Economic structure; digital euphoria

The dream of a conflict-free capitalism appeals to a diverse audience. No politician can win elections without eulogising the benefits of the information society and promising universal wealth through informatisation. "Europe must not lose track and should be able to make the step into the new knowledge and information society in the 21st century", said Tony Blair.

The US government has declared the construction of a fast information infrastructure network the centerpiece of its economic policies

In Lisbon the EU heads of state agreed to accelerate the informatisation of the European economies

The German Chancellor Schröder has requested the industry to create 20,000 new informatics jobs.

The World Bank understands information as the principal tool for third world development

Electronic classrooms and on-line learning schemes are seen as the ultimate advance in education by politicians and industry leaders alike.

But in the informatised economies, traditional exploitative practices are obscured by the glamour of new technologies. And the nearly universal acceptance of the ICT message has prepared the ground for a revival of 19th century "adapt-or-perish" ideology.

"There is nothing more relentlessly ideological than the apparently anti-ideological rhetoric of information technology"

(Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, media theorists)

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Advertising and the Media System

Media systems (especially broadcasting) can be classified in two different types:

Public Media Systems: Government control over broadcasting through ownership, regulation, and partial funding of public broadcasting services.

Private Media System: Ownership and control lies in the hands of private companies and shareholders.

Both systems can exist in various forms, according to the degree of control by governments and private companies, with mixed systems (public and private) as the third main kind.

Whereas public media systems are usually at least partially funded by governments, private broadcasting solely relies on advertising revenue. Still also public media systems cannot exclude advertising as a source of revenue. Therefore both types are to a certain degree dependent on money coming in by advertisers.

And this implies consequences on the content provided by the media. As the attraction of advertisers becomes critically important, interests of the advertising industry frequently play a dominant role concerning the structure of content and the creation of environments favorable for advertising goods and services within the media becomes more and more common.

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In Search of Reliable Internet Measurement Data

Newspapers and magazines frequently report growth rates of Internet usage, number of users, hosts, and domains that seem to be beyond all expectations. Growth rates are expected to accelerate exponentially. However, Internet measurement data are anything thant reliable and often quite fantastic constructs, that are nevertheless jumped upon by many media and decision makers because the technical difficulties in measuring Internet growth or usage are make reliable measurement techniques impossible.

Equally, predictions that the Internet is about to collapse lack any foundation whatsoever. The researchers at the Internet Performance Measurement and Analysis Project (IPMA) compiled a list of news items about Internet performance and statistics and a few responses to them by engineers.

Size and Growth

In fact, "today's Internet industry lacks any ability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP (Internet service provider, M. S.), or prepare systematically for the growing expectations of its users. Historic or current data about traffic on the Internet infrastructure, maps depicting ... there is plenty of measurement occurring, albeit of questionable quality", says K. C. Claffy in his paper Internet measurement and data analysis: topology, workload, performance and routing statistics (http://www.caida.org/Papers/Nae/, Dec 6, 1999). Claffy is not an average researcher; he founded the well-known Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA).

So his statement is a slap in the face of all market researchers stating otherwise.
In a certain sense this is ridiculous, because since the inception of the ARPANet, the offspring of the Internet, network measurement was an important task. The very first ARPANet site was established at the University of California, Los Angeles, and intended to be the measurement site. There, Leonard Kleinrock further on worked on the development of measurement techniques used to monitor the performance of the ARPANet (cf. Michael and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net). And in October 1991, in the name of the Internet Activities Board Vinton Cerf proposed guidelines for researchers considering measurement experiments on the Internet stated that the measurement of the Internet. This was due to two reasons. First, measurement would be critical for future development, evolution and deployment planning. Second, Internet-wide activities have the potential to interfere with normal operation and must be planned with care and made widely known beforehand.
So what are the reasons for this inability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP? First, in early 1995, almost simultaneously with the worldwide introduction of the World Wide Web, the transition of the stewardship role of the National Science Foundation over the Internet into a competitive industry (bluntly spoken: its privatization) left no framework for adequate tracking and monitoring of the Internet. The early ISPs were not very interested in gathering and analyzing network performance data, they were struggling to meet demands of their rapidly increasing customers. Secondly, we are just beginning to develop reliable tools for quality measurement and analysis of bandwidth or performance. CAIDA aims at developing such tools.
"There are many estimates of the size and growth rate of the Internet that are either implausible, or inconsistent, or even clearly wrong", K. G. Coffman and Andrew, both members of different departments of AT & T Labs-Research, state something similar in their paper The Size and Growth Rate of the Internet, published in First Monday. There are some sources containing seemingly contradictory information on the size and growth rate of the Internet, but "there is no comprehensive source for information". They take a well-informed and refreshing look at efforts undertaken for measuring the Internet and dismantle several misunderstandings leading to incorrect measurements and estimations. Some measurements have such large error margins that you might better call them estimations, to say the least. This is partly due to the fact that data are not disclosed by every carrier and only fragmentarily available.
What is measured and what methods are used? Many studies are devoted to the number of users; others look at the number of computers connected to the Internet or count IP addresses. Coffman and Odlyzko focus on the sizes of networks and the traffic they carry to answer questions about the size and the growth of the Internet.
You get the clue of their focus when you bear in mind that the Internet is just one of many networks of networks; it is only a part of the universe of computer networks. Additionally, the Internet has public (unrestricted) and private (restricted) areas. Most studies consider only the public Internet, Coffman and Odlyzko consider the long-distance private line networks too: the corporate networks, the Intranets, because they are convinced (that means their assertion is put forward, but not accompanied by empirical data) that "the evolution of the Internet in the next few years is likely to be determined by those private networks, especially by the rate at which they are replaced by VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) running over the public Internet. Thus it is important to understand how large they are and how they behave." Coffman and Odlyzko check other estimates by considering the traffic generated by residential users accessing the Internet with a modem, traffic through public peering points (statistics for them are available through CAIDA and the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research), and calculating the bandwidth capacity for each of the major US providers of backbone services. They compare the public Internet to private line networks and offer interesting findings. The public Internet is currently far smaller, in both capacity and traffic, than the switched voice network (with an effective bandwidth of 75 Gbps at December 1997), but the private line networks are considerably larger in aggregate capacity than the Internet: about as large as the voice network in the U. S. (with an effective bandwidth of about 330 Gbps at December 1997), they carry less traffic. On the other hand, the growth rate of traffic on the public Internet, while lower than is often cited, is still about 100% per year, much higher than for traffic on other networks. Hence, if present growth trends continue, data traffic in the U. S. will overtake voice traffic around the year 2002 and will be dominated by the Internet. In the future, growth in Internet traffic will predominantly derive from people staying longer and from multimedia applications, because they consume more bandwidth, both are the reason for unanticipated amounts of data traffic.

Hosts

The Internet Software Consortium's Internet Domain Survey is one of the most known efforts to count the number of hosts on the Internet. Happily the ISC informs us extensively about the methods used for measurements, a policy quite rare on the Web. For the most recent survey the number of IP addresses that have been assigned a name were counted. At first sight it looks simple to get the accurate number of hosts, but practically an assigned IP address does not automatically correspond an existing host. In order to find out, you have to send a kind of message to the host in question and wait for a reply. You do this with the PING utility. (For further explanations look here: Art. PING, in: Connected: An Internet Encyclopaedia) But to do this for every registered IP address is an arduous task, so ISC just pings a 1% sample of all hosts found and make a projection to all pingable hosts. That is ISC's new method; its old method, still used by RIPE, has been to count the number of domain names that had IP addresses assigned to them, a method that proved to be not very useful because a significant number of hosts restricts download access to their domain data.
Despite the small sample, this method has at least one flaw: ISC's researchers just take network numbers into account that have been entered into the tables of the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain, and it is possible that not all providers know of these tables. A similar method is used for Telcordia's Netsizer.

Internet Weather

Like daily weather, traffic on the Internet, the conditions for data flows, are monitored too, hence called Internet weather. One of the most famous Internet weather report is from The Matrix, Inc. Another one is the Internet Traffic Report displaying traffic in values between 0 and 100 (high values indicate fast and reliable connections). For weather monitoring response ratings from servers all over the world are used. The method used is to "ping" servers (as for host counts, e. g.) and to compare response times to past ones and to response times of servers in the same reach.

Hits, Page Views, Visits, and Users

Let us take a look at how these hot lists of most visited Web sites may be compiled. I say, may be, because the methods used for data retrieval are mostly not fully disclosed.
For some years it was seemingly common sense to report requested files from a Web site, so called "hits". A method not very useful, because a document can consist of several files: graphics, text, etc. Just compile a document from some text and some twenty flashy graphical files, put it on the Web and you get twenty-one hits per visit; the more graphics you add, the more hits and traffic (not automatically to your Web site) you generate.
In the meantime page views, also called page impressions are preferred, which are said to avoid these flaws. But even page views are not reliable. Users might share computers and corresponding IP addresses and host names with others, she/he might access not the site, but a cached copy from the Web browser or from the ISP's proxy server. So the server might receive just one page request although several users viewed a document.

Especially the editors of some electronic journals (e-journals) rely on page views as a kind of ratings or circulation measure, Rick Marin reports in the New York Times. Click-through rates - a quantitative measure - are used as a substitute for something of intrinsically qualitative nature: the importance of a column to its readers, e. g. They may read a journal just for a special column and not mind about the journal's other contents. Deleting this column because of not receiving enough visits may cause these readers to turn their backs on their journal.
More advanced, but just slightly better at best, is counting visits, the access of several pages of a Web site during one session. The problems already mentioned apply here too. To avoid them, newspapers, e.g., establish registration services, which require password authentication and therefore prove to be a kind of access obstacle.
But there is a different reason for these services. For content providers users are virtual users, not unique persons, because, as already mentioned, computers and IP addresses can be shared and the Internet is a client-server system; in a certain sense, in fact computers communicate with each other. Therefore many content providers are eager to get to know more about users accessing their sites. On-line registration forms or WWW user surveys are obvious methods of collecting additional data, sure. But you cannot be sure that information given by users is reliable, you can just rely on the fact that somebody visited your Web site. Despite these obstacles, companies increasingly use data capturing. As with registration services cookies come here into play.

For

If you like to play around with Internet statistics instead, you can use Robert Orenstein's Web Statistics Generator to make irresponsible predictions or visit the Internet Index, an occasional collection of seemingly statistical facts about the Internet.

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses

Measuring the Density of IP Addresses or domain names makes the geography of the Internet visible. So where on earth is the most density of IP addresses or domain names? There is no global study about the Internet's geographical patterns available yet, but some regional studies can be found. The Urban Research Initiative and Martin Dodge and Narushige Shiode from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at the University College London have mapped the Internet address space of New York, Los Angeles and the United Kingdom (http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/telecom.html and http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/paper/gisruk98.html).
Dodge and Shiode used data on the ownership of IP addresses from RIPE, Europe's most important registry for Internet numbers.





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The Concept of the Public Sphere

According to social critic and philosopher Jürgen Habermas "public sphere" first of all means "... a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely."

The system of the public sphere is extremely complex, consisting of spatial and communicational publics of different sizes, which can overlap, exclude and cover, but also mutually influence each other. Public sphere is not something that just happens, but also produced through social norms and rules, and channeled via the construction of spaces and the media. In the ideal situation the public sphere is transparent and accessible for all citizens, issues and opinions. For democratic societies the public sphere constitutes an extremely important element within the process of public opinion formation.

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Eliminating online censorship: Freenet, Free Haven and Publius

Protecting speech on the global data networks attracts an increasing attention. The efforts and the corresponding abilities of governmental authorities, corporations and copyright enforcement agencies are countered by similar efforts and abilities of researchers and engineers to provide means for anonymous and uncensored communication, as Freenet, Free Haven and Publius. All three of them show a similar design. Content is split up and spread on several servers. When a file is requested, the pieces are reassembled. This design makes it difficult to censor content. All of these systems are not commercial products.

The most advanced system seems to be Publius. Because of being designed by researchers and engineers at the prestigious AT&T Labs, Publius is a strong statement against online censorship. No longer can it be said that taking a firm stand against the use of technologies limiting the freedom of individuals is a position of radical leftists only.

For more information on Publius, see John Schwartz, Online and Unidentifiable? in: The Washington Post, June 30, 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21689-2000Jun29.html .

Freenet web site: http://freenet.sourceforge.net

Free Haven web site: http://www.freehaven.net

Publius web site: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius

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Virtual cartels, introduction

Among the most striking development of the 1990s has been the emergence of a global commercial media market utilizing new technologies and the global trend toward deregulation.
This global commercial media market is a result of aggressive maneuvering by the dominant firms, new technologies that make global systems cost-efficient, and neoliberal economic policies encouraged by the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and the US government to break down regulatory barriers to a global commercial media and telecommunication market.

A global oligopolistic market that covers the spectrum of media is now crystallizing the very high barriers to entry."

(Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy")

The network structure of information and communication technologies means that even deregulated markets are not "free". The functional logic of global networks only tolerates a small number of large players. Mergers, strategic alliances, partnerships and cooperations are therefore the daily routine of the ICT business. They bypass competition and create "virtual cartels".

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"Stealth Sites"

"Stealth sites" account for a particular form of hidden advertisement. Stealth sites look like magazines, nicely designed and featuring articles on different topics, but in reality are set up for the sole purpose of featuring a certain companies products and services. "About Wines" for example is a well-done online magazine, featuring articles on food and travel and also publishes articles on wine, which surprisingly all happen to be from Seagram.

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Sponsorship Models

With new sponsorship models being developed, even further influence over content from the corporate side can be expected. Co-operating with Barnes & Nobel Booksellers, the bookish e-zine FEED for instance is in part relying on sponsoring. Whenever a specific title is mentioned in the editorial, a link is placed in the margin - under the heading "Commerce" - to an appropriate page on Barnes & Noble. Steve Johnson, editor of FEED, says "We do not take a cut of any merchandise sold through those links.", but admits that the e-zine does indirectly profit from putting those links there.

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Timeline 1600 - 1900 AD

17th century Cardinal Richelieu invents an encryption-tool called grille, a card with holes for writing messages on paper into the holes of those cards. Afterwards he removes the cards and fills in the blanks, so the message looks like an ordinary letter. The recipient needs to own the same card

- Bishop John Wilkins invents a cryptologic system looking like music notes. In a book he describes several forms of steganographic systems like secrets inks, but also the string cipher. He mentions the so-called Pig Latin, a spoken way of encryption that was already used by the ancient Indians

- the English scientist, magician and astrologer John Dee works on the ancient Enochian alphabet; he also possesses an encrypted writing that could not been broken until today

1605/1623 Sir Francis Bacon (= Francis Tudor = William Shakespeare?) writes several works containing ideas about cryptography. One of his most important advises is to use ciphers in such a way that no-one gets suspicious that the text could be enciphered. For this the steganogram was the best method, very often used in poems. The attempt to decipher Shakespeare's sonnets (in the 20th century) lead to the idea that his works had been written by Francis Bacon originally.

1671 Leibniz invents a calculating machine that uses the binary scale which we still use today, more advanced of course, called the ASCII code

18th century this is the time of the Black Chambers of espionage in Europe, Vienna having one of the most effective ones, called the "Geheime Kabinettskanzlei", headed by Baron Ignaz von Koch. Its task is to read through international diplomatic mail, copy letters and return them to the post-office the same morning. Supposedly about 100 letters are dealt with each day.

1790's Thomas Jefferson and Robert Patterson invent a wheel cipher

1799 the Rosetta Stone is found and makes it possible to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs

1832 or 1838 Sam Morse develops the Morse Code, which actually is no code but an enciphered alphabet of short and long sounds. The first Morse code-message is sent by telegraph in 1844.

1834 the Braille Code for blind people is developed in today's form by Louis Braille

1844 the invention of the telegraph changes cryptography very much, as codes are absolutely necessary by then

1854 the Playfair cipher is invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone

1859 for the first time a tomographic cipher gets described

1861 Friedrich W. Kasiski does a cryptoanalysis of the Vigenère ciphers, which had been supposed to be uncrackable for ages

1891 Major Etienne Bazeries creates a new version of the wheel cipher, which is rejected by the French Army

1895 the invention of the radio changes cryptography-tasks again and makes them even more important

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Beautiful bodies

However, artificial beings need not be invisible or look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator". "My dream would be to create an artificial man that does not look like a robot but like a beautiful, graceful human being. The artificial man should be beautiful". Nadia Thalman's hopes for beautiful robots may become reality in the work of MIRALab, a research laboratory attached to the University of Geneva dedicated to realistic modelling of human functionalities. The laboratory has produced an artificial Marylyn Monroe showing just how beautiful artificial creatures can be, and there is a biography featuring details of her career and her - however virtual - love life. Yet beautiful creatures have been made before, at leas on the movie screen. Frank-N-furter, the protagonist of the Rocky Horror picture show ("I've been making a man / with blond hair and a tan / and he is good for relieving my /tension) did set remakrable esthetic standards.

While in Hindu mythology, avatars are bodies chosen by gods for their representation on earth, often animals such as swans or horses, the avatars populating cyberspace have a different function. The cyber bodies of real people, often 3 dimensional images of creatures whose aesthetics reflects both the tastes prevalent in the entertainment and advertising industries as the state of art in visual representation.

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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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Advertising and the Content Industry - The Coca-Cola Case

Attempts to dictate their rules to the media has become a common practice among marketers and the advertising industry. Similar as in the Chrysler case, where the company demanded that magazines give advance notice about controversial articles, recent attempts to put pressure on content providers have been pursued by the Coca-Cola Company.

According to a memo published by the New York Post, Coca-Cola demands a free ad from any publication that publishes a Coke ad adjacent to stories on religion, politics, disease, sex, food, drugs, environmental issues, health, or stories that employ vulgar language. "Inappropriate editorial matter" will result in the publisher being liable for a "full make good," said the memo by Coke advertising agency McCann-Erickson. Asked about this practice, a Coke spokes person said the policy has long been in effect.

(Source: Odwyerpr.com: Coke Dictates nearby Editorial. http://www.odwyerpr.com)

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4000 - 1000 B.C.

4th millennium B.C.
In Sumer writing is invented.

Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets were used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, which began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to only very few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers.

Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China.

3200 B.C.
In Sumer the seal is invented.

About 3000 B.C.
In Egypt papyrus scrolls and hieroglyphs are used.

About 1350 B.C.
In Assyria the cuneiform script is invented.

1200 B.C.
According to Aeschylus, the conquest of the town of Troy was transmitted via torch signals.

About 1100 B.C.
Egyptians use homing pigeons to deliver military information.

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The third industiral revolution. Life as a product.

Many years ago, the German philosopher Günther Anders already described the historical situation in which the homo creator and homo materia coincide as the "third industrial revolution". Anders, who spent many years exiled in the USA after fleeing from the Nazis, made issue of the ambivalence of modern science and technology as early as in the 1950s, and many of the concerns which today form part of the debates around the implications of computer technology are already polemically discussed in his work.

The "third industrial revolution" is characterized by men becoming the "raw material" of their own industries. Product and producer, production and consumption, technology and nature are no longer meaningful pairs of opposites. The third is also the last revolution, as it is difficult to think of further revolutions when the distinction between subject and object becomes blurred. The world is becoming a Bestand and the human body and mind are no protected zones. They are something like the last safety zone of human being which is now itself becoming a basis for technological innovation. When the subject is weakened by its technical environment, the use of technical crooks for body and mind becomes an obvious "solution", even if the technically strengthened subject is strengthened at the cost of no longer being a "subject" in the traditional, metaphysical sense. Biological processes are dissected and subjected to technical control. This technical control is technical in two senses: it is not only control through technology but by ttechnology itsself, since it is not carried out by unaided human minds, but increasingly by intelligent machines.

The point where this Andersian third industrial revolution reaches an unprecedented logic seems to lie within the realm of genetic engeneering. This example shows that the dissection of humanness - the decoding of genetic information - is tantamount to commodification. The purpose of the commercial genetic research projects is the use of genetic information as a resource for the development of new products, e.g. in pharmaceutics. Genetic products carry the promise of offering a solution to so-far uncurable diseases such as cancer, Alzeheimer, heart disorders, schizophrenia, and others, but they also open up the possibility of "breaking the chains of evolution", of actively manipulating the genetic structure of human beings and of "designing" healthy, long-living, beautiful, hard-working etc. beings. Here, the homo creator and the homo materia finally become indistinguishable and we are being to merge with our products in such a way that it "we" loses the remains of its meaning.

Since 1990 research on human genetics is organised in the Human Genome Project where universities from various countries cooperate in transcribing the entire genetic information of the predecessor of the homo sapiens , composed of 80,000 genes and more than 3 billion DNA sequences. The objective of the project is to complet the transcription process by the year 2003. One of the rationales of organising Genome research in an international fashion has been its extremely high cost, and also an ethical consideration, according to which human genetic information must not be a private property, which would be the case when genetic information becomes patentised.

But exactly this patentising is of paramount importance in the emerging "post-industrial" society where knowledge becomes the most important resource. A patent is nothing else than a property title to a piece of "know-how", and an necessary consequence commodification. When life no longer simply a natural creation but a product, it, too, will be patented and becomes a commodity.

Against the idea of the human genome as a public good, or an "open source", there is a growing competion on the part of private industry. Companies such as Celera deloped deciphering technologies which may allow an earlier completion of the project. In the case that human genetic information actually becomes patentised, then the technical possibility of interfering in human evolution would at leasst be partly in the hands of private business. What has been called a "quintessentially public resource" Iceland. In this nordic country, the government decided to allow the American genetics company DeCode to access and commercially exploit the anonymised genetic information of the entire population of Iceland. The Icelandic population provides a particularly good "sample" for research, because there has been almost no immigration since the times of the Vikings, and therefore genetic variations can be more easily detected than in populations with a more diverse genome. Also, Iceland possesses a wealth of genealogical information - many families are able to trace their origins back to the 12th century. Here modern science has found optimal laboratory conditions. Perhaps, had European history taken a different course in the 1930s and 40s, the frontier of commercial gentetic research would have found optimal conditions in an "ethnically clean" centre of Euorpe? The requirement of "purity", of "eliminating" difference prior to constructing knowledge, inscribed in the modern science since its beginnings, also applies to genome research. Except that in this kind of research humankind itself needs to fulfill laboratory standards of cleanliness, and that the biological transcription of humanness, the biological "nucleus" of the species, becomes the object of research, much like the nucleus of matter, the atom, in the 1940s and 50s.

But the commodification of life is not limited ot the human species. Genetically altered animals and plants are also suffering the same fate, and in most industrialised nations it is now possible to patent genetically engeneered species and crops. The promises of the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s are now repeated in the genetic revolution. Genetic engeneering, so it is argued, will be able to breed animals and plants which resist disease and yield more "food" and will therfore help to tackle problems of undernutrition and starvation. Companies such as Monsanto are at the forefront of developing genetically altered ("enhanced") food crops and promise to solve not only the problem of world hunger, but to improve the safety and even the taste of food. Convinced of the opposite of such high-flown promises, Vandana Shiva from the Indian Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology emphasises the relationship between post-colonial style exploitation of so-called "third world" countries. She also stresses the adverse ecological impact of biotechnology: "Today, the world is on the brink of a biological diversity crisis. The constantly diminishing store of biodiversity on our planet poses an enormous environmental threat"http://www.cnn.com/bioethics/9902/iceland.dna/template.html, 22 February 1999

http://www.indiaserver.com/betas/vshiva/title.htm, 9 February 2000

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acceleration

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Cryptography's Terms and background

"All nature is merely a cipher and a secret writing."
Blaise de Vigenère

In the (dis-)information age getting information but at the same time excluding others from it is part of a power-game (keeping the other uneducated). The reason for it eventually has found an argument called security.
Compared to the frequency of its presence in articles, the news and political speeches security seems to be one of the most popular words of the 90's. It must be a long time ago when that word was only used for and by the military and the police. Today one can find it as part of every political issue. Even development assistance and nutrition programs consider it part of its work.
The so-called but also real need for information security is widespread and concerning everybody, whether someone uses information technology or not. In any case information about individuals is moving globally; mostly sensitive information like about bank records, insurance and medical data, credit card transactions, and much much more. Any kind of personal or business communication, including telephone conversations, fax messages, and of course e-mail is concerned. Not to forget further financial transactions and business information. Almost every aspect of modern life is affected.
We want to communicate with everybody - but do not want anybody to know.

Whereas the market already depends on the electronic flow of information and the digital tools get faster and more sophisticated all the time, the rise of privacy and security concerns have to be stated as well.
With the increase of digital communication its vulnerability is increasing just as fast. And there exist two (or three) elements competing and giving the term digital security a rather drastic bitter taste: this is on the one hand the growing possibility for criminals to use modern technology not only to hide their source and work secretly but also to manipulate financial and other transfers. On the other hand there are the governments of many states telling the population that they need access to any kind of data to keep control against those criminals. And finally there are those people, living between enlightening security gaps and at the same time harming other private people's actions with their work: computer hackers.
While the potential of global information is regarded as endless, it is those elements that reduce it.

There is no definite solution, but at least some tools have been developed to improve the situation: cryptography, the freedom to encode those data that one does not want to be known by everybody, and give a possibility to decode them to those who shall know the data.

During the last 80 years cryptography has changed from a mere political into a private, economic but still political tool: at the same time it was necessary to improve the tools, eventually based on mathematics. Hence generally cryptography is regarded as something very complicated. And in many ways this is true as the modern ways of enciphering are all about mathematics.

"Crypto is not mathematics, but crypto can be highly mathematical, crypto can use mathematics, but good crypto can be done without a great reliance on complex mathematics." (W.T. Shaw)

For an introduction into cryptography and the mathematical tasks see:
http://www.sbox.tu-graz.ac.at/home/j/jonny/projects/crypto/index.htm
http://www.ccc.de/CCC-CA/policy.html

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Missing Labeling of Online Ads

One of the most crucial issues in on-line advertising is the blurring of the line between editorial content and ads. Unlike on TV and in the print media, where guidelines on the labeling of advertisements, which shall enable the customer to distinguish between editorial and ads, exist, similar conventions have not yet evolved for Internet content. Labeling of online advertisement up to now has remained the rare exception, with only few sites (e.g. http://www.orf.at) explicitly indicating non-editorial content.

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Product Placement

With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was "The Spot", a story about the ups and downs of an American commune. The Spot not only within short time attracted a large audience, but also pioneered in the field of online product placement. Besides Sony banners, the companies logo is also placed on nearly every electronic product appearing in the story. Appearing as a site for light entertainment, The Spots main goal is to make the name Sony and its product range well known within the target audience.

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The Advertising Industry

The advertising industry is dominated by three huge advertising networks, which offer their services throughout the world. Gross income of the three leading agencies is twice as much, as the one of places four to ten.

Table: World's Top 10 Advertising Organizations 1999

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1999

Advertising Organization

Headquarters

World-Wide Gross Income 1999

1

Omnicom

New York, USA

$ 5,743.4

2

Interpublic Group of Cos.

New York, USA

$ 5,079.3

3

WPP Group

London, UK

$ 4,819.3

4

Havas Advertising

Levallois-Perret, France

$ 2,385.1

5

Dentsu

Tokyo, Japan

$ 2,106.8

6

B Com3 Group

Chicago, USA

$ 1,933.8

7

Young & Rubicam Inc.

New York, USA

$ 1,870.1

8

Grey Advertising

New York, USA

$ 1,577.9

9

True North

Chicago, USA

$ 1,489.2

10

Publicis SA

Paris, France

$ 1,434.6



Table: Top 10 Global Marketers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

Advertiser

Headquarters

World-Wide Media Spending 1998

1

Procter & Gamble Co.

Cincinnati (US)

$ 4,747.6

2

Unilever

Rotterdam (NL)/London (UK)

$ 3,428.5

3

General Motors Corp.

Detroit (US)

$ 3,193.5

4

Ford Motor Co.

Darborn (US)

$ 2,229.5

5

Philip Morris Cos.

New York

$ 1,980.3

6

Daimler Chrysler

Stuttgart (GER)/Auburn Hills (US

$ 1,922.2

7

Nestle

Vevey (SUI)

$ 1,833.0

8

Toyota Motor Corp.

Toyota City (JP)

$ 1,692.4

9

Sony Corp.

Tokyo (JP)

$ 1,337.7

10

Coca-Cola Co.

Atlanta (US)

$ 1,327.3



On the other hand the three biggest advertisers only spend about US$ 2 millions less than places four to ten together. Whereas money spent on advertising in traditional media comes from very diverse categories, companies offering computer hard- and software, peripherals or Internet services mainly pay for on-line advertisements.

Table: Top 10 Internet Advertisers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

Advertiser

Internet Spending 1998

1998 - 1997 % Change

1

Microsoft Corp.

$ 34.9

9.4

2

IBM Corp.

$ 28.5

58.6

3

Compaq Computer Corp.

$ 16.2

169.8

4

General Motors Corp.

$ 12.7

84.8

5

Excite

$ 12.4

1.5

6

Infoseek Corp.

$ 9.3

22.3

7

AT&T Corp.

$ 9.3

43.5

8

Ford Motor Co.

$ 8.6

46.7

9

Hewlett-Packard Co.

$ 8.1

102.9

10

Barnes & Noble

$ 7.6

280.2



Source: Advertising Age

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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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Virtual cartels; mergers

In parallel to the deregulation of markets, there has been a trend towards large-scale mergers which ridicules dreams of increased competition.

Recent mega-mergers and acquisitions include

SBC Communications - Ameritech, $ 72,3 bn

Bell Atlantic - GTE, $ 71,3

AT&T - Media One, $ 63,1

AOL - Time Warner, $ 165 bn

MCI Worldcom - Spring, $ 129 bn

The total value of all major mergers since the beginnings of the 1990s has been 20 trillion Dollars, 2,5 times the size of the USA's GIP.

The AOL- Time Warner reflects a trend which can be observed everywhere: the convergence of the ICT and the content industries. This represents the ultimate advance in complete market domination, and a alarming threat to independent content.

"Is TIME going to write something negative about AOL? Will AOL be able to offer anything other than CNN sources? Is the Net becoming as silly and unbearable as television?"

(Detlev Borchers, journalist)

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The Role of the Media

To be able to participate in community life and make political choices citizens heavily rely on information. They need to know what is going on and the options that they should weigh, debate and act upon. An essential element for a functioning public sphere therefore is information.

Whereas formerly communication mostly happened on a face-to-face basis in large and complex societies (mass) media have evolved as the principal source of information. They act as a transport medium for the information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere. Ideally there should be a wide range of media, that represent the diverse opinions and viewpoints on issues of public interest existent in a society and which are independent of the state and society's dominant economic forces.

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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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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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Commercial vs. Independent Content

Commercial media aim towards economies of scale and scope, with the goal to maximize profits. As advertising money usually is their primary source of revenue their content very often is attuned to meet the needs of advertisers and marketers. Information necessary for a citizen's participation in the public sphere usually only plays a minor role in their programming, as it does not comply with the demands of an economic system whose principal aim is the generation of profit. They also virtually always are structured in accord with and to help reinforce society's defining hierarchical social relationships, and are generally controlled by and controlling of other major social institutions, particularly corporations.

Independent content provider on the other hand mostly act on a non-profit basis and try to avoid dependence on corporate powers and the state. One of their main concerns is the critical observation of public interest issues. The central aim of independent content provider's activities usually is to bring aspects and standpoints neglected by the (commercial) mainstream media to the public and subvert society's defining hierarchical social relationships. Promoting public debate and an active civil society they engage in the organization of alert actions and information campaigns or create subversive art

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Timeline 1900-1970 AD

1913 the wheel cipher gets re-invented as a strip

1917 William Frederick Friedman starts working as a cryptoanalyst at Riverbank Laboratories, which also works for the U.S. Government. Later he creates a school for military cryptoanalysis

- an AT&T-employee, Gilbert S. Vernam, invents a polyalphabetic cipher machine that works with random-keys

1918 the Germans start using the ADFGVX-system, that later gets later by the French Georges Painvin

- Arthur Scherbius patents a ciphering machine and tries to sell it to the German Military, but is rejected

1919 Hugo Alexander Koch invents a rotor cipher machine

1921 the Hebern Electric Code, a company producing electro-mechanical cipher machines, is founded

1923 Arthur Scherbius founds an enterprise to construct and finally sell his Enigma machine for the German Military

late 1920's/30's more and more it is criminals who use cryptology for their purposes (e.g. for smuggling). Elizabeth Smith Friedman deciphers the codes of rum-smugglers during prohibition regularly

1929 Lester S. Hill publishes his book Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet, which contains enciphered parts

1933-1945 the Germans make the Enigma machine its cryptographic main-tool, which is broken by the Poles Marian Rejewski, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park in England in 1939

1937 the Japanese invent their so called Purple machine with the help of Herbert O. Yardley. The machine works with telephone stepping relays. It is broken by a team of William Frederick Friedman. As the Japanese were unable to break the US codes, they imagined their own codes to be unbreakable as well - and were not careful enough.

1930's the Sigaba machine is invented in the USA, either by W.F. Friedman or his colleague Frank Rowlett

- at the same time the British develop the Typex machine, similar to the German Enigma machine

1943 Colossus, a code breaking computer is put into action at Bletchley Park

1943-1980 the cryptographic Venona Project, done by the NSA, is taking place for a longer period than any other program of that type

1948 Shannon, one of the first modern cryptographers bringing mathematics into cryptography, publishes his book A Communications Theory of Secrecy Systems

1960's the Communications-Electronics Security Group (= CESG) is founded as a section of Government Communications Headquarters (= GCHQ)

late 1960's the IBM Watson Research Lab develops the Lucifer cipher

1969 James Ellis develops a system of separate public-keys and private-keys

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Epilogue

As scientists are working hard on a quantum computer and also on quantum cryptography one can imagine that another revolution in the study of encryption has to be expected within the next years. By then today's hardware and software tools will look extraordinary dull. At the moment it is impossible to foresee the effects on cryptography and democratic developments by those means; the best and the worst can be expected at the same time. A certain ration of pessimism and prosecution mania are probably the right mixture of emotions about those tendencies, as the idea of big brother has come into existence long ago.

At the same time it will - in part - be a decision of the people to let science work against them or not. Acceleration of data-transmission calls for an acceleration of encryption-methods. And this again falls back on us, on an acceleration of daily life, blurring the private and the public for another time.
We live in an intersection, job and private life growing together. Cryptography cannot help us in that case. The privacy in our mind, the virtuality of all private and public lies in the field of democracy, or at least what is - by connection to the Human Rights - regarded as democracy.

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FREEnet (The Network for Research, Education and Engineering)

FREEnet is an academic and research network, interconnecting computer networks of research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities, colleges, and other research and academic institutions. It was established in 1991 by the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Center of Computer Assistance to Chemical Research. It provides its more than 350 members of the academic and educational community with all types of basic Internet services and various information services.

Strategies and Policies

FREEnets general intention is to become a backbone infrastructure providing:

Open networking services for efficient access to the network and information resources located both in Russia and all over the Internet.

Reliable network connectivity for research, academic and educational communities in Russia and abroad.

Worldwide access to science and information resources of the Russian Academy of Sciences, universities and colleges in Russia.

Assistance to the progress of Russian based fundamental research.

Assistance to the development and application of modern information technologies in education.

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On-line Advertising Revenues

Although Internet advertising only really started in 1994, revenues showed a steady and fast growth. In 1997 US$ 906.5 million were spent on on-line advertising. Compared with advertising revenue for the television industry in equivalent dollars for its third year, the Internet was slightly ahead, at US$ 907 million compared to television's US$ 834 million. 1998 on-line advertising grew by 112 percent to US$ 1.92 billion in revenues, and is on track to hit US$ 4 billion in 1999, which would put Internet advertising at about 2 percent of the U.S. ad market.

Table: Spending on On-Line Advertising by Category

(first quarter 1999)

Category

Percent

Consumer-related

27 %

Financial services

21 %

Computing

20 %

Retail/mail order

13 %

New media

8 %



Table: Types of On-Line Advertising

(first quarter 1999)

Type of Advertising

Percent

Banners

58 %

Sponsorships

29 %

Interstitials

6 %

E-mail

1 %

Others

6 %



Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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On-line Advertising and the Internet Content Industry

Applied to on-line content the advertising model leads to similar problems like in the traditional media. Dependence on advertising revenue puts pressure on content providers to consider advertising interests. Nevertheless new difficulties caused by the technical structure of online media, missing legal regulation and not yet established ethical rules, appear.

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Steganography

Ciphers as well as codes are transmitted openly. Everyone can see that they exist. Not so with steganograms.
Steganography is the art and science of communicating in a way which hides the existence of the secret part in that communication. During the Italian Renaissance and the time of the Elizabethan Age in England cryptography was very popular, for political reasons as well as for amusements (see John Dee).
In literature steganography played an important role. Many steganographs of that period have only been deciphered recently like some of the Shakespearean sonnets, which now seem to proof that the actor William Shakespeare was not the author of the famous poems and dramas, but that the latter' name was, and Francis Bacon, or even Francis Tudor, as some ciphers and other sources talk of him as Queen Elisabeth I.'s secret son.

for further details see:
http://home.att.net/~tleary/
http://www.thur.de/ulf/stegano/
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/gm2_rw.htm

One kind of steganogram is digital watermarking:
Watermarks protect digital images, videos, but also audio and multimedia products. They are made out of digital signals, put into other digital signals. They try to be invisible on first sight and should be nearly impossible to remove. The process of producing watermarks is to overlay some sort of identifying image over the original image (non-digital watermarks, like on money can be seen by holding the paper against light). Copying the image destroys the watermark, which cannot be copied. Any alteration of the original destroys the watermark, too.

Watermarking is one of the typical inventions of cryptography to assist the biggest content owners, but advertised as something necessary and helpful for everybody. Who in fact gets any advantage out of watermarking? The private user most of the time will not really need it except for small entities of pictures maybe.
But the big enterprises do. There is a tendency to watermark more and more information in the Internet, which until now was considered as free and as a cheap method to receive information. Watermarking could stop this democratic development.

for further information see:
http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~njohnson/Steganography

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Economic structure; transparent customers

Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.

User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.

"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."

(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)

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Internet Content Providers Perspective

As within the traditional media landscape, Internet content providers have two primary means of generating revenue: Direct sales or subscriptions, and advertising. Especially as charging Internet users for access to content - with all the free material available - has proven problematic, advertising is seen as the best solution for creating revenues in the short term. Therefore intense competition has started among Internet content providers and access services to attract advertising money.

Table: Web-Sites Seeking Advertising


Period

Number of Web-Sites

June 1999

2111

July 1999

2174

August 1999

2311

September 1999

2560



Source: Adknowledge eAnalytics. Online Advertising Report

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Pressures and Attacks against Independent Content Providers: Serbia

The independent Belgrade based FM radio-station B2-92, which from December 1996 on also broadcasts over the Internet, repeatedly has been the target of suppression and attacks by the Serbian government.

B2-92 offices have been raided on numerous occasions and members of staff have been repeatedly harassed or arrested. In March 1999 the transmitter of radio B2-92 was confiscated yet again by the Serbian authorities and editor-in-chief, Veran Matic, was taken and held in custody at a police station. Ten days after the confiscation of B2-92's transmitter, Serbian police entered and sealed their offices. All members of staff were sent home and a new General Manager was appointed by Serbian officials. Although by closing B2-92, the Serbian regime may have succeeded in softening the voice of the independent content provider, with the distributive nature of the Internet and the international help of media activists, the regime will have little chance of silencing the entire flood of independent content coming out of former Yugoslavia.

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Calculator

Calculators are machines for automatically performing arithmetical operations and certain mathematical functions. Modern calculators are descendants of a digital arithmetic machine devised by Blaise Pascal in 1642. Later in the 17th century, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz created a more advanced machine, and, especially in the late 19th century, inventors produced calculating machines that were smaller and smaller and less and less laborious to use.

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Roman smoke telegraph network, 150 A.D.

The Roman smoke signals network consisted of towers within visible range of each other and had a total length of about 4500 kilometers. It was used for military signaling.

For a similar telegraph network in ancient Greece see Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

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Amazon.Com

Amazon.Com was one of the first online bookstores. With thousands of books, CDs and videos ordered via the Internet every year, Amazon.Com probably is the most successful Internet bookstore.

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Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project is an international colaborative research project that aims to map the human genome. It's goal is to idenitfy the 100,000 genes of the human DNA as well as to sequence the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up the DNA. The HGP is designed on an open source basis, i.e. the information that is obtained and stored in databases should, in principle, be available to researchers and businesses all over the world. However, the HGP's work has been challenged by private businesses such as Celera whose objective is the private exploitation of genome information.

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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.

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Internet Research Task Force

Being itself under the umbrella of the Internet Society, the Internet Research Task Force is an umbrella organization of small research groups working on topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture and technology. It is governed by the Internet Research Steering Group.

http://www.irtf.org

http://www.irtf.org/
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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
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John Dee

b. July 13, 1527, London, England
d. December 1608, Mortlake, Surrey

English alchemist, astrologer, and mathematician who contributed greatly to the revival of interest in mathematics in England. After lecturing and studying on the European continent between 1547 and 1550, Dee returned to England in 1551 and was granted a pension by the government. He became astrologer to the queen, Mary Tudor, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned for being a magician but was released in 1555. Dee later toured Poland and Bohemia (1583-89), giving exhibitions of magic at the courts of various princes. He became warden of Manchester College in 1595.

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WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights.

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Internet Societal Task Force

The Internet Societal Task Force is an organization under the umbrella of the Internet Society dedicated to assure that the Internet is for everyone by identifying and characterizing social and economic issues associated with the growth and use of Internet. It supplements the technical tasks of the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group and the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Topics under discussion are social, economic, regulatory, physical barriers to the use of the Net, privacy, interdependencies of Internet penetration rates and economic conditions, regulation and taxation.

http://www.istf.isoc.org/

http://www.istf.isoc.org/
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Caching

Caching is a mechanism that attempts to decrease the time it takes to retrieve data by storing a copy at a closer location.

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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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Sputnik

At the beginning of the story of today's global data networks is the story of the development of satellite communication.

In 1955 President Eisenhower announced the USA's intention to launch a satellite. But it was the Soviet Union, which launched the first satellite in 1957: Sputnik I. After Sputnik's launch it became evident that the Cold War was also a race for leadership in the application of state-of-the-art technology to defence. As the US Department of Defence encouraged the formation of high-tech companies, it laid the ground to Silicon Valley, the hot spot of the world's computer industry.

In the same year the USA launched their first satellite - Explorer I - data were transmitted over regular phone circuits for the first time, thus laying the ground for today's global data networks.

Today's satellites may record weather data, scan the planet with powerful cameras, offer global positioning and monitoring services, and relay high-speed data transmissions. But up to now, most satellites are designed for military purposes such as reconnaissance.

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First Amendment Handbook

The First Amendment to the US Constitution, though short, lists a number of rights. Only a handful of words refer to freedoms of speech and the press, but those words are of incalculable significance. To understand the current subtleties and controversies surrounding this right, check out this First Amendment site. This detailed handbook of legal information, mostly intended for journalists, should be of interest to anyone who reads or writes. For example, the chapter Invasion of Privacy shows the limits of First Amendment rights, and the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the public - or, more crudely, the balance of Tabloid vs. Celebrity. Each section is carefully emended with relevant legal decisions.

http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/viewpage.cgi

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AT&T Labs-Research

The research and development division of AT&T. Inventions made at AT&T Labs-Research include so important ones as stereo recording, the transistor and the communications satellite.

http://www.research.att.com/

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Intellectual property

Intellectual property, very generally, relates to the output that result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Traditionally intellectual property is divided into two branches: 1) industrial property (inventions, marks, industrial designs, unfair competition and geographical indications), and 2) copyright. The protection of intellectual property is guaranteed through a variety of laws, which grant the creators of intellectual goods, and services certain time-limited rights to control the use made of their products.

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Above.net

Headquartered in San Jose, USA, AboveNet Communications is a backbone service provider. Through its extensive peering relationships, the company has built a network with the largest aggregated bandwidth in the world.

http://www.above.net

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CIM

To perform manufacturing firm's functions related to design and production the CAD/CAM technology, for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, was developed. Today it is widely recognized that the scope of computer applications must extend beyond design and production to include the business functions of the firm. The name given to this more comprehensive use of computers is computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM).

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Chrysler Corporation

American automotive company first incorporated in 1925 and reorganized and newly incorporated in 1986. It has long been the third largest automaker in the United States (after General Motors and the Ford Motor Company). Founded by Walter P. Chrysler, it took over the business and properties of Maxwell Motor Company, Inc. (first formed in 1913). Today its major subsidiaries include Chrysler Automotive Operations, Inc., which manufactures Plymouth, Dodge, and Chrysler passenger cars, Dodge trucks, and auto parts and accessories; and the Chrysler Financial Corporation. Headquarters are in Highland Park, Mich., U.S.

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About Wines

http://www.aboutwine.com/

http://www.aboutwine.com/
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atbash

Atbash is regarded as the simplest way of encryption. It is nothing else than a reverse-alphabet. a=z, b= y, c=x and so on. Many different nations used it in the early times of writing.

for further explanations see:
http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atbash.htm

http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/atb...
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ciphers

the word "cipher" comes from the Hebrew word "saphar", meaning "to number". Ciphers are mere substitutions. Each letter of the alphabet gets substituted; maybe by one letter or two or more.

an example:
PLAINTEXT a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
CIPHERTEXT D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A B C

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Internet Architecture Board

On behalf of the Internet Society, the Internet Architecture Board oversees the evolution of the architecture, the standards and the protocols of the Net.

Internet Society: http://www.isoc.org/iab

http://www.isoc.org/
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Invention

According to the WIPO an invention is a "... novel idea which permits in practice the solution of a specific problem in the field of technology." Concerning its protection by law the idea "... must be new in the sense that is has not already been published or publicly used; it must be non-obvious in the sense that it would not have occurred to any specialist in the particular industrial field, had such a specialist been asked to find a solution to the particular problem; and it must be capable of industrial application in the sense that it can be industrially manufactured or used." Protection can be obtained through a patent (granted by a government office) and typically is limited to 20 years.

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National Laboratory for Applied Network Research

NLANR, initially a collaboration among supercomputer sites supported by the National Science Foundation, was created in 1995 to provide technical and engineering support and overall coordination of the high-speed connections at these five supercomputer centers.

Today NLANR offers support and services to institutions that are qualified to use high performance network service providers - such as Internet 2 and Next Generation Internet.

http://www.nlanr.net

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to decipher/decode

to put the ciphers/codes back into the plaintext

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Vinton Cerf

Addressed as one of the fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf together with Robert Kahn developed the TCP/IP protocol suite, up to now the de facto-communication standard for the Internet, and also contributed to the development of other important communication standards. The early work on the protocols broke new ground with the realization of a multi-network open architecture.

In 1992, he co-founded the Internet Society where he served as its first President and later Chairman.

Today, Vinton Cerf is Senior Vice President for Internet Architecture and Technology at WorldCom, one of the world's most important ICT companies

Vinton Cerf's web site: http://www.wcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/

http://www.isoc.org/
http://www.wcom.com/
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Cookie

A cookie is an information package assigned to a client program (mostly a Web browser) by a server. The cookie is saved on your hard disk and is sent back each time this server is accessed. The cookie can contain various information: preferences for site access, identifying authorized users, or tracking visits.

In online advertising, cookies serve the purpose of changing advertising banners between visits, or identifying a particular direct marketing strategy based on a user's preferences and responses.

Advertising banners can be permanently eliminated from the screen by filtering software as offered by Naviscope or Webwash

Cookies are usually stored in a separate file of the browser, and can be erased or permanently deactivated, although many web sites require cookies to be active.

http://www.naviscope.com/
http://www.webwash.com/
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Enochian alphabet

Also "Angelic" language. Archaic language alphabet composed of 21 letters, discovered by John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley. It has its own grammar and syntax, but only a small sample of it has ever been translated to English.

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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/
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Proxy Servers

A proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary between a workstation user and the Internet so that security, administrative control, and caching service can be ensured.

A proxy server receives a request for an Internet service (such as a Web page request) from a user. If it passes filtering requirements, the proxy server, assuming it is also a cache server, looks in its local cache of previously downloaded Web pages. If it finds the page, it returns it to the user without needing to forward the request to the Internet. If the page is not in the cache, the proxy server, acting as a client on behalf of the user, uses one of its own IP addresses to request the page from the server out on the Internet. When the page is returned, the proxy server relates it to the original request and forwards it on to the user.

Source: Whatis.com

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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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Bandwidth

The bandwidth of a transmitted communications signal is a measure of the range of frequencies the signal occupies. The term is also used in reference to the frequency-response characteristics of a communications receiving system. All transmitted signals, whether analog or digital, have a certain bandwidth. The same is true of receiving systems.

Generally speaking, bandwidth is directly proportional to the amount of data transmitted or received per unit time. In a qualitative sense, bandwidth is proportional to the complexity of the data for a given level of system performance. For example, it takes more bandwidth to download a photograph in one second than it takes to download a page of text in one second. Large sound files, computer programs, and animated videos require still more bandwidth for acceptable system performance. Virtual reality (VR) and full-length three-dimensional audio/visual presentations require the most bandwidth of all.

In digital systems, bandwidth is data speed in bits per second (bps).

Source: Whatis.com

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Industrial design

Industrial design refers to the ornamental aspect of a useful article which may constitute of two or three-dimensional elements. To be qualified for intellectual property protection the design must be novel or original. Protection can be obtained through registration in a government office and usually is given for 10 to 15 years.

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Virtual Marylin Monroe

This is the story of the virtual Marylyn Monroe created by MRALab in Switzerland. The biography features her personal and professional stories. This being the biography of a virtual being, it does not end with the present and includes, instead, a chapter on her destiny.

http://www.miralab.unige.ch/MARILYN/VIRTUAL/virtual.html

http://www.miralab.unige.ch/MARILYN/VIRTUAL/v...
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Gateway

A gateway is a computer supplying point-to-multipoint connections between computer networks.

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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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ciphertext

the enciphered/encoded and primarily illegible text

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Cyborg

The word "cyborg" short form for "cybernetic organism", i.e. an entity which is partly biological and partly technical. As the technical seizure of nature progresses, cyborgs are proliferating and pose novel theoretical and social questions. The incorporation of technical components into human bodies is not new, but the bio-chips and nano-computers made possible by advances in information technology give a new quality to the development. Because the technization of the body has its origin in military history, cyborg studies have been connected to a critique of militarism, as in Chris Hables Gray, and to feminist critiques of society, as in Donna Haraway.

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Polybius Checkerboard


 

1

2

3

4

5

1

A

B

C

D

E

2

F

G

H

I

K

3

L

M

N

O

P

4

Q

R

S

T

U

5

V

W

X

Y

Z



It is a system, where letters get converted into numeric characters.
The numbers were not written down and sent but signaled with torches.

for example:
A=1-1
B=1-2
C=1-3
W=5-2

for more information see:
http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/polybius.htm

http://www.ftech.net/~monark/crypto/crypt/pol...
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America Online

Founded in 1985, America Online is the world's biggest Internet service provider serving almost every second user. Additionally, America Online operates CompuServe, the Netscape Netcenter and several AOL.com portals. As the owner of Netscape, Inc. America Online plays also an important role in the Web browser market. In January 2000 America Online merged with Time Warner, the worlds leading media conglomerate, in a US$ 243,3 billion deal, making America Online the senior partner with 55 percent in the new company.

http://www.aol.com

http://www.aol.com/
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First Monday

An English language peer reviewed media studies journal based in Denmark.

http://firstmonday.dk

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Coca-Cola Company

American corporation founded in 1892 and today engaged primarily in the manufacture and sale of syrup and concentrate for Coca-Cola, a sweetened, carbonated beverage that is a cultural institution in the United States and a symbol around the world of American tastes. The company also produces and sells other soft drinks and citrus beverages. Corporate headquarters are in Atlanta, Ga. The post-World War II years saw diversification in the packaging of Coca-Cola and also in the development or acquisition of new products. In 1946 the company purchased rights to the Fanta soft drink, previously developed in Germany. It introduced the lemon-lime drink Sprite in 1961 and the sugar-free cola Tab in 1963. By purchase of Minute Maid Corporation in 1960, it entered the citrus beverage market. In 1982 the company acquired a controlling interest in Columbia Pictures, a motion picture and entertainment company, but sold its interest to Sony Corporation in 1989.

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Seagram Company Ltd.

Seagram is the largest producer and marketer of distilled spirits in the world. It is headquartered in Montreal, Que. The company began when Distillers Corp., Ltd., a Montreal distillery owned by Samuel Bronfman, acquired Joseph E. Seagram & Sons in 1928. Under the leadership of the founder's son, Edgar M. Bronfman, who became head of the company in 1971, the firm diversified during the 1950s and '60s from its original base of blended whiskies into the production and marketing of scotch, bourbon, rum, vodka, gin, and many different wines. It also expanded into the European, Latin American, East Asian, and African markets with its products. The company adopted its present name in 1975. It produces more than 400 different brands of distilled spirits and wines. Edgar M. Bronfman, Jr., took over as head of the company in 1989. Seagram in 1995 purchased MCA Inc., a media and entertainment firm, from the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company.

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Blaise Pascal

b. June 19, 1623, Clermont-Ferrand, France
d. August 19, 1662, Paris, France

French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. He laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities, formulated what came to be known as Pascal's law of pressure, and propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. The establishment of his principle of intuitionism had an impact on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and also on the Existentialists.

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Moral rights

Authors of copyrighted works (besides economic rights) enjoy moral rights on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise.

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Terrestrial antennas

Microwave transmission systems based on terrestrial antennas are similar to satellite transmission system. Providing reliable high-speed access, they are used for cellular phone networks.

The implementation of the Wide Application Protocol (WAP) makes the wireless access to Internet services as E-Mail and even the World Wide Web via cellular phones convenient. Therefore microwave transmission systems become increasingly important.

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MIT

The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is a privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. During the 1930s and 1940s the institute evolved from a well-regarded technical school into an internationally known center for scientific and technical research. In the days of the Great Depression, its faculty established prominent research centers in a number of fields, most notably analog computing (led by Vannevar Bush) and aeronautics (led by Charles Stark Draper). During World War II, MIT administered the Radiation Laboratory, which became the nation's leading center for radar research and development, as well as other military laboratories. After the war, MIT continued to maintain strong ties with military and corporate patrons, who supported basic and applied research in the physical sciences, computing, aerospace, and engineering. MIT has numerous research centers and laboratories. Among its facilities are a nuclear reactor, a computation center, geophysical and astrophysical observatories, a linear accelerator, a space research center, supersonic wind tunnels, an artificial intelligence laboratory, a center for cognitive science, and an international studies center. MIT's library system is extensive and includes a number of specialized libraries; there are also several museums.

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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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Expert system

Expert systems are advanced computer programs that mimic the knowledge and reasoning capabilities of an expert in a particular discipline. Their creators strive to clone the expertise of one or several human specialists to develop a tool that can be used by the layman to solve difficult or ambiguous problems. Expert systems differ from conventional computer programs as they combine facts with rules that state relations between the facts to achieve a crude form of reasoning analogous to artificial intelligence. The three main elements of expert systems are: (1) an interface which allows interaction between the system and the user, (2) a database (also called the knowledge base) which consists of axioms and rules, and (3) the inference engine, a computer program that executes the inference-making process. The disadvantage of rule-based expert systems is that they cannot handle unanticipated events, as every condition that may be encountered must be described by a rule. They also remain limited to narrow problem domains such as troubleshooting malfunctioning equipment or medical image interpretation, but still have the advantage of being much lower in costs compared with paying an expert or a team of specialists.

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Celera

Celera is an American company dedicated to the full sequencing and exploitation of the humane genome according to private business criteria. The company whose slogan is "Speed matters", is run by the Vietnam veteran Craig Ventor, whose declarations and business practices have given rise to widespread criticism. Unlike the Humane Genome Project, which is mapping the entire genome, Dr Ventor's method focuses on the genome information contained in messenger molecules. In keeping with Celera's slogan, this allows a much faster sequencing rate. The aggressive manoeuvring of Celera, coupled with Dr Ventor's unchecked self-esteem which lead him to compare himself to Nobel Prize winners, has meant that Dr. Ventor has been ostracised within the scientific community. James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, refers to Dr. Ventor's fast but relatively crude results as work that "any monkey could do" (source: BBC)

http://www.celera.com

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plaintext

the original, legible text

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cryptology

also called "the study of code". It includes both, cryptography and cryptoanalysis

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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.

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McCann Erickson

Alfred W. Erickson founded the advertising agency McCann Erickson in 1902. In1913 McCann opened a San Francisco office and a Detroit office that moved to Cleveland in 1915. With operations in 127 countries, McCann reaches across the globe and continues to expand its capabilities through start-up units and acquisitions. McCann has recently added creative resources in the local, pan-regional and global arenas and also extended its expertise in specialized marketing categories, such as business-to-business and high-tech communications.

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Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) is the leading scholar of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, a group of philosophers, cultural critics and social scientists associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1929. The Frankfurt School is best known for its program of developing a "critical theory of society". Habermas was a student of Adorno, becoming his assistant in 1956. He first taught philosophy at Heidelberg before becoming a professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. In 1972, he moved to the Max-Planck Institute in Starnberg, but in the mid-1980s, he returned to his post at Frankfurt.

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