Legal Protection: European Union

Within the EU's goal of establishing a European single market also intellectual property rights are of significance. Therefore the European Commission aims at the harmonization of the respective national laws of the EU member states and for a generally more effective protection of intellectual property on an international level. Over the years it has adopted a variety of Conventions and Directives concerned with different aspects of the protection of industrial property as well as copyright and neighboring rights.

An overview of EU activities relating to intellectual property protection is available on the website of the European Commission (DG Internal Market): http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/intprop/intprop/index.htm

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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Digital Content Providers

Providers of digital information might be confronted with copyright related problems when using some of the special features of hypertext media like frames and hyperlinks (which both use third party content available on the Internet to enhance a webpage or CD ROM), or operate a search engine or online directory on their website.

Framing

Frames are often used to help define, and navigate within, a content provider's website. Still, when they are used to present (copyrighted) third party material from other sites issues of passing off and misleading or deceptive conduct, as well as copyright infringement, immediately arise.

Hyperlinking

It is generally held that the mere creation of a hyperlink does not, of itself, infringe copyright as usually the words indicating a link or the displayed URL are unlikely to be considered a "work". Nevertheless if a link is clicked on the users browser will download a full copy of the material at the linked address creating a copy in the RAM of his computer courtesy of the address supplied by the party that published the link. Although it is widely agreed that the permission to download material over the link must be part of an implied license granted by the person who has made the material available on the web in the first place, the scope of this implied license is still the subject of debate. Another option that has been discussed is to consider linking fair use.

Furthermore hyperlinks, and other "information location tools", like online directories or search engines could cause their operators trouble if they refer or link users to a site that contains infringing material. In this case it is yet unclear whether providers can be held liable for infringement.

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Definition

During the last 20 years the old Immanuel Wallerstein-paradigm of center - periphery and semi-periphery found a new costume: ICTs. After Colonialism, Neo-Colonialism and Neoliberalism a new method of marginalization is emerging: the digital divide.

"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:
http://www.whatis.com/digital_divide.htm

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Who owns the Internet and who is in charge?

The Internet/Matrix still depends heavily on public infrastructure and there is no dedicated owner of the whole Internet/Matrix, but the networks it consists of are run and owned by corporations and institutions. Access to the Internet is usually provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for a monthly fee. Each network is owned by someone and has a network operation center from where it is centrally controlled, but the Internet/Matrix is not owned by any single authority and has no network operation center of its own. No legal authority determines how and where networks can be connected together, this is something the managers of networks have to agree about. So there is no way to ever gain ultimate control of the Matrix/Internet.
The in some respects decentralized Matrix/Internet architecture and administration do not imply that there are no authorities for oversight and common standards for sustaining basic operations, for administration: There are authorities for IP number and domain name registrations, e.g.
Ever since the organizational structures for Internet administration have changed according to the needs to be addressed. Up to now, administration of the Internet is a collaborative undertaking of several loose cooperative bodies with no strict hierarchy of authority. These bodies make decisions on common guidelines, as communication protocols, e.g., cooperatively, so that compatibility of software is guaranteed. But they have no binding legal authority, nor can they enforce the standards they have agreed upon, nor are they wholly representative for the community of Internet users. The Internet has no official governing body or organization; most parts are still administered by volunteers.
Amazingly, there seems to be an unspoken and uncodified consent of what is allowed and what is forbidden on the Internet that is widely accepted. Codifications, as the so-called Netiquette, are due to individual efforts and mostly just expressively stating the prevailing consent. Violations of accepted standards are fiercely rejected, as reactions to misbehavior in mailing lists and newsgroups prove daily.
Sometimes violations not already subject to law become part of governmental regulations, as it was the case with spamming, the unsolicited sending of advertising mail messages. But engineers proved to be quicker and developed software against spamming. So, in some respects, the Internet is self-regulating, indeed.
For a detailed report on Internet governance, click here.

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Global data bodies - intro

- Education files, insurance files, tax files, communication files, consumption files, medical files, travel files, criminal files, investment files, files into infinity ...

Critical Art Ensemble

Global data bodies

1. Introduction

Informatisation has meant that things that once were "real", i.e. whose existence could be experienced sensually, are becoming virtual. Instead of the real existence of a thing, the virtual refers to its possibility of existence. As this process advances, an increasing identification of the possible with the real occurs. Reality migrates into a dim and dematerialised grey area. In the end, the possible counts for the real, virtualisation creates an "as-if" experience.

The experience of the body is also affected by this process. For example, in bio-technology, the human body and its functions are digitised, which prepares and understanding of the body exlusively in terms of its potential manipulation, the body becomes whatever it could be. But digitisation has not only affected the understanding and the social significance of the body, it has also altered the meaning of presence, traditionally identified with the body. The advance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has meant that for an increasing number of activities we no longer need be physically present, our "virtual" presence, achieved by logging onto a electronic information network, is sufficient.

This development, trumpeted as the pinnacle of convenience by the ICT industries and governments interested in attracting investment, has deeply problematic aspects as well. For example, when it is no longer "necessary" to be physically present, it may soon no longer be possible or allowed. Online-banking, offered to customers as a convenience, is also serves as a justification for charging higher fees from those unwilling or unable to add banking to their household chores. Online public administration may be expected to lead to similar effects. The reason for this is that the digitalisation of the economy relies on the production of surplus data. Data has become the most important raw material of modern economies.

In modern economies, informatisation and virtualisation mean that people are structurally forced to carry out their business and life their lives in such a way as to generate data.

Data are the most important resource for the New Economy. By contrast, activities which do not leave behind a trace of data, as for example growing your own carrots or paying cash rather than by plastic card, are discouraged and structurally suppressed.

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Legal Protection: TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights)

Another important multilateral treaty concerned with intellectual property rights is the TRIPS agreement, which was devised at the inauguration of the Uruguay Round negotiations of the WTO in January 1995. It sets minimum standards for the national protection of intellectual property rights and procedures as well as remedies for their enforcement (enforcement measures include the potential for trade sanctions against non-complying WTO members). The TRIPS agreement has been widely criticized for its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection. In 1999, 44 nations considered it appropriate to treat plant varieties as intellectual property.

The complete TRIPS agreement can be found on: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm1_e.htm

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0 - 1400 A.D.

150
A smoke signals network covers the Roman Empire

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within a visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling.
For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

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

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

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

1088
First European medieval university is established in Bologna.

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

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

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

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Basics: Introduction

Copyright law is a branch of intellectual property law and deals with the rights of intellectual creators in their works. The scope of copyright protection as laid down in Article 2 of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty "... extends to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such." Copyright law protects the creativity concerning the choice and arrangement of words, colors, musical notes etc. It grants the creators of certain specified works exclusive rights relating to the "copying" and use of their original creation.


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Challenges for Copyright by ICT: Introduction

Traditional copyright and the practice of paying royalties to the creators of intellectual property have emerged with the introduction of the printing press (1456). Therefore early copyright law has been tailored to the technology of print and the (re) production of works in analogue form. Over the centuries legislation concerning the protection of intellectual property has been adapted several times in order to respond to the technological changes in the production and distribution of information.

Yet again new technologies have altered the way of how (copyrighted) works are produced, copied, made obtainable and distributed. The emergence of global electronic networks and the increased availability of digitalized intellectual property confront existing copyright with a variety of questions and challenges. Although the combination of several types of works within one larger work or on one data carrier, and the digital format (although this may be a recent development it has been the object of detailed legal scrutiny), as well as networking (telephone and cable networks have been in use for a long time, although they do not permit interactivity) are nothing really new, the circumstance that recent technologies allow the presentation and storage of text, sound and visual information in digital form indeed is a novel fact. Like that the entire information can be generated, altered and used by and on one and the same device, irrespective of whether it is provided online or offline.


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Virtual cartels, oligopolistic structures

Global networks require global technical standards ensuring the compatibility of systems. Being able to define such standards makes a corporation extremely powerful. And it requires the suspension of competitive practices. Competition is relegated to the symbolic realm. Diversity and pluralism become the victims of the globalisation of baroque sameness.

The ICT market is dominated by incomplete competition aimed at short-term market domination. In a very short time, new ideas can turn into best-selling technologies. Innovation cycles are extremely short. But today's state-of-the-art products are embryonic trash.

    According to the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Microsoft is trying to aggressively take over the network market. This would mean that AT&T would control 70 % of all long distance phone calls and 60 % of cable connections.



    AOL and Yahoo are lone leaders in the provider market. AOL has 21 million subscribers in 100 countries. In a single month, AOL registers 94 million visits. Two thirds of all US internet users visited Yahoo in December 1999.



    The world's 13 biggest internet providers are all American.



    AOL and Microsoft have concluded a strategic cross-promotion deal. In the US, the AOL icon is installed on every Windows desktop. AOL has also concluded a strategic alliance with Coca Cola.


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Online data capturing

Hardly a firm today can afford not to engage in electronic commerce if it does not want to be swept out of business by competitors. "Information is everything" has become something like the Lord's prayer of the New Economy. But how do you get information about your customer online? Who are the people who visit a website, where do they come from, what are they looking for? How much money do they have, what might they want to buy? These are key questions for a company doing electronic business. Obviously not all of this information can be obtained by monitoring the online behaviour of web users, but there are always little gimmicks that, when combined with common tracking technologies, can help to get more detailed information about a potential customer. These are usually online registration forms, either required for entry to a site, or competitions, sometimes a combination of the two. Obviously, if you want to win that weekend trip to New York, you want to provide your contact details.

The most common way of obtaining information about a user online is a cookie. However, a cookie by itself is not sufficient to identify a user personally. It merely identifies the computer to the server by providing its IP number. Only combined with other data extraction techniques, such as online registration, can a user be identified personally ("Register now to get the full benefit of xy.com. It's free!")

But cookies record enough information to fine-tune advertising strategies according to a user's preferences and interests, e.g. by displaying certain commercial banners rather than others. For example, if a user is found to respond to a banner of a particular kind, he / she may find two of them at the next visit. Customizing the offers on a website to the particular user is part of one-to-one marketing, a type of direct marketing. But one-to-one marketing can go further than this. It can also offer different prices to different users. This was done by Amazon.com in September 2000, when fist-time visitors were offered cheaper prices than regular customers.

One-to-one marketing can create very different realities that undermine traditional concepts of demand and supply. The ideal is a "frictionless market", where the differential between demand and supply is progressively eliminated. If a market is considered a structure within which demand / supply differentials are negotiated, this amounts to the abolition of the established notion of the nature of a market. Demand and supply converge, desire and it fulfilment coincide. In the end, there is profit without labour. However, such a structure is a hermetic structure of unfreedom.

It can only function when payment is substituted by credit, and the exploitation of work power by the exploitation of data. In fact, in modern economies there is great pressure to increase spending on credit. Using credit cards and taking up loans generates a lot of data around a person's economic behaviour, while at the same restricting the scope of social activity and increasing dependence. On the global level, the consequences of credit spirals can be observed in many of the developing countries that have had to abandon most of their political autonomy. As the data body economy advances, this is also the fate of people in western societies when they are structurally driven into credit spending. It shows that data bodies are not politically neutral.

The interrelation between data, profit and unfreedom is frequently overlooked by citizens and customers. Any company in a modern economy will apply data collecting strategies for profit, with dependence and unfreedom as a "secondary effect". The hunger for data has made IT companies eager to profit from e-business rather resourceful. "Getting to know the customer" - this is a catchphrase that is heard frequently, and which suggests that there are no limits to what a company may want to about a customer. In large online shops, such as amazon.com, where customer's identity is accurately established by the practice of paying with credit cards, an all business happens online, making it easy for the company to accurately profile the customers.

But there are more advanced and effective ways of identification. The German company Sevenval has developed a new way of customer tracking which works with "virtual domains". Every visitor of a website is assigned an 33-digit identification number which the browser understands as part of the www address, which will then read something like http://XCF49BEB7E97C00A328BF562BAAC75FB2.sevenval.com. Therefore, this tracking method, which is advertised by Sevenval as a revolutionary method capable of tracking the exact and complete path of a user on a website, can not be simple switched off. In addition, the method makes it possible for the identity of a user can travel with him when he / she visits one of the other companies linked to the site in question. As in the case of cookies, this tracking method by itself is not sufficient to identify a user personally. Such an identification only occurs once a customer pays with a credit card, or decides to participate in a draw, or voluntarily completes a registration form.

Bu there are much less friendly ways of extracting data from a user and feeding the data body. Less friendly means: these methods monitor users in situations where the latter are likely not to want to be monitored. Monitoring therefore takes place in a concealed manner. One of these monitoring methods are so-called web bugs. These are tiny graphics, not more than 1 x 1 pixel in size, and therefore invisible on a screen, capable of monitoring an unsuspecting user's e-mails or movements on a website. Leading corporations such as Barnes and Noble, eToys, Cooking.com, and Microsoft have all used web bugs in advertising campaigns. Richard Smith has compiled a web bugs FAQ site that contains detailed information and examples of web bugs in use.

Bugs monitoring users have also been packaged in seemingly harmless toys made available on the Internet. For example, Comet Systems offers cursor images which have been shown to collect user data and send them back to the company's server. These little images replace the customary white arrow of a mouse with a little image of a baseball, a cat, an UFO, etc. large enough to carry a bug collecting user information. The technology is offered as a marketing tool to companies looking for a "fun, new way to interact with their audience".

The cursor image technology relies on what is called a GUID (global unique identifier). This is an identification number which is assigned to a customer at the time of registration, or when downloading a product. Many among the online community were alarmed when in 1999 it was discovered that Microsoft assigned GUIDS without their customer's knowledge. Following protests, the company was forced to change the registration procedure, assuring that under no circumstances would these identification numbers be used for tracking or marketing.

However, in the meantime, another possible infringement on user anonymity by Microsoft was discovered, when it as found out that MS Office documents, such as Word, Excel or Powerpoint, contain a bug that is capable of tracking the documents as they are sent through the net. The bug sends information about the user who opens the document back to the originating server. A document that contains the bug can be tracked across the globe, through thousands of stopovers. In detailed description of the bug and how it works can be found at the Privacy Foundation's website. Also, there is an example of such a bug at the Privacy Center of the University of Denver.

Of course there are many other ways of collecting users' data and creating appropriating data bodies which can then be used for economic purposes. Indeed, as Bill Gates commented, "information is the lifeblood of business". The electronic information networks are becoming the new frontier of capitalism.

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Biometric applications: surveillance

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

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

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

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Databody convergence

In the phrase "the rise of the citizen as a consumer", to be found on the EDS website, the cardinal political problem posed by the databody industry is summarised: the convergence of commercial and political interest in the data body business, the convergence of bureaucratic and commercial data bodies, the erosion of privacy, and the consequent undermining of democratic politics by private business interest.

When the citizen becomes a consumer, the state must become a business. In the data body business, the key word behind this new identity of government is "outsourcing". Functions, that are not considered core functions of government activity are put into the hands of private contractors.

There have long been instances where privately owned data companies, e.g. credit card companies, are allowed access to public records, e.g. public registries or electoral rolls. For example, in a normal credit card transaction, credit card companies have had access to public records in order to verify identity of a customer. For example, in the UK citizen's personal data stored on the Electoral Roll have been used for commercial purposes for a long time. The new British Data Protection Act now allows people to "opt out" of this kind of commercialisation - a legislation that has prompted protests on the part of the data industry: Experian has claimed to lose LST 500 mn as a consequence of this restriction - a figure that, even if exaggerated, may help to understand what the value of personal data actually is.

While this may serve as an example of an increased public awareness of privacy issues, the trend towards outsourcing seems to lead to a complete breakdown of the barriers between commercial and public use of personal data. This trend can be summarised by the term "outsourcing" of government functions.

Governments increasingly outsource work that is not considered core function of government, e.g. cooking meals in hospitals or mowing lawns in public parks. Such peripheral activities marked a first step of outsourcing. In a further step, governmental functions were divided between executive and judgemental functions, and executive functions increasingly entrusted to private agencies. For these agencies to be able to carry out the work assigned to them, the need data. Data that one was stored in public places, and whose handling was therefore subject to democratic accountability. Outsourcing has produced gains in efficiency, and a decrease of accountability. Outsourced data are less secure, what use they are put to is difficult to control.

The world's largest data corporation, EDS, is also among the foremost outsourcing companies. In an article about EDS' involvement in government outsourcing in Britain, Simon Davies shows how the general trend towards outsourcing combined with advances in computer technology allow companies EDS, outside of any public accountability, to create something like blueprints for the societies of the 21st century. But the problem of accountability is not the only one to be considered in this context. As Davies argues, the data business is taking own its own momentum "a ruthless company could easily hold a government to ransom". As the links between government agencies and citizens thin out, however, the links among the various agencies might increase. Linking the various government information systems would amount to further increase in efficiency, and a further undermining of democracy. The latter, after all, relies upon the separation of powers - matching government information systems would therefore pave the way to a kind of electronic totalitarianism that has little to do with the ideological bent of George Orwell's 1984 vision, but operates on purely technocratic principles.

Technically the linking of different systems is already possible. It would also create more efficiency, which means generate more income. The question, then, whether democracy concerns will prevent it from happening is one that is capable of creating

But what the EDS example shows is something that applies everywhere, and that is that the data industry is whether by intention or whether by default, a project with profound political implications. The current that drives the global economy deeper and deeper into becoming a global data body economy may be too strong to be stopped by conventional means.

However, the convergence of political and economic data bodies also has technological roots. The problem is that politically motivated surveillance and economically motivated data collection are located in the same area of information and communication technologies. For example, monitoring internet use requires more or less the same technical equipment whether done for political or economic purposes. Data mining and data warehousing techniques are almost the same. Creating transparency of citizens and customers is therefore a common objective of intelligence services and the data body industry. Given that data are exchanged in electronic networks, a compatibility among the various systems is essential. This is another factor that encourages "leaks" between state-run intelligence networks and the private data body business. And finally, given the secretive nature of state intelligence and commercial data capturing , there is little transparency. Both structures occupy an opaque zone.

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Timeline Cryptography - Introduction

Besides oral conversations and written language many other ways of information-transport are known: like the bush telegraph, drums, smoke signals etc. Those methods are not cryptography, still they need en- and decoding, which means that the history of language, the history of communication and the history of cryptography are closely connected to each other
The timeline gives an insight into the endless fight between enciphering and deciphering. The reasons for them can be found in public and private issues at the same time, though mostly connected to military maneuvers and/or political tasks.

One of the most important researchers on Cryptography through the centuries is David Kahn; many parts of the following timeline are originating from his work.

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Enforcement: Copyright Management and Control Technologies

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

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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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Global hubs of the data body industry

While most data bunkers are restricted to particular areas or contexts, there are others which act as global data nodes. Companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems), Experian, First Data Corporation and Equifax operate globally and run giant databases containing personal information. They are the global hubs of the data body economy.

Company

Sales in USD billions

Size of client database in million datasets





Equifax





1,7





360





Experian





1,5





779





Fist Data Corporation





5,5





260





EDS





18,5









(not disclosed)

(Sales and database sizes, 1998)

The size of these data repositories is constantly growing, so it is only a matter of time when everybody living in the technologically saturated part of the world will be registered in one of these data bunkers.

Among these companies, EDS, founded by the former US presidential candidate Ross Perot, known for his right-wing views and direct language, is of particular importance. Not only is it the world's largest data body company, it is also secretive about the size of its client database - a figure disclosed by the other companies either in company publications or upon enquiry. After all, the size of such a data base makes a company more attractive for potential customers.

For many years, EDS has been surrounded by rumours concerning sinister involvement with intelligence agencies. Beyond the rumours, though, there are also facts. EDS has a special division for government services. EDS does business with all military agencies of the US, as well as law enforcement agencies, justice agencies, and many others. The company also maintains a separate division for military equipment In 1984, the company became a subsidiary of General Motors, itself a leading manufacturer of military and intelligence systems. EDS is listed by the Federation of American Scientist's intelligence resource program as contractor to US intelligence agencies, and prides itself, amongst other things, to respond to the "rise of the citizen as a consumer".

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Hill & Knowlton

Although it is generally hard to distinguish between public relations and propaganda, Hill & Knowlton, the worlds leading PR agency, represents an extraordinary example for the manipulation of public opinion with public relations activities. Hill & Knowlton did not only lobby for countries, accused of the abuse of human rights, like China, Peru, Israel, Egypt and Indonesia, but also represented the repressive Duvalier regime in Haiti.

It furthermore played a central role in the Gulf War. On behalf of the Kuwaiti government it presented a 15-year-old girl to testify before Congress about human rights violations in a Kuwaiti hospital. The girl, later found out to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., and its testimony then became the centerpiece of a finely tuned PR campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton and co-ordinated with the White House on behalf of the government of Kuwait an the Citizens for a Free Kuwait group. Inflaming public opinion against Iraq and bringing the U.S. Congress in favor of war in the Gulf, this probably was one of the largest and most effective public relations campaigns in history.

Running campaigns against abortion for the Catholic Church and representing the Church of Scientology, large PR firms like Hill & Knowlton, scarcely hesitate to manipulate public and congressional opinion and government policy through media campaigns, congressional hearings, and lobbying, when necessary. Also co-operation with intelligence agencies seems to be not unknown to Hill & Knowlton.

Accused of pursuing potentially illegal proxy spying operation for intelligence agencies, Richard Cheney, head of Hill & Knowltons New York office, denied this allegations, but said that "... in such a large organization you never know if there's not some sneak operation going on." On the other hand former CIA official Robert T. Crowley acknowledged, that "Hill & Knowlton's overseas offices were perfect 'cover` for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers." Furthermore the CIA, Crowley admitted, used its Hill & Knowlton connections to "... put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions. ... Hill & Knowlton employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United States news media."

(Source: Carlisle, Johan: Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert Gray, and the CIA. http://mediafilter.org/caq/)

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Transparent customers. Direct marketing online



This process works even better on the Internet because of the latter's interactive nature. "The Internet is a dream to direct marketers", said Wil Lansing, CEO of the American retailer Fingerhut Companies. Many services require you to register online, requiring users to provide as much information about them as possible. And in addition, the Internet is fast, cheap and used by people who tend to be young and on the search for something interesting.

Many web sites also are equipped with user tracking technology that registers a users behaviour and preferences during a visit. For example, user tracking technology is capable of identifying the equipment and software employed by a user, as well as movements on the website, visit of links etc. Normally such information is anonymous, but can be personalised when it is coupled with online registration, or when personal identifcation has been obtained from other sources. Registration is often a prerequisite not just for obtaining a free web mail account, but also for other services, such as personalised start pages. Based on the information provided by user, the start page will then include advertisements and commercial offers that correspond to the users profile, or to the user's activity on the website.

One frequent way of obtaining such personal information of a user is by offering free web mail accounts offered by a great many companies, internet providers and web portals (e.g. Microsoft, Yahoo, Netscape and many others). In most cases, users get "free" accounts in return for submitting personal information and agreeing to receive marketing mails. Free web mail accounts are a simple and effective direct marketing and data capturing strategy which is, however, rarely understood as such. However, the alliances formed between direct advertising and marketing agencies on the one hand, and web mail providers on the other hand, such as the one between DoubleClick and Yahoo, show the common logic of data capturing and direct marketing. The alliance between DoubleClick and Yahoo eventually attracted the US largest direct marketing agency, Abacus Direct, who ended up buying DoubleClick.

However, the intention of collecting users personal data and create consumer profiles based on online behaviour can also take on more creative and playful forms. One such example is sixdegrees.com. This is a networking site based on the assumption that everybody on the planet is connected to everybody else by a chain of six people at most. The site offers users to get to know a lot of new people, the friends of their friends of their friends, for example, and if they try hard enough, eventually Warren Beatty or Claudia Schiffer. But of course, in order to make the whole game more useful for marketing purposes, users are encouraged to join groups which share common interests, which are identical with marketing categories ranging from arts and entertainment to travel and holiday. Evidently, the game becomes more interesting the more new people a user brings into the network. What seems to be fun for the 18 to 24 year old college student customer segment targeted by sixdegrees is, of course, real business. While users entertain themselves they are being carefully profiled. After all, data of young people who can be expected to be relatively affluent one day are worth more than money.

The particular way in which sites such as sixdegrees.com and others are structured mean that not only to users provide initial information about them, but also that this information is constantly updated and therefore becomes even more valuable. Consequently, many free online services or web mail providers cancel a user's account if it has not been uses for some time.

There are also other online services which offer free services in return for personal information which is then used for marketing purposes, e.g. Yahoo's Geocities, where users may maintain their own free websites, Bigfoot, where people are offered a free e-mail address for life, that acts as a relais whenever a customer's residence or e-mail address changes. In this way, of course, the marketers can identify friendship and other social networks, and turn this knowledge into a marketing advantage. People finders such as WhoWhere? operate along similar lines.

A further way of collecting consumer data that has recently become popular is by offering free PCs. Users are provided with a PC for free or for very little money, and in return commit themselves to using certain services rather than others (e.g. a particular internet provider), providing information about themselves, and agree to have their online behaviour monitored by the company providing the PC, so that accurate user profiles can be compiled. For example, the Free PC Network offers advertisers user profiles containing "over 60 individual demographics". There are literally thousands of variations of how a user's data are extracted and commercialised when online. Usually this happens quietly in the background.

A good inside view of the world of direct marketing can be gained at the website of the American Direct Marketing Association and the Federation of European Direct Marketing.

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Another Question of Security

Even with the best techniques it is impossible to invent a cryptographic system that is absolutely safe/unbreakable. To decipher a text means to go through many, sometimes nearly - but never really - endless attempts. For the computers of today it might take hundreds of years or even more to go through all possibilities of codes, but still, finally the code stays breakable. The much faster quantum computers will proof that one day.
Therefore the decision to elect a certain method of enciphering finally is a matter of trust.

For the average user of computers it is rather difficult to understand or even realize the dangers and/or the technological background of electronic transmission of data. For the majority thinking about one's own necessities for encryption first of all means to trust others, the specialists, to rely on the information they provide.
The websites explaining the problems behind (and also the articles and books concerning the topic) are written by experts of course as well, very often in their typical scientific language, merely understandable for laymen. The introductions and other superficial elements of those articles can be understood, whereas the real background appears as untouchable spheres of knowledge.

The fact that dangers are hard to see through and the need for security measures appears as something most people know from media reports, leads directly to the problem of an underdeveloped democracy in the field of cryptography. Obviously the connection between cryptography and democracy is rather invisible for many people. Those mentioned media reports often specialize in talking about the work computer hackers do (sometimes being presented as criminals, sometimes as heroes) and the danger to lose control over the money drawn away from one's bank account, if someone steals the credit card number or other important financial data. The term "security", surely connected to those issues, is a completely different one from the one that is connected to privacy.
It is especially the latter that touches the main elements of democracy.

for the question of security see:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/gio/CS99I/security.html

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Internet, Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks

With the rise of networks and the corresponding decline of mainframe services computers have become communication devices instead of being solely computational or typewriter-like devices. Corporate networks become increasingly important and often use the Internet as a public service network to interconnect. Sometimes they are proprietary networks.

Software companies, consulting agencies, and journalists serving their interests make some further differences by splitting up the easily understandable term "proprietary networks" into terms to be explained and speak of Intranets, Extranets, and Virtual Private Networks.

Cable TV networks and online services as Europe Online, America Online, and Microsoft Network are also proprietary networks. Although their services resemble Internet services, they offer an alternative telecommunication infrastructure with access to Internet services for their subscribers.
America Online is selling its service under the slogan "We organize the Web for you!" Such promises are more frightening than promising because "organizing" is increasingly equated with "filtering" of seemingly objectionable messages and "rating" of content. For more information on these issues, click here If you want to know more about the technical nature of computer networks, here is a link to the corresponding article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Especially for financial transactions, secure proprietary networks become increasingly important. When you transfer funds from your banking account to an account in another country, it is done through the SWIFT network, the network of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). According to SWIFT, in 1998 the average daily value of payments messages was estimated to be above U$ 2 trillion.

Electronic Communications Networks as Instinet force stock exchanges to redefine their positions in trading of equities. They offer faster trading at reduced costs and better prices on trades for brokers and institutional investors as mutual funds and pension funds. Last, but not least clients are not restricted to trading hours and can trade anonymously and directly, thereby bypassing stock exchanges.

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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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Leonard M. Adleman

Leonard M. Adleman was one of three persons in a team to invent the RSA public-key cryptosystem. The co-authors were Adi Shamir and Ron Rivest.

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The Flesh Machine

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

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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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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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File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP enables the transfer of files (text, image, video, sound) to and from other remote computers connected to the Internet.

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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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Hill & Knowlton

John W. Hill opened the doors of his first public relations office in 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. His early clients were banks, steel manufacturers, and other industrial companies in the Midwest. Hill managed the firm until 1962, and remained active in it until shortly before his death in New York City in 1977. In 1952, Hill and Knowlton became the first American public relations consultancy to recognize the business communication implications engendered by formation of the European Economic Community. Hill and Knowlton established a network of affiliates across Europe and by the middle of the decade had become the first American public relations firm to have wholly-owned offices in Europe. Hill and Knowlton, a member of the WPP Group integrated communications services family, has extensive resources and geographic coverage with its 59 offices in 34 countries. Hill and Knowlton is known for its hard-hitting tactics and said to have connections with intelligence services.

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Total copyright industries

The total copyright industries encompass the "core copyright industries" and portions of many other industries that either create, distribute, or depend upon copyrighted works. Examples include retail trade (a portion of which is sales of video, audio, software, and books, for example), the doll and toy industry, and computer manufacturing.


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Scientology

Official name Church Of Scientology, religio-scientific movement developed in the United States in the 1950s by the author L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86). The Church of Scientology was formally established in the United States in 1954 and was later incorporated in Great Britain and other countries. The scientific basis claimed by the church for its diagnostic and therapeutic practice is disputed, and the church has been criticized for the financial demands that it makes on its followers. From the 1960s the church and various of its officials or former officials faced government prosecutions as well as private lawsuits on charges of fraud, tax evasion, financial mismanagement, and conspiring to steal government documents, while the church on the other hand claimed it was being persecuted by government agencies and by established medical organizations. Some former Scientology officials have charged that Hubbard used the tax-exempt status of the church to build a profitable business empire.

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Medieval universities and copying of books

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

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

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

http://quarles.unbc.edu/ideas/net/history/his...
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VISA

Visa International's over 21,000 member financial institutions have made VISA one of the world's leading full-service payment network. Visa's products and services include Visa Classic card, Visa Gold card, Visa debit cards, Visa commercial cards and the Visa Global ATM Network. VISA operates in 300 countries and territories and also provides a large consumer payments processing system.

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The World Wide Web History Project

The ongoing World Wide Web History Project was established to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking. As primary research methods are used archival research and the analysis of interviews and talks with pioneers of the World Wide Web. As result a vast of collection of historic video, audio, documents, and software is expected. The project's digital archive is currently under development.

http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

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DMCA

The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was signed into law by U.S. President Clinton in 1998 and implements the two 1996 WIPO treaties (WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty and WIPO Copyright Treaty). Besides other issues the DMCA addresses the influence of new technologies on traditional copyright. Of special interest in the context of the digitalization of intellectual property are the titles no. 2, which refers to the limitation on the liability of online service providers for copyright infringement (when certain conditions are met), no. 3, that creates an exemption for making a copy of a computer program in case of maintenance and repair, and no. 4 which is concerned with the status of libraries and webcasting. The DCMA has been widely criticized for giving copyright-holders even more power and damage the rights and freedom of consumers, technological innovation, and the free market for information.

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Java Applets

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 Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Source: Whatis.com

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National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (NASDAQ)

Incepted in 1971, The NASDAQ Stock Market was the world's first electronic stock market and has since attracted many technology companies from countries all over the world, some of them as legendary as Apple, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc., e.g., to go public.
NASDAQ is the largest stock market in the world.
http://www.nasdaq.com

http://www.nasdaq.com/
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Galileo Galilee

Galileo Galilee (1564-1642), the Italian Mathematician and Physicist is called the father of Enlightenment. He proofed the laws of the free fall, improved the technique for the telescope and so on. Galilee is still famous for his fights against the Catholic Church. He published his writings in Italian instead of writing in Latin. Like this, everybody could understand him, which made him popular. As he did not stop talking about the world as a ball (the Heliocentric World System) instead of a disk, the Inquisition put him on trial twice and forbid him to go on working on his experiments.

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RSA

The best known of the two-key cryptosystems developed in the mid-1980s is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptoalgorithm, which was first published in April, 1977. Since that time, the algorithm has been employed in the most widely-used Internet electronic communications encryption program, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). It is also employed in both the Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer web browsing programs in their implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and by Mastercard and VISA in the Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) protocol for credit card transactions.

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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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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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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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Adi Shamir

Adi Shamir was one of three persons in a team to invent the RSA public-key cryptosystem. The other two authors were Ron Rivest and Leonard M. Adleman.

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Artificial intelligence approaches

Looking for ways to create intelligent machines, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has split into several different approaches based on the opinions about the most promising methods and theories. The two basic AI approaches are: bottom-up and top-down. The bottom-up theory suggests that the best way to achieve artificial intelligence is to build electronic replicas of the human brain's complex network of neurons (through neural networks and parallel computing) while the top-down approach attempts to mimic the brain's behavior with computer programs (for example expert systems).

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Electronic Messaging (E-Mail)

Electronic messages are transmitted and received by computers through a network. By E-Mail texts, images, sounds and videos can be sent to single users or simultaneously to a group of users. Now texts can be sent and read without having them printed.

E-Mail is one of the most popular and important services on the Internet.

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Kosov@

The "word" Kosov@ is a compromise between the Serb name KosovO and the Albanian KosovA. It is mostly used by international people who want to demonstrate a certain consciousness about the conflict including some sort of neutrality, believing that neither the one side nor the other (and maybe not even NATO) is totally right. Using the word Kosov@ is seen as a symbol of peace.

For more explanations (in German) see: http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm

http://www.zivildienst.at/kosov@.htm
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CIA

CIA's mission is to support the President, the National Security Council, and all officials who make and execute U.S. national security policy by: Providing accurate, comprehensive, and timely foreign intelligence on national security topics; Conducting counterintelligence activities, special activities, and other functions related to foreign intelligence and national security, as directed by the President. To accomplish its mission, the CIA engages in research, development, and deployment of high-leverage technology for intelligence purposes. As a separate agency, CIA serves as an independent source of analysis on topics of concern and works closely with the other organizations in the Intelligence Community to ensure that the intelligence consumer--whether Washington policymaker or battlefield commander--receives the adaequate intelligence information.

http://www.cia.gov

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Core copyright industries

Those encompass the industries that create copyrighted works as their primary product. These industries include the motion picture industry (television, theatrical, and home video), the recording industry (records, tapes and CDs), the music publishing industry, the book, journal and newspaper publishing industry, and the computer software industry (including data processing, business applications and interactive entertainment software on all platforms), legitimate theater, advertising, and the radio, television and cable broadcasting industries.

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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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Machine language

Initially computer programmers had to write instructions in machine language. This coded language, which can be understood and executed directly by the computer without conversion or translation, consists of binary digits representing operation codes and memory addresses. Because it is made up of strings of 1s and 0s, machine language is difficult for humans to use.

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Sperry

Formerly (1955 - 1979) Sperry Rand Corporation, American corporation that merged with the Burroughs Corporation in 1986 to form Unisys Corporation, a large computer manufacturer.

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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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