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World-Infostructure |
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World-Infostructure provides information on a variety of topics that enable to understand the context in which actual developments in the field of new media and technologies happen. The timeline of communication systems presents a chronological overview of the most important events in the  history of communication systems and shows the acceleration in the storage and processing of information. Moreover World-Information.Org explores the level of concentration and exclusion between the north and south as well as between the corporate world and the public interest. On the basis of a world map it illustrates the levels of saturation with technology, and the power structures and assets of the commercial sphere vs. the civil sector and the public interest.
Slaves and expert systems is concerned with technological developments such as the invention of powered machines, computers, robots and artificial intelligence that enable the automation of labor processes. Also the role of expert systems in the workplace and the social status of machines vs. humans is examined. A history of disinformation and propaganda is given in disinformation vs. democracy. It demonstrates the methods of falsification and manipulation in digital environments, and shows the power and dangers of automated information systems and their potential for abuse. The fusion of flesh and machine, the rise of biometrics, the patenting of life, and the development of body implants is the issue of biotechnology convergence.
Related search: World-Infostructure
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Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks
This book gives a fascinating glimpse of the many documented attempts throughout history to develop effective means for long distance communications. Large-scale communication networks are not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The oldest attempts date back to millennia before Christ and include ingenious uses of homing pigeons, mirrors, flags, torches, and beacons. The first true nationwide data networks, however, were being built almost two hundred years ago. At the turn of the 18th century, well before the electromagnetic telegraph was invented, many countries in Europe already had fully operational data communications systems with altogether close to one thousand network stations. The book shows how the so-called information revolution started in 1794, with the design and construction of the first true telegraph network in France, Chappe's fixed optical network.
http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/
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