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Digital Planet: 18/01/2011

Factual: Science & Nature

18/01/2011

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, 18/01/2011

Did social media bring about social change in Tunisia?  Evgeny Morozov gives his view.

Did social media bring about social change in Tunisia?  Evgeny Morozov gives his view; Wikipedia is 10 years old, we speak to founder Jimmy Wales; Solar power cells in Uganda; Gamification

Evgeny Morozov
Has Tunisia just seen a social media revolution?  There was as much anger online as on the streets.  Facebook and Twitter activists collectively calling themselves the SBZ news network have been posting videos and comments from inside Tunisia.  Others in blogosphere and on Facebook have been mobilising protests.  Nobody is seriously suggesting that online activism alone forced regime change in the country – but one commentator in particular says that the role of the social media is overblown.  Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine and visiting scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, as well as  author of the book The Net Delusion: How not to Liberate the World joined us in the studio. 


Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia
Wikipedia is celebrating its tenth birthday and has successfully hit its target of raising $16 million from user donations, allowing it stay free of adverts.  Questions still hang in the air about how sustainable that approach is.  Offline, Jimmy Wales has been very visible attending tenth anniversary bashes around the world.  BBC reporter Chris Vallance caught up with him in London to hear what we can expect next from Wikipedia. 


Solar Power in Uganda
In Uganda solar power is providing power where mains electricity, if there is any, remains prohibitively too expensive for many households.  Solar power and LED lighting seems to be part of the answer now, as the technologies have become truly affordable.  Our reporter Anna Cavell As has been finding out how it is improving life, and even saving lives, for residents.


Gamification
There are an increasing number of businesses who are pretty serious about gaming.  The trend in engaging customers through games is growing.  If you get someone hooked on an addictive title, and you have their attention, you have their time and potentially their money if you can be clever about how you use the opportunity to communicate your business and your product to them.  Hence the buzzword gamification – and the first major summit devoted to it.  It kicks off in San Francisco this week – one of its organisers is Gabe Zichermann, author of the book Games Based Marketing speaks to Gareth Mitchell.

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