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1961: Installation of the First Industrial Robot Industrial |
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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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A non-history of disinformation If we look at history books we see the history of the winners, of men, of the rich and powerful ones. We read about a small part of the world's history - and very often we do not even realize this selective attitude. Those books disinform, telling us that they inform about what had happened in former times. Information turns into disinformation. Even being aware of this, we tend to live with it rather than change the system of selection. Which means, we are accustomed to disinformation, as it is nothing new. There is nothing like an exact history of disinformation, but the topic seems to have existed forever. With the help of disinformation, power and might can be prolonged, destroyed or gained. This is the secret of disinformation and its popularity. Rumors were the first way of spreading news. Rumors tend to be interesting and they make people interesting: first of all the person who spreads the rumor and second the person who hears about it. Both of them think that they know something that others do not know yet - and this information advantage makes them special, at least for some moments, until the next rumor is spread or that one destroyed by some truth. The "history" of disinformation is closely connected with the history of propaganda, though those two words do not mean the same thing. They are connected to each other and tend to influence each other in various ways. What we tend to forget: everybody is disinforming sometimes, everybody is using propaganda. And persuasion is a common companion. The latter is less problematic though, as it uses less violence. |
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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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The Role of the Media "Although this is a free society, the U.S. mainstream media often serve as virtual propaganda agents of the state, peddling viewpoints the state wishes to inculcate and marginalizing any alternative perspectives. This is especially true in times of war, when the wave of patriotic frenzy encouraged by the war-makers quickly engulfs the media. Under these conditions the media's capacity for dispassionate reporting and critical analysis is suspended, and they quickly become cheer-leaders and apologists for war." (words as propaganda, by The mass-media would have a possibility to get out of this circle of being disinformed and making others disinformed. To admit that oneself is not always informed correctly, and also mention that the pictures shown are not in any case suitable to the text, as some of them are older, or even from another battle. For the media it would be easy to talk about the own disinformation in public. Doing this would provoke the government or in the case of the |
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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 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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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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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 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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Central processing unit A CPU is the principal part of any digital computer system, generally composed of the main memory, control unit, and arithmetic-logic unit. It constitutes the physical heart of the entire computer system; to it is linked various peripheral equipment, including input/output devices and auxiliary storage units... |
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Ottawa Latitude: 45.42, Longitude: -75.7 The headquarters of the Communications Security Establishment CSE are located in Ottawa. Here all processed intercepted data from Canadian monitoring stations come together to be further analyzed by special signals intelligence analysts. For that purpose the dictionary system is used. |
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Time Warner The largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The corporation resulted from the merger of the publisher Time Inc. and the media conglomerate Warner Communications Inc. in 1989. It acquired the Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS) in 1996. Time Warner Inc.'s products encompass magazines, hardcover books, comic books, recorded music, motion pictures, and broadcast and cable television programming and distribution. The company's headquarters are in New York City. In January 2000 Time Warner merged with AOL (America Online), which owns several online-services like Compuserve, Netscape and Netcenter in a US$ 243,3 billion deal. |
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George Boole b. Nov. 2, 1815, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England d. Dec. 8, 1864, Ballintemple, County Cork, Ireland English mathematician who helped establish modern symbolic logic and whose algebra of logic, now called Boolean algebra, is basic to the design of digital computer circuits. One of the first Englishmen to write on logic, Boole pointed out the analogy between the algebraic symbols and those that can represent logical forms and syllogisms, showing how the symbols of quantity can be separated from those of operation. With Boole in 1847 and 1854 began the algebra of logic, or what is now called Boolean algebra. It is basically two-valued in that it involves a subdivision of objects into separate classes, each with a given property. Different classes can then be treated as to the presence or absence of the same property. |
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Expert system Expert systems are advanced computer programs that mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. Their creators strive to clone the expertise of one or several human specialists to develop a tool that can be used by the layman to solve difficult or ambiguous problems. Expert systems differ from conventional computer programs as they combine facts with rules that state relations between the facts to achieve a crude form of reasoning analogous to |
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The Flesh Machine This is the tile of a book by the |
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Fort Meade Headquarters of the US National Security Agency in Maryland. |
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Sperry Formerly (1955 - 1979) Sperry Rand Corporation, American corporation that merged with the Burroughs Corporation in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation, a large computer manufacturer. |
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Transistor A transistor is a solid-state device for amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals. Transistors are used in a wide array of electronic equipment, ranging from pocket |
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Automation Automation is concerned with the application of machines to tasks once performed by humans or, increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible. Although the term mechanization is often used to refer to the simple replacement of human labor by machines, |
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News Corporation The News Corporation Ltd., a global media holding company, which governed News Limited (Australia), News International (U.K.), and News America Holdings Inc. (U.S.) was founded by the Australian-born newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur, Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's corporate interests center on newspaper, magazine, book, and electronic publishing; television broadcasting; and film and video production, principally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. |
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to decipher/decode to put the ciphers/codes back into the plaintext |
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Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is the independent research branch of the U.S. Department of Defense that, among its other accomplishments, funded a project that in time was to lead to the creation of the Internet. Originally called ARPA (the "D" was added to its name later), DARPA came into being in 1958 as a reaction to the success of Sputnik, Russia's first manned satellite. DARPA's explicit mission was (and still is) to think independently of the rest of the military and to respond quickly and innovatively to national defense challenges. In the late 1960s, DARPA provided funds and oversight for a project aimed at interconnecting computers at four university research sites. By 1972, this initial network, now called the http://www.darpa.mil |
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Machine vision A branch of |
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National Science Foundation (NSF) Established in 1950, the National Science Foundation is an independent agency of the U.S. government dedicated to the funding in basic research and education in a wide range of sciences and in mathematics and engineering. Today, the NSF supplies about one quarter of total federal support of basic scientific research at academic institutions. For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,2450+1+2440,00.html |
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Newsgroups Newsgroups are on-line discussion groups on the Usenet. Over 20,000 newsgroups exist, organized by subject into hierarchies. Each subject hierarchy is further broken down into subcategories. Covering an incredible wide area of interests and used intensively every day, they are an important part of the Internet. For more information, click here ( |
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Charles Babbage b. December 26, 1791, London, England d. October 18, 1871, London, England English mathematician and inventor who is credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer. The idea of mechanically calculating mathematical tables first came to Babbage in 1812 or 1813. Later he made a small |
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John von Neumann 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. |
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Morwenstow Station Latitude: 50.9087, Longitude: -4.55264 The |
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Bulletin Board Systems A BBS (bulletin board system) is a computer that can be reached by computer modem dialing (you need to know the phone number) or, in some cases, by Bulletin board systems originated and generally operate independently of the Internet. Source: Whatis.com |
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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 |
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Cheltenham Analysts at the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham process the mass of intercepted satellite communications produced by their sophisticated interception system, especially from Morwenstow and Menwith Hill. At the headquarters personel use advanced computer hardware and the Dictionary system. |
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