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
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In the space of flows constituted by today's global data networks the space of places is transcended. Visualizations of these global data flows show arches bridging seas and continents, thereby linking the world's centres of research and development, economics and politics. In the global "Network Society" (Manuel Castells) the traditional centres of power and domination are not discarded, in the opposite, they are strengthened and reinforced by the use of information and communication technologies. Political, economical and symbolical power becomes increasingly linked to the use of modern information and communication technologies. The most sensitive and advanced centres of information and communication technologies are the stock markets. Excluded from the network constituted by modern information and communication technologies, large parts of Africa, Asia and South America, but also the poor of industrialized countries, are ranking increasingly marginal to the world economy.
Cities are centres of communications, trade and power. The higher the percentage of urban population, the more it is likely that the telecommunications infrastructure is generally good to excellent. This goes hand in hand with lower telecommunications costs. Those parts of the world with the poorest infrastructure are also the world's poorhouse. In Bangladesh for most parts of the population a personal computer is as expensive as a limousine in European one-month's salary in Europe, they have to pay eight annual salaries. Therefore telecommunications infrastructure is concentrated on the highly industrialized world: Most telephone mainlines, mobile telephones, computers, Internet accounts and Internet hosts (computers connected to the global data networks) can be found here. The same applies to media: the daily circulation of newspapers and the use of TV sets and radios. - Telecommunication and media services affordable to most parts of the population are mostly restricted to industrialized countries.
This situation will not change in the foreseeable future: Most expenditure for telecommunications infrastructure will be restricted to the richest countries in the world. In 1998, the world's richest countries consumed 75% of all cables and wires.
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17th century Cardinal Richelieu invents an encryption-tool called grille, a card with holes for writing messages on paper into the holes of those cards. Afterwards he removes the cards and fills in the blanks, so the message looks like an ordinary letter. The recipient needs to own the same card
- Bishop John Wilkins invents a cryptologic system looking like music notes. In a book he describes several forms of steganographic systems like secrets inks, but also the string cipher. He mentions the so-called Pig Latin, a spoken way of encryption that was already used by the ancient Indians
- the English scientist, magician and astrologer
1605/1623 Sir Francis Bacon (= Francis Tudor = William Shakespeare?) writes several works containing ideas about cryptography. One of his most important advises is to use ciphers in such a way that no-one gets suspicious that the text could be enciphered. For this the steganogram was the best method, very often used in poems. The attempt to decipher Shakespeare's sonnets (in the 20th century) lead to the idea that his works had been written by Francis Bacon originally.
1671 Leibniz invents a calculating machine that uses the binary scale which we still use today, more advanced of course, called the ASCII code
18th century this is the time of the Black Chambers of espionage in Europe, Vienna having one of the most effective ones, called the "Geheime Kabinettskanzlei", headed by Baron Ignaz von Koch. Its task is to read through international diplomatic mail, copy letters and return them to the post-office the same morning. Supposedly about 100 letters are dealt with each day.
1790's Thomas Jefferson and Robert Patterson invent a wheel cipher
1799 the Rosetta Stone is found and makes it possible to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs
1832 or 1838 Sam Morse develops the Morse Code, which actually is no code but an enciphered alphabet of short and long sounds. The first Morse code-message is sent by telegraph in 1844.
1834 the
1844 the invention of the telegraph changes cryptography very much, as codes are absolutely necessary by then
1854 the Playfair cipher is invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone
1859 for the first time a tomographic cipher gets described
1861 Friedrich W. Kasiski does a cryptoanalysis of the Vigenère ciphers, which had been supposed to be uncrackable for ages
1891 Major Etienne Bazeries creates a new version of the wheel cipher, which is rejected by the French Army
1895 the invention of the radio changes cryptography-tasks again and makes them even more important
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With the dissemination of their content commercial media are among other things also able to transport values and ideologies. Usually their programming reflects society's dominant social, political, ethical, cultural and economical values. A critical view of the prevalent ideologies often is sacrificed so as not to offend the existing political elites and corporate powers, but rather satisfy shareholders and advertisers.
With most of the worlds content produced by a few commercial media conglomerates, with the overwhelming majority of companies (in terms of revenue generation) concentrated in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Australia there is also a strong flow of content from the 'North-West' to the 'South-East'. Popular culture developed in the world's dominant commercial centers and Western values and ideologies are so disseminated into the most distant corners of the earth with far less coming back.
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The internet can be regarded as a mirror of the variety of interests, attitudes and needs of human kind. Propaganda and disinformation in that way have to be part of it, whether they struggle for something good or evil. But the classifications do no longer function.
During the last years the internet opened up a new source for racism as it can be difficult to find the person who gave a certain message into the net. The anarchy of the internet provides racists with a lot of possibilities to reach people which they do not possess in other media, for legal and other reasons.
In the 1980s racist groups used mailboxes to communicate on an international level; the first ones to do so were supposedly the
A complete network of anti-racist organizations, including a high number of websites are fighting against racism. For example:
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Supposedly his real name was Aeneas of Stymphalus. He was a Greek military scientist and cryptographer. He invented an optical system for communication similar to a telegraph: the
Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores.
Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best.
Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the
For more information on early communication networks see
b. December 3, 1903, Budapest, Hungary
d. February 8, 1957, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, logic, meteorology, and computer science. His theory of games had a significant influence upon economics. In computer theory, von Neumann did much of the pioneering work in logical design, in the problem of obtaining reliable answers from a machine with unreliable components, the function of "memory," machine imitation of "randomness," and the problem of constructing automata that can reproduce their own kind.
An Extranet is an Intranet with limited and controlled access by authenticated outside users, a business-to-business Intranet, e.g.
IRC is a text-based chat system used for live discussions of groups.
For a history of IRC see Charles A. Gimon, IRC: The Net in Realtime,