The Catholic Church In the beginnings of Christianity most people were illiterate. Therefore the Bible had to be transformed into pictures and symbols; and not only the stories but also the moral duties of everybody. Images and legends of the Saints turned out as useful models for human behavior - easy to tell and easy to understand. Later, when the crusades began, the Christian Church used propaganda against Muslims, creating pictures of evil, pagan and bloodcurdling people. While the knights and others were fighting abroad, people in Europe were told to pray for them. Daily life was connected to the crusades, also through money-collections - more for the cause of propaganda than for the need of money. During the period of the Counter-Reformation Catholic propaganda no longer was against foreigners but turned against people at home - the Protestants; and against their publications/books, which got prohibited by starting the so-called index. By then both sides were using disinformation for | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The big "change" ... With the invention of the printing press and - as a consequence - the distribution of information in masses (by then already mostly in the shape of propaganda), propaganda could change its methods. It could not only be produced but also reproduced and therefore spread widely. The Protestant Reformation profited by this. The idea of translating the Bible into local languages was successful, because it got possible for many people to get a Bible, as books no longer were affordable only for the nobles and the Church. Royalty and the Courts realized that prestige asked for propaganda and that it was impossible to reign over the people if their mood turned against the king. This gave the impetus for acting. Pamphlets were used for spreading royal messages; like the so-called "mazarinades" ( When - in From that time on propaganda and manipulation were carried out for the most different political ideas and nearly without frontiers. Censorship - a part of disinformation - seems to have been the only barrier then. Sometimes even the source of a message kept hidden, which was part of the disinformation process. It is easier to spread ideas against somebody if the own name is kept hidden; and speaking out some kind of laudation that the own party is better without mentioning that it was oneself who spread it and therefore claim that it was someone else who praised the very idea. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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World War I ... With World War I an entire system of ideas how wars work collapsed. Suddenly it was no longer mostly soldiers who had to fight. War became an engagement of every day's life. Everybody got involved. Propaganda therefore changed as well. The campaigns were no longer temporarily and recent but had to be planned for years. Who failed in organizing it or used the wrong keywords failed. Masters of modern propaganda became the British, whereas the Germans failed completely in the beginning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Theory of the Celestro-Centric World In 1870 the U.S.-American for further details see: Those who believe in it, call it the truth, those who simply like the idea, may call it a parallel science. Others call it disinformation, asking for the reasons to spread it. The turning to the inside, where there is no way out, produces a different reality. It shows that realities are always produced. Political conservatives and racists like | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Abstract Disinformation is part of human communication. Thousands of years ago it was already used as a political medium. In the age of mass-communication and information its possibilities have grown tremendously. It plays an important role in many different fields, together with its "companion" propaganda. Some of these fields are: politics, international relations, the (mass-)media and the internet, but also art and science. There is no evidence at all for a disappearance of disinformation. On this account it is important to understand where it comes from, what its tools are and how nations (democratic as well as totalitarian systems), international organizations and the media work with it or against it. This report tries to give a short insight into this topic: on a theoretical level by demonstrating cases of disinformation, like the 2nd Chechnya War in 1999. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Credibility The magic word is credibility. Disinformation can mean leaving out important informations. Telling lies is not the only method of disinformation. The not telling also creates thoughts and delegates them into certain directions, whereas other models of thinking are left out. Like this, the deaths on the own side are adjusted downwards whereas the victims of the enemy are counted proudly - as long as they are not civilians. The post-Gulf War period demonstrated how the population reacts if the number of innocent victims is much higher than expected. It was the fact of those numbers that provoked the biggest part of the post-war critique. The media in democratic states tend to criticize this, which does not mean that they always want to be free of governmental influence. They can choose to help the government in a single case by not writing anything against it or by writing pro-government stories. At the same time every democracy has undemocratic parts in it - which is already part of democracy itself. There are situations when a democratic government may find it essential to put pressure on the media to inform the population in a certain way; and also censorship is nothing that can only be connected to dictatorship; just think of the Falkland War, the Gulf-War or the Kosovo-War. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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New Forms of Propaganda (in the 19th Century) As soon as governments found out that newspapers were a fantastic and very often unsuspicious medium for supporting propaganda they tried to pull them to their side. Two ways existed: a) to have one's own newspaper, which implies that mostly friends of the government read it. Nothing is regarded as something neutral. b) to keep a good relationship to the most powerful/most frequently read newspapers and then try to make one's opinion theirs. Today mostly elected is b), trying to set up alliances. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The history of propaganda Thinking of propaganda some politicians' names are at once remembered, like The history of propaganda has to tell then merely mentioning those names: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The ancient Greek Disinformation was seen as an appropriate tool of politics and rhetoric in ancient Greece. Most of all persuasion was used, which then was considered a type of art. Religion was (and in many ways still is) the best disinformer or manipulator; prophecies were constructed to manipulate the population. The important thing was to use emotions and more than anything else fear as a tool for manipulation. If the oracle of Delphi said a war was to fight and would be won, then the Greek population - because of religious motives - was prepared to fight that war. Propaganda was not only used in wars but also in daily life to bring people together and create a nation. But poets, playwrights and other artists were manipulating as well. Their pieces of literature and plays were full of political messages with different ideologies behind. In the way how theatre at that time was part of life, it can be understood easily that those messages had not only entertainment's character but also a lot of political and social influence. A different and very famous part of disinformation in ancient Greek history was the story of | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Propaganda "For propaganda is a communicative process of persuasion, and persuasion remains an integral part of human discourse in peace as well as in war. (...) propaganda is a process unique to human communication regardless of time, space and geographic location." ( The word propaganda is coming from the Catholic Church. In the 17th century the word was used in the fights against the Protestant Reformation (see Propaganda is using words - of course. But it furthermore uses a huge variety of tools for putting through its purpose. Some of them are: hymns, marches, parades, flags, colors, uniforms, all the typical insignias of the military are pieces of propaganda. And it is no coincidence that the standardization of the uniforms for the army were an invention of Propaganda makes us think and act in a way we probably would not have chosen to without its influence. Still, in most cases the degree of influence is impossible to know. Studies proving the efficiency of propaganda are doing nothing else but guessing in big parts. But it is efficient, that we know for sure. This is true for commercial advertisements as well as for political propaganda. Short messages are the most effective form of propaganda, look at posters for elections or at advertisements for any product. The best or most effective propaganda is that which is wanted by the people. If propaganda meets the needs of the people then it has good chances to be extremely effective. And of course those needs can be "educated", as Jacques Ellul mentioned already in 1957, in his book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Political will suffers from the urgency of spreading propaganda. The will to change something - even if it was for the better - is hopelessly lost, if their is no prestige or aura around an idea. A certain amount of disinformation and propaganda is the perfect tool to get ideas through. So, actually, what is the difference between disinformation and propaganda? One difference is that the first one is directed at reason whereas propaganda also touches emotions, most of the time even prefers to influence emotions. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Gulf War By the end of our century a new method of disinformation is gaining importance: disinformation by an overflow of information. In the Gulf War, similar to the Vietnam War, journalists had little chance to report neutrally and correctly from the battlefields. Many times they staid in places far from the actual fightings - due to censorship. In many ways the so-called video-war reminded of a series of commercials. No wonder, the Gulf War was the first war to have a commercial advertisement agency to do the war-propaganda for the USA. They worked hard in preventing the government from a destiny like the one of the Vietnam War, when the war most of all was lost in the American homes because of anti-war propaganda. In an interview, And this is true for both sides: the baby milk plant: Western bombs had destroyed a chemical weapon factory - that's what they claimed. ( the life guard: In December 1990, the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur published the story of Karim Abdallah al-Jabouri, Saddam Hussein's Life Guard who had fled from Iraq right after Iraq's invasion in Kuwait. Soon afterwards he was in a French TV-show, where he told atrocity stories about the baby-incubator-story of Najirah On the 10th of October 1991 a young refugee, called Najirah, from Kuwait spoke in front of the U.S.-congress. With a lot of tears she told that she had been working in a Kuwaiti hospital, when Iraqi soldiers came in, tore the babies out of the incubators and let them die on the floor. The pictures of this declaration went around the world and were one of the reasons why the U.S.-population wanted an intervention. In 1992 the journalist R. MacArthur was able to proof that the presented witness had been the daughter of the Kuwait-ambassador in the USA and that she had not been in that hospital or in Kuwait at the mentioned time. By then the war was over and the manipulation of the population had taken place long ago. For reading about the U.S.-propaganda tools during that war, like surrender passes, balloons, fake banknotes, threats and many more visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Right to get Disinformed Disinformation might also be welcome: While the ones criticize disinformation and try to fight against it, others do nothing against it. And others again seem to enjoy getting disinformed. How this works? It is the result of a society that does no longer want to live under the pressure of doing and hearing everything at the same time. Acceleration of life seems too fast. The only way to get out is to refuse certain things/messages/truths. Receiving disinformation can be more comfortable than getting so-called correct information. This is especially true for the readers of the yellow press. The yellow press lives on that perspective, the commodity of getting light news, mostly wrong news and lies - but those being wrapped up in nice pictures and stories about those who seem to reign the world. The aim is the escape out of reality. A surplus of information, information terror, can produce disinformation. The profusion can get exploited for disinformation. This works in that way that in the mass of information the individual has no possibility to get an overview of the different ways of thinking and to reach a stage of objective knowledge. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Introduction Political and economic agendas change. People leave, get exchanged. Whereas one of the things that never seem to change is disinformation. Watching different kinds of cultures and regimes throughout history you will always find disinformation. Its use is variable just like its tools. First of all it does not necessarily need words. It is possible to disinform in any kind of language (sounds, symbols, letters or with the help of the body). As it seems to have come into existence together with human communication, we need not even hope that it will disappear once in a while. One could rather say: disinformation has always been there. Instead of hoping to stop it we need to learn to live with it, detect it, restore it to consciousness. Even this will not be any insurance for not walking into the trap. It is an attempt, nothing else. For detecting disinformation one needs to know what types of disinformation are possible and how they work. This site gives you some ideas about the history, tendencies and different types of disinformation, with the restriction that it will mostly be about the Western types of disinformation, as it is still harder to understand the media of disinformation in other cultures; and anyhow, many methods and tools run parallel in different cultures. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Romans The Romans can be called the great inventors of myths with the purpose of propaganda. Think of Or Augustus: he reunited the Roman Empire; part of his power was due to huge efforts in propaganda, visible e.g. in the mass of coins showing his face, being sent all over the empire. He understood very well, that different cultures used different symbols - and he used them for his propaganda. Politically the Roman army was an important factor. Propaganda in that case was used for the soldiers on the one hand, but on the other hand also for demonstrating the power of the army to the people, so they could trust in its strength. Even then security was an essential factor of politics. As long as the army functioned, the Roman Empire did as well ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Association for Progressive Communication (APC) The APC is a global federation of 24 non-profit Internet providers serving over 50,000 NGOs in 133 countries. Since 1990, APC has been supporting people and organizations worldwide, working together online for social, environmental and economic justice. The APC's network of members and partners spans the globe, with significant presence in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. History Between 1982 and 1987 several independent, national, non-profit computer networks emerged as viable information and communication resources for activists and NGOs. The networks were founded to make new communication techniques available to movements working for social change. In 1987, people at GreenNet in England began collaborating with their counterparts at the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) in the United States. These two networks started sharing electronic conference material and demonstrated that transnational electronic communications could serve international as well as domestic communities working for peace, human rights and the environment. This innovation proved so successful that by late 1989, networks in Sweden, Canada, Brazil, Nicaragua and Australia were exchanging information with each other and with IGC and GreenNet. In the spring of 1990, these seven organizations founded the Association for Progressive communications to co-ordinate the operation and development of this emerging global network of networks. Strategies and Policies The APC defends and promotes non-commercial, productive online space for NGOs and collaborates with like-minded organizations to ensure that the information and communication needs of civil society are considered in telecommunications, donor and investment policy. The APC is committed to freedom of expression and exchange of information on the Internet. The APC helps to build capacity between existing and emerging communication service providers. The APC Women's Networking Support Program promotes gender-aware Internet design, implementation and use. Through its African members, the APC is trying to strengthen indigenous information sharing and independent networking capacity on the continent. Members of APC develop Internet products, resources and tools to meet the advocacy, collaboration and information publishing and management needs of civil society. Recent APC initiatives have included the APC Toolkit Project: Online Publishing and Collaboration for Activists and the Mission-Driven Business Planning Toolkit. The APC also runs special projects like the Beijing+5, which shall enable non-governmental organizations to actively participate in the review of the Beijing Platform for Action. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The British Propaganda Campaign in World War I The British set up a unique system for propaganda, involving GB, the USA and all the colonies. Most different agencies and civilians worked together, the civilians not always knowing about the machinery behind. During the first years of the war the main goal was to achieve a U.S.-entry to the war on Britain's side of the battle. All propaganda was working on this, which meant to destroy Germany's reputation and create dark stereotypes about them, which was an easy task as the Germans were not only fatally unlucky but also very weak in propaganda. At the same time the U.S.-citizens' opinion about the war had to be influenced. The most promising way to do so was by starting with the men in power. One of the most beloved tools at that time was the use of atrocity stories; and most popular among the masses were cartoons, furthermore posters, an element perfectioned by the USSR in World War I and II, and movies. The particular thing was that British propaganda finally had an effect on the German population. Soldiers at the front and people at home received the disinformation messages, mostly pamphlets that had been dropped by aeroplanes or balloons. Together with the development of the fightings turning against the Germans this kind of propaganda was able to discourage the people and make the German government lose its power of propaganda. "Allied propaganda had caused a collapse of morale at home." ( After all this success it is hardly understandable that the British committed a huge error right after the war, an error that had bad consequences for the next war: being regarded as a tool of war and therefore regarded as inappropriate for times of peace, the propaganda institutions were closed. At about the same time similar ones were built up in Germany - first of all on paper, in | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Post-World-War II-period After World War II the importance of propaganda still increased, on the commercial level as well as on a political level, in the era of the Cold War. The propaganda institutions of the different countries wanted their people to think the right way, which meant, the national way. In the USA the McCarthy-era started, a totalitarian system in struggle against communism. Cold War brought the era of spies with it, which was the perfect tool of disinformation. But the topic as a movie-genre seems still popular today, as the unchanged success of James Bond-movies show. A huge net of propaganda was built up for threatening with the nuclear bomb: pretending that the enemy was even more dangerous than the effect of such a bomb. And later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, disinformation found other fields of work, like the wars of the 1990s showed us. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Enigma Machine The Enigma Encryption Machine was famous for its insecurities as for the security that it gave to German ciphers. It was broken, first by the Poles in the 1930s, then by the British in World War II. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD) was adopted by | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nero Nero's full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). Nero was Roman Emperor from 54-68 AD; during the first years in power he stood under the influence of his teacher | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Telnet Telnet allows you to login remotely on a computer connected to the Internet. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Flesh Machine This is the tile of a book by the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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International Standardization Organization ISO (International Organization for Standardization), founded in 1946, is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. Among the standards it fosters is Source: Whatis.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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DMCA The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was signed into law by U.S. President Clinton in 1998 and implements the two 1996 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D. The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling. For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) The ICPC aims at reducing the number of incidents of damages to submarine telecommunications cables by hazards. The Committee also serves as a forum for the exchange of technical and legal information pertaining to submarine cable protection methods and programs and funds projects and programs, which are beneficial for the protection of submarine cables. Membership is restricted to authorities (governmental administrations or commercial companies) owning or operating submarine telecommunications cables. As of May 1999, 67 members representing 38 nations were members. http://www.iscpc.org | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Censorship of Online Content in China During the Tian-an men massacre reports and photos transmitted by fax machines gave notice of what was happening only with a short delay. The Chinese government has learned his lesson well and "regulated" Internet access from the beginning. All Internet traffic to and out of China passes through a few Users are expected not to "harm" China's national interests and therefore have to apply for permission of Internet access; Web pages have to be approved before being published on the Net. For the development of measures to monitor and control Chinese content providers, China's state police has joined forces with the MIT. For further information on Internet censorship, see Human Rights Watch, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath party when he was a university student. In 1958 he had the head of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qassim, killed. Since 1979 he has been President of Iraq. Under his reign Iraq fought a decade-long war with Iran. Because of his steady enmity with extreme Islamic leaders the West supported him first of all, until his army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, an incident that the USA led to the Gulf War. Since then many rumors about a coup d'état have been launched, but Saddam Hussein is still in unrestricted power. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier is president of Counterpane Systems in Minneapolis. This consulting enterprise specialized in cryptography and computer security. He is the author of the book Applied Cryptography and inventor of the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Louis XIV. Louis XIV. (1643-1715) became King of France when he was still a young boy. He centralized all the state's power to the crown and created a state of absolutism. In this respect Louis' most famous sentence was: L'état c'est moi. (= The state am I). During his reign the most talented and respectable men in art as well as in philosophy and policy worked for the monarchy. His favor for luxury and the steady wars with other European empires ruined the state morally and financially, but for the history he is still called Roi Soleil (King of the Sun). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alexander Graham Bell b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it. For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Apple Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and headquartered in Cupertino, USA, Apple Computer was the first commercially successful personal computer company. In 1978 Wozniak invented the first personal computer, the Apple II. For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,115726+1+108787,00.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Local Area Network (LAN) A Local Area Network is an office network, a network restricted to a building area. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show The story of Frank-N-furter, Brad and Janet ... Don't dream it, be it! http://www.rockyhorrorpictureshow.com/ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medieval universities and copying of books The first of the great medieval universities was established at Bologna. At the beginning, universities predominantly offered a kind of do-it-yourself publishing service. Books still had to be copied by hand and were so rare that a copy of a widely desired book qualified for being invited to a university. Holding a lecture equaled to reading a book aloud, like a priest read from the Bible during services. Attending a lecture equaled to copy a lecture word by word, so you had your own copy of a book, thus enabling you to hold a lecture, too. For further details see History of the Idea of a University, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Virtual Marylin Monroe This is the story of the virtual Marylyn Monroe created by MRALab in Switzerland. The biography features her personal and professional stories. This being the biography of a virtual being, it does not end with the present and includes, instead, a chapter on her destiny. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Adi Shamir Adi Shamir was one of three persons in a team to invent the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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cryptology also called "the study of code". It includes both, cryptography and cryptoanalysis | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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RSA The best known of the two-key cryptosystems developed in the mid-1980s is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptoalgorithm, which was first published in April, 1977. Since that time, the algorithm has been employed in the most widely-used Internet electronic communications encryption program, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Optical communication system by Aeneas Tacitus, 4th century B.C. Aeneas Tacitus, a Greek military scientist and cryptographer, invented an optical communication system that combines water and beacon telegraphy. Torches indicated the beginnings and the ends of message transmissions while water jars were used to transmit the messages. These jars had a plugged standard-size hole drilled on the bottom side and were filled with water. As those who sent and those who received the message unplugged the jars simultaneously, the water drained out. Because the transmitted messages corresponded to water levels, the sender indicated by torch signal that the appropriate water level has been reached. It is a disadvantage that the possible messages are restricted to a given code, but as this system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand these messages unless they possessed the codebook. With communication separated from transportation, the distant became near. Tacitus' telegraph system was very fast and not excelled until For further information see Joanne Chang & Anna Soellner, Decoding Device, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Immanuel Wallerstein Immanuel Wallerstein (* 1930) is director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. He is one of the most famous sociologists in the Western World. With his book The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1976), which led to the expression World-System Theory about centers, peripheries and semi-peripheries in the capitalist world system, he did not only influence a whole generation of scientists, but this theory seems to get popular again, due to globalization. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Polybius Checkerboard
It is a system, where letters get converted into numeric characters. The numbers were not written down and sent but signaled with torches. for example: A=1-1 B=1-2 C=1-3 W=5-2 for more information see: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General Electric GE is a major American corporation and one of the largest and most diversified corporations in the world. Its products include electrical and electronic equipment, plastics, aircraft engines, medical imaging equipment, and financial services. The company was incorporated in 1892, and in 1986 GE purchased the RCA Corporation including the RCA-owned television network, the National Broadcasting Company, Inc. In 1987, however, GE sold RCA's consumer electronics division to Thomson SA, a state-owned French firm, and purchased Thomson's medical technology division. In 1989 GE agreed to combine its European business interests in appliances, medical systems, electrical distribution, and power systems with the unrelated British corporation General Electric Company. Headquarters are in Fairfield, Conn., U.S. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Internet Society Founded in 1992, the Internet Society is an umbrella organization of several mostly self-organized organizations dedicated to address the social, political, and technical issues, which arise as a result of the evolution and the growth of the Net. Its most important subsidiary organizations are the Its members comprise companies, government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. The Internet Society is governed by elected trustees. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) TCP and IP are the two most important protocols and communication standards. TCP provides reliable message-transmission service; IP is the key protocol for specifying how packets are routed around the Internet. More detailed information can be found | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Louis Braille b. Jan. 4, 1809, Coupvray, near Paris, France d. Jan. 6, 1852, Paris, France Educator who developed a system of printing and writing that is extensively used by the blind and that was named for him. Himself blind Braille became interested in a system of writing, exhibited at the school by Charles Barbier, in which a message coded in dots was embossed on cardboard. When he was 15, he worked out an adaptation, written with a simple instrument, that met the needs of the sightless. He later took this system, which consists of a six-dot code in various combinations, and adapted it to musical notation. He published treatises on his type system in 1829 and 1837. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mark A mark (trademark or service mark) is "... a sign, or a combination of signs, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings. The sign may particularly consist of one or more distinctive words, letters, numbers, drawings or pictures, emblems, colors or combinations of colors, or may be three-dimensional..." ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin (1879-1953): After Lenin's death he took over and became a dictator without any limits of power. Everyone who dared to talk or act against him or was in suspicion of doing so, got killed. Millions were murdered. His empire was one made out of propaganda and fear. As long as he was in power his picture had to be in every flat and bureau. Soon after his death the cult was stopped and in 1956 the De-Stalination was started, though he was partly rehabilitated in 1970. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1896 1896 The Daily Mail was published in Great Britain. It was the first newspaper for the masses. With the emerging of newspapers the manner how politics was perceived by the public changed completely. It became more difficult to keep secrets, while at the same time there was suddenly a new and nearly perfect tool for manipulation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Internet Protocol Number (IP Number) Every computer using IP numbers are divided into three classes. Class A is restricted for big-sized organizations, Class B to medium-sized ones as universities, and Class C is dedicated to small networks. Because of the increasing number of networks worldwide, networks belonging together, as | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Technological measures As laid down in the proposed EU Directive on copyright and related | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca (~4 BC - 65 AD), originally coming from Spain, was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator and playwright with a lot of influence on the Roman cultural life of his days. Involved into politics, his pupil | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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IDEA IDEA is another symmetric-key system. It is a block cipher, operating on 64-bit plaintext blocks, having a key-length of 128 bits. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Colouring In November 1997, after the assassination of (above all Swiss) tourists in Egypt, the Swiss newspaper Blick showed a picture of the place where the attack had happened, with a tremendous pool of blood, to emphasize the cruelty of the Muslim terrorists. In other newspapers the same picture could be seen - with a pool of water, like in the original. Of course the manipulated coloured version of the Blick fit better into the mind of the shocked Swiss population. The question about death penalty arose quickly .... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Extranet An Extranet is an Intranet with limited and controlled access by authenticated outside users, a business-to-business Intranet, e.g. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kessler Marketing Intelligence (KMI) KMI is the leading source for information on fiber-optics markets. It offers market research, strategic analysis and product planning services to the opto-electronics and communications industries. KMI tracks the worldwide fiber-optic cable system and sells the findings to the industry. KMI says that every fiber-optics corporation with a need for strategic market planning is a subscriber to their services. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hieroglyphs Hieroglyphs are pictures, used for writing in ancient Egypt. First of all those pictures were used for the names of kings, later more and more signs were added, until a number of 750 pictures | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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