film - Tag Archive

INSS Social Sustainability Multi Media Competition

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

threeleggedstool

Technology Bloggers is pleased to support the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (INSS) Digital media competition “Visions of Social Sustainability”.

The overall goal of the INSS network is to produce a clearer, more applicable definition of social sustainability, and to create opportunities for engaging people in discussions about social sustainability. The network is made up of individuals from various jobs and professions to consider social sustainability, and aims to put people engaging with social sustainability in touch with one another to speed up and promote understanding of this important aspect of sustainability.

The competition is looking for creative explorations of what social sustainability means, how it is being pursued, and how it might be advanced further. The hope is that it will push forward discussion of social sustainability by bringing a broader range of voices into the discussion.

We would invite all readers to think about submitting an entry, give a voice to their ideas and push debate and action in a positive way. Technology Bloggers Editor Jonny Hankins is part of the team that have prepared the call, and through the Bassetti Foundation will help to promote the winning entry.

So why not get your camera or telephone out and have a go?

— Call For Entries —

Multi-Media Competition: Visions of Social Sustainability

What does social sustainability mean to you? Where do you see it in practice? And what are the ingredients for a more sustainable world?

In the past several decades, sustainability has grown into an important and all-encompassing priority for communities and nations around the world. While there is little debate that current patterns of development, production, and consumption are un-sustainable, there is less agreement about what a sustainable world looks like.

There are countless visions of sustainability, and the Integrated Network for Social Sustainability is interested in your vision of social sustainability in a short video or digital media presentation.

Eligible Entries

Amateur or non-professional artists/producers may submit one piece of work in any digital media format up to 10 minutes in length, including but not limited to videos, photo essays, games, and apps. Submissions may be produced using cell phones or other household recording technologies. Limited to one entry per person or group.

How to Submit

Submissions can either be sent directly to visions.of.sustainability@gmail.com or via a link to any large file hosting service (dropbox, hightail etc). Email us with any problems uploading or sending the files. To be considered for the competition, entries must be received by 5 pm EST on January 3, 2015.

Judging

All eligible submissions will be hosted on the INSS YouTube channel and website. The competition will be judged through public vote, and will be promoted through the member institutions of the INSS.

Winning Entry Publicity

The winning entry will be shown at the April 2015 INSS annual conference, where its producer(s) will be invited to present their work. The entry will also be hosted on the INSS website and promoted in other INSS communications. The Bassetti Foundation will promote the winning entry on its website and will seek international press coverage of the winning producer(s). 

Rules

  • Your entry must respect copyright. Any music, video and photos must be your own or used with permission and acknowledged in your description (royalty free or stock audio/photos are ok to use).
  • Your entry must not be owned by someone else (e.g. if you’ve entered into another contest and they now own it).
  • Your entry should be appropriate for a public audience in language and images.
  • Still image and/or graphic slide shows are also eligible, as well as any other digital format.

Fixed, a Film Review

3 Replies Jonny Hankins

A couple of weeks ago I went to a science conference called S.NET here in Boston. On the first day a film called Fixed was shown, followed by a discussion with the Director. The film was about commonly held beliefs about ‘disability’, and technological ‘fixes’ seen through the eyes of a series of people who use these fixes or work in the field. See the film website here.

My first post on Technology Bloggers was about elective amputation, and in that post I wanted to raise the idea that people may choose to replace parts of their body for better functioning prosthetic devices. This may seem far fetched, but today the US military are a leader in pioneering eye surgery. They operate on pilots with perfect vision in order to make it even better, see this article for a brief overview.

So this leads to questioning the entire idea of able bodied or not. And this is reflected in the title of the film. We are no longer able, now we can take drugs that enhance our learning, have the blemishes in our eyes touched up so that we see better than anyone else, and use body suits that give us super human strength.

It looks to me as if able just got better, but of course how far are we prepared to go? OK, once in a while I might think about helping my brain out a bit with a prescription drug, but of course not every day. Maybe just before my university exams though, and what when the other people in the office start using them every day? I will get left behind so I will have to join them, or should I stand by my ethical convictions and remain disabled?

But back to the film. The protagonists are an interesting lot. One makes bionic limbs, and uses a couple himself after a climbing accident. And he wouldn’t take our second rate skin and bone legs back for a moment! He can climb better, run up the stairs, doesn’t get cramp, can screw on a new foot when he needs different shaped toes, his legs are great.

Another follows one of my great interests, the implications of newly emerging technologies for prenatal screening. One is a test pilot, working for a company that is developing an exoskeleton that allows people with no leg use to walk, another at MIT working on human/machine collaborations, there is a biochemist and somebody who has had sensors fitted to his brain that allow him to use a robot arm through thought.

Not to mention the diving wheelchair.

Fixed

Fixed

The film speaks about ‘abelism’, an idea that leads to the possibility of using the dis prefix to describe somebody. The concept is obviously prejudicial and distinctly flawed, particularly today when our able state may not be as natural as we once thought.

There is a field called tranhumanism, more of a movement than a field, that celebrates the dynamic interplay between humanity and the acceleration of technology. There are many websites if you want to search the term. Practitioners see these developments as positive, a brave new future for an old model (the human).

There is a fine line here. Obviously helping someone who cannot walk is a great thing, but we might be moving towards improvement as a model, and no longer at fixing.

I would recommend the film to all. The website linked above has a trailer and list of upcoming screenings, and although it is not yet on general release, I think the film-makers would be pleased to receive contacts. Check out the Trailer here.

Taxing the Smartphone

4 Replies Jonny Hankins

On Monday a report was released in France that contained the suggestion that a tax should be levied on Internet devices in order to raise money to promote and protect French cultural production.

A Tax Paid Phone

A Tax Paid Phone

For several years France has had a policy of taxing broadcasters and spending the money on supporting its own film and entertainment industries, but revenues are falling. The problem seems to be that many more people are accessing their entertainment via the Internet and therefore not contributing to its production cost.

The Lescure report as it is known suggests a tax of between 1 and 4% on any Internet capable devices (smartphones, eBook readers and games consoles included), but as we might imagine many of the producers of these devices are not happy about the proposal.

Money has to be raised to maintain the entertainment industries, but many of the companies that provide access to this entertainment are not based in France and do not contribute. They probably don’t want to either, and so we come across the same problem that I wrote about last week, collecting national taxes from international corporations based in another state is never easy, and borders are porous.

The proposed tax would replace one already in existence upon storage devices. Currently tax is levied on blank CD’s and memory sticks as well as computers with hard discs.

The manufacturers complain that the price of the devices would rise leading to fewer sales, although the author of the report argues that such a small percentage increase would make little difference, and would not even effect the home job market because most of these devices are assembled overseas. A 1% tax would raise something of the order of 90 million Euro a year.

The problem remains though. As our sources of entertainment move away from pay TV, publicity funded channels and national subscription systems such as the BBC, money is taken away from the producers and associations that represent and fund these industries. Some see the fact that Google and Apple amongst others are operating outside the tax system and are not contributing to the industries that they make their money from as unfair, and hope that this change in tax law will go some way to evening out the field.

The Wall Street Journal goes into a little more depth on the matter in its free online edition.

I wonder if France takes this step if others in the EU will follow. There are many different ways of making money through so called free downloads as we all know, but the money ends up in the pockets of the provider and not the producer and the industries involved are feeling the pinch. Maybe this needs to change.