Introduction: The Substitution of Human Faculties with Technology: Computers and Robots

With the development of modern computing, starting in the 1940s, the substitution of human abilities with technology obtained a new dimension. The focus shifted from the replacement of pure physical power to the substitution of mental faculties. Following the early 1980s personal computers started to attain widespread use in offices and quickly became indispensable tools for office workers. The development of powerful computers combined with progresses in artificial intelligence research also led to the construction of sophisticated robots, which enabled a further rationalization of manufacturing processes.

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Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II

Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies.
The first propaganda movie of World War II was British.
At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity.
Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index.

U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools.

In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

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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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Disinformation and Science

Disinformation's tools emerged from science and art.
And furthermore: disinformation can happen in politics of course, but also in science:
for example by launching ideas which have not been proven exactly until the moment of publication. e.g. the thought that time runs backwards in parts of the universe:
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991127/newsstory3.html

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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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Royalties

Royalties refer to the payment made to the owners of certain types of rights by those who are permitted by the owners to exercise the rights. The rights concerned are literary, musical, and artistic copyright and patent rights in inventions and designs (as well as rights in mineral deposits, including oil and natural gas). The term originated from the fact that in Great Britain for centuries gold and silver mines were the property of the crown and such "royal" metals could be mined only if a payment ("royalty") were made to the crown.

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Fair use

Certain acts normally restricted by copyright may, in circumstances specified in the law, be done without the authorization of the copyright owner. Fair use may therefore be described as the privilege to use copyrighted material in a reasonable manner without the owner's consent and allows the reproduction and use of a work for limited purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and research. To determine whether a use is fair or not most copyright laws consider: 1) purpose and character of the use, 2) nature of the copyrighted work, 3) amount and substantiality of the portion used, and 4) effect of the use on the potential market. Examples of activities that may be excused as fair use include: providing a quotation in a book review; distributing copies of a section of an article in class for educational purposes; and imitating a work for the purpose of parody or social commentary.

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Blue Box

The blue box-system works with a special blue colored background. The person in front can act as if he/she was filmed anywhere, also in the middle of a war.

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Internet Protocol Number (IP Number)

Every computer using TCP/IP has a 32 bit-Internet address, an IP number. This number consists of a network identifier and of a host identifier. The network identifier is registered at and allocated by a Network Information Center (NIC), the host identifier is allocated by the local network administration.

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 LANs forming a corporate network, are allocated a single IP number.

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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 Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

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French laws against anonymity on the Net

Since the end of June in France anonymous publishing - on the World Wide Web, in newsgroups, mailing lists or chat rooms - is prohibited. The use of pseudonyms, so popular in chat rooms, e.g., is not restricted, but the true identities of those who "publish" on the Net must be known to the users' Internet service and Internet content providers. Additionally, Internet providers are obliged to point out the possibility of blocking access to material to their customers and to offer them appropriate technology for blocking access.

Loi sur la communication audiovisuelle, http://www.legalis.net/jnet/2000/loi-audio/projetloi-fin.htm

Source: Florian Rötzer, Frankreich hat mit der Anonymität im internet Schluss gemacht, in: Telepolis, July 2, 2000

http://www.heise.de/tp
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Instinet

Instinet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reuters Group plc since 1987, is the world's largest agency brokerage firm and the industry brokerage leader in after hours trading. It trades in over 40 global markets daily and is a member of seventeen exchanges in North America, Europe, and Asia. Its institutional clients represent more than 90 percent of the institutional equity funds under management in the United States. Instinet accounts for about 20 percent of the NASDAQ daily trading volume and trades approximately 170 million shares of all U.S. equities daily.

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Convergence, 2000-

Digital technologies are used to combine previously separated communication and media systems as telephony, audiovisual technologies and computing to new services and technologies, thus forming extensions of existing communication systems and resulting in fundamentally new communication systems. This is what is meant by today's new buzzwords "multimedia" and "convergence".

Classical dichotomies as the one of computing and telephony and traditional categorisations no longer apply, because these new services no longer fit traditional categories.

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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. IBM countered its successful introduction to the market by introducing a personal computer running MS-DOS, the operating system supplied by Microsoft Corporation. And IBM gained leadership again. Although by introducing the first graphical user interface affordable to consumers having started the desktop publishing revolution, Apple could not regain leadership again.

http://www.apple.com

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,115726+1+108787,00.html

http://www.apple.com/
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