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.

TEXTBLOCK 1/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657963
 
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)

TEXTBLOCK 2/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611726/100438658925
 
B2-92

B2-92 is an independent FM radio station based in Belgrade, which has won a number of international press and media awards. Their broadcasts and music and uncensored news heard across Serbia through a network of local partner stations. Their signal was also picked up by the BBC World Service and retransmitted via satellite around the world. In December 1996, B2-92 began using technology to stream live audio broadcasts and short video clips over the Internet.

Strategies and Policies

From its start as a terrestrial broadcaster B2-92 has been a respected source of independent news in the Balkans. Although B2-92 has been constantly subjected to repression and threat by government authorities it continued to provide music and news. When in December 1996 B2-92 was banned from broadcasting it began to distribute its content via streaming audio and video on its website. A web savvy support group was formed helping B2-92 to continue its distribution of news. Anonymous e-mail lists were developed to protect the identity of those wishing to express their views about the war, as well as a message boards linking to the Help B2-92 Campaign site. Furthermore encrypted e-mail services were provided for journalists and others in the former Yugoslavia who found themselves under threat. B2-92 also co-operates with various media activists and support groups and networks, which help B2-92 to continue its content distribution.

TEXTBLOCK 3/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438659212
 
Economic structure; introduction



"Globalization is to no small extent based upon the rise of rapid global communication networks. Some even go so far as to argue that "information has replaced manufacturing as the foundation of the economy". Indeed, global media and communication are in some respects the advancing armies of global capitalism."

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

"Information flow is your lifeblood."

(Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft)

The usefulness of information and communication technologies increases with the number of people who use them. The more people form part of communication networks, the greater the amount of information that is produced. Microsoft founder Bill Gates dreams of "friction free capitalism", a new stage of capitalism in which perfect information becomes the basis for the perfection of the markets.

But exploitative practices have not disappeared. Instead, they have colonised the digital arena where effective protective regulation is still largely absent.

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)

TEXTBLOCK 4/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611726/100438658916
 
An Economic and therefore Governmental Issue

While the digital divide might bring up the idea that enterprises will be able to sell more and more computers during the next years another truth looks as if there was no hope for a certain percentage of the population to get out of their marginalization, their position of being "have nots".

Studies show that the issue of different colors of skin play a role in this, but more than "racial" issues it is income, age and education that decides about the have and have nots.

There exist ~ 103 million households in the USA.
~6 million do not even have telephone access. Why should they care about computers?

The digital divide cuts the world into centers and peripheries, not into nations, as it runs through the boarder between the North and the South as well as through nations.

http://www.digitaldivide.gov/
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/
http://www.pbs.org/digitaldivide/
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-344552.html
http://racerelations.about.com/newsissues/racerelations/msubdigdivide.htm
http://www.techweek.com/articles/11-1-99/divide.htm
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/falling.html

The most different institutions with various interests in their background work in that field; not rarely paid by governments, which are interested in inhabitants, connected to the net and economy.
see also: http://www.washington.edu/wto/digital/

Searching information about the digital divide one will find informations saying that it is growing all the time whereas other studies suggest the contrary, like this one
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-341054.html

TEXTBLOCK 5/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611730/100438659326
 
1900 - 2000 A.D.

1904
First broadcast talk

1918
Invention of the short-wave radio

1929
Invention of television in Germany and Russia

1941
Invention of microwave transmission

1946
Long-distance coaxial cable systems and mobile telephone services are introduced in the USA.

1957
Sputnik, the first satellite, is launched by the USSR
First data transmissions over regular phone circuits.

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 in the end 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 defense. As the US Department of Defense encouraged the formation of high-tech companies, it laid the ground to Silicon Valley, the hot spot of the world's computer industry.

The same year as the USA launched their first satellite - Explorer I - data was 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. Yet up to now, most satellites are designed for military purposes such as reconnaissance.

1969
ARPAnet online

ARPAnet was the small network of individual computers connected by leased lines that marked the beginning of today's global data networks. An experimental network it mainly served the purpose of testing the feasibility of wide area networks and the possibility of remote computing. It was created for resource sharing between research institutions and not for messaging services like E-mail. Although US military sponsored its research, ARPAnet was not designed for directly martial use but to support military-related research.

In 1969 ARPANET went online and linked the first two computers, one located at the University of California, Los Angeles, the other at the Stanford Research Institute.

Yet ARPAnet did not become widely accepted before it was demonstrated in action to a public of computer experts at the First International Conference on Computers and Communication in Washington, D. C. in 1972.

Before it was decommissioned in 1990, NSFnet, a network of scientific and academic computers funded by the National Science Foundation, and a separate new military network went online in 1986. In 1988 the first private Internet service providers started offering access to NSFnet to a general public. After having become the backbone of the Internet in the USA, in 1995 NSFnet was turned into a consortium of commercial backbone providers. This and the launch of the World Wide Web added to the success of the global data network we call the Net.

In the USA it was already in 1994 that commercial users outnumbered military and academic users.

Despite the rapid growth of the Net, most computers linked to it are still located in the United States.

1971
Invention of E-Mail

1979
Introduction of fiber-optic cable systems

1992
Launch of the World Wide Web

TEXTBLOCK 6/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611796/100438659828
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 7/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438659253
 
Acessing the Internet

The Net connections can be based on wire-line and wireless access technolgies.

Wire-line access

Wire-less access

copper wires

Satellites

coaxial cables

mobile terrestrial antennas

electric power lines

fixed terrestrial antennas

fiber-optic cables







Usually several kinds of network connections are employed at once. Generally speaking, when an E-mail message is sent it travels from the user's computer via copper wires or coaxial cables ISDN lines, etc., to an Internet Service Provider, from there, via fibre-optic cables, to the nearest Internet exchange, and on into a backbone network, tunneling across the continent und diving through submarine fibre-optic cables across the Atlantic to another Internet exchange, from there, via another backbone network and across another regional network to the Internet Service Provider of the supposed message recipient, from there via cables and wires of different bandwidth arriving at its destination, a workstation permanently connected to the Internet. Finally a sound or flashing icon informs your virtual neighbor that a new message has arrived.

Satellite communication

Although facing competition from fiber-optic cables as cost-effective solutions for broadband data transmission services, the space industry is gaining increasing importance in global communications. As computing, telephony, and audiovisual technologies converge, new wireless technologies are rapidly deployed occupying an increasing market share and accelerating the construction of high-speed networks.

Privatization of satellite communication

Until recently transnational satellite communication was provided exclusively by intergovernmental organizations as Intelsat, Intersputnik and Inmarsat.

Scheduled privatization of intergovernmental satellite consortia:

Satellite consortia

Year of foundation

Members

Scheduled date for privatization

Intelsat

1964

200 nations under the leadership of the USA

2001

Intersputnik

1971

23 nations under the leadership of Russia

?

Inmarsat

1979

158 nations (all members of the International Maritime Organization)

privatized since 1999

Eutelsat

1985

Nearly 50 European nations

2001



When Intelsat began to accumulate losses because of management failures and the increasing market share of fiber-optic cables, this organizational scheme came under attack. Lead by the USA, the Western industrialized countries successfully pressed for the privatization of all satellite consortia they are members of and for competition by private carriers.

As of February 2000, there are 2680 satellites in service. Within the next four years a few hundred will be added by the new private satellite systems. Most of these systems will be so-called Low Earth Orbit satellite systems, which are capable of providing global mobile data services on a high-speed level at low cost.

Because of such technological improvements and increasing competition, experts expect satellite-based broadband communication to be as common, cheap, and ubiquitous as satellite TV today within the next five or ten years.

Major satellite communication projects

Project name

Main investors

Expected cost

Number of satellites

Date of service start-up

Astrolink

Lockheed Martin, TRW, Telespazio, Liberty Media Group

US$ 3.6 billion

9

2003

Globalstar

13 investors including Loral Space & Communications, Qualcomm, Hyundai, Alcatel, France Telecom, China Telecom, Daimler Benz and Vodafone/Airtouch

US$ 3.26 billion

48

1998

ICO

57 investors including British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, Inmarsat, TRW and Telefonica

US$ 4.5 billion

10

2001

Skybridge

9 investors including Alcatel Space, Loral Space & Communications, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sharp

US$ 6.7 billion

80

2002

Teledesic

Bill Gates, Craig McCaw, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, Abu Dhabi Investment Company

US$ 9 billion

288

2004


Source: Analysys Satellite Communications Database

TEXTBLOCK 8/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611791/100438659839
 
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)

TEXTBLOCK 9/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611709/100438658959
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 10/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611777/100438658827
 
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".

TEXTBLOCK 11/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611709/100438658911
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 12/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438658034
 
Satyrs, Frankenstein, Machine Men, Cyborgs

The idea of hybrid beings between man and non-human entities can be traced back to mythology: mythologies, European and non-European are populated with beings which are both human and non-human, and which, because of this non-humanness, have served as reference points in the human endeavour of understanding what it means to be human. Perhaps "being human" is not even a meaningful phrase without the possibility to identify ourselves also with the negation of humanness, that is, to be human through the very possibility of identification with the non-human.

While in classical mythology, such being were usually between the man and animal kingdoms, or between the human and the divine, the advent of modern technology in the past two centuries has countered any such irrational representations of humanness. The very same supremacy of rationality which deposited the hybrid beings of mythology (and of religion) on the garbage heap of the modern period and which attempted a "pure" understanding of humanness, has also been responsible for the rapid advance of technology and which in turn prepared a "technical" understanding of the human.

The only non-human world which remains beyond the animal and divine worlds is the world of technology. The very attempt of a purist definition of the human ran encountered difficulty; the theories of Darwin and Freud undermined the believe that there was something essentially human in human beings, something that could be defined without references to the non-human.

Early representations of half man - half machine creatures echo the fear of the violent use of machinery, as in wars. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, only a few years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. But machines are not only a source of fear exploited in fiction literature, their power and makes their non-humanness super-humanness. The French philosopher and doctor Julien de La Mettrie argues in his famous Machine Man that human beings are essentially constructed like machines and that they obey to the same principles. Machine Man provides a good example of how the ideas of the Enlightenment of human autonomy are interwoven with a technical discourse of perfection.

What human minds have later dreamed up about - usually hostile - artificial beings has segmented in the literary genre of science fiction. Science fiction seems to have provided the "last" protected zone for the strong emotions and hard values which in standard fiction literature would relegate a story into the realm of kitsch. Violent battles, strong heroes, daring explorations, infinity and solitude, clashes of right and wrong and whatever else makes up the aesthetic repertoire of metaphysics has survived unscathed in science fiction.

However, science fiction also seems to mark the final sequence of pure fiction: the Cyborg heroes populating this genre have transcended the boundary between fact and fiction, ridiculing most established social theories of technology based on technological instrumentalism. Donna Haraway has gone a long way in coming to terms with the cultural and social implications of this development. "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs", Haraway states in her Cyborg Manifesto. In cyber culture, the boundaries between organisms and machines, between nature and culture become as ambivalent as the borderline between he physical and the non-physical: "Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals".

In the Flesh Machine the Critial Art Ensemble analyses the mapping of the body, as in genetics, as one aspect of keeping state power in place, the other two aspects being the "war machine" and the "sight machine". The mapping of the flesh machine is a logical and necessary consequence of the development of the other two "machines". Cyborgisation is in the words of CEA, the "coming of age of the flesh machine", which, although it has "intersected both the sight and war machine since ancient times ... is the slowest to develop. " Representation is a necessary preliminary to violence, since "Any successful offensive military action begins with visualization and representation. The significant principle here .... is that vision equals control."

TEXTBLOCK 13/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611777/100438658891
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 14/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438659280
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 15/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611796/100438659725
 
"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.

TEXTBLOCK 16/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657995
 
acceleration

TEXTBLOCK 17/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611777/100438658418
 
1800 - 1900 A.D.

1801
Invention of the punch card

Invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, an engineer and architect in Lyon, France, punch cards laid the ground for automatic information processing. For the first time information was stored in binary format on perforated cardboard cards. In 1890 Hermann Hollerith used Joseph-Marie Jacquard's punch card technology to process statistical data collected during the US census in 1890, thus speeding up US census data analysis from eight to three years. Hollerith's application of Jacquard's invention was used for programming computers and data processing until electronic data processing was introduced in the 1960's. - As with writing and calculating, administrative applications account for the beginning of modern automatic data processing.

Paper tapes are a medium similar to Jacquard's punch cards. In 1857 Sir Charles Wheatstone used them for the preparation, storage, and transmission of data for the first time. Through paper tapes telegraph messages could be stored, prepared off-line and sent ten times quicker (up to 400 words per minute). Later similar paper tapes were used for programming computers.

1809
Invention of the electrical telegraph

With Samuel Thomas Soemmering's invention of the electrical telegraph the telegraphic transmission of messages was no longer tied to visibility, as it was the case with smoke and light signals networks. Economical and reliable, the electric telegraph became the state-of-the-art communication system for fast data transmissions, even over long distances.

Click here for an image of Soemmering's electric telegraph.

1861
Invention of the telephone

The telephone was not invented by Alexander Graham Bell, as is widely held, but by Philipp Reiss, a German teacher. When he demonstrated his invention to important German professors in 1861, it was not enthusiastically greeted. Because of this dismissal, he was not given any financial support for further development.

And here Bell comes in: In 1876 he successfully filed a patent for the telephone. Soon afterwards he established the first telephone company.

1866
First functional underwater telegraph cable is laid across the Atlantic

1895
Invention of the wireless telegraph

TEXTBLOCK 18/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611796/100438659897
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 19/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438658026
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 20/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438658974
 
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.





TEXTBLOCK 21/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611791/100438658352
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 22/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657986
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 23/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438658450
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 24/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438658921
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 25/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611730/100438659300
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 26/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438659084
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 27/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438659225
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 28/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438658403
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 29/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611776/100438659021
 
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).

TEXTBLOCK 30/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657944
 
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.

TEXTBLOCK 31/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611734/100438658499
 
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

TEXTBLOCK 32/32 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657954
 
United Brands Company

American corporation formed in 1970 in the merger of United Fruit Company and AMK Corporation. United Fruit Company, the main company, was founded in 1899 producing and marketing bananas grown in the Caribbean islands, Central America, and Colombia. The principal founder was Minor C. Keith, who had begun to acquire banana plantations and to build a railroad in Costa Rica as early as 1872. In 1884 he contracted with the Costa Rican government to fund the national debt and to lay about 50 more miles of track. In return he received, for 99 years, full rights to these rail lines and 800,000 acres of virgin land, tax exempt for 20 years. By 1930 it had absorbed 20 rival firms and became the largest employer in Central America. As a foreign corporation of conspicuous size, United Fruit sometimes became the target of popular attacks. The Latin-American press often referred to it as el pulpo ("the octopus"), accusing it of exploiting labourers, bribing officials, and influencing governments during the period of Yankee "dollar diplomacy" in the first decades of the 20th century.

INDEXCARD, 1/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 2/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 3/56
 
Avatar

Traditionally, an avatar is a mythical figure half man half god. In Hindu mythology, avatars are the form that deities assume when they descend on earth. Greek and Roman mythologies also contain avatars in animal form or half animal, half man. In virtual space, the word avatar refers to a "virtual identity" that a user can construct for him / herself, e.g. in a chat-room. Avatars have also been a preferred object of media art.

INDEXCARD, 4/56
 
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

INDEXCARD, 5/56
 
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/
INDEXCARD, 6/56
 
Internet Engineering Steering Group

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

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

http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html
INDEXCARD, 7/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 8/56
 
Cooperative Association of Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)

Based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center, CAIDA supports cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. It is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) through its Next Generation Internet program, by the National Science Foundation, Cisco, Inc., and Above.net.

INDEXCARD, 9/56
 
Chappe's fixed optical network

Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores.

Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best.

Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the Roman smoke signals network and Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system.

For more information on early communication networks see Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks.

INDEXCARD, 10/56
 
Internet Exchanges

Internet exchanges are intersecting points between major networks.

List of the World's Public Internet exchanges (http://www.ep.net)

http://www.ep.net/
INDEXCARD, 11/56
 
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/
INDEXCARD, 12/56
 
Samuel Thomas Soemmering's electric telegraph, 1809

With Samuel Thomas Soemmering's invention of the electrical telegraph the telegraphic transmission of messages is no longer tied to visibility, as it is the case with smoke and light signals networks. Economical and reliable, the electric telegraph became the state-of-the-art communication system for fast data transmissions, even over long distances.

Click here for an image of Soemmering's electric telegraph.

http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/2335...
INDEXCARD, 13/56
 
Nadia Thalman

Nadia Thalman is director of MIRAlab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Thalmann has become known as the creator of "virtual Marylyn", an installation which allowed visitors to literally to slip into Marylyn's shoes. Thalman's work is located at interface between science and art. It is about modelling human bodies for science and creative purposes, e.g. as virtual actors in movies. Thalman insists that artificial beings must be beautiful, in addition to being useful, as we will be living with them at close quarters.

INDEXCARD, 14/56
 
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

INDEXCARD, 15/56
 
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/
INDEXCARD, 16/56
 
The Internet Engineering Task Force

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

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

http://www.ietf.org/
INDEXCARD, 17/56
 
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/

INDEXCARD, 18/56
 
Louis Braille

b. Jan. 4, 1809, Coupvray, near Paris, France
d. Jan. 6, 1852, Paris, France

Educator who developed a system of printing and writing that is extensively used by the blind and that was named for him. Himself blind Braille became interested in a system of writing, exhibited at the school by Charles Barbier, in which a message coded in dots was embossed on cardboard. When he was 15, he worked out an adaptation, written with a simple instrument, that met the needs of the sightless. He later took this system, which consists of a six-dot code in various combinations, and adapted it to musical notation. He published treatises on his type system in 1829 and 1837.

INDEXCARD, 19/56
 
Center for Democracy and Technology

The Center for Democracy and Technology works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. With expertise in law, technology, and policy, the Center seeks practical solutions to enhance free expression and privacy in global communications technologies. The Center is dedicated to building consensus among all parties interested in the future of the Internet and other new communications media.

http://www.cdt.org

INDEXCARD, 20/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 21/56
 
Telnet

Telnet allows you to login remotely on a computer connected to the Internet.

INDEXCARD, 22/56
 
Alexander Graham Bell

b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh

d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it.

For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html

INDEXCARD, 23/56
 
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/
INDEXCARD, 24/56
 
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

INDEXCARD, 25/56
 
Edward L. Bernays

Born 1891 in Vienna, Bernays was one of the founders of modern public relations. An enigmatic character, he was a master of mise en scène with far-reaching contacts in the world of business and politics. The nephew of Sigmund Freund and related with Heinrich Heine, he was also among the first to pursue PR for governments and to produce pseudo-events. Bernays considered the manipulation of public opinion as an important element of mass democracies and was of the opinion that only through PR a society's order can be kept.

INDEXCARD, 26/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 27/56
 
Optical communication system by Aeneas Tacitus, 4th century B.C.

Aeneas Tacitus, a Greek military scientist and cryptographer, invented an optical communication system that combines water and beacon telegraphy. Torches indicated the beginnings and the ends of message transmissions while water jars were used to transmit the messages. These jars had a plugged standard-size hole drilled on the bottom side and were filled with water. As those who sent and those who received the message unplugged the jars simultaneously, the water drained out. Because the transmitted messages corresponded to water levels, the sender indicated by torch signal that the appropriate water level has been reached. It is a disadvantage that the possible messages are restricted to a given code, but as this system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand these messages unless they possessed the codebook.

With communication separated from transportation, the distant became near.

Tacitus' telegraph system was very fast and not excelled until the end of the 18th century.

For further information see Joanne Chang & Anna Soellner, Decoding Device, http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/decoder2.html

http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inven...
INDEXCARD, 28/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 29/56
 
PGP

A cryptographic software application that was developed by Phil Zimmerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication.

INDEXCARD, 30/56
 
Virtual Private Networks

Virtual Private Networks provide secured connections to a corporate site over a public network as the Internet. Data transmitted through secure connections are encrypted and therefore have to be encrypted before they can be read.
These networks are called virtual because connections are provided only when you connect to a corporate site; they do not rely on dedicated lines and support mobile use.

INDEXCARD, 31/56
 
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

INDEXCARD, 32/56
 
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

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

INDEXCARD, 33/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 34/56
 
French laws against anonymity on the Net

Since the end of June in France anonymous publishing - on the World Wide Web, in newsgroups, mailing lists or chat rooms - is prohibited. The use of pseudonyms, so popular in chat rooms, e.g., is not restricted, but the true identities of those who "publish" on the Net must be known to the users' Internet service and Internet content providers. Additionally, Internet providers are obliged to point out the possibility of blocking access to material to their customers and to offer them appropriate technology for blocking access.

Loi sur la communication audiovisuelle, http://www.legalis.net/jnet/2000/loi-audio/projetloi-fin.htm

Source: Florian Rötzer, Frankreich hat mit der Anonymität im internet Schluss gemacht, in: Telepolis, July 2, 2000

http://www.heise.de/tp
INDEXCARD, 35/56
 
Intelsat

Intelsat, the world's biggest communication satellite services provider, is still mainly owned by governments, but will be privatised during 2001, like Eutelsat. A measure already discussed 1996 at an OECD competition policy roundtable in 1996. Signatory of the Intelsat treaty for the United States of America is Comsat, a private company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Additionally Comsat is one of the United Kingdom's signatories. Aggregated, Comsat owns about 20,5% of Intelsat already and is Intelsat's biggest shareholder. In September 1998 Comsat agreed to merge with Lockheed Martin. After the merger, Lockheed Martin will hold at least 49% of Comsat share capital.

http://www.intelsat.int/index.htm

http://www.eutelsat.org/
http://www.oecd.org//daf/clp/roundtables/SATS...
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.nyse.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
http://www.comsat.com/
INDEXCARD, 36/56
 
Kessler Marketing Intelligence (KMI)

KMI is the leading source for information on fiber-optics markets. It offers market research, strategic analysis and product planning services to the opto-electronics and communications industries. KMI tracks the worldwide fiber-optic cable system and sells the findings to the industry. KMI says that every fiber-optics corporation with a need for strategic market planning is a subscriber to their services.

http://www.kmicorp.com/

http://www.kmicorp.com/
INDEXCARD, 37/56
 
Local Area Network (LAN)

A Local Area Network is an office network, a network restricted to a building area.

INDEXCARD, 38/56
 
DES

The U.S. Data Encryption Standard (= DES) is the most widely used encryption algorithm, especially used for protection of financial transactions. It was developed by IBM in 1971. It is a symmetric-key cryptosystem. The DES algorithm uses a 56-bit encryption key, meaning that there are 72,057,594,037,927,936 possible keys.

for more information see:
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,117763+5,00.html
http://www.cryptography.com/des/

http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0...
http://www.cryptography.com/des/
INDEXCARD, 39/56
 
Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn


INDEXCARD, 40/56
 
Caching

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

INDEXCARD, 41/56
 
First Monday

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

http://firstmonday.dk

INDEXCARD, 42/56
 
Robot

Robot relates to any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner. The term is derived from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." Modern use of the term stems from the play R.U.R., written in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek, which depicts society as having become dependent on mechanical workers called robots that are capable of doing any kind of mental or physical work. Modern robot devices descend through two distinct lines of development--the early automation, essentially mechanical toys, and the successive innovations and refinements introduced in the development of industrial machinery.

INDEXCARD, 43/56
 
skytale

The skytale (pronunciation: ski-ta-le) was a Spartan tool for encryption. It consisted of a piece of wood and a leather-strip. Any communicating party needed exactly the same size wooden stick. The secret message was written on the leather-strip that was wound around the wood, unwound again and sent to the recipient by a messenger. The recipient would rewound the leather and by doing this enciphering the message.

INDEXCARD, 44/56
 
Transistor

A transistor is a solid-state device for amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals. Transistors are used in a wide array of electronic equipment, ranging from pocket calculators and radios to industrial robots and communications satellites.

INDEXCARD, 45/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 46/56
 
About Wines

http://www.aboutwine.com/

http://www.aboutwine.com/
INDEXCARD, 47/56
 
Sony Corporation

Japanese SONY KK, major Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products. Headquarters are in Tokyo. The company was incorporated in 1946 and spearheaded Japan's drive to become the world's dominant consumer electronics manufacturer in the late 20th century. The company was one of the first to recognize the potential of the consumer videotape market. In 1972 it formed an affiliate to market its Betamax colour videocassette system. In 1987-88 Sony purchased the CBS Records Group from CBS Inc., thus acquiring the world's largest record company. It followed that purchase with the purchase in 1989 of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.

INDEXCARD, 48/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 49/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 50/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 51/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 52/56
 
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/
INDEXCARD, 53/56
 
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.

INDEXCARD, 54/56
 
Network Information Center (NIC)

Network information centers are organizations responsible for registering and maintaining the domain names on the World Wide Web. Until competition in domain name registration was introduced, they were the only ones responsible. Most countries have their own network information center.

INDEXCARD, 55/56
 
The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The story of Frank-N-furter, Brad and Janet ... Don't dream it, be it!

http://www.rockyhorrorpictureshow.com/

INDEXCARD, 56/56