According to social critic and philosopher
The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publics of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. Public sphere is not something that just happens, but also produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.
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During the last 20 years the old
"Digital divide" describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who
do and people who do not have access to (or the education to handle with) modern information technologies, e.g. cellular telephone, television, Internet. This digital divide is concerning people all over the world, but as usually most of all people in the formerly so called third world countries and in rural areas suffer; the poor and less-educated suffer from that divide.
More than 80% of all computers with access to the Internet are situated in larger cities.
"The cost of the information today consists not so much of the creation of content, which should be the real value, but of the storage and efficient delivery of information, that is in essence the cost of paper, printing, transporting, warehousing and other physical distribution means, plus the cost of the personnel manpower needed to run these `extra' services ....Realizing an autonomous distributed networked society, which is the real essence of the Internet, will be the most critical issue for the success of the information and communication revolution of the coming century of millennium."
(Izumi Aizi)
for more information see:
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~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard
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 "
4th century
487 the Spartans introduce the so called "
170
50-60
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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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"All nature is merely a cipher and a secret writing."
Blaise de Vigenère
In the (dis-)information age getting information but at the same time excluding others from it is part of a power-game (keeping the other uneducated). The reason for it eventually has found an argument called security.
Compared to the frequency of its presence in articles, the news and political speeches security seems to be one of the most popular words of the 90's. It must be a long time ago when that word was only used for and by the military and the police. Today one can find it as part of every political issue. Even development assistance and nutrition programs consider it part of its work.
The so-called but also real need for information security is widespread and concerning everybody, whether someone uses information technology or not. In any case information about individuals is moving globally; mostly sensitive information like about bank records, insurance and medical data, credit card transactions, and much much more. Any kind of personal or business communication, including telephone conversations, fax messages, and of course e-mail is concerned. Not to forget further financial transactions and business information. Almost every aspect of modern life is affected.
We want to communicate with everybody - but do not want anybody to know.
Whereas the market already depends on the electronic flow of information and the digital tools get faster and more sophisticated all the time, the rise of privacy and security concerns have to be stated as well.
With the increase of digital communication its vulnerability is increasing just as fast. And there exist two (or three) elements competing and giving the term digital security a rather drastic bitter taste: this is on the one hand the growing possibility for criminals to use modern technology not only to hide their source and work secretly but also to manipulate financial and other transfers. On the other hand there are the governments of many states telling the population that they need access to any kind of data to keep control against those criminals. And finally there are those people, living between enlightening security gaps and at the same time harming other private people's actions with their work: computer hackers.
While the potential of global information is regarded as endless, it is those elements that reduce it.
There is no definite solution, but at least some tools have been developed to improve the situation: cryptography, the freedom to encode those data that one does not want to be known by everybody, and give a possibility to decode them to those who shall know the data.
During the last 80 years cryptography has changed from a mere political into a private, economic but still political tool: at the same time it was necessary to improve the tools, eventually based on mathematics. Hence generally cryptography is regarded as something very complicated. And in many ways this is true as the modern ways of enciphering are all about mathematics.
"Crypto is not mathematics, but crypto can be highly mathematical, crypto can use mathematics, but good crypto can be done without a great reliance on complex mathematics." (W.T. Shaw)
For an introduction into cryptography and the mathematical tasks see:
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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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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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FREEnet is an academic and research network, interconnecting computer networks of research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities, colleges, and other research and academic institutions. It was established in 1991 by the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Center of Computer Assistance to Chemical Research. It provides its more than 350 members of the academic and educational community with all types of basic Internet services and various information services.
Strategies and Policies
FREEnets general intention is to become a backbone infrastructure providing:
Open networking services for efficient access to the network and information resources located both in Russia and all over the Internet.
Reliable network connectivity for research, academic and educational communities in Russia and abroad.
Worldwide access to science and information resources of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities and colleges in Russia.
Assistance to the progress of Russian based fundamental research.
Assistance to the development and application of modern information technologies in education.
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As within the traditional media landscape, Internet content providers have two primary means of generating revenue: Direct sales or subscriptions, and advertising. Especially as charging Internet users for access to content - with all the free material available - has proven problematic, advertising is seen as the best solution for creating revenues in the short term. Therefore intense competition has started among Internet content providers and access services to attract advertising money.
Table: Web-Sites Seeking Advertising
|
Source: Adknowledge eAnalytics. Online Advertising Report
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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)
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Table: Types of On-Line Advertising
(first quarter 1999)
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Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
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1913 the wheel cipher gets re-invented as a strip
1917
- an AT&T-employee, Gilbert S. Vernam, invents a polyalphabetic cipher machine that works with random-keys
1918 the Germans start using the ADFGVX-system, that later gets later by the French Georges Painvin
- Arthur Scherbius patents a ciphering machine and tries to sell it to the German Military, but is rejected
1919 Hugo Alexander Koch invents a rotor cipher machine
1921 the Hebern Electric Code, a company producing electro-mechanical cipher machines, is founded
1923 Arthur Scherbius founds an enterprise to construct and finally sell his
late 1920's/30's more and more it is criminals who use cryptology for their purposes (e.g. for smuggling). Elizabeth Smith Friedman deciphers the codes of rum-smugglers during prohibition regularly
1929 Lester S. Hill publishes his book Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet, which contains enciphered parts
1933-1945 the Germans make the Enigma machine its cryptographic main-tool, which is broken by the Poles Marian Rejewski, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park in England in 1939
1937 the Japanese invent their so called Purple machine with the help of Herbert O. Yardley. The machine works with telephone stepping relays. It is broken by a team of
1930's the Sigaba machine is invented in the USA, either by W.F. Friedman or his colleague Frank Rowlett
- at the same time the British develop the Typex machine, similar to the German Enigma machine
1943 Colossus, a code breaking computer is put into action at Bletchley Park
1943-1980 the cryptographic Venona Project, done by the NSA, is taking place for a longer period than any other program of that type
1948 Shannon, one of the first modern cryptographers bringing mathematics into cryptography, publishes his book A Communications Theory of Secrecy Systems
1960's the Communications-Electronics Security Group (= CESG) is founded as a section of Government Communications Headquarters (= GCHQ)
late 1960's the IBM Watson Research Lab develops the Lucifer cipher
1969 James Ellis develops a system of separate public-keys and private-keys
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One of the most crucial issues in on-line advertising is the blurring of the line between editorial content and ads. Unlike on TV and in the print media, where guidelines on the labeling of advertisements, which shall enable the customer to distinguish between editorial and ads, exist, similar conventions have not yet evolved for Internet content. Labeling of online advertisement up to now has remained the rare exception, with only few sites (e.g.
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the original, legible text
Headquartered in San Jose, USA, AboveNet Communications is a
http://www.above.net
the study of breaking others' codes to transform a message back into a legible form without knowing the key from the beginning
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.
an algorithm for bringing a legible message into an illegible form. There has to exist some sort of code book to encode/decode it.
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
http://www.darpa.mil
With Samuel Thomas Soemmering's invention of the electrical telegraph the telegraphic transmission of messages is no longer tied to visibility, as it is the case with smoke and light signals networks. Economical and reliable, the electric telegraph became the state-of-the-art communication system for fast data transmissions, even over long distances.
Click
the enciphered/encoded and primarily illegible text
Being the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, Cisco Systems is one of the most prominent companies of the Internet industry.
http://www.cisco.com
to put the ciphers/codes back into the plaintext
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.
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/
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
to put a word or text into ciphers/codes