AOL Time Warner The largest media conglomerate in the world, Time Warner resulted from the merger of the publisher Time Inc. and the media company Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc. in 1996. Time Inc. founded in 1922 primarily concentrated on magazines and books and in the 1950s moved into the broadcasting and entertainment industry, but in the 1970s announced that it was selling its broadcasting holdings and concentrating on cable television. In 1989 Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications Inc., which besides being a major motion-picture and television studio, was also one of the biggest U.S. music recordings producers and cable-television operators. In January 2000 Time Warner merged with AOL (America Online) in a US$ 243.3 billion deal. Although AOL so far generated far less profit and turnover than Time Warner its quotation on the stock exchange was clearly higher, making Time Warner the junior partner (45 percent) in the new company. Through its merger with AOL, which is a major player in the online-business and owns several Internet-services like Compuserve, Netscape and Netcenter, the new media conglomerate could significantly enlarge its online presence and also complement its traditional media activities.

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Legal Protection: TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Another important multilateral treaty concerned with intellectual property rights is the TRIPS agreement, which was devised at the inauguration of the Uruguay Round negotiations of the WTO in January 1995. It sets minimum standards for the national protection of intellectual property rights and procedures as well as remedies for their enforcement (enforcement measures include the potential for trade sanctions against non-complying WTO members). The TRIPS agreement has been widely criticized for its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection. In 1999, 44 nations considered it appropriate to treat plant varieties as intellectual property. The complete TRIPS agreement can be found on: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm1_e.htm

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The Flesh Machine This is the tile of a book by the Critical Art Ensemble which puts the development of artifical life into a critical historical and political context, defining the power vectors which act as the driving force behind this development. The book is available in a print version (New York, Autonomedia 1998) and in an online version at http://www.critical-art.net/fles/book/index.html

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Calculator Calculators are machines for automatically performing arithmetical operations and certain mathematical functions. Modern calculators are descendants of a digital arithmetic machine devised by Blaise Pascal in 1642. Later in the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz created a more advanced machine, and, especially in the late 19th century, inventors produced calculating machines that were smaller and smaller and less and less laborious to use.

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