Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Bringing the US election to Berlin
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Last night, the US election came to Berlin in a big way. More than 2000 people from the worlds of politics, media and business convened in Deutsche Telekom’s historic Telegraph Building to follow the action and debate the election live - in person, on air, and
online
.
German public broadcaster
ZDF
anchored its election reporting from the event - one of the largest held anywhere outside the US. For our part, we teamed up with ZDF and the
American Academy
in Berlin, who used Google+ technology to host two live “Transatlantic Election Hangouts”.
The Hangouts featured Bundestag President
Norbert Lammert
, Die Zeit editor
Josef Joffe
, former German Ambassador to the US
Wolfgang Ischinger
and President of the Brookings Institution,
Strobe Talbott
. The discussions were broadcast live to the web as "Hangouts on Air" for politically interested European citizens and people around the world on Google+ and YouTube. ZDF also integrated Hangouts on Air with bloggers in the US into their live programming.
Alongside ZDF, Deutsche Telekom, Google and the American Academy, the event was co-hosted by organisations including the US Embassy in Berlin, the American Chamber of Commerce, Tagesspiegel and the German Newspaper Association (VDZ) among others - each of whom welcomed guests to their own booths.
On the Google stand, guests were able to access a wide range of information via the
Google elections
page, including results displayed state by state on a Google Map in real time, live reporting on YouTube by US broadcasters and newspapers, and the volume of search queries by state for each candidate. Prominent guests including US-ambassador Philip D. Murphy and the Head of the SPD fraction in the German Bundestag
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
dropped by to take a look. Every two hours our guests were able to chat with Google’s election team in Washington DC via Hangout to get the freshest insights into how the race was playing out online.
When the event kicked off at 7pm last night, we knew it was going to be an exciting night. Thanks to the Internet, we - and citizens across Germany and around the world - were able to follow the action in real time, see the results come in and discuss and debate with people on the ground in the US. When we left the building at 7am, bleary-eyed and exhausted, we knew just how close a race it had been.
Posted by Ralf Bremer, Senior Manager Communications and Public Affairs, Google Germany
Supporting bottom-up, multi-stakeholder Internet governance
Monday, November 5, 2012
UPDATE:
A highlight video of the Big Tent Baku is now available. Please take a look.
The Internet has been built from the bottom up. From its origins as a US Government research project, private business, public authorities, civil society, academia and 2.3 billion users have built it over the past three decades into a global information network. Today, we stand at a crossroads as more than a thousand representatives of Internet businesses, NGOs, and governments assemble in Azerbaijan at the
United Nations Seventh Intergovernmental Forum.
While the Net has grown to embrace and enhance almost every human activity, more and more governments, unnerved by its revolutionary freedoms, are seeking to constrain its use. According to the Open Net Initiative, some 42 countries censor, filter or block content on the web. Google is going to Azerbaijan to stand up for freedom and openness of the Internet. At the Internet Governance Forum, all of us can make contributions. All our voices are heard. The Net's value is found in its generalized nature, its abilities to allow all shades of colour to be displayed.
Many of the same governments that restrict Net freedom in their home countries want to interfere with this success story. Some are proposing to impose a new United Nations agency to govern the Net. Others want to use the already established, Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union, as a ‘stalking horse,’ slipping dangerous provisions into a soon-to-be-negotiated telecommunications treaty.
This evening in Azerbaijan, we are hosting a
Big Tent
to discuss these crucial Internet governance issues. Our featured guest is
Vint Cerf,
famed for the role he played in developing the Net’s early technology - and his tireless support for the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum.
At the Big Tent, Baku, we're going to look at this battle for freedom, first hand and up close in Azerbaijan. Our host country is going through a momentous transformation in the two decades since it won independence. It has made huge strides developing its economy. It international profile is rising fast. Yet a strong debate is now underway about freedom of speech. Some bloggers have been imprisoned. Others face restrictions on what they can say online. At the Big Tent, we will show an excerpt from a
film
about
Internet freedom in Azerbaijan.
Under the UN's own convention, each and every one of us enjoys the right to express ourselves freely. We recognize that the limits of free speech are open for debate - different cultural norms allow different levels of expression. We ourselves do not accept certain types of content on Google platforms - for example, videos that incite violence, or child pornography. Wherever we operate locally, we respect local law, even if that means pulling down content that's legal elsewhere. But our bottom line remains a strong preference for keeping the Net as open and free as possible.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
German senior citizens show "the beautiful side of the Net"
Friday, November 2, 2012
Earlier this year, we launched a program in Germany to encourage senior citizens to go online. After spending quality time
talking individually with over 800 senior citizens
about how older people like to use the Internet, we ran a competition called
“We’ll show you! The beautiful sides of the Internet”
, together with our partners
Deutschland sicher im Netz
(Germany Safe Online) and
BAGSO
(the Federal Association of Senior Citizens’ Organisations).
This week, at an awards ceremony at Google’s Berlin office, more than 90 guests from government, civil society and industry celebrated the achievements of the winners. A jury chose
the best entrants in three categories
- Experience Report, Video and Website - and also gave a special award to three friends who meet online to share presentations and research via online video chat.
We also conducted a survey with our partners, which showed some positive developments - for example, that in the age range 51-85, more than 80% of men and women already use email to communicate with friends and family - and more than 75% use search engines to find information.
In many areas, however, the survey suggested that German senior citizens were not being well served online. Little information exists online on leisure offerings for older generations such as holidays, sport, and fashion. And
like senior citizens in the UK
, they wanted to see more attention paid to developing online services that enhance social inclusion and improve care for the elderly.
Older people - a long overlooked audience on the Net - are catching on to the possibilities of the online world. We’re committed to helping improve things for them.
Posted by Sabine Frank, Media Literacy Policy Counsel, Berlin
Celebrating Spain's inventor of the world’s first computer game
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
What does a cable car in Niagara Falls have to do with the world’s first machine to play chess? Surprisingly, both were inventions of
Spanish civil engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo
. Next week, as part of
our ongoing effort
to celebrate Europe’s computing heritage, we’re commemorating Torres-Quevedo’s legacy and his remarkable machine—
"El Ajedrecista"
(in English, "The Chess Player")—in partnership with the
Telecommunication Engineering department of the Technical University of Madrid.
Photo thanks to Wikimedia Commons
Torres-Quevedo’s inventions span many fields. He was the second in the world to
demonstrate wireless remote control
, beaten to the post only by
Nikola
Tesla
. His
designs for airships
were used by both the French and British during WWI. He was a global leader in cable car design, creating the “
Spanish aero car
” over the Niagara Whirlpool which,
nearly a century on
, remains a tourist attraction. However, his most remarkable achievements were in the field of automation, developing machines that are antecedents to what we now call computers and robots.
Torres-Quevedo’s ambitions were bold. As Scientific American
proclaimed in 1915
: “He would substitute machinery for the human mind.” In the 1890’s Torres-Quevedo built a
series of mechanical devices
that solved algebraic equations. In 1920 he wowed a Paris audience with an electromechanical
arithmometer
with typewriter attachment. You simply typed a formula—say, “24x48”—and the machine would calculate and automatically type the answer “=1152” in reply.
But “El Ajedrecista,” an algorithmically powered machine that could play an end-game of chess against a human opponent completely automatically, is his most notable creation. Although it’s a far cry from
Deep Blue
, El Ajedrecista can lay claim to being the world’s first (analog) computer game.
.
Photos thanks to
Museo Torres Quevedo
The machine didn’t just calculate its moves—it had mechanical arms that physically moved its pieces, in the form of electrical jacks, across a grid. In later models the arm mechanism was replaced by magnets, and play took place on a more ordinary-looking chess board. You couldn’t cheat the machine as it could spot illegal moves; and you couldn’t win, as the game always started at a point (machine’s King and Rook versus human’s King) from which the
machine could never lose
.
In honor of El Ajedrecista’s 100th birthday, we’re working with the
Telecommunication Engineering department of the Technical University of Madrid
to stage a conference commemorating Torres-Quevedo’s legacy.
The conference
, taking place on November 7, will feature lectures and panel discussions, as well as an exhibition of Torres-Quevedo’s devices—including El Ajedrecista itself. Attendance is free—if you want to join us,
request an invitation
.
Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations
Supporting innovative ways to protect kids online
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Have you got a great product, project or prototype that helps children and parents get the most out of the internet, whilst staying safe? Want to demo it to an audience of parents, children, celebrities and journalists?
If so, take this opportunity to win a resident membership to Europe's most exciting tech startup hub, Google’s
Campus
in London by entering the
Interactivism: Think Kids
contest. Campus is designed to support the UK’s burgeoning web entrepreneurs, offering seven floors of flexible work spaces, free high speed internet and all the support you need to fuel your idea. In addition, residents get access to mentoring programmes, speaker series, networking events and more.
NSPCC
,
FutureGov
and
Coadec
, along with Google, are supporting this exciting opportunity. The deadline for submissions is
9pm on Wednesday 14th November 2012
. Winners will be selected to attend the Interactivism pitch day at Campus on
December 6th
.
Find out more and submit your idea on the
Simpl Challenge page
.
Posted by Naomi Gummer, Senior Policy Analyst, Google UK
More Art Project online for you to explore
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Back in April we
announced
a major expansion of the Google Art Project. Since then 15 million people have explored the paintings, sculptures, street art and photographs contributed by our partners. From today the number of treasures you can view is increasing by more than 10% as 29
new art organisations
from 14 countries bring their collections online.
A wide range of global institutions, large and small, well-known and less traditional, are represented. Explore contemporary works at the
Istanbul Modern Art Museum
, admire works from the
Art Gallery of South Australia
(who have contributed almost 600 objects) and access the treasures of the famous
Museum of Palazzo Vecchio
in Italy and
Princeton University
. This round has also seen contributions from more unusual sources including a collection from the
National Ballet of Canada
,
pre-Columbian art from Peru
, and
decorative arts from China
.
Now that the total number of objects online is more than 35,000, we've turned our attention towards thinking of different ways for you to experience the collections.
The first is a great educational tool for art students, enthusiasts or those who are simply curious. A “Compare” button has been added to the toolbar on the left of each painting. This allows you to examine two pieces of artwork side-by-side to look at how an artist’s style evolved over time, connect trends across cultures or delve deeply into two parts of the same work. Here's an
example
: place an early sketch of
Winslow Homer's
'The Life Line'
from the
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
next to
the completed painting
from the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
. Comparing them in this way allows you to see how the artist's vision altered (or not) over the life of the work.
Beyond following us and discussing great art on our
Google+ page
, we have also created a
Hangout
app within the Art Project so that you can share your favorite collections and perhaps give your friends a personal guided tour. If there is a budding museum guide or an art critic within any of you it can finally be unleashed! Watch this video to see how it works.
Around 180 partners have contributed their works to the Art Project so far, more than 300,000 of you have created your own online galleries and we've had more than 15 million visitors since our last launch in April. The cultural community has invested great time and effort to bring these masterpieces online.
Watch this space
for more to come.
Posted by Piotr Adamczyk, Google Art Project
Blogging in Solidarity's shadow
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Three decades ago in Gdansk, Poles rose up and created a marvel - an independent trade union Solidarity that, after a decade of non-violent struggle, threw off the shackles of communism. Today, the country is part of the European Union and has created a vibrant free market democracy - making it a potential leader in pushing Internet freedom. I travelled to Solidarity's birthplace, to give the keynote speech at the largest conference of Polish bloggers,
Blog Forum Gdansk
.
More than 200 young, energetic bloggers (and 120,000 online viewers) assembled in the conference room of the sparkling new
Gdansk Stadium
, constructed for the
Euro 2012 tournament
. In a keynote speech, we outlined the promise and perils of Internet freedom. For me, it was a moving moment - I remember covering the Solidarity revolution in the 1980s as a journalist and I compared how I took notes almost in secret and only could publish my stories after I left the country. Now Tweets and blogs were published direct from the conference room, in real time.
In many ways, Poland should be ripe for Internet freedom to flourish. More than any other Central European country under Soviet rule, Poland resisted and kept the spirit of free discourse alive with a vibrant
samizdat
press. Estonia recently captured first place in
Freedom House's rankings
and has become the poster-child for post-communist freedom fighters. Despite some initiatives supporting an open internet, Poland remains ranked at a distant 17th place.
Why? Our meetings with bloggers and NGOs in both Warsaw and Gdansk illustrated how the power of the Internet to revolutionise free expression is not yet full understood. Many complain about a worrying rise of hate speech. Many politicians are angry about comments posted on the free Internet, and libel and defamation suits proliferate. Some Polish court rulings seem to interpret liability laws in a restrictive way detrimental to Internet platforms, threatening to limit freedom of expression for users.
Our appearance at the Blog Forum Gdansk is just a first step in an effort to encourage change. Over the coming months, we will continue our activities to demonstrate how the Internet provides positive new possibilities for Poles to express themselves.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Free Expression, Europe, Middle East and Africa
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