[Review] Rewire

[Review] Rewire

Ethan has crafted a beautiful, engaging book for all who seek to transcend the cultural, political, and linguistic barriers that history has placed between us. Unfortunately, I fear that those of us who aspire to global citizenship are a small and diminishing...

[Must See] The Invisibles

I am in El Salvador today. I live in Mexico City. I still consider San Diego to be home. It’s that connection, I think, that caused these videos to have such a huge impact on me. I don’t think I could ever watch them without my eyes watering, my throat...

Mexico’s SB-1070

The following is my translation of Alberto Escorcia’s post, “Ley General de Población, una SB-1070 a la mexicana”, which was originally published on Pateando Piedras under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share alike license. Photographs are by Don...

Soft Start and Soft Power

My time off: amazing. Beyond words. Every since: a disaster. It seems that my computer just couldn’t deal with such a lack of attention. And so, mysteriously, while it wasn’t being used at all, the logic board gave out. I spent about three days...

Miguel Esquirol's Thoughts on Global Voices

On the one hand, the very nature of a citizen media project like Global Voices enables every single participant to contribute ideas to improve the project. All they have to do – as Bolivian volunteer translator Miguel Esquirol did earlier this week – is...
User Generated Surveillance

User Generated Surveillance

Earlier this year I was sitting with Michael Naimark at Cubus in the new Ars Electronica center. The restaurant, decked out with speedy wi-fi and attractive waiters and waitresses, feels like it is floating over the Danube River and the rest of Linz. Michael and I...
[Review] The Visitor

[Review] The Visitor

On the Johannesburg to Dakar leg of the flight I watched the movie, The Visitor, written and directed by the same guy who did Sideways. The movie follows the troubling and familiar dynamic of poor brown people from the third world depending on the seemingly heroic...
Diaspora and Development

Diaspora and Development

As if immigrants to the Western world don’t have enough to worry about with accusations of terrorism and complaints of non-assimilation, they must also endure the frequent criticisms that come from their home country. If they become too involved in the affairs...
Roots and Poetry

Roots and Poetry

Question: Why is ancestral country and culture so important to some Americans and not others? And why do some ethnicities identify with the home country and culture of their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents more than others? It seems to me that...