ZaMir.net started in 1992 trying to enable anti-war and human rights groups of former Yugoslavia to communicate with each other and co-ordinate their activities. Today there are an estimated 1,700 users in 5 different Bulletin Board Systems (Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Pristiana). Za-mir Transnational Network (ZTN) offers e-mail and conferences/newsgroups. The ZTN has its own conferences, which are exchanged between the 5 BBS, and additionally offers more than 150 international conferences. ZTN aim is to help set up systems in other cities in the post-Yugoslav countries that have difficulty connecting to the rest of the world.
History
With the war in Yugoslavia anti-war and human rights groups of former Yugoslavia found it very difficult to organize and met huge problems to co-ordinate their activities due to immense communication difficulties. So in 1992 foreign peace groups together with Institutions in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade launched the Communications Aid project. Modems were distributed to peace and anti-war groups in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo and a BBS (Bulletin Board System) installed.
As after spring 1992 no directs connections could be made they were done indirectly through Austria, Germany or Britain, which also enabled a connection with the worldwide networks of BBS's. Nationalist dictators therefore lost their power to prevent communication of their people. BBS were installed in Zagreb and Belgrade and connected to the APC Network and associated networks. Za-mir Transnational Network (ZTN) was born.
Strategies and Policies
With the help of ZaMir's e-mail network it have been possible to find and coordinate humanitarian aid for some of the many refugees of the war. It has become an important means of communication for humanitarian organizations working in the war region and sister organizations form other countries. It helps co-ordinate work of activists form different countries of former Yugoslavia, and it also helps to coordinate the search for volunteers to aid in war reconstruction. ZTN also helped facilitate exchange of information undistorted by government propaganda between Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia. Independent magazines like Arkzin (Croatia) and Vreme (Serbia) now publish electronic editions on ZTN.
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The convergence of biology and technology is not an entirely new phenomenon but and has its origin in the concept of modern technology itself. This concept understands technology as something bigger, stronger, and more reliable than ourselves. But, unlike human beings, technologies are always tied to specific men-defined purposes. In so far as men define purposes and build the technology to achieve those purposes, technology is smaller than ourselves. The understanding of technology as a man-controlled tool has been called the instrumental and anthropological understanding of technology.
However, this understanding is becoming insufficient when technologies become fast and interdependent, i.e. when fast technologies form systems and global networks. Powerful modern technologies, especially in the field of informatics, have long ceased to be mere instruments and have created constraints for human action which act to predetermine activity and predefine purposes.
As a consequence, the metaphysical distinction between subject and object has become blurred. In the 1950s Heidegger already speaks of modern technology not as the negation but as the culmination of metaphysical thought which provokes men to "overcome" metaphysics. The weakening of metaphysical determinations which occurs in the project of modern technology has also meant that it become impossible to clearly define what being human is, and to determine the line that separates non-human from human being. These changes are not progressing at a controllable rate, but they are undergoing constant acceleration. The very efficiency and power of calculation of modern technologies means that acceleration itself is being accelerated. Every new technological development produces new shortcuts in socio-technical systems and in communication.
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NLANR, initially a collaboration among supercomputer sites supported by the
Today NLANR offers support and services to institutions that are qualified to use high performance network service providers - such as Internet 2 and
http://www.nlanr.net
The story of Frank-N-furter, Brad and Janet ... Don't dream it, be it!
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