Znet

ZNet provides forum facilities for online discussion and chatting on various topics ranging from culture and ecology to international relations and economics. ZNet also publishes daily commentaries and maintains a Web-zine, which addresses current news and events as well as many other topics, trying to be provocative, informative and inspiring to its readers.

Strategies and Policies

Daily Commentaries: Znet's commentaries address current news and events, cultural happenings, and organizing efforts, providing context, critique, vision, and analysis, but also references to or reviews of broader ideas, new books, activism, the Internet, and other topics that strike the diverse participating authors as worthy of attention.

Forum System: Znet provides a private (and soon also a public) forum system. The fora are among others concerned with topics such as: activism, cultural, community/race/religion/ethnicity, ecology, economics/class, gender/kinship/sexuality, government/polity, international relations, ParEcon, vision/strategy and popular culture. Each forum has a set of threaded discussions, also the fora hosted by commentary writers like Chomsky, Ehrenreich, Cagan, Peters and Wise.

ZNet Daily WebZine: ZNet Daily WebZine offers commentaries in web format.

Z Education Online (planned): The Z Education Online site will provide instructionals and courses of diverse types as well as other university-like, education-aimed features.

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1980s: Artificial Intelligence (AI) - From Lab to Life

Following the commercial success of expert systems, which started in the 1970s, also other AI technologies began to make their way into the marketplace. In 1986, U.S. sales of AI-related hardware and software rose to U.S.$ 425 million. Especially expert systems, because of their efficiency, were still in demand. Yet also other fields of AI turned out to be successful in the corporate world.

Machine vision systems for example were used for the cameras and computers on assembly lines to perform quality control. By 1985 over a hundred companies offered machine vision systems in the U.S., and sales totaled U.S.$ 80 million. Although there was a breakdown in the market for AI-systems in 1986 - 1987, which led to a cut back in funding, the industry slowly recovered.

New technologies were being invented in Japan. Fuzzy logic pioneered in the U.S. and also neural networks were being reconsidered for achieving artificial intelligence. The probably most important development of the 1980s was, that it showed that AI technology had real life uses. AI applications like voice and character recognition systems or steadying camcorders using fuzzy logic were not only made available to business and industry, but also to the average customer.

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The North against the South?

"Faced with this process of globalization, most governments appear to lack the tools required for facing up to the pressure from important media changes. The new global order is viewed as a daunting challenge, and it most often results in reactions of introversion, withdrawal and narrow assertions of national identity. At the same time, many developing countries seize the opportunity represented by globalization to assert themselves as serious players in the global communications market."
(UNESCO, World Communication Report)

The big hope of the South is that the Internet will close the education gap and economic gap, by making education easier to achieve. But in reality the gap is impossible to close, because the North is not keeping still, but developing itself further and further all the time; inventing new technologies that produce another gap each. The farmer's boy sitting in the dessert and using a cellular telephone and a computer at the same time is a sarcastic picture - nothing else.

Still, the so called developing countries regard modern communication technologies as a tremendous chance - and actually: which other choice is there left?

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1960s - 1970s: Increased Research in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

During the cold war the U.S. tried to ensure that it would stay ahead of the Soviet Union in technological advancements. Therefore in 1963 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) granted the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) U.S.$ 2.2 million for research in machine-aided cognition (artificial intelligence). The major effect of the project was an increase in the pace of AI research and a continuation of funding.

In the 1960s and 1970s a multitude of AI programs were developed, most notably SHRDLU. Headed by Marvin Minsky the MIT's research team showed, that when confined to a small subject matter, computer programs could solve spatial and logic problems. Other progresses in the field of AI at the time were: the proposal of new theories about machine vision by David Marr, Marvin Minsky's frame theory, the PROLOGUE language (1972) and the development of expert systems.

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Industrial design

Industrial design refers to the ornamental aspect of a useful article which may constitute of two or three-dimensional elements. To be qualified for intellectual property protection the design must be novel or original. Protection can be obtained through registration in a government office and usually is given for 10 to 15 years.

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NSFNet

Developed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NSFnet served as the successor of the ARPAnet as the main network linking universities and research facilities until 1995, when it was replaced it with a commercial backbone network. Being research networks, ARPAnet and NSFnet served as testing grounds for future networks.

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François Duvalier

b. April 14, 1907, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
d. April 21, 1971, Port-au-Prince

By name PAPA DOC, president of Haiti whose 14-year regime was of unprecedented duration in that country. A supporter of President Dumarsais Estimé, Duvalier was appointed director general of the National Public Health Service in 1946. He was appointed underminister of labour in 1948 and the following year became minister of public health and labour, a post that he retained until May 10, 1950, when President Estimé was overthrown by a military junta under Paul E. Magloire, who was subsequently elected president. By 1954 he had become the central opposition figure and went underground. Duvalier was elected president in September 1957. Setting about to consolidate his power, he reduced the size of the army and organized the Tontons Macoutes ("Bogeymen"), a private force responsible for terrorizing and assassinating alleged foes of the regime. Late in 1963 Duvalier moved further toward an absolutist regime, promoting a cult of his person as the semi divine embodiment of the Haitian nation. In April 1964 he was declared president for life. Although diplomatically almost completely isolated, excommunicated by the Vatican until 1966 for harassing the clergy, and threatened by conspiracies against him, Duvalier was able to stay in power longer than any of his predecessors.

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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 World Wide Web.

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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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