Many years ago, the German philosopher
The "third industrial revolution" is characterized by men becoming the "raw material" of their own industries. Product and producer, production and consumption, technology and nature are no longer meaningful pairs of opposites. The third is also the last revolution, as it is difficult to think of further revolutions when the distinction between subject and object becomes blurred. The world is becoming a Bestand and the human body and mind are no protected zones. They are something like the last safety zone of human being which is now itself becoming a basis for technological innovation. When the subject is weakened by its technical environment, the use of technical crooks for body and mind becomes an obvious "solution", even if the technically strengthened subject is strengthened at the cost of no longer being a "subject" in the traditional, metaphysical sense. Biological processes are dissected and subjected to technical control. This technical control is technical in two senses: it is not only control through technology but by ttechnology itsself, since it is not carried out by unaided human minds, but increasingly by intelligent machines.
The point where this Andersian third industrial revolution reaches an unprecedented logic seems to lie within the realm of genetic engeneering. This example shows that the dissection of humanness - the decoding of genetic information - is tantamount to commodification. The purpose of the commercial genetic research projects is the use of genetic information as a resource for the development of new products, e.g. in pharmaceutics. Genetic products carry the promise of offering a solution to so-far uncurable diseases such as cancer, Alzeheimer, heart disorders, schizophrenia, and others, but they also open up the possibility of "breaking the chains of evolution", of actively manipulating the genetic structure of human beings and of "designing" healthy, long-living, beautiful, hard-working etc. beings. Here, the homo creator and the homo materia finally become indistinguishable and we are being to merge with our products in such a way that it "we" loses the remains of its meaning.
Since 1990 research on human genetics is organised in the
But exactly this patentising is of paramount importance in the emerging "post-industrial" society where knowledge becomes the most important resource. A patent is nothing else than a property title to a piece of "know-how", and an necessary consequence commodification. When life no longer simply a natural creation but a product, it, too, will be patented and becomes a commodity.
Against the idea of the human genome as a public good, or an "open source", there is a growing competion on the part of private industry. Companies such as
But the commodification of life is not limited ot the human species. Genetically altered animals and plants are also suffering the same fate, and in most industrialised nations it is now possible to patent genetically engeneered species and crops. The promises of the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s are now repeated in the genetic revolution. Genetic engeneering, so it is argued, will be able to breed animals and plants which resist disease and yield more "food" and will therfore help to tackle problems of undernutrition and starvation. Companies such as
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With new sponsorship models being developed, even further influence over content from the corporate side can be expected. Co-operating with
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The independent Belgrade based FM radio-station B2-92, which from December 1996 on also broadcasts over the Internet, repeatedly has been the target of suppression and attacks by the Serbian government.
B2-92 offices have been raided on numerous occasions and members of staff have been repeatedly harassed or arrested. In March 1999 the transmitter of radio B2-92 was confiscated yet again by the Serbian authorities and editor-in-chief, Veran Matic, was taken and held in custody at a police station. Ten days after the confiscation of B2-92's transmitter, Serbian police entered and sealed their offices. All members of staff were sent home and a new General Manager was appointed by Serbian officials. Although by closing B2-92, the Serbian regime may have succeeded in softening the voice of the independent content provider, with the distributive nature of the Internet and the international help of media activists, the regime will have little chance of silencing the entire flood of independent content coming out of former Yugoslavia.
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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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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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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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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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The advertising industry is dominated by three huge advertising networks, which offer their services throughout the world. Gross income of the three leading agencies is twice as much, as the one of places four to ten.
Table: World's Top 10 Advertising Organizations 1999
(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)
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Table: Top 10 Global Marketers 1998
(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)
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On the other hand the three biggest advertisers only spend about US$ 2 millions less than places four to ten together. Whereas money spent on advertising in traditional media comes from very diverse categories, companies offering computer hard- and software, peripherals or Internet services mainly pay for on-line advertisements.
Table: Top 10 Internet Advertisers 1998
(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)
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Source: Advertising Age
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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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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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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.
Friedman is considered the father of U.S.-American cryptoanalysis - he also was the one to start using this term.
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.
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
Java applets are small programs that can be sent along with a Web page to a user. Java applets can perform interactive animations, immediate calculations, or other simple tasks without having to send a user request back to the server. They are written in Java, a platform-independent computer language, which was invented by
Source: Whatis.com
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.
an algorithm for bringing a legible message into an illegible form. There has to exist some sort of code book to encode/decode it.
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
Yahoo AI sites:
MIT AI lab:
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.
b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh
d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada
American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it.
For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html
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
the original, legible text