Advertising and the Media System

Media systems (especially broadcasting) can be classified in two different types:

Public Media Systems: Government control over broadcasting through ownership, regulation, and partial funding of public broadcasting services.

Private Media System: Ownership and control lies in the hands of private companies and shareholders.

Both systems can exist in various forms, according to the degree of control by governments and private companies, with mixed systems (public and private) as the third main kind.

Whereas public media systems are usually at least partially funded by governments, private broadcasting solely relies on advertising revenue. Still also public media systems cannot exclude advertising as a source of revenue. Therefore both types are to a certain degree dependent on money coming in by advertisers.

And this implies consequences on the content provided by the media. As the attraction of advertisers becomes critically important, interests of the advertising industry frequently play a dominant role concerning the structure of content and the creation of environments favorable for advertising goods and services within the media becomes more and more common.

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1970s: Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM)

Since the 1970s there had been a growing trend towards the use of computer programs in manufacturing companies. Especially functions related to design and production, but also business functions should be facilitated through the use of computers.

Accordingly the CAD/CAM technology, related to the use of computer systems for design and production, was developed. CAD (computer-aided design) was created to assist in the creation, modification, analysis, and optimization of design. CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) was designed to help with the planning, control, and management of production operations. CAD/CAM technology, since the 1970s, has been applied in many industries, including machined components, electronics products, equipment design and fabrication for chemical processing.

To enable a more comprehensive use of computers in firms the CIM (computer-integrated manufacturing) technology, which also includes applications concerning the business functions of companies, was created. CIM systems can handle order entry, cost accounting, customer billing and employee time records and payroll. The scope of CIM technology includes all activities that are concerned with production. Therefore in many ways CIM represents the highest level of automation in manufacturing.

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Beautiful bodies

However, artificial beings need not be invisible or look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator". "My dream would be to create an artificial man that does not look like a robot but like a beautiful, graceful human being. The artificial man should be beautiful". Nadia Thalman's hopes for beautiful robots may become reality in the work of MIRALab, a research laboratory attached to the University of Geneva dedicated to realistic modelling of human functionalities. The laboratory has produced an artificial Marylyn Monroe showing just how beautiful artificial creatures can be, and there is a biography featuring details of her career and her - however virtual - love life. Yet beautiful creatures have been made before, at leas on the movie screen. Frank-N-furter, the protagonist of the Rocky Horror picture show ("I've been making a man / with blond hair and a tan / and he is good for relieving my /tension) did set remakrable esthetic standards.

While in Hindu mythology, avatars are bodies chosen by gods for their representation on earth, often animals such as swans or horses, the avatars populating cyberspace have a different function. The cyber bodies of real people, often 3 dimensional images of creatures whose aesthetics reflects both the tastes prevalent in the entertainment and advertising industries as the state of art in visual representation.

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"Stealth Sites"

"Stealth sites" account for a particular form of hidden advertisement. Stealth sites look like magazines, nicely designed and featuring articles on different topics, but in reality are set up for the sole purpose of featuring a certain companies products and services. "About Wines" for example is a well-done online magazine, featuring articles on food and travel and also publishes articles on wine, which surprisingly all happen to be from Seagram.

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Eliminating online censorship: Freenet, Free Haven and Publius

Protecting speech on the global data networks attracts an increasing attention. The efforts and the corresponding abilities of governmental authorities, corporations and copyright enforcement agencies are countered by similar efforts and abilities of researchers and engineers to provide means for anonymous and uncensored communication, as Freenet, Free Haven and Publius. All three of them show a similar design. Content is split up and spread on several servers. When a file is requested, the pieces are reassembled. This design makes it difficult to censor content. All of these systems are not commercial products.

The most advanced system seems to be Publius. Because of being designed by researchers and engineers at the prestigious AT&T Labs, Publius is a strong statement against online censorship. No longer can it be said that taking a firm stand against the use of technologies limiting the freedom of individuals is a position of radical leftists only.

For more information on Publius, see John Schwartz, Online and Unidentifiable? in: The Washington Post, June 30, 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21689-2000Jun29.html .

Freenet web site: http://freenet.sourceforge.net

Free Haven web site: http://www.freehaven.net

Publius web site: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius

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RTMark

RTMark is a group of culture jammers applying a brokerage-system that benefits from "limited liability" like any other corporation. Using this principle, RTMark supports the sabotage (informative alternation) of corporate products, from dolls and children's learning tools to electronic action games, by channeling funds from investors to workers. RTMark searches for solutions that go beyond public relations and defines its "bottom line" in improving culture. It seeks cultural and not financial profit.

Strategies and Policies

RTMark is engaged in a whole lot of projects, which are designed to lead to a positive social change. Projects with roughly similar intent, risk, or likelihood of accomplishment are grouped into "fund families", like for example "The Frontier Fund". This fund is dedicated to challenge naive, utopic visions of the "global village", focusing on the implications of allowing corporations and other multinational interests to operate free of social context.

RTMark pursues its projects through donations by individuals, which can invest in a certain fund, whereby an exact specification of how the donated money should be used can be made. RTMark has repeatedly gained attention through its projects, especially with its spoof websites, like the ones of Rudy Giuliani and the WTO, or its campaign against eToys, which prevents the Internet art group etoy from using the domain etoy.com.

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Governmental Regulations

The new U.S. regulations are based on the Wassenaar Arrangement Revision of 1998, where exports without license of 56 bit DES and similar products are allowed after a technical review, just like encryption commodities and software with key lengths of 64-bits or less which meet the mass market requirements.
For more information see:
http://www.wassenaar.org/

Seven states stay excluded from the new freedom. These are states like Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Cuba, altogether states seen as terrorist supporting. No encryption tools may be exported into those countries.

This is, what happened in the USA, whereas in Germany the issue of a cryptography-law is still on the agenda. Until now, in Germany, everyone can decide by her-/himself, whether she/he wants to encrypt electronic messages or not. Some organizations fear that this could get changed soon. Therefore an urgent action was organized in February 2000 to demonstrate the government that people want the freedom to decide on their own. One governmental argument is that only very few people actually use cryptography. Therefore the urgent action is organized as a campaign for using it more frequently.

For more information on this see:
http://www.heise.de/ct/97/04/032/
http://www.fitug.de/ulf/krypto/verbot.html#welt

Other European countries have more liberate laws on cryptography, like France. Austria doesn't have any restrictions at all, probably because of a governmental lack of interest more than accepting freedom.
The (former) restrictions in the bigger countries influenced and hindered developments for safer key-systems, e.g. the key-length was held down extraordinarily.

"Due to the suspicious nature of crypto users I have a feeling DES will be with us forever, we will just keep adding keys and cycles (...). There is a parallel between designing electronic commerce infrastructure today that uses weak cryptography (i.e. 40 or 56 bit keys) and, say, designing air traffic control systems in the '60s using two digit year fields. (...) Just because you can retire before it all blows up doesn't make it any less irresponsible."
(Arnold G. Reinhold)


The Chinese State Encryption Management Commission (SEMC) announced in March 2000 that only strong encryption tools will have to be registered in the future. Which sounds so nice on first sight, does not mean a lot in reality: any kind of useful encryption technique, like the PGP, stay under governmental control.

The restrictions and prohibitions for cryptography are part of the states' wish to acquire more control - in the name of the battle against criminality, probably?
Due to the emerging organized criminality the governments want to obtain more freedom of control over citizens. Organizations like the NSA appear as the leaders of such demands.
What about civil rights or Human Rights?

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Late 1970s - Present: Fourth Generation Computers

Following the invention of the first integrated circuits always more and more components could be fitted onto one chip. LSI (Large Scale Integration) was followed by VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) and ULSI (Ultra-Large Scale Integration), which increased the number of components squeezed onto one chip into the millions and helped diminish the size as well as the price of computers. The new chips took the idea of the integrated circuit one step further as they allowed to manufacture one microprocessor which could then be programmed to meet any number of demands.

Also, ensuing the introduction of the minicomputer in the mid 1970s by the early 1980s a market for personal computers (PC) was established. As computers had become easier to use and cheaper they were no longer mainly utilized in offices and manufacturing, but also by the average consumer. Therefore the number of personal computers in use more than doubled from 2 million in 1981 to 5.5 million in 1982. Ten years later, 65 million PCs were being used.

Further developments included the creation of mobile computers (laptops and palmtops) and especially networking technology. While mainframes shared time with many terminals for many applications, networking allowed individual computers to form electronic co-operations. LANs (Local Area Network) permitted computers to share memory space, information, software and communicate with each other. Although already LANs could reach enormous proportions with the invention of the Internet an information and communication-network on a global basis was established for the first time.

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On-line Advertising and the Internet Content Industry

Applied to on-line content the advertising model leads to similar problems like in the traditional media. Dependence on advertising revenue puts pressure on content providers to consider advertising interests. Nevertheless new difficulties caused by the technical structure of online media, missing legal regulation and not yet established ethical rules, appear.

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biotechnology introduction



One of the most critical trends in the western culture what might be called the "fusion of flesh and machine". Increasingly, technological artifacts such as computers, rather than being used as tools by people, are functioning as parts of the human organism. On the other hand, human functionalities such as intelligence, emotion, adaptability or reproductivity are integrated into technological artifacts: the days when computers where only able to count apples and pears and their intelligence was not even matching an insect's are rapidly becoming history. Today, the boundaries between organisms and technology are losing their significance.

As new technologies are no longer mere instruments, or "extensions" of the organism, they acquire the capability of modifying the human organism - body and mind - from within according to certain pre-established principles. The history of the evolution of the human species is hastily being re-written as artificial beings begin to mock the categories of evolution and seem to work their way towards historical subjectivity. The German philosopher Günther Anders has extensively reflected on the changes of the human condition provoked by the development of modern technology speaks of an "antiquatedness of history" at a time when technology itself becomes a historical subject and men are becoming co-historical.

However, the softening of the biological definition of the human race is a theme which has accompanied western thinking ever since its origins. Beings half man-half animal crowd the tales of classical mythology and transcend the boundary between the human from below, while divine creatures, temporarily occupying humanoid bodies, relativise humanness form "above". What exactly "being human" meant and who "human beings" could be "defined" is a question with a long history. "Der Mensch ist das nicht festgestellte Thier" as Nietzsche commented.

Just as the boundaries between human and non-human are being crossed by technological development, so also the boundaries between the classical episteme are becoming permeable. Psychology is occupying itself with the emotions of machines, while physics and cybernetics is applied to the human mind and body. The "nicht festgestellte "character of humanness has meant that imagination has become just as relevant a factor in understanding humanness as science. Science fiction as a literary genre is no longer merely a depository of phantasies about a technisised world our of control. As the human monopoly on history seems to dissolve, the baroque narratives of science fiction have also become a resource for understanding history.

However, it is evident that the potentials of the new technologies gives rise not only to wild hopes and dreams and to bizarre stories; they also harbour some real ambiguities of a political and ethical nature. Not only does the merging of previously distinct realities - the human and the non-human worlds - unhinge theories and institutions based upon a clear distinction and separation of the two, it also is placing political practice on a different footing. Will artificial life have rights? Will artificial entities have political power? How will social relationships change?

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Economic structure; digital euphoria

The dream of a conflict-free capitalism appeals to a diverse audience. No politician can win elections without eulogising the benefits of the information society and promising universal wealth through informatisation. "Europe must not lose track and should be able to make the step into the new knowledge and information society in the 21st century", said Tony Blair.

The US government has declared the construction of a fast information infrastructure network the centerpiece of its economic policies

In Lisbon the EU heads of state agreed to accelerate the informatisation of the European economies

The German Chancellor Schröder has requested the industry to create 20,000 new informatics jobs.

The World Bank understands information as the principal tool for third world development

Electronic classrooms and on-line learning schemes are seen as the ultimate advance in education by politicians and industry leaders alike.

But in the informatised economies, traditional exploitative practices are obscured by the glamour of new technologies. And the nearly universal acceptance of the ICT message has prepared the ground for a revival of 19th century "adapt-or-perish" ideology.

"There is nothing more relentlessly ideological than the apparently anti-ideological rhetoric of information technology"

(Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, media theorists)

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c2o (Community Communications Online)

c2o, founded in 1997, provides consultancy, training and web hosting services to community-based organizations in the Australasian region. c2o's focus lies on addressing the issues and needs that have arisen from the transition from connectivity to information management.

Strategies and Policies

Content and Delivery: c2o focuses on the development and maintenance of content delivery services that assist in the publication and dissemination of information, particularly that of community interest including environment, social development, human rights and social justice.

Publishing Support: c2o designs online publishing systems that provide a means for user maintenance and tools that enhance an organizations existing information systems. c2o seeks seamless integration and user empowerment.

Asia-Pacific Networking: c2o supports networking initiatives throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific region. It promotes and encourages public and equitable access to networking technologies.

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Pressures and Attacks against Independent Content Providers: Pakistan

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the licensing authority for electronic services, has imposed a number of restrictions of the use of the Internet. Licenses to ISPs (Internet Service Provider) will be issued under the terms of the highly restrictive Telephone and Telegraph Act of 1885.

Under the terms of the agreement, users are prohibited from using any sort of data encryption and have to agree that their electronic communications may be monitored by government agencies. Transmission or reception of obscene or objectionable material is also prohibited and may lead not only to immediate disconnection of service but also to prosecution by authorities.

Users of electronic services will also have to submit to service provider's copies of the National Identity Card. According to the terms of issuance of licenses, service providers will also be responsible for ensuring that the programs and information provided through electronic services do not "come into direct clash with accepted standards of morality and social values in Pakistan."

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ZaMir.net

ZaMir.net started in 1992 trying to enable anti-war and human rights groups of former Yugoslavia to communicate with each other and co-ordinate their activities. Today there are an estimated 1,700 users in 5 different Bulletin Board Systems (Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Pristiana). Za-mir Transnational Network (ZTN) offers e-mail and conferences/newsgroups. The ZTN has its own conferences, which are exchanged between the 5 BBS, and additionally offers more than 150 international conferences. ZTN aim is to help set up systems in other cities in the post-Yugoslav countries that have difficulty connecting to the rest of the world.

History

With the war in Yugoslavia anti-war and human rights groups of former Yugoslavia found it very difficult to organize and met huge problems to co-ordinate their activities due to immense communication difficulties. So in 1992 foreign peace groups together with Institutions in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade launched the Communications Aid project. Modems were distributed to peace and anti-war groups in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo and a BBS (Bulletin Board System) installed.

As after spring 1992 no directs connections could be made they were done indirectly through Austria, Germany or Britain, which also enabled a connection with the worldwide networks of BBS's. Nationalist dictators therefore lost their power to prevent communication of their people. BBS were installed in Zagreb and Belgrade and connected to the APC Network and associated networks. Za-mir Transnational Network (ZTN) was born.

Strategies and Policies

With the help of ZaMir's e-mail network it have been possible to find and coordinate humanitarian aid for some of the many refugees of the war. It has become an important means of communication for humanitarian organizations working in the war region and sister organizations form other countries. It helps co-ordinate work of activists form different countries of former Yugoslavia, and it also helps to coordinate the search for volunteers to aid in war reconstruction. ZTN also helped facilitate exchange of information undistorted by government propaganda between Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia. Independent magazines like Arkzin (Croatia) and Vreme (Serbia) now publish electronic editions on ZTN.

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Advertising and the Content Industry - The Coca-Cola Case

Attempts to dictate their rules to the media has become a common practice among marketers and the advertising industry. Similar as in the Chrysler case, where the company demanded that magazines give advance notice about controversial articles, recent attempts to put pressure on content providers have been pursued by the Coca-Cola Company.

According to a memo published by the New York Post, Coca-Cola demands a free ad from any publication that publishes a Coke ad adjacent to stories on religion, politics, disease, sex, food, drugs, environmental issues, health, or stories that employ vulgar language. "Inappropriate editorial matter" will result in the publisher being liable for a "full make good," said the memo by Coke advertising agency McCann-Erickson. Asked about this practice, a Coke spokes person said the policy has long been in effect.

(Source: Odwyerpr.com: Coke Dictates nearby Editorial. http://www.odwyerpr.com)

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Advertising

Advertising as referred to in most economic books is part of the marketing mix. Therefore advertising usually is closely associated with the aim of selling products and services. Still, developments like "branding" show a tendency towards the marketing of not only products and services, but of ideas and values. While advertising activities are also pursued by political parties, politicians and governmental as well as non-governmental organizations, most of the money flowing into the advertising industry comes from corporations. Although these clients come from such diverse fields, their intentions hardly differ. Attempting to influence the public, their main goal is to sell: Products, services, ideas, values and (political) ideology.

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Convergence

The convergence of biology and technology is not an entirely new phenomenon but and has its origin in the concept of modern technology itself. This concept understands technology as something bigger, stronger, and more reliable than ourselves. But, unlike human beings, technologies are always tied to specific men-defined purposes. In so far as men define purposes and build the technology to achieve those purposes, technology is smaller than ourselves. The understanding of technology as a man-controlled tool has been called the instrumental and anthropological understanding of technology.

However, this understanding is becoming insufficient when technologies become fast and interdependent, i.e. when fast technologies form systems and global networks. Powerful modern technologies, especially in the field of informatics, have long ceased to be mere instruments and have created constraints for human action which act to predetermine activity and predefine purposes.

As a consequence, the metaphysical distinction between subject and object has become blurred. In the 1950s Heidegger already speaks of modern technology not as the negation but as the culmination of metaphysical thought which provokes men to "overcome" metaphysics. The weakening of metaphysical determinations which occurs in the project of modern technology has also meant that it become impossible to clearly define what being human is, and to determine the line that separates non-human from human being. These changes are not progressing at a controllable rate, but they are undergoing constant acceleration. The very efficiency and power of calculation of modern technologies means that acceleration itself is being accelerated. Every new technological development produces new shortcuts in socio-technical systems and in communication.

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Anonymity

"Freedom of anonymous speech is an essential component of free speech."

Ian Goldberg/David Wagner, TAZ Servers and the Rewebber Network: Enabling Anonymous Publishing on the World Wide Web, in: First Monday 3,4, 1999

Someone wants to hide one's identity, to remain anonymous, if s/he fears to be holding accountable for something, say, a publication, that is considered to be prohibited. Anonymous publishing has a long tradition in European history. Writers of erotic literature or pamphlets, e. g., preferred to use pseudonyms or publish anonymously. During the Enlightenment books as d'Alembert's and Diderot's famous Encyclopaedia were printed and distributed secretly. Today Book Locker, a company selling electronic books, renews this tradition by allowing to post writings anonymously, to publish without the threat of being perishing for it. Sometimes anonymity is a precondition for reporting human rights abuses. For example, investigative journalists and regime critics may rely on anonymity. But we do not have to look that far; even you might need or use anonymity sometimes, say, when you are a woman wanting to avoid sexual harassment in chat rooms.

The original design of the Net, as far as it is preserved, offers a relatively high degree of privacy, because due to the client-server model all what is known about you is a report of the machine from which information was, respectively is requested. But this design of the Net interferes with the wish of corporations to know you, even to know more about you than you want them to know. What is euphemistically called customer relationship management systems means the collection, compilation and analysis of personal information about you by others.

In 1997 America Online member Timothy McVeigh, a Navy employee, made his homosexuality publicly known in a short autobiographical sketch. Another Navy employee reading this sketch informed the Navy. America Online revealed McVeigh's identity to the Navy, who discharged McVeigh. As the consequence of a court ruling on that case, Timothy McVeigh was allowed to return to the Navy. Sometimes anonymity really matters.

On the Net you still have several possibilities to remain anonymous. You may visit web sites via an anonymizing service. You might use a Web mail account (given the personal information given to the web mail service provider is not true) or you might use an anonymous remailing service which strips off the headers of your mail to make it impossible to identify the sender and forward your message. Used in combination with encryption tools and technologies like FreeHaven or Publius anonymous messaging services provide a powerful tool for countering censorship.

In Germany, in 1515, printers had to swear not to print or distribute any publication bypassing the councilmen. Today repressive regimes, such as China and Burma, and democratic governments, such as the France and Great Britain, alike impose or already have imposed laws against anonymous publishing on the Net.

Anonymity might be used for abuses, that is true, but "the burden of proof rests with those who would seek to limit it. (Rob Kling, Ya-ching Lee, Al Teich, Mark S. Frankel, Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations, in: The Information Society, 1999).

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some essential definitions

some essential definitions in the field of cryptography are:
- cryptoanalysis
- cryptology
- ciphers

"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break." (David Kahn)

codes
plaintext
ciphertext
to encipher/encode
to decipher/decode

The variants of encryption systems are endless.
For deciphering there exists always the same game of trial and error (first guessing the encryption method, then the code). A help to do so is pruning. Once, after a more or less long or short period a code/cipher breaks. Monoalphabetic ciphers can be broken easily and of course are no longer used today but for games.

for further information on codes and ciphers etc. see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/01004A.html
http://www.ridex.co.uk/cryptology/#_Toc439908851

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Institute for Global Communications (IGC)

IGC's vision is to actively promote change toward a healthy society, which is founded on the principals of social justice, broadly shared economic opportunity, a robust democratic process, and sustainable environmental practices. IGC believes that healthy societies rely fundamentally on respect for individual rights, the vitality of communities and diversity. IGC's aim is to advance the work of progressive organizations and individuals for peace justice economic opportunity, human rights, democracy and environmental sustainability through strategic use of online technologies.

History

In 1987 the Institute for Global Communications was officially formed to manage PeaceNet and the newly acquired EcoNet, which was the world's first computer network dedicated to environmental preservation and sustainability. In 1988 IGC began to collaborate with like-minded organizations outside the states and in partnership with six international organizations, IGC co-founded the Association of Progressive Communications (APC).

ConflictNet, incorporated by IGC in 1989, to provide information and communications for people by promoting the constructive resolution of conflicts is now enfolded in the PeaceNet network. LaborNet, a full network of IGC from 1992 through August 1999, serves the labor community by working for the human rights and economic justice of workers. WomensNet, launched in 1995 is an online community of individuals and organizations who use computer technology to advance the interests of women worldwide. Also the Anti-racism.Net forms part of IGC network family.

Strategies and Policies

IGC's aim is to offer progressive individuals and groups a place on the Internet to learn, meet and organize. IGC focuses on content, information sharing and collaborative tools and provides Internet access services, e-mail discussions and newsletters. The Institute for Global Communications aims at bringing Internet tools and online services to organizations and activists working on peace, economic and social justice, human rights, environmental protection, labor issues and conflict resolution. IGC also provides alternative news and political analysis as well as information about other progressive organizations.

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Commercial vs. Independent Content: Human and Financial Resources

Concerning their human and financial resources commercial media and independent content provider are an extremely unequal pair. While the 1998 revenues of the world's leading media conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and the News Corporation) amounted to US$ 91,144,000,000 provider of independent content usually act on a non-profit basis and to a considerable extent depend on donations and contributions.

Also the human resources they have at their disposal quite differ. Viacom for example employs 112,000 people. Alternative media conversely are mostly run by a small group of activists, most of them volunteers. Moreover the majority of the commercial media giants has a multitude of subsidiaries (Bertelsmann for instance has operations in 53 countries), while independent content provider in some cases do not even have proper office spaces. Asked about their offices number of square meters Frank Guerrero from RTMark comments "We have no square meters at all, because we are only on the web. I guess if you add up all of our servers and computers we would take up about one or two square meters."

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Virtual cartels; mergers

In parallel to the deregulation of markets, there has been a trend towards large-scale mergers which ridicules dreams of increased competition.

Recent mega-mergers and acquisitions include

SBC Communications - Ameritech, $ 72,3 bn

Bell Atlantic - GTE, $ 71,3

AT&T - Media One, $ 63,1

AOL - Time Warner, $ 165 bn

MCI Worldcom - Spring, $ 129 bn

The total value of all major mergers since the beginnings of the 1990s has been 20 trillion Dollars, 2,5 times the size of the USA's GIP.

The AOL- Time Warner reflects a trend which can be observed everywhere: the convergence of the ICT and the content industries. This represents the ultimate advance in complete market domination, and a alarming threat to independent content.

"Is TIME going to write something negative about AOL? Will AOL be able to offer anything other than CNN sources? Is the Net becoming as silly and unbearable as television?"

(Detlev Borchers, journalist)

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Commercial vs. Independent Content: Power and Scope

Regarding the dimension of their financial and human resources commercial media companies are at any rate much more powerful players than their independent counterparts. Still those reply with an extreme multiplicity and diversity. Today thousands of newsgroups, mailing-list and e-zines covering a wide range of issues from the environment to politics, social and human rights, culture, art and democracy are run by alternative groups.

Moreover independent content provider have started to use digital media for communication, information and co-ordination long before they were discovered by corporate interest. They regularly use the Internet and other networks to further public discourse and put up civic resistance. And in many cases are very successful with their work, as initiatives like widerst@ndMUND's (AT) co-ordination of the critics of the participation of the Freedom Party in the Austrian government via mailing-lists, an online-magazine and discussion forums, show.

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Biotechnology: robotics and artificial intelligence

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Commercial vs. Independent Content

Commercial media aim towards economies of scale and scope, with the goal to maximize profits. As advertising money usually is their primary source of revenue their content very often is attuned to meet the needs of advertisers and marketers. Information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere usually only plays a minor role in their programming, as it does not comply with the demands of an economic system whose principal aim is the generation of profit. They also virtually always are structured in accord with and to help reinforce society's defining hierarchical social relationships, and are generally controlled by and controlling of other major social institutions, particularly corporations.

Independent content provider on the other hand mostly act on a non-profit basis and try to avoid dependence on corporate powers and the state. One of their main concerns is the critical observation of public interest issues. The central aim of independent content provider's activities usually is to bring aspects and standpoints neglected by the (commercial) mainstream media to the public and subvert society's defining hierarchical social relationships. Promoting public debate and an active civil society they engage in the organization of alert actions and information campaigns or create subversive art

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Censorship and Free Speech

There is no society - in the past or in the present - free of censorship, the enforced restriction of speech. It is not restricted to authoritarian regimes. Democratic societies too aim at the control of the publication and distribution of information in order to prevent unwanted expressions. In every society some expressions, ideas or opinions are feared. Censored are books, magazines, films and videos, and computer games, e.g.

In defence of its monopoly of truth, the Catholic Church published a blacklist of books not allowed to be read: the Index librorum prohibitorum. As indicated by the fact that every declaration of human rights - including the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights - embraces free expression, democratic societies censorship is not imposed to protect a monopoly on truth or to foster the prevailing orthodoxy, as it seems. (With the remarkable exceptions of the prohibition of Nazi or Nazi-like publications and censorship practiced during wartime.) On the contrary, it is the point of free speech that we do not know the truth, that truth is something to strive for in a kind of public discourse or exchange intended to contribute to or even to constitute democracy. So "we cannot think coherently about free speech independently of issues about equality." (Susan Dwyer, A Plea to Ignore the Consequences of Free Speech, in: Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, January 1, 1996, http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/jan/dwyer.html) Racist expressions prove that. There are good reasons for supporting censorship to avoid violations of human dignity, as there are reasons to support unrestricted discussions of all topics.

To a high degree the Protestant Reformation was made possible by the invention of the printing press. Now those who were capable of writing and reading no longer needed to rely on the priests to know what is written in the Bible. They could compare the Bible with the sermons of the priests. This may be one of the reasons why especially in countries with a strong Protestant or otherwise anti-catholic tradition (with the exception of Germany), free speech is held in such high esteem.

There seems to be no alternative: free speech without restriction or censorship. But censorship is not the only kind of restriction of speech. Speech codes as politically correct speech are restrictions, sometimes similar to censorship; copyright, accessibility and affordability of means of communication are other ones. Because of such restrictions different to censorship, we cannot think coherently about free speech independently of issues about social justice. Many campaigns for free speech, the right of free expression are backed by the concept of free speech as unconstrained speech. That is perfectly well understood under the auspices of regimes prominently, which try to silence their critics and restrict access to their publications. But the concept of free speech should not solely focus on such constrains. Thinking of free speech as unconstrained speech, we tend to forget to take into account - to campaign against - these other restrictions. Additionally, free expression understood in that way offers no clue how to practice this freedom of expression and what free speech is good for.

In liberal democratic societies censorship is not justified by recurring to absolute truth. Its necessity is argued by referring to personal integrity. Some kind of expression might do harm to individuals, especially to children, by traumatize them or by disintegrating personal morality. Some published information, such as the names of rape victims, might infringe some people's right on privacy or some, as others say, such as pornographic images or literature, e.g., infringes some people's right on equality (how?).

For more information on the history of censorship see The File Room Project.

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Governmental Influence

Agencies like the NSA are currently able to eavesdrop on anyone with few restrictions only - though other messages are spread by the NSA.
Theoretically cryptography can make that difficult. Hence those agencies speak up for actions like introducing trapdoors to make it possible to get access to everybody's data.

See the U.S. discussion about the Clipper Chip some years ago:
http://www.epic.org/crypto/clipper/
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/admin/041693whpress.txt

While encryption offers us privacy for the transmission of data, we do not only wish to have it but also need it if we want to transport data which shall not be seen by anyone else but the recipient of our message. Given this, the governments and governmental institutions/organizations fear to lose control. Strict laws are the consequence. The often repeated rumor that the Internet was a sphere of illegality has been proven wrong. Some parts are controlled by law very clearly. One of them is cryptography. Prohibition of cryptography or at least its restriction are considered an appropriate tool against criminality. Or one should say: had been considered that. In the meantime also governmental institutions have to admit that those restrictions most of all work against the population instead against illegal actors. Therefore laws have been changed in many states during the last five years. Even the USA, the Master of cryptography-restriction, liberated its laws in December 1999 to be more open-minded now.

for an insight into the discussion having gone on for years see:
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/new2crypto/3.shtml

the final text of the new U.S. Encryption Regulations you will find under:
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/admin/000110cryptoregs.shtml
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/admin/000114cryptoregs.txt

an explanation of the regulations can be found under:
http://www.cdt.org/crypto/admin/000112commercefactsheet.shtml

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The Role of the Media

To be able to participate in community life and make political choices citizens heavily rely on information. They need to know what is going on and the options that they should weigh, debate and act upon. An essential element for a functioning public sphere therefore is information.

Whereas formerly communication mostly happened on a face-to-face basis in large and complex societies (mass) media have evolved as the principal source of information. They act as a transport medium for the information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere. Ideally there should be a wide range of media, that represent the diverse opinions and viewpoints on issues of public interest existent in a society and which are independent of the state and society's dominant economic forces.

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In Search of Reliable Internet Measurement Data

Newspapers and magazines frequently report growth rates of Internet usage, number of users, hosts, and domains that seem to be beyond all expectations. Growth rates are expected to accelerate exponentially. However, Internet measurement data are anything thant reliable and often quite fantastic constructs, that are nevertheless jumped upon by many media and decision makers because the technical difficulties in measuring Internet growth or usage are make reliable measurement techniques impossible.

Equally, predictions that the Internet is about to collapse lack any foundation whatsoever. The researchers at the Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis Project (IPMA) compiled a list of news items about Internet performance and statistics and a few responses to them by engineers.

Size and Growth

In fact, "today's Internet industry lacks any ability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP (Internet service provider, M. S.), or prepare systematically for the growing expectations of its users. Historic or current data about traffic on the Internet infrastructure, maps depicting ... there is plenty of measurement occurring, albeit of questionable quality", says K. C. Claffy in his paper Internet measurement and data analysis: topology, workload, performance and routing statistics (http://www.caida.org/Papers/Nae/, Dec 6, 1999). Claffy is not an average researcher; he founded the well-known Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA).

So his statement is a slap in the face of all market researchers stating otherwise.
In a certain sense this is ridiculous, because since the inception of the ARPANet, the offspring of the Internet, network measurement was an important task. The very first ARPANet site was established at the University of California, Los Angeles, and intended to be the measurement site. There, Leonard Kleinrock further on worked on the development of measurement techniques used to monitor the performance of the ARPANet (cf. Michael and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net). And in October 1991, in the name of the Internet Activities Board Vinton Cerf proposed guidelines for researchers considering measurement experiments on the Internet stated that the measurement of the Internet. This was due to two reasons. First, measurement would be critical for future development, evolution and deployment planning. Second, Internet-wide activities have the potential to interfere with normal operation and must be planned with care and made widely known beforehand.
So what are the reasons for this inability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP? First, in early 1995, almost simultaneously with the worldwide introduction of the World Wide Web, the transition of the stewardship role of the National Science Foundation over the Internet into a competitive industry (bluntly spoken: its privatization) left no framework for adequate tracking and monitoring of the Internet. The early ISPs were not very interested in gathering and analyzing network performance data, they were struggling to meet demands of their rapidly increasing customers. Secondly, we are just beginning to develop reliable tools for quality measurement and analysis of bandwidth or performance. CAIDA aims at developing such tools.
"There are many estimates of the size and growth rate of the Internet that are either implausible, or inconsistent, or even clearly wrong", K. G. Coffman and Andrew, both members of different departments of AT & T Labs-Research, state something similar in their paper The Size and Growth Rate of the Internet, published in First Monday. There are some sources containing seemingly contradictory information on the size and growth rate of the Internet, but "there is no comprehensive source for information". They take a well-informed and refreshing look at efforts undertaken for measuring the Internet and dismantle several misunderstandings leading to incorrect measurements and estimations. Some measurements have such large error margins that you might better call them estimations, to say the least. This is partly due to the fact that data are not disclosed by every carrier and only fragmentarily available.
What is measured and what methods are used? Many studies are devoted to the number of users; others look at the number of computers connected to the Internet or count IP addresses. Coffman and Odlyzko focus on the sizes of networks and the traffic they carry to answer questions about the size and the growth of the Internet.
You get the clue of their focus when you bear in mind that the Internet is just one of many networks of networks; it is only a part of the universe of computer networks. Additionally, the Internet has public (unrestricted) and private (restricted) areas. Most studies consider only the public Internet, Coffman and Odlyzko consider the long-distance private line networks too: the corporate networks, the Intranets, because they are convinced (that means their assertion is put forward, but not accompanied by empirical data) that "the evolution of the Internet in the next few years is likely to be determined by those private networks, especially by the rate at which they are replaced by VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) running over the public Internet. Thus it is important to understand how large they are and how they behave." Coffman and Odlyzko check other estimates by considering the traffic generated by residential users accessing the Internet with a modem, traffic through public peering points (statistics for them are available through CAIDA and the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research), and calculating the bandwidth capacity for each of the major US providers of backbone services. They compare the public Internet to private line networks and offer interesting findings. The public Internet is currently far smaller, in both capacity and traffic, than the switched voice network (with an effective bandwidth of 75 Gbps at December 1997), but the private line networks are considerably larger in aggregate capacity than the Internet: about as large as the voice network in the U. S. (with an effective bandwidth of about 330 Gbps at December 1997), they carry less traffic. On the other hand, the growth rate of traffic on the public Internet, while lower than is often cited, is still about 100% per year, much higher than for traffic on other networks. Hence, if present growth trends continue, data traffic in the U. S. will overtake voice traffic around the year 2002 and will be dominated by the Internet. In the future, growth in Internet traffic will predominantly derive from people staying longer and from multimedia applications, because they consume more bandwidth, both are the reason for unanticipated amounts of data traffic.

Hosts

The Internet Software Consortium's Internet Domain Survey is one of the most known efforts to count the number of hosts on the Internet. Happily the ISC informs us extensively about the methods used for measurements, a policy quite rare on the Web. For the most recent survey the number of IP addresses that have been assigned a name were counted. At first sight it looks simple to get the accurate number of hosts, but practically an assigned IP address does not automatically correspond an existing host. In order to find out, you have to send a kind of message to the host in question and wait for a reply. You do this with the PING utility. (For further explanations look here: Art. PING, in: Connected: An Internet Encyclopaedia) But to do this for every registered IP address is an arduous task, so ISC just pings a 1% sample of all hosts found and make a projection to all pingable hosts. That is ISC's new method; its old method, still used by RIPE, has been to count the number of domain names that had IP addresses assigned to them, a method that proved to be not very useful because a significant number of hosts restricts download access to their domain data.
Despite the small sample, this method has at least one flaw: ISC's researchers just take network numbers into account that have been entered into the tables of the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain, and it is possible that not all providers know of these tables. A similar method is used for Telcordia's Netsizer.

Internet Weather

Like daily weather, traffic on the Internet, the conditions for data flows, are monitored too, hence called Internet weather. One of the most famous Internet weather report is from The Matrix, Inc. Another one is the Internet Traffic Report displaying traffic in values between 0 and 100 (high values indicate fast and reliable connections). For weather monitoring response ratings from servers all over the world are used. The method used is to "ping" servers (as for host counts, e. g.) and to compare response times to past ones and to response times of servers in the same reach.

Hits, Page Views, Visits, and Users

Let us take a look at how these hot lists of most visited Web sites may be compiled. I say, may be, because the methods used for data retrieval are mostly not fully disclosed.
For some years it was seemingly common sense to report requested files from a Web site, so called "hits". A method not very useful, because a document can consist of several files: graphics, text, etc. Just compile a document from some text and some twenty flashy graphical files, put it on the Web and you get twenty-one hits per visit; the more graphics you add, the more hits and traffic (not automatically to your Web site) you generate.
In the meantime page views, also called page impressions are preferred, which are said to avoid these flaws. But even page views are not reliable. Users might share computers and corresponding IP addresses and host names with others, she/he might access not the site, but a cached copy from the Web browser or from the ISP's proxy server. So the server might receive just one page request although several users viewed a document.

Especially the editors of some electronic journals (e-journals) rely on page views as a kind of ratings or circulation measure, Rick Marin reports in the New York Times. Click-through rates - a quantitative measure - are used as a substitute for something of intrinsically qualitative nature: the importance of a column to its readers, e. g. They may read a journal just for a special column and not mind about the journal's other contents. Deleting this column because of not receiving enough visits may cause these readers to turn their backs on their journal.
More advanced, but just slightly better at best, is counting visits, the access of several pages of a Web site during one session. The problems already mentioned apply here too. To avoid them, newspapers, e.g., establish registration services, which require password authentication and therefore prove to be a kind of access obstacle.
But there is a different reason for these services. For content providers users are virtual users, not unique persons, because, as already mentioned, computers and IP addresses can be shared and the Internet is a client-server system; in a certain sense, in fact computers communicate with each other. Therefore many content providers are eager to get to know more about users accessing their sites. On-line registration forms or WWW user surveys are obvious methods of collecting additional data, sure. But you cannot be sure that information given by users is reliable, you can just rely on the fact that somebody visited your Web site. Despite these obstacles, companies increasingly use data capturing. As with registration services cookies come here into play.

For

If you like to play around with Internet statistics instead, you can use Robert Orenstein's Web Statistics Generator to make irresponsible predictions or visit the Internet Index, an occasional collection of seemingly statistical facts about the Internet.

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses or domain names makes the geography of the Internet visible. So where on earth is the most density of IP addresses or domain names? There is no global study about the Internet's geographical patterns available yet, but some regional studies can be found. The Urban Research Initiative and Martin Dodge and Narushige Shiode from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London have mapped the Internet address space of New York, Los Angeles and the United Kingdom (http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/telecom.html and http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/gisruk98.html).
Dodge and Shiode used data on the ownership of IP addresses from RIPE, Europe's most important registry for Internet numbers.





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Content Choice and Selective Reporting

Media as today's main information sources unarguably have the power to influence political agenda-setting and public opinion. They decide which topics and issues are covered and how they are reported. Still, in many cases those decisions are not primarily determined by journalistic criteria, but affected by external factors. The importance of shareholders forces media to generate more profit every quarter, which can chiefly be raised by enlarging audiences and hence attracting more advertising money. Therefore the focus of media's programming in many cases shifts towards audience alluring content like entertainment, talk-shows, music and sports.

Further pressure regarding the selection of content occurs from advertisers and marketers, who often implicitly or explicitly suggest to refrain from programming which could show them or their products and services (e.g. tobacco) in an unfavorable light. Interlocking directorships and outright ownerships can moreover be responsible for a selective coverage. Financial connections with defense, banking, insurance, gas, oil, and nuclear power, repeatedly lead (commercial) media to the withholding of information, which could offend their corporate partners. In totalitarian regimes also pressure from political elites may be a reason for the suppression or alteration of certain facts.

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The Cassini Case

In 1997 NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn and its moons led to heated controversies, because it was fueled by plutonium, a substance that could cause serious environmental and health problems if it were released into the atmosphere.

Still no major U.S. news outlet in broadcasting or print reported in depth on the risks of the Cassini mission. Westinghouse-owned media like CBS and NBC (also partly owned by General Electric) for example had only reported that children were invited to sign a plaque inside Cassini. Not surprisingly Westinghouse and General Electric are two of the largest corporations with defense contracts and nuclear interests.

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Virtual cartels, introduction

Among the most striking development of the 1990s has been the emergence of a global commercial media market utilizing new technologies and the global trend toward deregulation.
This global commercial media market is a result of aggressive maneuvering by the dominant firms, new technologies that make global systems cost-efficient, and neoliberal economic policies encouraged by the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and the US government to break down regulatory barriers to a global commercial media and telecommunication market.

A global oligopolistic market that covers the spectrum of media is now crystallizing the very high barriers to entry."

(Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy")

The network structure of information and communication technologies means that even deregulated markets are not "free". The functional logic of global networks only tolerates a small number of large players. Mergers, strategic alliances, partnerships and cooperations are therefore the daily routine of the ICT business. They bypass competition and create "virtual cartels".

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Timeline BC

~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography

1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia

parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering

4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock

487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field

170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard.

50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.

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On-line Advertising Revenues

Although Internet advertising only really started in 1994, revenues showed a steady and fast growth. In 1997 US$ 906.5 million were spent on on-line advertising. Compared with advertising revenue for the television industry in equivalent dollars for its third year, the Internet was slightly ahead, at US$ 907 million compared to television's US$ 834 million. 1998 on-line advertising grew by 112 percent to US$ 1.92 billion in revenues, and is on track to hit US$ 4 billion in 1999, which would put Internet advertising at about 2 percent of the U.S. ad market.

Table: Spending on On-Line Advertising by Category

(first quarter 1999)

Category

Percent

Consumer-related

27 %

Financial services

21 %

Computing

20 %

Retail/mail order

13 %

New media

8 %



Table: Types of On-Line Advertising

(first quarter 1999)

Type of Advertising

Percent

Banners

58 %

Sponsorships

29 %

Interstitials

6 %

E-mail

1 %

Others

6 %



Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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Epilogue

As scientists are working hard on a quantum computer and also on quantum cryptography one can imagine that another revolution in the study of encryption has to be expected within the next years. By then today's hardware and software tools will look extraordinary dull. At the moment it is impossible to foresee the effects on cryptography and democratic developments by those means; the best and the worst can be expected at the same time. A certain ration of pessimism and prosecution mania are probably the right mixture of emotions about those tendencies, as the idea of big brother has come into existence long ago.

At the same time it will - in part - be a decision of the people to let science work against them or not. Acceleration of data-transmission calls for an acceleration of encryption-methods. And this again falls back on us, on an acceleration of daily life, blurring the private and the public for another time.
We live in an intersection, job and private life growing together. Cryptography cannot help us in that case. The privacy in our mind, the virtuality of all private and public lies in the field of democracy, or at least what is - by connection to the Human Rights - regarded as democracy.

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The Private against the Public?

"The multiple human needs and desires that demand privacy
among two or more people in the midst of social life must
inevitably lead to cryptology wherever men thrive
and wherever they write."

David Kahn, The Codebreakers

In the age of the vitreous man, whose data are not only collected by different institutions but kept under disclosure, out of reach, uncontrollable and unmanageable for the individual, privacy obtains new importance, receives a much higher value again.
The irony behind is that those who long for cryptography in order to preserve more privacy actually have to trust the same people who first created the methods to "produce" something like that vitreous man; of course not the same individual but persons of the same area of science. It is the reign of experts.
So far about self-determination.

for a rather aesthetic view on privacy and cryptography see:
http://www.t0.or.at/franck/d_franck.htm

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Individualized Audience Targeting

New opportunities for online advertisers arise with the possibility of one-to-one Web applications. Software agents for example promise to "register, recognize and manage end-user profiles; create personalized communities on-line; deliver personalized content to end-users and serve highly targeted advertisements". The probably ultimate tool for advertisers. Although not yet widely used, companies like Amazon.Com have already started to exploit individualized audience targeting for their purposes.

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First Amendment Handbook

The First Amendment to the US Constitution, though short, lists a number of rights. Only a handful of words refer to freedoms of speech and the press, but those words are of incalculable significance. To understand the current subtleties and controversies surrounding this right, check out this First Amendment site. This detailed handbook of legal information, mostly intended for journalists, should be of interest to anyone who reads or writes. For example, the chapter Invasion of Privacy shows the limits of First Amendment rights, and the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the public - or, more crudely, the balance of Tabloid vs. Celebrity. Each section is carefully emended with relevant legal decisions.

http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/viewpage.cgi

INDEXCARD, 1/90
 
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, 2/90
 
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 ARPAnet, had grown to 37 computers. ARPANet and the technologies that went into it, including the evolving Internet Protocol (IP) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), led to the Internet that we know today.

http://www.darpa.mil

INDEXCARD, 3/90
 
William Frederick Friedman

Friedman is considered the father of U.S.-American cryptoanalysis - he also was the one to start using this term.

INDEXCARD, 4/90
 
Chrysler Corporation

American automotive company first incorporated in 1925 and reorganized and newly incorporated in 1986. It has long been the third largest automaker in the United States (after General Motors and the Ford Motor Company). Founded by Walter P. Chrysler, it took over the business and properties of Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. (first formed in 1913). Today its major subsidiaries include Chrysler Automotive Operations, Inc., which manufactures Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler passenger cars, Dodge trucks, and auto parts and accessories; and the Chrysler Financial Corporation. Headquarters are in Highland Park, Mich., U.S.

INDEXCARD, 5/90
 
Next Generation Internet Program

A research and development program funded by the US government. Goal is the development of advanced networking technologies and applications requiring advanced networking with capabilities that are 100 to 1,000 times faster end-to-end than today's Internet.

http://www.ngi.gov

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Above.net

Headquartered in San Jose, USA, AboveNet Communications is a backbone service provider. Through its extensive peering relationships, the company has built a network with the largest aggregated bandwidth in the world.

http://www.above.net

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Internet Societal Task Force

The Internet Societal Task Force is an organization under the umbrella of the Internet Society dedicated to assure that the Internet is for everyone by identifying and characterizing social and economic issues associated with the growth and use of Internet. It supplements the technical tasks of the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group and the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Topics under discussion are social, economic, regulatory, physical barriers to the use of the Net, privacy, interdependencies of Internet penetration rates and economic conditions, regulation and taxation.

http://www.istf.isoc.org/

http://www.istf.isoc.org/
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Braille

Universally accepted system of writing used by and for blind persons and consisting of a code of 63 characters, each made up of one to six raised dots arranged in a six-position matrix or cell. These Braille characters are embossed in lines on paper and read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript. Louis Braille, who was blinded at the age of three, invented the system in 1824 while a student at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children), Paris.

INDEXCARD, 9/90
 
Proxy Servers

A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary between a workstation user and the Internet so that security, administrative control, and caching service can be ensured.

A proxy server receives a request for an Internet service (such as a Web page request) from a user. If it passes filtering requirements, the proxy server, assuming it is also a cache server, looks in its local cache of previously downloaded Web pages. If it finds the page, it returns it to the user without needing to forward the request to the Internet. If the page is not in the cache, the proxy server, acting as a client on behalf of the user, uses one of its own IP addresses to request the page from the server out on the Internet. When the page is returned, the proxy server relates it to the original request and forwards it on to the user.

Source: Whatis.com

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CIM

To perform manufacturing firm's functions related to design and production the CAD/CAM technology, for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, was developed. Today it is widely recognized that the scope of computer applications must extend beyond design and production to include the business functions of the firm. The name given to this more comprehensive use of computers is computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM).

INDEXCARD, 11/90
 
ciphers

the word "cipher" comes from the Hebrew word "saphar", meaning "to number". Ciphers are mere substitutions. Each letter of the alphabet gets substituted; maybe by one letter or two or more.

an example:
PLAINTEXT a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
CIPHERTEXT D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

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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

INDEXCARD, 13/90
 
CNN

CNN is a U.S.-TV-enterprise, probably the world's most famous one. Its name has become the symbol for the mass-media, but also the symbol of a power that can decide which news are important for the world and which are not worth talking about. Every message that is published on CNN goes around the world. The Gulf War has been the best example for this until now, when a CNN-reporter was the one person to do the countdown to a war. The moments when he stood on the roof of a hotel in Baghdad and green flashes surrounded him, went around the world.

INDEXCARD, 14/90
 
Donna Haraway

Ever since the publication of her Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway has been providing widely received theoretical contributions to the debate around artificial life. In the "Manifesto" she considers the political and social implications of the advent of artificial beings. A radical feminist, Haraway combines in her theoretical approach philosophy, cultural studies and gender studies.

Hyperlink to Donna Haraway: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~RF6T-TYFK/haraway.htmlWired Archive interviews with DH: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//5.02/ffharaway.html?person=donna_haraway&topic_set=wiredpeople

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~RF6T-TYFK/haraway...
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//5.02/ffha...
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Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn


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skytale

The skytale (pronunciation: ski-ta-le) was a Spartan tool for encryption. It consisted of a piece of wood and a leather-strip. Any communicating party needed exactly the same size wooden stick. The secret message was written on the leather-strip that was wound around the wood, unwound again and sent to the recipient by a messenger. The recipient would rewound the leather and by doing this enciphering the message.

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About Wines

http://www.aboutwine.com/

http://www.aboutwine.com/
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Blaise Pascal

b. June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France
d. August 19, 1662, Paris, France

French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.

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The European Convention on Human Rights and its Five Protocols

As can be read in the Convention's preamble, the member states of the Council of Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights is intended as a follow-up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948 and as an official act of "securing the universal and effective recognition and observance of the Rights therein declared." Because it is stated "that the aim of the Council of Europe is the achievement of greater unity between its Members and that one of the methods by which the aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realization of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms", the European Convention on Human Rights can be read as the political sibling to the biblical Ten Commandments on which effective and legitimate European democratic government are based. The European Convention on Human Rights is intended to represent the essence of the common heritage of European political traditions and ideals.

Signed in Rome on November 4, 1950, the Convention is supplemented by five protocols dated from March 20, 1952 (Paris), May 6, 1963, September 16, 1963, and January 20, 1966 (Strasbourg).

http://www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html

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Economic rights

The economic rights (besides moral rights and in some cases also neighboring rights) granted to the owners of copyright usually include 1) copying or reproducing a work, 2) performing a work in public, 3) making a sound recording of a work, 4) making a motion picture of a work, 5) broadcasting a work, 6) translating a work and 7) adapting a work. Under certain national laws some of these rights are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration.

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Intellectual property

Intellectual property, very generally, relates to the output that result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Traditionally intellectual property is divided into two branches: 1) industrial property (inventions, marks, industrial designs, unfair competition and geographical indications), and 2) copyright. The protection of intellectual property is guaranteed through a variety of laws, which grant the creators of intellectual goods, and services certain time-limited rights to control the use made of their products.

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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.

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The Internet Engineering Task Force

The Internet Engineering Task Force contributes to the evolution of the architecture, the protocols and technologies of the Net by developing new Internet standard specifications. The directors of its functional areas form the Internet Engineering Steering Group.

Internet Society: http://www.ietf.org

http://www.ietf.org/
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Internet Research Task Force

Being itself under the umbrella of the Internet Society, the Internet Research Task Force is an umbrella organization of small research groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology. It is governed by the Internet Research Steering Group.

http://www.irtf.org

http://www.irtf.org/
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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is concerned with the simulation of human thinking and emotions in information technology. AI develops "intelligent systems" capable, for example, of learning and logical deduction. AI systems are used for creatively handling large amounts of data (as in data mining), as well as in natural speech processing and image recognition. AI is also used as to support decision taking in highly complex environments.
Yahoo AI sites: http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science/Artificial_Intelligence/
MIT AI lab: http://www.ai.mit.edu/


http://dir.yahoo.com/Science/Computer_Science...
http://www.ai.mit.edu/
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Network Information Center (NIC)

Network information centers are organizations responsible for registering and maintaining the domain names on the World Wide Web. Until competition in domain name registration was introduced, they were the only ones responsible. Most countries have their own network information center.

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Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)

TCP and IP are the two most important protocols and communication standards. TCP provides reliable message-transmission service; IP is the key protocol for specifying how packets are routed around the Internet.

More detailed information can be found here

http://www.anu.edu/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Pri...
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Nadia Thalman

Nadia Thalman is director of MIRAlab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Thalmann has become known as the creator of "virtual Marylyn", an installation which allowed visitors to literally to slip into Marylyn's shoes. Thalman's work is located at interface between science and art. It is about modelling human bodies for science and creative purposes, e.g. as virtual actors in movies. Thalman insists that artificial beings must be beautiful, in addition to being useful, as we will be living with them at close quarters.

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Polybius

Polybius was one of the greatest historians of the ancient Greek. he lived from 200-118 BC. see: Polybius Checkerboard.

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atbash

Atbash is regarded as the simplest way of encryption. It is nothing else than a reverse-alphabet. a=z, b= y, c=x and so on. Many different nations used it in the early times of writing.

for further explanations see:
http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atbash.htm

http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atb...
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Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project is an international colaborative research project that aims to map the human genome. It's goal is to idenitfy the 100,000 genes of the human DNA as well as to sequence the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up the DNA. The HGP is designed on an open source basis, i.e. the information that is obtained and stored in databases should, in principle, be available to researchers and businesses all over the world. However, the HGP's work has been challenged by private businesses such as Celera whose objective is the private exploitation of genome information.

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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.

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National Laboratory for Applied Network Research

NLANR, initially a collaboration among supercomputer sites supported by the National Science Foundation, was created in 1995 to provide technical and engineering support and overall coordination of the high-speed connections at these five supercomputer centers.

Today NLANR offers support and services to institutions that are qualified to use high performance network service providers - such as Internet 2 and Next Generation Internet.

http://www.nlanr.net

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Aeneas Tacticus

Supposedly his real name was Aeneas of Stymphalus. He was a Greek military scientist and cryptographer. He invented an optical system for communication similar to a telegraph: the water-clocks.

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Neighboring rights

Copyright laws generally provide for three kinds of neighboring rights: 1) the rights of performing artists in their performances, 2) the rights of producers of phonograms in their phonograms, and 3) the rights of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs. Neighboring rights attempt to protect those who assist intellectual creators to communicate their message and to disseminate their works to the public at large.

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Coca-Cola Company

American corporation founded in 1892 and today engaged primarily in the manufacture and sale of syrup and concentrate for Coca-Cola, a sweetened, carbonated beverage that is a cultural institution in the United States and a symbol around the world of American tastes. The company also produces and sells other soft drinks and citrus beverages. Corporate headquarters are in Atlanta, Ga. The post-World War II years saw diversification in the packaging of Coca-Cola and also in the development or acquisition of new products. In 1946 the company purchased rights to the Fanta soft drink, previously developed in Germany. It introduced the lemon-lime drink Sprite in 1961 and the sugar-free cola Tab in 1963. By purchase of Minute Maid Corporation in 1960, it entered the citrus beverage market. In 1982 the company acquired a controlling interest in Columbia Pictures, a motion picture and entertainment company, but sold its interest to Sony Corporation in 1989.

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PGP

A cryptographic software application that was developed by Phil Zimmerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication.

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to decipher/decode

to put the ciphers/codes back into the plaintext

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Local Area Network (LAN)

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

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Internet Society

Founded in 1992, the Internet Society is an umbrella organization of several mostly self-organized organizations dedicated to address the social, political, and technical issues, which arise as a result of the evolution and the growth of the Net. Its most important subsidiary organizations are the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Research Task Force, and the Internet Societal Task Force.

Its members comprise companies, government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. The Internet Society is governed by elected trustees.

http://www.isoc.org

http://www.isoc.org/
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Mark

A mark (trademark or service mark) is "... a sign, or a combination of signs, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings. The sign may particularly consist of one or more distinctive words, letters, numbers, drawings or pictures, emblems, colors or combinations of colors, or may be three-dimensional..." (WIPO) To be protected a mark must be registered in a government office whereby generally the duration is limited in time, but can be periodically (usually every 10 years) renewed.

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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

b. July 1, 1646, Leipzig
d. November 14, 1716, Hannover, Hanover

German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the differential and integral calculus. 1661, he entered the University of Leipzig as a law student; there he came into contact with the thought of men who had revolutionized science and philosophy--men such as Galileo, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and René Descartes. In 1666 he wrote De Arte Combinatoria ("On the Art of Combination"), in which he formulated a model that is the theoretical ancestor of some modern computers.

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America Online

Founded in 1985, America Online is the world's biggest Internet service provider serving almost every second user. Additionally, America Online operates CompuServe, the Netscape Netcenter and several AOL.com portals. As the owner of Netscape, Inc. America Online plays also an important role in the Web browser market. In January 2000 America Online merged with Time Warner, the worlds leading media conglomerate, in a US$ 243,3 billion deal, making America Online the senior partner with 55 percent in the new company.

http://www.aol.com

http://www.aol.com/
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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.

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Cyborg

The word "cyborg" short form for "cybernetic organism", i.e. an entity which is partly biological and partly technical. As the technical seizure of nature progresses, cyborgs are proliferating and pose novel theoretical and social questions. The incorporation of technical components into human bodies is not new, but the bio-chips and nano-computers made possible by advances in information technology give a new quality to the development. Because the technization of the body has its origin in military history, cyborg studies have been connected to a critique of militarism, as in Chris Hables Gray, and to feminist critiques of society, as in Donna Haraway.

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Gaius Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) was a Roman Statesman who came to power through a military career and by buying of votes. His army won the civil war, run over Spain, Sicily and Egypt, where he made Cleopatra a Queen. For reaching even more power he increased the number of senators. But he also organized social measures to improve the people's food-situation. In February 44 BC he did not accept the kingship offered by Marc Anthony, which made him even more popular. One month later he was murdered during a senate sitting.

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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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Telephone

The telephone was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell, as is widely held to be true, but by Philipp Reiss, a German teacher. When he demonstrated his invention to important German professors in 1861, it was not enthusiastically greeted. Because of this dismissal, no financial support for further development was provided to him.

And here Bell comes in: In 1876 he successfully filed a patent for the telephone. Soon afterwards he established the first telephone company.

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Internet Architecture Board

On behalf of the Internet Society, the Internet Architecture Board oversees the evolution of the architecture, the standards and the protocols of the Net.

Internet Society: http://www.isoc.org/iab

http://www.isoc.org/
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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/

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McCann Erickson

Alfred W. Erickson founded the advertising agency McCann Erickson in 1902. In1913 McCann opened a San Francisco office and a Detroit office that moved to Cleveland in 1915. With operations in 127 countries, McCann reaches across the globe and continues to expand its capabilities through start-up units and acquisitions. McCann has recently added creative resources in the local, pan-regional and global arenas and also extended its expertise in specialized marketing categories, such as business-to-business and high-tech communications.

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French laws against anonymity on the Net

Since the end of June in France anonymous publishing - on the World Wide Web, in newsgroups, mailing lists or chat rooms - is prohibited. The use of pseudonyms, so popular in chat rooms, e.g., is not restricted, but the true identities of those who "publish" on the Net must be known to the users' Internet service and Internet content providers. Additionally, Internet providers are obliged to point out the possibility of blocking access to material to their customers and to offer them appropriate technology for blocking access.

Loi sur la communication audiovisuelle, http://www.legalis.net/jnet/2000/loi-audio/projetloi-fin.htm

Source: Florian Rötzer, Frankreich hat mit der Anonymität im internet Schluss gemacht, in: Telepolis, July 2, 2000

http://www.heise.de/tp
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Punch card, 1801

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 writing and calculating, administrative purposes account for the beginning of modern automatic data processing.

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.

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Integrated circuit

Also called microcircuit, the integrated circuit is an assembly of electronic components, fabricated as a single unit, in which active semiconductor devices (transistors and diodes) and passive devices (capacitors and resistors) and their interconnections are built up on a chip of material called a substrate (most commonly made of silicon). The circuit thus consists of a unitary structure with no connecting wires. The individual circuit elements are microscopic in size.

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John Dee

b. July 13, 1527, London, England
d. December 1608, Mortlake, Surrey

English alchemist, astrologer, and mathematician who contributed greatly to the revival of interest in mathematics in England. After lecturing and studying on the European continent between 1547 and 1550, Dee returned to England in 1551 and was granted a pension by the government. He became astrologer to the queen, Mary Tudor, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned for being a magician but was released in 1555. Dee later toured Poland and Bohemia (1583-89), giving exhibitions of magic at the courts of various princes. He became warden of Manchester College in 1595.

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Avatar

Traditionally, an avatar is a mythical figure half man half god. In Hindu mythology, avatars are the form that deities assume when they descend on earth. Greek and Roman mythologies also contain avatars in animal form or half animal, half man. In virtual space, the word avatar refers to a "virtual identity" that a user can construct for him / herself, e.g. in a chat-room. Avatars have also been a preferred object of media art.

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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.

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Wide Application Protocol (WAP)

The WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is a specification for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way that wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and radio transceivers, can be used for Internet access, including e-mail, the World Wide Web, newsgroups, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

While Internet access has been possible in the past, different manufacturers have used different technologies. In the future, devices and service systems that use WAP will be able to interoperate.

Source: Whatis.com

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The Spot

http://www.thespot.com/

http://www.thespot.com/
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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 calculators and radios to industrial robots and communications satellites.

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Chappe's fixed optical network

Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores.

Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best.

Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the Roman smoke signals network and Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

For more information on early communication networks see Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks.

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MIT

The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is a privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. During the 1930s and 1940s the institute evolved from a well-regarded technical school into an internationally known center for scientific and technical research. In the days of the Great Depression, its faculty established prominent research centers in a number of fields, most notably analog computing (led by Vannevar Bush) and aeronautics (led by Charles Stark Draper). During World War II, MIT administered the Radiation Laboratory, which became the nation's leading center for radar research and development, as well as other military laboratories. After the war, MIT continued to maintain strong ties with military and corporate patrons, who supported basic and applied research in the physical sciences, computing, aerospace, and engineering. MIT has numerous research centers and laboratories. Among its facilities are a nuclear reactor, a computation center, geophysical and astrophysical observatories, a linear accelerator, a space research center, supersonic wind tunnels, an artificial intelligence laboratory, a center for cognitive science, and an international studies center. MIT's library system is extensive and includes a number of specialized libraries; there are also several museums.

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Microsoft Corporation

Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and headquartered in Redmond, USA, Microsoft Corporation is today's world-leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. As MS-DOS, the first operating system released by Microsoft, before, Windows, its successor, has become the de-facto standard operating system for personal computer. According to critics and following a recent court ruling this is due to unfair competition.

http://www.microsoft.com

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0,5716,1524+1+1522,00.html

http://www.microsoft.com/
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...
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Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D.

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within 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.

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Sony Corporation

Japanese SONY KK, major Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products. Headquarters are in Tokyo. The company was incorporated in 1946 and spearheaded Japan's drive to become the world's dominant consumer electronics manufacturer in the late 20th century. The company was one of the first to recognize the potential of the consumer videotape market. In 1972 it formed an affiliate to market its Betamax colour videocassette system. In 1987-88 Sony purchased the CBS Records Group from CBS Inc., thus acquiring the world's largest record company. It followed that purchase with the purchase in 1989 of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.

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Optical communication system by Aeneas Tacitus, 4th century B.C.

Aeneas Tacitus, a Greek military scientist and cryptographer, invented an optical communication system that combines water and beacon telegraphy. Torches indicated the beginnings and the ends of message transmissions while water jars were used to transmit the messages. These jars had a plugged standard-size hole drilled on the bottom side and were filled with water. As those who sent and those who received the message unplugged the jars simultaneously, the water drained out. Because the transmitted messages corresponded to water levels, the sender indicated by torch signal that the appropriate water level has been reached. It is a disadvantage that the possible messages are restricted to a given code, but as this system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand these messages unless they possessed the codebook.

With communication separated from transportation, the distant became near.

Tacitus' telegraph system was very fast and not excelled until the end of the 18th century.

For further information see Joanne Chang & Anna Soellner, Decoding Device, http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/decoder2.html

http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inven...
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Günther Anders

Born in Germany in 1913, Günther Anders spent the Nazi period exiled in the USA where he stayed until 1950. His chief work Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen is an extensive analysis of human existence in a technised world. Among the most outstanding theses of Anders is the concept a permanent gap between the potential of technical artefacts and the human mind's power to imagine the consequences of technology. Men think of themselves as "antiquated" in comparison to their artefacts, and feel "promethean embarrassment". Anders was among the first thinkers to react to the Holocaust and the dropping of the Atomic bomb. The ethical quandaries resulting from the latter are documented in an exchange of letters between Anders and Claude Eatherly, the pilot of the Hiroshima plane, in Burning Conscience.

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Telnet

Telnet allows you to login remotely on a computer connected to the Internet.

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Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology

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

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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

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Virtual Marylin Monroe

This is the story of the virtual Marylyn Monroe created by MRALab in Switzerland. The biography features her personal and professional stories. This being the biography of a virtual being, it does not end with the present and includes, instead, a chapter on her destiny.

http://www.miralab.unige.ch/MARILYN/VIRTUAL/virtual.html

http://www.miralab.unige.ch/MARILYN/VIRTUAL/v...
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Polybius Checkerboard


 

1

2

3

4

5

1

A

B

C

D

E

2

F

G

H

I

K

3

L

M

N

O

P

4

Q

R

S

T

U

5

V

W

X

Y

Z



It is a system, where letters get converted into numeric characters.
The numbers were not written down and sent but signaled with torches.

for example:
A=1-1
B=1-2
C=1-3
W=5-2

for more information see:
http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/polybius.htm

http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/pol...
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Barnes and Noble

Massive online retail bookstore housing more than a million titles. Includes a book recommendation "personalizer,", a comprehensive list of The New York Times bestsellers, a "live" community events calendar with a daily survey and several forums, "highlighted" books from 19 subject areas, browsable categories such as antiques, ethnic studies, and pop culture, Books in the News, and weekly features such as reviews, excerpts, recommendations, interviews, events, "roundups" of popular titles, and quizzes.

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plaintext

the original, legible text

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Sun Microsystems

Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Palo Alto, USA, Sun Microsystems manufactures computer workstations, servers, and software.

http://www.sun.com

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0,5716,108249+1+105909,00.html .

http://www.sun.com/
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/9/0...
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Robot

Robot relates to any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner. The term is derived from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." Modern use of the term stems from the play R.U.R., written in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek, which depicts society as having become dependent on mechanical workers called robots that are capable of doing any kind of mental or physical work. Modern robot devices descend through two distinct lines of development--the early automation, essentially mechanical toys, and the successive innovations and refinements introduced in the development of industrial machinery.

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AT&T Labs-Research

The research and development division of AT&T. Inventions made at AT&T Labs-Research include so important ones as stereo recording, the transistor and the communications satellite.

http://www.research.att.com/

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Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) is the leading scholar of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, a group of philosophers, cultural critics and social scientists associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1929. The Frankfurt School is best known for its program of developing a "critical theory of society". Habermas was a student of Adorno, becoming his assistant in 1956. He first taught philosophy at Heidelberg before becoming a professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. In 1972, he moved to the Max-Planck Institute in Starnberg, but in the mid-1980s, he returned to his post at Frankfurt.

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Bandwidth

The bandwidth of a transmitted communications signal is a measure of the range of frequencies the signal occupies. The term is also used in reference to the frequency-response characteristics of a communications receiving system. All transmitted signals, whether analog or digital, have a certain bandwidth. The same is true of receiving systems.

Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. For example, it takes more bandwidth to download a photograph in one second than it takes to download a page of text in one second. Large sound files, computer programs, and animated videos require still more bandwidth for acceptable system performance. Virtual reality (VR) and full-length three-dimensional audio/visual presentations require the most bandwidth of all.

In digital systems, bandwidth is data speed in bits per second (bps).

Source: Whatis.com

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cryptoanalysis

the study of breaking others' codes to transform a message back into a legible form without knowing the key from the beginning

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codes

an algorithm for bringing a legible message into an illegible form. There has to exist some sort of code book to encode/decode it.

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Caching

Caching is a mechanism that attempts to decrease the time it takes to retrieve data by storing a copy at a closer location.

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WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights.

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Internet Engineering Steering Group

On behalf of the Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Steering Group is responsible for the technical management of the evolution of the architecture, the standards and the protocols of the Net.

http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html

http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html
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Sputnik

At the beginning of the story of today's global data networks is the story of the development of satellite communication.

In 1955 President Eisenhower announced the USA's intention to launch a satellite. But it was the Soviet Union, which launched the first satellite in 1957: Sputnik I. After Sputnik's launch it became evident that the Cold War was also a race for leadership in the application of state-of-the-art technology to defence. As the US Department of Defence encouraged the formation of high-tech companies, it laid the ground to Silicon Valley, the hot spot of the world's computer industry.

In the same year the USA launched their first satellite - Explorer I - data were transmitted over regular phone circuits for the first time, thus laying the ground for today's global data networks.

Today's satellites may record weather data, scan the planet with powerful cameras, offer global positioning and monitoring services, and relay high-speed data transmissions. But up to now, most satellites are designed for military purposes such as reconnaissance.

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Critical Art Ensemble

Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of five artists of various specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, radical politics, and critical theory. CAE have published a number of books and carried out innovative art projects containing insightful and ironic theoretical contributions to media art. Projects include Addictionmania, Useless Technology, The Therapeutic State, Diseases of Consciousness, Machineworld, As Above So Below, and Flesh Machine.

http://www.critical-art.net

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RIPE

The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is one of three Regional Internet

Registries (RIR), which exist in the world today, providing allocation and registration services which support the operation of the Internet globally, mainly the allocation of IP address space for Europe.

http://www.ripe.net

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Enochian alphabet

Also "Angelic" language. Archaic language alphabet composed of 21 letters, discovered by John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley. It has its own grammar and syntax, but only a small sample of it has ever been translated to English.

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Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein (* 1930) is director of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. He is one of the most famous sociologists in the Western World. With his book The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1976), which led to the expression World-System Theory about centers, peripheries and semi-peripheries in the capitalist world system, he did not only influence a whole generation of scientists, but this theory seems to get popular again, due to globalization.

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