Iranian bloggers win major press award

IRANIAN bloggers have won a major press award for their efforts to cover the Islamic Republic’s disputed presidential election. Read this article.

Filed under: 1

Mythical charaters; time to change

I’ll keep you updated about the “renovate me” project. Just for your information, we have selected this character as the main persona of the project. Hopefuly, the project will end up with a performance. I will design the clothing and some accessories for our “renovated hero”!

Filed under: design, Renovate me, character, design, fashion design, hossein, islamic mythes, myth

To have an over view of Iran’s Twitter revolution

To have an overview of Iran’s Twitter revolution I am providing a link to a post on The Nation website by Ari Berman on September, 15th. Also here in Washington Post Evgeny Morozov describes the whole story. I chose these two links because they tell the story in a clear way and I read these two at the time that all the demonstrations were happening.

Besides, you can watch this video, an interview of Fareed Zakaria with tow experts of the domain and they will describe the importance of this web 2.0 based revolution.

Filed under: Social networking, twitter revelution

His and Her vote

T-shirt design by NIMANY addressing the slogan of “where is my vote”. This slogan is now a symbol of Iran’s green movement and points to the fact that the government have stolen the votes of people in the fraud election.

Filed under: design, politics, behnood, fashion design, finger print, Iran election, nimany

Customizing the democracy

Regardless of how long it takes, these days, Iranians have started building up a new form of government. Iranian people are looking for equity and freedom. I can not convince my self that this movement is necessarily heading toward democracy. Democracy includes impartial justice and freedom and should be studied in the context of public virtues. Some doubt that “democracy” yet fits Iranian society.I  assume that the process of choosing a government, by people, should first meet the concerns of Iranians due to their experiences and expectations. Secondly, meets emerging social trends and finally, should be a technology-based process according to the recently exhibited capabilities of the society.

The term “democracy” with all of its fabulous trends and advantages seems more like a brand to me. Once it starts exporting itself to other countries huge advertising campaigns surround it. Commercialized often as a product of western intellectuality while, supplying the package, knowledge of eastern cultures has not grown as fast as the demands do. I adore the idea and I agree with the fact that it is functioning where it has been accepted. By the way,  I am firmly of the belief that it will hardly fit within the cultural frameworks of eastern societies while the commercial aspect is so lustrous and provocative. Political democracy, as a process of choosing government by people is associated with other social and public virtues. As long as the associating elements do not match other virtues of a nation, the democracy will lose it essence. Democracy must adapt itself to sociocultural frameworks of a nation and not the other way around. Iranian people showed a strong desire for change and used social networking websites as a tool for delivering news and organizing the demonstrations and events. They exhibited a profound intention toward finding a new reliable way of selecting “what-to-do” concepts. People have lost their trust to elections and rely more on self-organized and socially-derived ways of decision making. Democracy for Iran, can provide solutions for such concerns. The new process of selecting the government should contribute to increase the role of individuals in the decision making process.

Secondly, why democracy is not updated while one may fall behind the daily advances of technology? A problem with current democratic systems is that it still produces centralized powers while technology can support decentralized powers perform not only reliable but also more advantageous. For example, media and news agencies relied on You tube movies and Twitts of Iranian citizens for covering the news of after election crisis. Individuals performed as small news agencies to cover the news. Besides, they performed well in delivering the news about the time and places which demonstrations supposed to be held. The so called “twitter revolution” revealed that decentralizing the power is also reliable. Once a member of a network manifests a high performance it becomes the center of attention and as another high performing member reveals the attention moves toward that spot. Needless of an election being held, the network chooses its most reliable members for conducting a certain task. Therefore, the technology can facilitate new ways of selection.

In case of the success of the green movement, the outcome might be an customized version of democracy or a beta version of a form of government which does not carry the name of Democracy any more. No surprise to see an Iranized form of government beside all other similarly digested cultures and ideologies.

Filed under: politics, Social networking, ahmadinejad, democracy, design, green movement, Iran election

Neda, was killed in streets of Tehran

Filed under: Stories, ahmadinejad, green movement, iran, Iran election, neda, painting

A lesson that Iranian regim must take: fighting the battle of equals.

Lets be honest and call, what is now happening in Iran, a battle. It is not the first time that Iranians are facing such harsh conditions, facing a totalitarian government. The way that Iranian government is treating its people is  an outcome of a critical shortage in knowledge, proficiency and information within its decision making think tanks. They know how to fight the battle of good versus evil but not the battle of equals. Wining a battle of equals needs knowledge. When government finds its strategies useless then chooses violence as a tactic to pass the crisis.

In politics, an action that one side takes is not necessarily evaluated based on the intention behind it but on the basis of its results. No matter what the purpose of an action is, many factors influence the outcome and produce interpretations and effects that are out of player’s control. In my point of view, Iranian authorities are so weak in setting their goals and assessing the feedback. They set goals and take an action but come up with totally different results (e.g. from the society). When they get surprised with unexpected and unpleasant reactions then they return to their default and final tactic which is violence.

Should people take time to teach them how to fight the battle of equals? Did they take one lesson from the “silent demonstrations”? They ended up with shooting citizens. The government decreases the resolution space. Are they doing the same with their foreign policy? Are we running out of time?

Filed under: design, ahmadinejad, green movement, iran, Iran election

Democracy, social networking and design

There is no single recipe that every nation can follow it in certain sequence of phases and gets Democracy out of the process. Every country should customize its democracy due to cultural, historical and social values etc.  Design as a problem solving activity can support societies to customize their democracy. Technological developments can also contribute on this issue. I believe that Social networking websites can facilitate the networks to come up with creative ideas.

I was monitoring the most popular Iranian social news website, Balatarin (also see Balatarin English), during last three months. Batarin plays an important role in current social movement of Iran. It is a place that news are shared and blogers also share their ideas and concepts about what should be done in next steps of the movement. Members read and rank the concepts and visitors act upon some of the most accepted ones. I was lucky enough to observe the moments that a concepts were born, spread, developed and came to reality by humongous amount of people. A wonderful subject was how people rank the ideas (e.g. demonstrations, selecting a slogan or opposing a president’s speech on TV by plugging in, the electrical appliances at a certain time). I was also following the Twitts and facebook activites of my fellow Iranians to spread the news. Eventually, I came to the idea of starting an indivisual research on the topic of “creative facilitation through social networking websites”.

Filed under: Social networking, democracy, design, iran, Iran election, mousavi, Social networking

The changing concept of design

“What many think of as an aesthetic profession has become so much more.” The changing concept of design is an article by Andrian Kreye which I suggest you to read.

Filed under: Renovate me