, ended as an occasion for high-minded rhetoric and solemn oaths to future generations.  What a difference a Park(ing) Day makes.   

December 16, 2008
Lance Duroni
Temple University