Beautiful bodies

However, artificial beings need not be invisible or look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator". "My dream would be to create an artificial man that does not look like a robot but like a beautiful, graceful human being. The artificial man should be beautiful". Nadia Thalman's hopes for beautiful robots may become reality in the work of MIRALab, a research laboratory attached to the University of Geneva dedicated to realistic modelling of human functionalities. The laboratory has produced an artificial Marylyn Monroe showing just how beautiful artificial creatures can be, and there is a biography featuring details of her career and her - however virtual - love life. Yet beautiful creatures have been made before, at leas on the movie screen. Frank-N-furter, the protagonist of the Rocky Horror picture show ("I've been making a man / with blond hair and a tan / and he is good for relieving my /tension) did set remakrable esthetic standards.

While in Hindu mythology, avatars are bodies chosen by gods for their representation on earth, often animals such as swans or horses, the avatars populating cyberspace have a different function. The cyber bodies of real people, often 3 dimensional images of creatures whose aesthetics reflects both the tastes prevalent in the entertainment and advertising industries as the state of art in visual representation.

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Introduction: The Substitution of Human Faculties with Technology: Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems

Research in artificial intelligence, starting in the 1960s, yet formulated a new goal: the automation of thought processes with intelligent machines. Although first attempts to develop "thinking" machines had only little success as the aimed at solving very general problems, the invention of expert systems marked a breakthrough. Albeit the application of those semi-intelligent systems is (still) restricted to quite narrow domains of performance, such as taxation and medical image interpretation, they are able to mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. While the development of intelligent machines, which are able to reason, to generalize and to learn from past experience is not likely to become reality in the very near future, research in artificial intelligence progresses quickly and sooner or later the substitution of men's unique faculties will come true.

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Institute for Global Communications (IGC)

IGC's vision is to actively promote change toward a healthy society, which is founded on the principals of social justice, broadly shared economic opportunity, a robust democratic process, and sustainable environmental practices. IGC believes that healthy societies rely fundamentally on respect for individual rights, the vitality of communities and diversity. IGC's aim is to advance the work of progressive organizations and individuals for peace justice economic opportunity, human rights, democracy and environmental sustainability through strategic use of online technologies.

History

In 1987 the Institute for Global Communications was officially formed to manage PeaceNet and the newly acquired EcoNet, which was the world's first computer network dedicated to environmental preservation and sustainability. In 1988 IGC began to collaborate with like-minded organizations outside the states and in partnership with six international organizations, IGC co-founded the Association of Progressive Communications (APC).

ConflictNet, incorporated by IGC in 1989, to provide information and communications for people by promoting the constructive resolution of conflicts is now enfolded in the PeaceNet network. LaborNet, a full network of IGC from 1992 through August 1999, serves the labor community by working for the human rights and economic justice of workers. WomensNet, launched in 1995 is an online community of individuals and organizations who use computer technology to advance the interests of women worldwide. Also the Anti-racism.Net forms part of IGC network family.

Strategies and Policies

IGC's aim is to offer progressive individuals and groups a place on the Internet to learn, meet and organize. IGC focuses on content, information sharing and collaborative tools and provides Internet access services, e-mail discussions and newsletters. The Institute for Global Communications aims at bringing Internet tools and online services to organizations and activists working on peace, economic and social justice, human rights, environmental protection, labor issues and conflict resolution. IGC also provides alternative news and political analysis as well as information about other progressive organizations.

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Commercial vs. Independent Content

Commercial media aim towards economies of scale and scope, with the goal to maximize profits. As advertising money usually is their primary source of revenue their content very often is attuned to meet the needs of advertisers and marketers. Information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere usually only plays a minor role in their programming, as it does not comply with the demands of an economic system whose principal aim is the generation of profit. They also virtually always are structured in accord with and to help reinforce society's defining hierarchical social relationships, and are generally controlled by and controlling of other major social institutions, particularly corporations.

Independent content provider on the other hand mostly act on a non-profit basis and try to avoid dependence on corporate powers and the state. One of their main concerns is the critical observation of public interest issues. The central aim of independent content provider's activities usually is to bring aspects and standpoints neglected by the (commercial) mainstream media to the public and subvert society's defining hierarchical social relationships. Promoting public debate and an active civil society they engage in the organization of alert actions and information campaigns or create subversive art

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1500 - 1700 A.D.

1588
Agostino Ramelli's reading wheel

Agostino Ramelli designed a "reading wheel", which allowed browsing through a large number of documents without moving from one spot to another.

The device presented a large number of books - a small library - laid open on lecterns on a kind of ferry-wheel. It allowed skipping chapters and browsing through pages by turning the wheel to bring lectern after lectern before the eyes. Ramelli's reading wheel thus linked ideas and texts and reminds of today's browsing software used to navigate the World Wide Web.

1597
The first newspaper is printed in Europe.

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The Concept of the Public Sphere

According to social critic and philosopher Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."

The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publics of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. Public sphere is not something that just happens, but also produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.

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Timeline BC

~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography

1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia

parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering

4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock

487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field

170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard.

50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.

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Product Placement

With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was "The Spot", a story about the ups and downs of an American commune. The Spot not only within short time attracted a large audience, but also pioneered in the field of online product placement. Besides Sony banners, the companies logo is also placed on nearly every electronic product appearing in the story. Appearing as a site for light entertainment, The Spots main goal is to make the name Sony and its product range well known within the target audience.

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William Gibson

American science fiction author. Most famous novel: Neuromancer.

For resources as writings and interviews available on the Internet see http://www.lib.loyno.edu/bibl/wgibson.htm

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Backbone Networks

Backbone networks are central networks usually of very high bandwidth, that is, of very high transmitting capacity, connecting regional networks. The first backbone network was the NSFNet run by the National Science Federation of the United States.

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Cooperative Association of Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)

Based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center, CAIDA supports cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. It is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) through its Next Generation Internet program, by the National Science Foundation, Cisco, Inc., and Above.net.

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Virtual Private Networks

Virtual Private Networks provide secured connections to a corporate site over a public network as the Internet. Data transmitted through secure connections are encrypted and therefore have to be encrypted before they can be read.
These networks are called virtual because connections are provided only when you connect to a corporate site; they do not rely on dedicated lines and support mobile use.

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Internet Exchanges

Internet exchanges are intersecting points between major networks.

List of the World's Public Internet exchanges (http://www.ep.net)

http://www.ep.net/
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Galileo Galilee

Galileo Galilee (1564-1642), the Italian Mathematician and Physicist is called the father of Enlightenment. He proofed the laws of the free fall, improved the technique for the telescope and so on. Galilee is still famous for his fights against the Catholic Church. He published his writings in Italian instead of writing in Latin. Like this, everybody could understand him, which made him popular. As he did not stop talking about the world as a ball (the Heliocentric World System) instead of a disk, the Inquisition put him on trial twice and forbid him to go on working on his experiments.

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Next Generation Internet Program

A research and development program funded by the US government. Goal is the development of advanced networking technologies and applications requiring advanced networking with capabilities that are 100 to 1,000 times faster end-to-end than today's Internet.

http://www.ngi.gov

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water-clocks

The water-clocks are an early long-distance-communication-system. Every communicating party had exactly the same jar, with a same-size-hole that was closed and the same amount of water in it. In the jar was a stick with different messages written on. When one party wanted to tell something to the other it made a fire-sign. When the other answered, both of them opened the hole at the same time. And with the help of another fire-sign closed it again at the same time, too. In the end the water covered the stick until the point of the wanted message.

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cryptology

also called "the study of code". It includes both, cryptography and cryptoanalysis

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Agostino Ramelli's reading wheel, 1588

Agostino Ramelli designed a "reading wheel" which allowed browsing through a large number of documents without moving from one spot.

Presenting a large number of books, a small library, laid open on lecterns on a kind of ferry-wheel, allowing us to skip chapters and to browse through pages by turning the wheel to bring lectern after lectern before our eyes, thus linking ideas and texts together, Ramelli's reading wheel reminds of today's browsing software used to navigate the World Wide Web.

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Division of labor

The term refers to the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to mass production systems, where it is one of the basic organizing principles of the assembly line. Breaking down work into simple, repetitive tasks eliminates unnecessary motion and limits the handling of tools and parts. The consequent reduction in production time and the ability to replace craftsmen with lower-paid, unskilled workers result in lower production costs and a less expensive final product. The Scottish economist Adam Smith saw in this splitting of tasks a key to economic progress by providing a cheaper and more efficient means of producing economic goods.

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