Cartoons

Cartoons' technique is simplicity.
Images are easier to remember than texts.
Frequently they show jokes about politicians, friendly or against the person shown. In the first decades of this century, cartoons were also used for propaganda against artists; remember the famous cartoons of Oscar Wilde being portrayed as a criminal, aiming to destroy his popularity.
As a tool in politics it had fatal consequences by determining stereotypes, which never again could be erased even if detected as pure disinformation. Most famous got the cartoons about Jews, which were not only distributed by Germans and Austrians but all over Europe; and already in the tens and twenties of our century. Most horrifying is the fact that many of those old, fascist and racist cartoons are coming back now, in slightly different design only.

TEXTBLOCK 1/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658509
 
Late 1960s - Early 1970s: Third Generation Computers

One of the most important advances in the development of computer hardware in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the invention of the integrated circuit, a solid-state device containing hundreds of transistors, diodes, and resistors on a tiny silicon chip. It made possible the production of large-scale computers (mainframes) of higher operating speeds, capacity, and reliability at significantly lower costs.

Another type of computer developed at the time was the minicomputer. It profited from the progresses in microelectronics and was considerably smaller than the standard mainframe, but, for instance, powerful enough to control the instruments of an entire scientific laboratory. Furthermore operating systems, that allowed machines to run many different programs at once with a central program that monitored and coordinated the computer's memory, attained widespread use.

TEXTBLOCK 2/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659498
 
The 2nd Chechnya-War

In the summer of 1999 between 1.200 and 2.000 Muslim rebels from Chechnya fell into Dagestan. Rumors say that Russian soldiers closed their eyes pretending not to see anything. During the fightings that started soon, many persons got killed. The hole issue was blamed on Chechnya.
At that time there were rumors that there would be heavy bombing in Moscow in September. And there was. Those two things together brought back the hatred against the Chechnya rebels. The 2nd War between Russia and the Muslim country began. While the first war was lost at home, because the Russians, especially mothers, did not understand why their sons should fight against Chechnya, this time the atmosphere was completely different. In the cities 85% and all over Russia 65% of the Russian population agreed with the war. This time the war was a national issue, a legitimate defense.
The media emphasized this.
Alexander Zilin, a journalist, found out that the truth was far from the one presented in the media: First of all there was no evidence that the Moscow-bombings were organized by Chechnyans. On the contrary it is more than probable that the crimes were organized by a governmental institution for national security. The disinformation was part of the strategy to make the population support another war with Chechnya. The media were part of the story, maybe without knowing. They kept on the government's and army's side, showing only special and patriotic parts of the war. For example the number of dead Russian soldiers was held back.

The U.S.-behavior on this:
The USA would like to intervene but they are afraid of ruining the weak relation to Russia. For years the main topic of U.S.-politics has been the struggle against terrorism. Now Russia pretends to be fighting terrorism. How could it be criticized for that?

The reason for this war is rather cynical: it worked as a public relations-campaign for Vladimir Putin, candidate for the president's elections in. When Putin came into power as minister-president of Russia in August 1999, opinion polls gave him 2% for the elections in summer 2000. By the end of November he got already 46%! And finally he won. The public relations war worked well.
At the same time a propaganda-campaign against his rival Y. Primakov (98), formerly the most popular candidate, was spreading lies and bad rumors. Opinion-polls showed very fast that he had lost the elections because of this black propaganda, even before the elections took place.

TEXTBLOCK 3/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658639
 
Key Recovery Systems

As stated before the sense of cryptography is a properly designed cryptosystem making it essentially impossible to recover encrypted data without any knowledge of the used key. The issue of lost keys and the being-locked-out from one's own data as a consequence favors key recovery systems. On the other hand the counter argument is confidentiality: as soon as a possibility to recover a key is provided, the chances for abuses grow.
Finally it is the state that does not want to provide too much secrecy. On the contrary. During the last 20 years endless discussions about the state's necessity and right to restrict private cryptography have taken place, as the governments rarely care for the benefit of private users if they believe in catching essential informations about any kind of enemy, hence looking for unrestricted access to all keys.

The list of "key recovery," "key escrow," and "trusted third-party" as encryption requirements, suggested by governmental agencies, covers all the latest developments and inventions in digital technology.
At the same time the NSA, one of the world's most advanced and most secret enterprises for cryptography, worked hard in getting laws through to forbid the private use of strong encryption in one way or the other. Still, it is also organizations like this one that have to admit that key recovery systems are not without any weaknesses, as the U.S. Escrowed Encryption Standard, the basis for the famous and controversially discussed Clipper Chip, showed. The reason for those weaknesses is the high complexity of those systems.

Another aspect is that key recovery systems are more expensive and certainly much less secure than other systems. So, why should anyone use them?

In that context, one has to understand the legal framework for the use of cryptography, a strict framework in fact, being in high contradiction to the globalised flow of communication.

TEXTBLOCK 4/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438659037
 
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.


TEXTBLOCK 5/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611709/100438658963
 
Palm recognition

In palm recognition a 3-dimensional image of the hand is collected and compared to the stored sample. Palm recognition devices are cumbersome artefacts (unlike fingerprint and iris recognition devices) but can absorb perform a great amount of identification acts in a short time. They are therefore preferably installed in situations where a large number of people is identified, as in airports.

TEXTBLOCK 6/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611729/100438658375
 
The "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor

Supposedly the most famous British atrocity story concerning the Germans during World War I was the "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor; it was said the Germans produced soap out of corpses. A story, which got so well believed that it was repeated for years - without a clear evidence of reality at that time. (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p.180)

TEXTBLOCK 7/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658427
 
Introduction

Political and economic agendas change. People leave, get exchanged. Whereas one of the things that never seem to change is disinformation. Watching different kinds of cultures and regimes throughout history you will always find disinformation.
Its use is variable just like its tools. First of all it does not necessarily need words. It is possible to disinform in any kind of language (sounds, symbols, letters or with the help of the body). As it seems to have come into existence together with human communication, we need not even hope that it will disappear once in a while.
One could rather say: disinformation has always been there.
Instead of hoping to stop it we need to learn to live with it, detect it, restore it to consciousness. Even this will not be any insurance for not walking into the trap. It is an attempt, nothing else.
For detecting disinformation one needs to know what types of disinformation are possible and how they work. This site gives you some ideas about the history, tendencies and different types of disinformation, with the restriction that it will mostly be about the Western types of disinformation, as it is still harder to understand the media of disinformation in other cultures; and anyhow, many methods and tools run parallel in different cultures.

TEXTBLOCK 8/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658071
 
Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II

Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies.
The first propaganda movie of World War II was British.
At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity.
Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index.

U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools.

In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

TEXTBLOCK 9/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658547
 
The Kosovo-Crisis

During the Kosovo Crisis and during the war that followed, and probably also after it, all sides of the conflict were manipulating their people and others as well, whenever they could. Some of the propaganda shown on TV was as primitive as in World War II, others were subtler. This propaganda started by telling the history of the geographic point of discussion from the own point of view, it went on with the interpretation of the motives of the enemy and finally came to censorship, manipulation of the number of victims ( for more information see: http://www.oneworld.org/index_oc/kosovo/kadare.html , spreading of atrocity stories and so on.
Many journalists and scientists are still working to detect more propaganda and disinformation stories.

An interesting detail about this war was that more people than ever before took their information about the war out of the internet. In part this had to do with the biased TV-reports on all sides. All parties put their ideas and perspectives in the net, so one could get an overview of the different thoughts and types of disinformation.
One of the big lies of NATO was the numbers of destroyed military facilities in Serbia. After the war the numbers had to be corrected down to a ridiculous number of about 13 destroyed tanks. At the same time the numbers of civilian victims turned out to be much higher than NATO had admitted in the first line. The method how European and American people had been persuaded to support the NATO-bombings was the promise to bomb only targets of the military or military-related facilities. Nearly every day NATO had to stretch this interpretation, as many civilian houses got destroyed. A cynical word was created for this kind of excuse: collateral damage.

The Serbs were not better than Western governments and media, which worked together closely. Serb TV showed the bombed targets and compared persons like Bill Clinton to Adolf Hitler and called the NATO fascist. On the other hand pictures from the situation in Kosov@ were left out in their reports.

More:
http://www.voa.gov/editorials/08261.htm (91)
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/vol3/prog3n22.html (92)
http://www.serbia-info.com/news (93)
http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/Belgrade041399.html (94)
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1999/08/SAID/12320.html (95)

TEXTBLOCK 10/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658714
 
It is always the others

Disinformation is supposed to be something evil, something ethically not correct. And therefore we prefer to connect it to the past or to other political systems than the ones in the Western hemisphere. It is always the others who work with disinformation. The same is true for propaganda.
Even better, if we can refer it to the past: Adolf Hitler, supposedly one of the world's greatest and most horrible propagandists (together with his Reichsminister für Propaganda Josef Goebbels) did not invent modern propaganda either. It was the British example during World War I, the invention of modern propaganda, where he took his knowledge from. And it was Hitler's Reich, where (racist) propaganda and disinformation were developed to a perfect manipulation-tool in a way that the consequences are still working today.
A war loses support of the people, if it is getting lost. Therefore it is extremely important to launch a feeling of winning the war. Never give up emotions of victory. Governments know this and work hard on keeping the mood up. The Germans did a very hard job on that in the last months of World War II.
But the in the 1990s disinformation- and propaganda-business came back to life (if it ever had gone out of sight) through Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the reactions by democratic states. After the war, reports made visible that not much had happened the way we had been told it had happened. Regarded like this the Gulf War was the end of the New World Order, a better and geographically broader democratic order, that had just pretended to having begun.

TEXTBLOCK 11/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658640
 
1940s - 1950s: The Development of Early Robotics Technology

During the 1940s and 1950s two major developments enabled the design of modern robots. Robotics generally is based on two related technologies: numerical control and teleoperators.

Numerical control was invented during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is a method of controlling machine tool axes by means of numbers that have been coded on media. The first numerical control machine was presented in 1952 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose subsequent research led to the development of APT (Automatically Programmed Tools). APT, a language for programming machine tools, was designed for use in computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM).

First teleoperators were developed in the early 1940s. Teleoperators are mechanical manipulators which are controlled by a human from a remote location. In its typical application a human moves a mechanical arm and hand with its moves being duplicated at another location.

TEXTBLOCK 12/12 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611663/100438659348
 
Blue Box

The blue box-system works with a special blue colored background. The person in front can act as if he/she was filmed anywhere, also in the middle of a war.

INDEXCARD, 1/15
 
Alan Turing

b. June 23, 1912, London, England
d. June 7, 1954, Wilmslow, Cheshire

English mathematician and logician who pioneered in the field of computer theory and who contributed important logical analyses of computer processes. Many mathematicians in the first decades of the 20th century had attempted to eliminate all possible error from mathematics by establishing a formal, or purely algorithmic, procedure for establishing truth. The mathematician Kurt Gödel threw up an obstacle to this effort with his incompleteness theorem. Turing was motivated by Gödel's work to seek an algorithmic method of determining whether any given propositions were undecidable, with the ultimate goal of eliminating them from mathematics. Instead, he proved in his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem [Decision Problem]" (1936) that there cannot exist any such universal method of determination and, hence, that mathematics will always contain undecidable propositions. During World War II he served with the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, where he played a significant role in breaking the codes of the German "Enigma Machine". He also championed the theory that computers eventually could be constructed that would be capable of human thought, and he proposed the Turing test, to assess this capability. Turing's papers on the subject are widely acknowledged as the foundation of research in artificial intelligence. In 1952 Alan M. Turing committed suicide, probably because of the depressing medical treatment that he had been forced to undergo (in lieu of prison) to "cure" him of homosexuality.

INDEXCARD, 2/15
 
IBM

IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) manufactures and develops cumputer hardware equipment, application and sysem software, and related equipment.

IBM produced the first PC (Personal Computer), and its decision to make Microsoft DOS the standard operating system initiated Microsoft's rise to global dominance in PC software.

Business indicators:

1999 Sales: $ 86,548 (+ 7,2 % from 1998)

Market capitalization: $ 181 bn

Employees: approx. 291,000

Corporate website: www.ibm.com

http://www.ibm.com/
INDEXCARD, 3/15
 
Ross Perot

Ross Perot, founder of EDS, is one of the richtest individuals of the US, and former presidential candidate of the Reform Party. A staunch patriot, Perot has been know for his aggressive business practices as well as for his close relationships to the military and other US governmental bodies. Perot reached 19 % in the 1992 presidential elections, but dropped to less than 10 % in 1996.

Official website: http://www.perot.org/

Unofficial website: http://www.realchange.org/perot.htm

http://www.eds.com/
http://www.perot.org/
http://www.realchange.org/perot.htm
INDEXCARD, 4/15
 
Royalties

Royalties refer to the payment made to the owners of certain types of rights by those who are permitted by the owners to exercise the rights. The rights concerned are literary, musical, and artistic copyright and patent rights in inventions and designs (as well as rights in mineral deposits, including oil and natural gas). The term originated from the fact that in Great Britain for centuries gold and silver mines were the property of the crown and such "royal" metals could be mined only if a payment ("royalty") were made to the crown.

INDEXCARD, 5/15
 
Mark

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

INDEXCARD, 6/15
 
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)

Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) is a standard reference model for communication between two end users in a network. It is used in developing products and understanding networks.

Source: Whatis.com

INDEXCARD, 7/15
 
Theoedore Roosevelt

With the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation's history. Roosevelt's youth differed sharply from that of the log cabin Presidents. He was born in New York City in 1858 into a wealthy family. Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a favorite proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . "

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War.

for more information see the official website:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presidents/html/tr26.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse/presiden...
INDEXCARD, 8/15
 
Internet Engineering Steering Group

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

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

http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html
INDEXCARD, 9/15
 
Saddam Hussein

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

INDEXCARD, 10/15
 
The Internet Engineering Task Force

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

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

http://www.ietf.org/
INDEXCARD, 11/15
 
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

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

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

INDEXCARD, 12/15
 
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

INDEXCARD, 13/15
 
Josef Goebbels

Josef Goebbels (1897-1945) was Hitler's Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. He had unlimited influence on the press, the radio, movies and all kind of literary work in the whole Reich. In 1944 he received all power over the Total War. At the same time he was one of the most faithful followers of Hitler - and he followed him into death in 1945.

INDEXCARD, 14/15
 
Next Generation Internet Program

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

http://www.ngi.gov

INDEXCARD, 15/15