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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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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"In wartime they attack a part of the body that other weapons cannot reach in an attempt to affect the way which participants perform on the field of battle." (
Therefore the demonstrated tools refer to political propaganda in the two World Wars.
Propaganda has the ability to change a war, a natural evil, into a so-called "just" war. Violence then is supposedly defense, no more aggression.
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The concept of
Expert systems were designed to mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of a human specialist in a given domain by using
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Besides ordinary religious manipulation-tools the Egyptians were masters of using architecture for propaganda. In Egypt, most of all, architecture was used as a media to demonstrated power, whereas the Greek and Romans used other types of art, like statues, for political propaganda.
The pyramids, palaces, tombs became tools for power demonstrations. Paintings and carvings (like on obelisks) proved the might of the rulers.
All those signs of power were done to make people compare their ruling dynasty to gods and keep them politically silent, because religion was used for justifying mortal power. Marble, gold, jewelry and artists were the tools for those maneuvers. Whereas questions for the truth were not even asked or listened to.
Finally it was the masses who were used for propaganda, when they were not only forced to work as slaves on those signs of power but also were abused for those power demonstrations, when they had to accompany the dead king into his tomb - dying of hunger, thirst, lack of oxygen and in darkness. The more religious disinformation the more luxury. The more luxury the better. The more luxury the more power.
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C.R. Teed (New York State) was a doctor of alternative medicine in the last century. He worked on alchemy, too. In 1870 he had the idea that the universe was made out of cells, the earth being the biggest one. Thus he imagined the world as a concave system. Out of this thought he founded a religion, calling it Koreshanity.
Telnet allows you to login remotely on a computer connected to the Internet.
American corporation that was the world's largest automotive manufacturer and perhaps the largest industrial corporation throughout most of the 20th century. It was founded in 1908 to consolidate several motorcar companies and today operates manufacturing and assembly plants and distribution centers throughout the United States and Canada and many other countries. Its major products include automobiles and trucks, a wide range of automotive components, engines, and defense and aerospace material. In 1996 it sold Electronic Data Systems, and in 1997 it sold the defense units of its Hughes Electronics subsidiary to the Raytheon Company, thus leaving the computer-services and defense-aerospace fields in order to concentrate on its automotive businesses. The company's headquarters are in Detroit, Michigan.
Authors of copyrighted works (besides
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) manufactures and develops cumputer hardware equipment, application and sysem software, and related equipment.
IBM produced the first PC (Personal Computer), and its decision to make Microsoft DOS the standard operating system initiated Microsoft's rise to global dominance in PC software.
Business indicators:
1999 Sales: $ 86,548 (+ 7,2 % from 1998)
Market capitalization: $ 181 bn
Employees: approx. 291,000
Corporate website:
AT&T Corporation provides voice, data and video communications services to large and small businesses, consumers and government entities. AT&T and its subsidiaries furnish domestic and international long distance, regional, local and wireless communications services, cable television and Internet communications services. AT&T also provides billing, directory and calling card services to support its communications business. AT&T's primary lines of business are business services, consumer services, broadband services and wireless services. In addition, AT&T's other lines of business include network management and professional services through AT&T Solutions and international operations and ventures. In June 2000, AT&T completed the acquisition of MediaOne Group. With the addition of MediaOne's 5 million cable subscribers, AT&T becomes the country's largest cable operator, with about 16 million customers on the systems it owns and operates, which pass nearly 28 million American homes. (source: Yahoo)
Slogan: "It's all within your reach"
Business indicators:
Sales 1999: $ 62.391 bn (+ 17,2 % from 1998)
Market capitalization: $ 104 bn
Employees: 107,800
Corporate website:
Martin Hellman was
According to Barbrook and Cameron there is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. In this paper they are calling this orthodoxy the Californian Ideology in honor of the state where it originated. By naturalizing and giving a technological proof to a political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless and - horror of horrors - unfashionable. - This paper argues for an interactive future.
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/HRC/ci/calif.html
In the 1920s the Hollow Earth Theory was very popular in Germany. With the acceptance and support of the NAZI regime Karl Neupert wrote the book Geokosmos. With the help of this book the theory became a cult in Germany.
Invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, an engineer and architect in Lyon, France, the punch cards laid the ground for automatic information processing. For the first time information was stored in binary format on perforated cardboard cards. In 1890 Hermann Hollerith used Joseph-Marie Jacquard's punch card technology for processing statistical data retrieved from the US census in 1890, thus speeding up data analysis from eight to three years. His application of Jacquard's invention was also used for programming computers and data processing until electronic data processing was introduced in the 1960's. - As with
Paper tapes are a medium similar to Jacquard's punch cards. In 1857 Sir Charles Wheatstone applied them as a medium for the preparation, storage, and transmission of data for the first time. By their means, telegraph messages could be prepared off-line, sent ten times quicker (up to 400 words per minute), and stored. Later similar paper tapes were used for programming computers.