Product Placement

With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was "The Spot", a story about the ups and downs of an American commune. The Spot not only within short time attracted a large audience, but also pioneered in the field of online product placement. Besides Sony banners, the companies logo is also placed on nearly every electronic product appearing in the story. Appearing as a site for light entertainment, The Spots main goal is to make the name Sony and its product range well known within the target audience.

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0 - 1400 A.D.

150
A smoke signals network covers the Roman Empire

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within a 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.

About 750
In Japan block printing is used for the first time.

868
In China the world's first dated book, the Diamond Sutra, is printed.

1041-1048
In China moveable types made from clay are invented.

1088
First European medieval university is established in Bologna.

The first of the great medieval universities was established in Bologna. At the beginning universities predominantly offered a kind of do-it-yourself publishing service.

Books still had to be copied by hand and were so rare that a copy of a widely desired book qualified for being invited to a university. Holding a lecture equaled to reading a book aloud, like a priest read from the Bible during services. Attending a lecture equaled to copy a lecture word by word, so that you had your own copy of a book, thus enabling you to hold a lecture, too.

For further details see History of the Idea of a University, http://quarles.unbc.edu/ideas/net/history/history.html

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Biometrics applications: gate keeping

Identity has to do with "place". In less mobile societies, the place where a person finds him/herself tells us something about his/her identity. In pre-industrial times, gatekeepers had the function to control access of people to particular places, i.e. the gatekeepers function was to identify people and then decide whether somebody's identity would allow that person to physically occupy another place - a town, a building, a vehicle, etc.

In modern societies, the unambiguous nature of place has been weakened. There is a great amount of physical mobility, and ever since the emergence and spread of electronic communication technologies there has been a "virtualisation" of places in what today we call "virtual space" (unlike place, space has been a virtual reality from the beginning, a mathematical formula) The question as to who one is no longer coupled to the physical abode. Highly mobile and virtualised social contexts require a new generation of gatekeepers which biometric technology aims to provide.

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Economic structure; transparent customers

Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.

User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.

"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."

(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)

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Identificaiton in history

In biometric technology, the subject is reduced to its physical and therefore inseparable properties. The subject is a subject in so far as it is objectified; that is, in so far as is identified with its own res extensa, Descartes' "extended thing". The subject exists in so far as it can be objectified, if it resists the objectification that comes with measurement, it is rejected or punished. Biometrics therefore provides the ultimate tool for control; in it, the dream of hermetic identity control seems to become a reality, a modern technological reconstruction of traditional identification techniques such as the handshake or the look into somebody's eyes.

The use of identification by states and other institutions of authority is evidently not simply a modern phenomenon. The ancient Babylonians and Chinese already made use of finger printing on clay to identify authors of documents, while the Romans already systematically compared handwritings.

Body measurement has long been used by the military. One of the first measures after entering the military is the identification and appropriation of the body measurements of a soldier. These measurements are filed and combined with other data and make up what today we would call the soldier's data body. With his data body being in possession of the authority, a soldier is no longer able freely socialise and is instead dependent on the disciplinary structure of the military institution. The soldier's social being in the world is defined by the military institution.

However, the military and civilian spheres of modern societies are no longer distinct entities. The very ambivalence of advanced technology (dual use technologies) has meant that "good" and "bad" uses of technology can no longer be clearly distinguished. The measurement of physical properties and the creation of data bodies in therefore no longer a military prerogative, it has become diffused into all areas of modern societies.

If the emancipatory potential of weak identities is to be of use, it is therefore necessary to know how biometric technologies work and what uses they are put to.

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Other biometric technologies

Other biometric technologies not specified here include ear recognition, signature dynamics, key stroke dynamics, vein pattern recognition, retinal scan, body odour recognition, and DNA recognition. These are technologies which are either in early stages of development or used in highly specialised and limited contexts.

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Enforcement: Copyright Management and Control Technologies

With the increased ease of the reproduction and transmission of unauthorized copies of digital works over electronic networks concerns among the copyright holder community have arisen. They fear a further growth of copyright piracy and demand adequate protection of their works. A development, which started in the mid 1990s and considers the copyright owner's apprehensions, is the creation of copyright management systems. Technological protection for their works, the copyright industry argues, is necessary to prevent widespread infringement, thus giving them the incentive to make their works available online. In their view the ideal technology should be "capable of detecting, preventing, and counting a wide range of operations, including open, print, export, copying, modifying, excerpting, and so on." Additionally such systems could be used to maintain "records indicating which permissions have actually been granted and to whom".

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Biometric applications: surveillance

Biometric technologies are not surveillance technologies in themselves, but as identification technologies they provide an input into surveillance which can make such as face recognition are combined with camera systems and criminal data banks in order to supervise public places and single out individuals.

Another example is the use of biometrics technologies is in the supervision of probationers, who in this way can carry their special hybrid status between imprisonment and freedom with them, so that they can be tracked down easily.

Unlike biometric applications in access control, where one is aware of the biometric data extraction process, what makes biometrics used in surveillance a particularly critical issue is the fact that biometric samples are extracted routinely, unnoticed by the individuals concerned.

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The story of Frank-N-furter, Brad and Janet ... Don't dream it, be it!

http://www.rockyhorrorpictureshow.com/

INDEXCARD, 1/19
 
Writing

Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers.

Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China.

INDEXCARD, 2/19
 
Slobodan Milosevic

Slobodan Milosevic (* 1941) is a Serbian political leader.
As a young man S. Milosevic joined the Communist Party, in 1984 the banker became head of the local Communist Party of Belgrade, in 1987 head of the Serb CP. Since 1989 he has been president of Serbia (since 1997 president of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). During his reign the Yugoslav Republic broke up, bringing about the independence of Slovenia and Croatia and the war in Bosnia. In 1998 the Kosovo Crisis started.

INDEXCARD, 3/19
 
Center for Democracy and Technology

The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. With expertise in law, technology, and policy, the Center seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies. The Center is dedicated to building consensus among all parties interested in the future of the Internet and other new communications media.

http://www.cdt.org

INDEXCARD, 4/19
 
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 ( http://www.terena.nl/libr/gnrt/group/usenet.html ).

http://www.terena.nl/libr/gnrt/group/usenet.h...
INDEXCARD, 5/19
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 6/19
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 7/19
 
Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan has a long history of violence. It emerged out of the resentment and hatred many white Southerners. Black Americans are not considered human beings. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished.

INDEXCARD, 8/19
 
Local Area Network (LAN)

A Local Area Network is an office network, a network restricted to a building area.

INDEXCARD, 9/19
 
Backbone Networks

Backbone networks are central networks usually of very high bandwidth, that is, of very high transmitting capacity, connecting regional networks. The first backbone network was the NSFNet run by the National Science Federation of the United States.

INDEXCARD, 10/19
 
Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath party when he was a university student. In 1958 he had the head of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qassim, killed. Since 1979 he has been President of Iraq. Under his reign Iraq fought a decade-long war with Iran. Because of his steady enmity with extreme Islamic leaders the West supported him first of all, until his army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, an incident that the USA led to the Gulf War. Since then many rumors about a coup d'état have been launched, but Saddam Hussein is still in unrestricted power.

INDEXCARD, 11/19
 
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

INDEXCARD, 12/19
 
Liability of ISPs

ISPs (Internet Service Provider), BBSs (Bulletin Board Service Operators), systems operators and other service providers (in the U.S.) can usually be hold liable for infringing activities that take place through their facilities under three theories: 1) direct liability: to establish direct infringement liability there must be some kind of a direct volitional act, 2) contributory liability: a party may be liable for contributory infringement where "... with knowledge of the infringing activity, [it] induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing activity of another." Therefore a person must know or have reason to know that the subject matter is copyrighted and that particular uses violated copyright law. There must be a direct infringement of which the contributory infringer has knowledge, and encourages or facilitates for contributory infringement to attach, and 3) vicarious liability: a party may be vicariously liable for the infringing acts of another if it a) has the right and ability to control the infringer's acts and b) receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement. Unlike contributory infringement, knowledge is not an element of vicarious liability.


INDEXCARD, 13/19
 
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.

http://www.nsf.gov

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,2450+1+2440,00.html

http://www.nsf.gov/
INDEXCARD, 14/19
 
Federal Networking Council

Being an organization established in the name of the US government, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) acts as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature version of these technologies from the commercial sector.

Its members are representatives of agencies as the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, e.g.

http://www.fnc.gov

INDEXCARD, 15/19
 
Moral rights

Authors of copyrighted works (besides economic rights) enjoy moral rights on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise.

INDEXCARD, 16/19
 
Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks

This book gives a fascinating glimpse of the many documented attempts throughout history to develop effective means for long distance communications. Large-scale communication networks are not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The oldest attempts date back to millennia before Christ and include ingenious uses of homing pigeons, mirrors, flags, torches, and beacons. The first true nationwide data networks, however, were being built almost two hundred years ago. At the turn of the 18th century, well before the electromagnetic telegraph was invented, many countries in Europe already had fully operational data communications systems with altogether close to one thousand network stations. The book shows how the so-called information revolution started in 1794, with the design and construction of the first true telegraph network in France, Chappe's fixed optical network.

http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/

INDEXCARD, 17/19
 
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 Telnet for the purpose of sharing or exchanging messages or other files. Some BBSs are devoted to specific interests; others offer a more general service. The definitive BBS List says that there are 40,000 BBSs worldwide.

Bulletin board systems originated and generally operate independently of the Internet.

Source: Whatis.com

INDEXCARD, 18/19
 
Invention

According to the WIPO an invention is a "... novel idea which permits in practice the solution of a specific problem in the field of technology." Concerning its protection by law the idea "... must be new in the sense that is has not already been published or publicly used; it must be non-obvious in the sense that it would not have occurred to any specialist in the particular industrial field, had such a specialist been asked to find a solution to the particular problem; and it must be capable of industrial application in the sense that it can be industrially manufactured or used." Protection can be obtained through a patent (granted by a government office) and typically is limited to 20 years.

INDEXCARD, 19/19