The Standard People Balk at Giving Personal Info Online, Jupiter Says

"Consumers, especially those in their first year online, are reluctant to provide much personal information to companies other than banks, according to a new study released Monday by research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. Additionally, the study found that the majority of users surveyed are resistant to models like Microsoft's HailStorm, in which a single company stores user information and gives it to other vendors, companies or to the user upon request.

The study tracked users who have been online for five or more years and those online for a year or less. It examined the differences between the two groups in their willingness to store personal information beyond name, address and zip code with third parties. The bulk of new users surveyed trusted no company, with 44 percent of respondents saying that they didn't trust any company with their personal information."

redux [09.02.00]
The Washington Post 'Opting In': A Privacy Paradox

"Some big computer out there knows all about Joan Schram. Its massive memory has stored the birth dates of family members and friends, the fact that she drives a Ford Explorer, and the names and birth dates of her American shorthair cat and rare Brazilian fila dog.

And she's thrilled about it.

Schram gave out the information herself, answering screen after screen of personal questions from LifeMinders Inc., a Herndon-based company that collects such data from consumers and e-mails them information in return ? reminders of important dates, tips on when it's time to treat the cat for ticks, and news and advertising targeted to their interests.

But like many Americans, the Kennedy Center employee also says she's uncomfortable with the thought that when she goes online, other Internet companies could be monitoring her wanderings and gathering the same kind of personal information that she freely gave over to LifeMinders. If somebody else knew about her Explorer, she says, "I'd be a little disconcerted."

It's one of the more puzzling conundrums of online life. While companies that capitalize on the Internet's powerful potential to invade privacy are denounced as villains of the information age, millions of people type out highly personal data and send it off to Web sites they've barely heard of, with no strong legal protection against misuse of the information."

redux [09.14.00]
Wired News Private Folks Really Tell All

"Nearly all Internet users say they are concerned about privacy online, but despite those fears nearly two-thirds of Web surfers have transmitted such highly personal information as a credit card number, according to a study released Wednesday.

The study, published by the Andersen Consulting Institute for Strategic Change and the Owen School of Business at Vanderbilt University, said 95 percent of consumers have significant concerns about their privacy online."

"But the researchers said they were surprised to find how often Internet users' actual behavior conflicted with those fears, calling it a "a hidden willingness to provide information online."

redux [02.15.01]
The New York Times Magazine The Eroded Self
[requires 'free' registration]

"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context. "

"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."

redux [02.15.01]
The Atlantic Online The Reinvention of Privacy

"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?

A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""

The New York Times Software Double Bind
[requires 'free' registration]

"Call it the digital copyright equivalent of having your cake but not being able to eat it. The case of Dmitri Sklyarov, a Russian computer programmer arrested last month in Las Vegas, is drawing attention to a double bind in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law that some legal experts say extends rights to consumers even as it effectively prevents them from exercising those rights.

The law of which Mr. Sklyarov ran afoul makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute a device designed to bypass technology that protects copyright material."

"The law also makes it illegal for individuals to use such a program - even to make a back-up copy of a book or movie or song for themselves, the type of copies traditionally allowed under copyright law. That is where the double bind comes in. Actually making such copies for personal use is not illegal. But it is against the law to break through the copy-protection measure to make the legal copies."

OpenP2P.Com The End of Innovation?

"The Internet under its original design built a platform that induced lots of innovation in applications and content. And it did this by embracing an end-to-end principle, which meant that the network would remain as simple as possible and push all of the intelligence and, therefore, innovation to the end. This is the vision that is now enabled by a peer-to-peer architecture, and it's the environment that has inspired the greatest amount of innovation around the Internet in its history.

Now this architecture threatens existing interests, business interests and Hollywood interests, and in response to that threat there have been a number of changes that have occurred in both the technical and legal environment, aiming to undermine this platform for innovation, aiming to change it into a platform where it's easier for certain interests to exercise control over innovation on that platform. And the changes at the technical level include changes to the architecture, enabling network owners to exercise more control or discrimination over content that flows across their network or for applications that run on the network. And in the legal environment, the change is brought about by changes in copyright law essentially -- also patent law, but let's start with copyright law -- that radically increase the extent to which copyright holders can exercise control over their content."

redux [07.12.01]
News.Com Library "radicals" targeted in latest copyright battles

"Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times."

In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."

redux [07.30.01]
The New York Times Opinion Page Jail Time in the Digital Age
[requires 'free' registration]

"Dmitri Sklyarov is a Russian programmer who, until recently, lived and worked in Moscow. He wrote a program that was legal in Russia, and in most of the world, a program his employer, ElcomSoft, then sold on the Internet. Adobe Corporation bought a copy and complained to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the program violated American law and that, by the way, Mr. Sklyarov was about to give a lecture in Las Vegas describing the weaknesses in Adobe's electronic book software. Two weeks ago, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Sklyarov. He still sits in a Las Vegas jail."

Something is going terribly wrong with copyright law in America."

redux [06.08.01]
ZDNet Technology and the corruption of copyright

"Interestingly, with the onslaught of technology and promises of greater opportunity to share and communicate, copyright is now a hindrance to these ideals, serving only the moneyed interests of owners."

"Historically, copyright protections were afforded to promote expressive discourse fundamental to a democratic society. Today, the very notion of intellectual property serves to commoditize expressive ideas, rather than fostering their dissemination. Whereas initially the provision of an economic benefit was secondary to the promotion of original works, modern copyright inverts this ideal in a continuing effort to establish a marketplace for ideas."

redux [01.23.01]
Cryptome What's Wrong With Content Protection

"Converting the whole world to operate without scarcity is a huge task. Such a large economic shift would take decades to spread through the entire world economy, making billions of new winners and new losers. We will be extremely lucky if by 2030 we are prepared to end scarcity without massive social turmoil, including riots, civil unrest, and world war. If we are to find a peaceful path to an era of plenty, we should be starting HERE AND NOW, transforming the industries we have already eliminated scarcity in -- text, audio, and video. Companies that can't adjust should disappear and be replaced by those who can. As these whole industries learn how to exist and thrive without creating artificial scarcity, they will provide models and expertise for other industries, which will need to change when their own inefficient production is replaced by efficient duplication ten or fifteen years from now. Relying on copy-protection now would send us in exactly the wrong direction! Copy protection pretends that the law and some fancy footwork with industrial cartels can maintain our current economic structures, in the face of a hurricane of positive technological change that is picking them up and sending them whirling like so many autumn leaves."

redux [12.17.00]
Bad Subjects Beyond Copyright Consciousness

"Today's received ideas about intellectual property can be distilled into two major threads: technology killed copyright, and copyright is anachronistic in networked culture. Both of these notions are simplistic and ahistorical, and I'll try to argue that they're shortsighted. What we really ought to be talking about is access to works. Access is related to copyright, but is really more fundamental to our freedom to think and experience. I'd like to propose an expanded access scheme and offer an example of small steps that are being taken in that direction."

redux [07.27.00]
Free Software Advocacy Against intellectual property

"The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale."

"This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the so-called "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them. "

"If we simply imagine intellectual property being abolished but the rest of the economic system unchanged, then many objections can be made. Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals."

redux [07.13.00]
Business 2.0 Semantics of the New Economy

"The struggle over monetizing the digital economy is now a war, if we follow the rhetoric of its leaders. The battle over music and movies is inspiring Charlton Heston-like images, most recently from Edgar Bronfman, head of Universal Studios (whose last widely distributed quote came years ago when he declared the Internet the "CB radio of the '90s"), in a speech at Real Conference 2000 in May. "

""I am warring against the culture of the Internet, threatening to depopulate Silicon Valley as I move a Roman legion or two of Wall Street lawyers to litigate in Bellevue and San Jose," Bronfman said. "I have moved these lawyers?not to attack the Internet and its culture, but for its benefit and to protect it."

Bronfman justified his fight as defense of his "intellectual property rights," and those of creators everywhere. "You own a home. You own a car. They're yours - they belong to you. Well, your ideas belong to you, too. And "intellectual property" is property, period." In pursuit of pirates, he said, "we must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide."

"The semantics of the issues intrigue me, and came to my attention through Richard Stallman, who suggests that terminology is a foundation for our ideas, and that words such as consumer, protection, piracy, and intellectual property reinforce faulty premises."

Silicon.Com Knowledge management: It's about people too

"The term 'knowledge management' is outdated and confusing and should be scrapped, according to David Snowden, director of IBM's Institute of Knowledge Management, EMEA.

At a roundtable discussion in central London, Snowden said the focus should always be on users. "Anybody who tells you knowledge management is about applications, is a liar," he said.

He claimed the term knowledge management should be abandoned, and be separated into content and context management. Content management defines data control, and context management defines connecting people with relative ideas."

redux [07.16.01]
Seattle Times Knowledge-sharing platform proves wise move for AskMe

"A recent study by market-research firm Gartner Group suggests companies that proactively manage intellectual assets stand to make more profit than those that don't."

"Harry Bruce, associate dean of the University of Washington's Information School, said knowledge sharing is important because information has value in and of itself in our society."

""Clearly, we're increasingly becoming aware of the complexities of trying to share and transfer information and expertise within organizations and between organizations," he said."

Release 1.0 Postmodern Knowledge Management

"People constantly exchange information, the raw material of knowledge, with co-workers, business partners and customers... but they do it using personal, unstructured tools such as email. Wouldn't it be nice if companies could benefit from their own collective intelligence? Despite this appealing premise, years of knowledge management (KM) implementations have produced mixed results."

"The fundamental problem is philosophical. KM suffers from the hubris of modernism: the belief we can discover ultimate truths and organize the world according to rational principles using clever code. It's time for postmodern knowledge management."

"Postmodern KM avoids the deterministic view of knowledge that worked at cross-purposes with human nature. Instead, it operates within and on the basis of existing behavior patterns, mining conversation streams and relationships automatically to incorporate structure and context into the information human users already manipulate. It fosters human intelligence and interaction rather than trying to replace them. In the end, postmodern knowledge management isn't about management at all, because management implies external control. The goal of postmodern KM is simpler yet deeper: leveraging people."

redux [06.12.01]
DigitalMASS First rule of knowledge management: Knowing who needs what

"Within IBM, there's an interesting disconnect between Cooper's team and Larry Prusak's IBM Institute for Knowledge Management, a research group located just across the street from Cooper in Cambridge. While Cooper is trying to sell a sophisticated piece of software that uses automated spiders, linguistic analysis, and Bayesian arithmetic to create topical clusters of documents and identify in-house gurus, Prusak is publishing books and articles that say that the key to developing the kind of strong relationships that make companies more effective -- what he calls social capital -- has nothing to do with software.

In an article in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review, Prusak argues that virtuality -- collaborating with colleagues in an online chat-room, for example -- can eat away at the social fabric of an organization."

Outsights Knowledge Management -- Emerging Perspectives

"Yes, knowledge management is the hottest subject of the day. The question is: what is this activity called knowledge management, and why is it so important to each and every one of us? The following writings, articles, and links offer some emerging perspectives in response to these questions. As you read on, you can determine whether it all makes any sense or not."

redux [05.28.01]
The New York Times I.B.M. Meets With 52,600, Virtually
[requires 'free' registration]

""Intuitively, people feel there should be immense value in knowledge sharing, but no one has gotten their arms around how you do it in a large organization and how you measure its effect," said Steven L. Telleen, an analyst at the Giga Information Group, a technology research firm based in Cambridge, Mass.

IBM Research Fostering the Collaborative Creation of Knowledge: A White Paper

""Good" HCI design practice then, is viewed here not simply as a more practical way to improve productivity on a specific job. It is conceived of as part of larger movement to use technology to foster a more community-based, more contextualized, more systems-oriented view of human knowledge. The consequences include greater chances for improved productivity in the small, but also, in the large, the consequences may include a move toward greater trust and cooperation; less feeling of isolation; more feeling of connectedness; hence, ultimately, more ecologically sound behavior."

redux [05.24.01]
Fortune I Know What You Mean. And I Can't Do Anything About It.

"Knowledge is power.

No, it's not. This deceitful truism is the Big Lie of the Information Age. For most people in most organizations, knowledge confers impotence, not power.

No, it's not. This deceitful truism is the Big Lie of the Information Age. For most people in most organizations, knowledge confers impotence, not power.

"That's not to say that enterprises should err on the side of concealing rather than revealing knowledge. But it is in everyone's best interest to be honest about the organizational reality that knowledge is seldom power. On the contrary, knowledge confirms the absence of meaningful power. Working with that proposition is the true challenge for those zealots who advocate "knowledge management.""

Michael H. Zack If Managing Knowledge is the Solution, then What's the Problem?

"Knowledge is power.

"Load, from a knowledge perspective then, is the amount of knowledge processing that a firm must perform within some time interval to manage complexity, uncertainty, equivocality and ambiguity to perform its tasks and execute its strategy, as well as to adapt to change and maintain the organization itself. Overload occurs when the organization is unable to perform the amount of processing required because that amount is too great, given the time and resources available. The challenge is for the organization and its members to develop sufficient intellectual resources and processing capabilities to manage or reduce equivo cality, ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. Alternately, the organization may manage the knowledge environment generating that load (for example, by reducing the number of customers, serving more stable markets, or taking on simpler or more familiar tasks) to bring it into balance with its capabilities. Strategicaly, organizations must maintain a balance between overload and underload, in that overload reduces performance effectiveness by exceeding capabilities while underload reduces performance effectiveness by a lack of challenging experiences, stimulation for learning, and inefficient use of resources (Hedberg 1981, Tushman and Nadler 1978)."

Knowledge Media Institute Oracles, Bards, and Village Gossips, or, Social Roles and Meta Knowledge Management

"Knowledge management systems are used widely in many different organisations, yet there are few models and theories which can be used to help introduce and apply them successfully. In this paper, we analyse some of the more common problems for knowledge management systems. Using this background, we adapt models and theories from social and organisational psychology and computer supported collaborative work, and discuss a variety of different knowledge management systems in these contexts. We argue that knowledge management systems routinely adopt different social roles within an organisation, and that these social roles can have a major influence on a system's acceptability. With these principles in mind, we draw out some general practical lessons, and a 'character space' framework, which can help to inform the design of future knowledge management systems, so as to minimise the problems of acceptability within a given organisation."

SiliconValley.Com Revisiting isolation and its link to the Internet

"As with the re-examination of first HomeNet families, the study of the "new" newcomers found Internet use was linked to more social involvement and psychological well-being. Kraut noted a "rich get richer" effect, where the Net appears to amplify one's innate social tendencies. Those who were extroverts were more likely than their introverted brethren to leverage the new medium to make more friends.

What is to account for this stunning turnabout? My guess is that what changed in the intervening years is the Net itself. It has more social tools, more avenues for personal connections, -- more of everything people need in order to thrive."

redux [07.23.01]
USA Today Study: Net use doesn't increase depression, after all

"Using the Internet at home doesn't make people more depressed and lonely after all.

A new, longer follow-up from a study that linked Web use to poor mental health -- heavily publicized three years ago -- shows that most bad effects have disappeared.

"Either the Internet has changed, or people have learned to use it more constructively, or both," says the study leader, psychologist Robert Kraut of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh."

redux [06.21.01]
Pew Internet and American Life Project Teenage Life Online: The rise of the instant-message generation and the Internet's impact on friendships and family relationships

"The Internet is the telephone, television, game console, and radio wrapped up in one for most teenagers and that means it has become a major "player" in many American families. Teens go online to chat with their friends, kill boredom, see the wider world, and follow the latest trends. Many enjoy doing all those things at the same time during their online sessions. Multitasking is their way of life. And the emotional hallmark of that life is the enthusiasm for the new ways the Internet lets them connect with friends, expand their social networks, explore their identities, and learn new things."

redux [10.25.00]
USA Today Study suggests Net does not create isolation

"Concerns the Internet revolution has dehumanized America may be unfounded.

For instance, more than 75% said they do not feel as if they're being ignored by relatives and friends as a result of chat-room activity. In fact, the majority of Internet users said e-mail, Web sites and chat rooms have a ''modestly positive impact'' on their abilities to make new friends and communicate more with family."

redux [10.25.00]
Powazek.Com on weblogs, the press, and changing the world

"I think all this hooey is simply public self-expression. And it's a good thing. If it makes you happy to call it a blog, go for it. You could call it a desk for all I care. Just keep doing it. I believe, now more that ever, that all this self-expression is going to change the world.

Haven't you noticed? It already has. How many people do you know who you've never met? Or, how many people have you met online? How much has being online changed your perceptions and ideas? Where do you go when you need to connect with other people? How much of your time is spent conversing with people who aren't in the same room with you? Where do you get your music? Your fun? Your ideas? Your ... faith?

Now think about life before you got online. See the difference?

Put simply, expressing yourself online is a gift to the web, because it lets strangers see the world through your eyes, if only for a moment. And if we all did that a little more, I think the world would be a more tolerant place."

redux [02.21.00]
Alertbox Does the Internet Make Us Lonely?

"In assessing the impact of the Internet, the question is not whether it replaces (fully or partly) some other forms of communication and social contact. Because the Internet adds its own new forms of communication and social contact. For example, people may well attend fewer meetings and events outside the house and yet feel connected to a community of others who "meet" on a much more regular basis online.

The question is whether the new lifestyle is enjoyable and whether it nourishes humans or causes them damage. There is certainly a risk that some people get overly caught up in chat rooms and role playing, but a different kind of study is needed to assess this problem."

Wired News Wired News

"An obscure university study, but a study nonetheless, reveals that Americans who have dogs spend the time with their dogs instead of said time watching TV, visiting with friends, sleeping, going to movies, surfing the Internet, and doing nothing.

They walk their dogs, play with them, train them, speak gibberish to them, comparison-shop for dog food, and read up on them to the point that it detracts from actually interacting with other human beings, obscure researchers have concluded."

First Monday The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

"It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term.

Many authoritarian regimes translate a long and successful history of control over other information and communication technologies into strong control of Internet development within their borders. Potential challenges to the state may arise from Internet use in several areas: the mass public, civil society, the economy, and the international community. Authoritarian states will likely respond to these challenges with a variety of reactive measures: restricting Internet access, filtering content, monitoring online behavior, or even prohibiting Internet use entirely. In addition, such states seek to extend central control through proactive strategies, guiding the development of the medium to promote their own interests and priorities. Through a combination of reactive and proactive strategies, an authoritarian regime can counter the challenge posed by Internet use and even utilize the Internet to extend its reach and authority.

In this paper we illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintainng control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule."

redux [06.19.01]
Ananova Political heavyweight warns of 'web threat to democracy'

"Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister has warned the internet threatens democracy and people's sense of patriotism.

Lee Hsien Loong says governments must find new ways to build a consensus on national issues and strengthen national identities."

"The internet "opens up societies and helps individuals link up with like-minded souls anywhere in cyberspace," he said.

But it "may weaken the bonds of place and circumstance that have always tied citizens to their home and nation," he added."

redux [10.26.00]
Center for Strategic and International Studies Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age

"The world is changing fundamentally. Images and information respect neither time nor borders. Hierarchy is giving way to networking. Openness is crowding out secrecy and exclusivity. Ideas and capital move swiftly and unimpeded across a global network of governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. In this world of instantaneous information, traditional diplomacy struggles to sustain its relevance."

"The prime mover of change is information technology. When Gutenberg shattered the old order by mechanizing printing five centuries ago, the democratization of literacy and knowledge irresistibly followed. As the millennium ends, the microchip is again revolutionizing information gathering and transmission and will bring even more profound changes in the next century. The critical elements are the international networks created by computers and electronic connectivity. Exponential growth in computing power and plummeting international telecommunications costs are having profound consequences for finance, business, education, medicine, civil society, and government. Nations once connected by foreign ministries and traders are now linked through millions of individuals by fiber optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. The Internet, with 100 million users today, will reach one billion people by 2005 and will be available to half the world's population by 2010. The network will become the central nervous system of international relations."

redux [05.10.01]
First Monday The Impact of the Internet on Myanmar

"In the present paper, I explore how the Internet has affected the flow of information between in and outside Myanmar (Burma). I show that there is a strong difference between the way information was presented before and after the introduction of the World Wide Web.

Within the last century, the country has been marked by political instability (Eliot, 1997; Freedom House, 2000). Particularly since its separation from British colonial rule in 1948, Burma has witnessed significant political change, violence and unrest. Since the early 1960s, Burma has essentially been an isolated state, with closed borders and a military government. However, the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War seem to suggest that isolationism is growing less common worldwide. Importantly, meteoric advances in communications have also paralleled the fall of isolationism.

In my study, I examine two political events in Myanmar connected to student uprisings, in the hope of documenting how the Internet - as an easily researched symbol of modern communications - may be affecting the political strategies of one of the last isolated states."

redux [01.20.01]
The Guardian Unlimited Filipinos rally to oust the president: C U @ the revolution

"Millions of ordinary Filipinos, communicating with each other via mobile phone text messages, swarmed on to the streets of the capital, Manila, in scenes reminiscent of the 1986 uprising which ousted the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

"Most people heard about the planned swearing-in of Ms Arroyo via the text messages, the same means that galvanised a spontaneous uprising on Tuesday evening, when Mr Estrada's impeachment trial collapsed after he bullied and bribed senators to block the admission of vital evidence."

"The text message doing the rounds late last night said it all: "I guess we've won again."

redux [10.10.00]
MediaChannel.Org A Tower Aflame: Media, Metaphor and Revolution

"When the Moscow television tower burst into flames at the end of August, the fire blacked out 10 million TV screens and made news all over the world. And so did President Vladimir Putin's sinister comment: The fire at the Ostankino tower is a metaphor for the state of the nation.

Metaphors, symbols and sayings are mighty mind-setters. They captivate our minds and focus our attention to one main point, effectively excluding others. Putin used the burning of the Ostankino television tower, once hailed as a symbol of Soviet supremacy, as a metaphor for the desperate economic need of Russia. The global media played along with this tune, once again showcasing images of Russia's decay. But there is another largely untold story to be extracted from Putin's metaphor: TV towers are more than symbols ? indeed they are very concrete centers of mind control, distributing the flow of information and entertainment."

"Who chose the crumbling Berlin Wall as the icon and metaphor for the breakdown of communism and the end of the Cold War? Wouldn't a TV tower in flames be more accurate? It wasn't about the free flow of capital. It was about the free flow of information."

The New York Times Time of Growing Pains for Information Age
[requires 'free' registration]

"These would seem to be heady times to be a computer scientist. This is the information age, in which, we are told, biology is defined by a three-billion- letter instruction manual called the genome and human thoughts are analogous to digital bits flowing through a computer. And, we are warned, human intellect will soon be dwarfed by superintelligent machines.

"All kinds of people," said Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician, "are happy to tell us what we do is the central metaphor, the best explanation of everything from biology to economics to aesthetics to child rearing, sex, you name it. It's very ego-gratifying.""

"Humans have always tended to try to envision the world and themselves in terms of the latest technology. In the 17th and 18th centuries, for example, workings of the cosmos were thought of as the workings of a clock, and the building of clockwork automata was fashionable. But not everybody in the world of computers and science agrees with Dr. Lloyd that the computation metaphor is ready for prime time."

redux [07.31.01]
MIT Technology Review Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital Age

"The entire science of information theory grew out of one electrifying paper that Shannon published in 1948, when he was a 32-year-old researcher at Bell Laboratories. Shannon showed how the once-vague notion of information could be defined and quantified with absolute precision. He demonstrated the essential unity of all information media, pointing out that text, telephone signals, radio waves, pictures, film and every other mode of communication could be encoded in the universal language of binary digits, or bits?a term that his article was the first to use in print. Shannon laid forth the idea that once information became digital, it could be transmitted without error. This was a breathtaking conceptual leap that led directly to such familiar and robust objects as CDs. Shannon had written "a blueprint for the digital age," says MIT information theorist Robert Gallager, who is still awed by the 1948 paper."

redux [06.20.01]
N. Katherine Hayles How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

"Here, at the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment is performed so that "intelligence" becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human lifeworld. The Turing test was to set the agenda for artificial intelligence for the next three decades. In the push to achieve machines that can think, researchers performed again and again the erasure of embodiment at the heart of the Turing test. All that mattered was the formal generation and manipulation of informational patterns. Aiding this process was a definition of information, formalized by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, that conceptualized information as an entity distinct from the substrates carrying it. From this formulation, it was a small step to think of information as a kind of bodiless fluid that could flow between different substrates without loss of meaning or form."

"Think of the Turing test as a magic trick. Like all good magic tricks, the test relies on getting you to accept at an early stage assumptions that will determine how you interpret what you see later. The important intervention comes not when you try to determine which is the man, the woman, or the machine. Rather, the important intervention comes much earlier, when the test puts you into a cybernetic circuit that splices your will, desire, and perception into a distributed cognitive system in which represented bodies are joined with enacted bodies through mutating and flexible machine interfaces. As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, no matter what identifications you assign to the embodied entities that you cannot see, you have already become posthuman."

redux [10.10.00]
Media In Transition What is Information? The Flow of Bits and the Control of Chaos

"Information science operates with a binary logic of reflection which results in multiple paths, but these paths are always circumscribed by laws of combination (Deleuze, & Guattari, 1987). In this manner the fragmented space and time of information flows is reordered and directed toward specific objectives. But the objectives of information processing within the capitalist dynamic are not end points-- they are aimed at an accumulation of knowledge that is always an impetus for further accumulation, for multiplying the flow, opening out into every horizon. But this flow is at the same time stored up in a central memory which traces the exact paths of this flow, connecting geographic spaces and matching up the temporal locations of dispersed market centers. This central memory system functions through command trees, centered systems and hierarchical structures that attempt to fix possible pathways of the network and thus to limit the possible variations immanent in the network. The definitions of information formulated within information science and information economics derive from and serve this modeling of the system. As we have seen, information defined as nonsemantic discrete bits flowing across space and then directed and stored substantiates information as the object of control. Thus, the enemy of the information scientists and economists is heterogeneity, disorganization, noise, chaos. They want an uninterrupted flow, but at the same time a destruction of the unnecessary. This encloses or territorializes information; it becomes a part of capitalism's mapping of space and time. But what we have found is that information's function is precisely to disorganize, interrupt, to remain itself and at the same time to disperse. Information may, in fact, be a keyword connecting the phenomenon we have examined, but not as an element, nor as a content, but as a heterogeneous remapping of space and time. If the information society is to be our society, let it be disorganized."

NPR: Morning Edition The Thief of Time: Multitasking is Inefficient, Studies Show

""To do two things at once," said the Roman sage Publilius Syrus, "is to do neither." And this was 2,000 years ago, long before people tried to drive while talking on their cellphones and digging for tollbooth change and yelling at the kids and (ahem) listening to the radio.

Syrus may have overstated the case, but a new study concludes that performance does drop off when people try to accomplish more than one task at a time. Another sage -- William Shakespeare this time -- called procrastination "the thief of time." But it looks like multitasking is giving procrastination a run for its money."

CNN Study: Multitasking is counterproductive

"What are you doing right now as you read this article? Ordering supplies for the office from your distribution warehouse? Monitoring a screen for production equipment performance? Getting an e-mail back to your colleagues in the Denver office? Carrying on Instant Message conversations with three co-workers? Writing up a report in Word for the meeting on Wednesday? Eating the lunch you never have time to leave the desk for? Opening and reading traditional mail? Filing an in-house memo to Tech Services because your browser is acting up? Making a list of the clients you're expect to reach by close-of-business today? Trying to resize the fonts in the company newsletter so it fits on one page?"

David Weinberger The Price of Multitasking: Your Soul

"It's my assumption -- and I think it's as self-evident as human stuff gets -- that when we pay attention to something, we do so with certain affective qualities. That is, when we pay attention to the [Nazi Philosoper Heidegger pretending he Cares] cake that's now burning (because we were paying too much attention to the radio's description of Clinton's oral techniques or the shape of his member or his budget proposal's impact on macroeconomics or Hillary's oral techniques), we do so with some emotion, mood, or evaluation. And this is because attention isn't a dry and abstract or cognitive relation to the world. It's a relationship of caring. (Gosh, did Heidegger think of this before me? Damn! Wait, maybe I if I give it a made-up name I'll be able to trademark and claim it as my own thought. I've got it! Let's call it "e-careTM"!)"

"If this is true -- and you can take it from my sincere look and deep tone of voice that it is -- then it proves that humans can't multitask, at least not always. If attention were nothing but cognition, if it were like a flashlight sweeping over a dark world, then maybe we could multitask by wagging our attention back and forth. But if paying attention to two objects also means switching our emotions, feelings, preferences, mood and valuations, then, well, our souls just aren't enough like my sister Kate (who can shake them like jelly on a plate, for those of you who missed the Dave Van Ronk years of the folkie movement) to manage even rapid time slicing...except when dealing with matters that we don't really care much about."

Harold Pashler Task Switching and Multi-Task Performance

" We turn now to the limitations that arise when people attempt to perform two different tasks at the same time. While there is a large literature on relatively complex and continuous dual-task performance, the focus here will be on discrete tasks. The reason for this is that with more continuous tasks interference and switching are easily disguised for reasons that will emerge clearly below. Not surprisingly, limitations on simultaneous mental operations evidently arise at various different functional loci. Perceptual analysis of multiple stimuli can often take place in parallel, but when perceptual demands exceed a certain threshold, capacity limitations can become evident (Pashler, 1997) although non-perceptual factors (such as statistical noise in search designs) often masquerade as capacity limitations (Palmer, 1995). These limitations appear largely, but probably not entirely, modality-specific (Treisman & Davies, 1973; Duncan, Mertens & Ward,1997). Similarly, response conflicts arise when responses must be produced close together in time. These perceptual limitations are often most acute when similar or linked effectors are used, such as the two hands (Heuer, 1985)."

"The most intriguing, and for the present topic, the most relevant limitations are those that arise in central stages of decision, memory retrieval and response selection. Intuitively, most laymen assume that the cognitive aspects of two tasks can be performed simultaneously unless one or both is intellectually demanding. This seems not to be the case, however. This is most clearly seen when people try to carry out two speeded but relatively simple tasks, each requiring a response to a separate individual stimulus. As Telford (1931) first observed, people almost invariably respond to the second stimulus more slowly when the interval between the two stimuli is reduced..." [via peterme]

Ars Technica Intellectual Property and the Good Society

"Many of the voices in online debates around IP fall into one of two camps. I won't take the time to do more than very briefly summarize these two positions, because we're all familiar with them by now. The first is the "information wants to be free" camp, which advocates the free and communal sharing of information and rejects any notion that products of the intellect can or should be understood, legally or philosophically, as property. At the other extreme is a camp that is comfortable drawing direct, strong analogies between concepts of ownership of physical property and concepts of ownership of intellectual property. Furthermore, this camp is intent on letting the "free" market determine a value for information, much as it determines a value for more traditional types of property. This second camp usually feels that the anti-IP rhetoric coming from the first camp is merely a rationale for piracy, while the first camp feels that members of the second are mindless shills for the corporate machine.

Somewhere in between these two extremes lies a large majority who find both extremes attractive for different reasons, but who can't in good conscience commit to one stance or the other."

redux [08.09.00]
The Observer How Dr Dre sings out for the Big Six

"Dre v Napster is the musical sideshow of the bigger war over ownership of intellectual property, ranging from ditties to DNA. In my last column, I described how the Clinton administration blocked South Africa's purchasing of low-cost drugs to stem the spread of Aids. To protect the right of Glaxo-Wellcome to embargo cross-border sales of AZT which don't meet the company's terms, Clinton threatened South Africa with trade sanctions under the World Trade Organisation's Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips).

Today I can report that one nation has finally displayed the huevos to stand up to America's bully-boy enforcement of WTO dictat: the US."

"But then, hypocrisy is the oxygen of the new imperial order of thought ownership. Every genteel landlord of fenced-in intellectual real estate began life as a thief. Under WTO and US law today, how many products built on the ideas of others could never have made it to market? As Isaac Newton would say now: 'If I see further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants too dumb to patent their discoveries'."

redux [07.13.00]
Business 2.0 Semantics of the New Economy

"The struggle over monetizing the digital economy is now a war, if we follow the rhetoric of its leaders. The battle over music and movies is inspiring Charlton Heston-like images, most recently from Edgar Bronfman, head of Universal Studios (whose last widely distributed quote came years ago when he declared the Internet the "CB radio of the "90s"), in a speech at Real Conference 2000 in May. "

""I am warring against the culture of the Internet, threatening to depopulate Silicon Valley as I move a Roman legion or two of Wall Street lawyers to litigate in Bellevue and San Jose," Bronfman said. "I have moved these lawyers?not to attack the Internet and its culture, but for its benefit and to protect it."

Bronfman justified his fight as defense of his "intellectual property rights," and those of creators everywhere. "You own a home. You own a car. They're yours - they belong to you. Well, your ideas belong to you, too. And "intellectual property" is property, period." In pursuit of pirates, he said, "we must restrict the anonymity behind which people hide."

"The semantics of the issues intrigue me, and came to my attention through Richard Stallman, who suggests that terminology is a foundation for our ideas, and that words such as consumer, protection, piracy, and intellectual property reinforce faulty premises."

redux [04.15.00]
MIT Technology Review Freedom - Or Copyright?

"Once upon a time, in the age of the printing press, an industrial regulation was established for the business of writing and publishing. It was called copyright. Copyright?s purpose was to encourage the publication of a diversity of written works. Copyright?s method was to make publishers get permission from authors to reprint recent writings.

"We have more good ideas than we can handle," she confesses. "We have so many good ideas here--truly innovative ideas--that sometimes our people get a little frustrated that we can't act on most of them.""

Ordinary readers had little reason to disapprove, since copyright restricted only publication, not the things a reader could do. If it raised the price of a book a small amount, that was only money. Copyright provided a public benefit, as intended, with little burden on the public. It did its job well - back then.

Then a new way of distributing information came about: computers and networks. The advantage of digital information technology is that it facilitates copying and manipulating information, including software, musical recordings and books. Networks offered the possibility of unlimited access to all sorts of data - an information utopia.

But one obstacle stood in the way: copyright. Readers who made use of their computers to share copyright infringers. The world had changed, and what was once an industrial regulation on publishers had become a restriction on the public it was meant to serve."

redux [02.05.00]
Reason Magazine Copy Catfight

"There is an inherent conflict between intellectual property rights and freedom of speech, a tension between your right to control a story you've written and my right to use it as raw material for my own work. Thanks to two trends, that tension is turning rapidly into a collision... On one hand, as information has grown more valuable, copyright and trademark law has become increasingly restrictive. At the same time, there has been, in the words of MIT media studies professor Henry Jenkins, an "explosion of grassroots, participatory culture," a new high-tech folkway that not only draws on pop culture but appropriates from it more easily than ever before, and disseminates itself on a wider scale."