Academia

Surveillance Report

The Surveillance Studies Network (some information here) has released its â??A Report on the Surveillance Societyâ?? (editor: David Murakami Wood, authors: Kirstie Ball, David Lyon, David Murakami Wood, Clive Norris & Charles Raab)

The report consists of five sections entitled:

Introducing the Surveillance Society
A Survey of the Surveillance Society
A Week in the Life of the Surveillance Society 2006
Glimpses of Life in the Surveillance Society 2016
Regulating the Surveillance Society

Download the report as a PDF here.

The BBC website has a short readable list of ways in which surveillance takes place in addition to a news article on the new report.

In relation to this see also Privacy International and the results of their international survey. This survey showa that the UK is among the nations which have the worst protection of privacy rights. Or to put it in a more positive light â?? the UK is one of the leading surveillance states.

Posted on by mklang

Copyright Australian Style

From Matthew Rimmer we get an update on the copyright situation in Australia where the Australian Parliament is viewing an amendment of copyright (Copyright Amendment Bill 2006).

Matthew writes that instead of creating a US style defence of fair use or even reforming the defence of fair dealing, the Australian Government has actually narrowed the defence of fair dealing in respect of research and study. There are new minor exceptions on time-shifting, format-shifting, non-commercial use by libraries and archives, and satire and parody.

However, such provisions have been so narrowly framed that they are largely unworkable and inoperable.
Search engines, such as Google, will be in particular strife in Australia under such a regime. In addition, the Australian Government is providing copyright owners with stronger technological protection measures and a wide range of remedies.

A Parliamentary Committee will hear half a day of debate next week on the topic. Some of the submissions of interest are from: The Australian Digital Alliance, The Australian Libraries Copyright Committee, and the submission of Google.

Posted on by mklang

Art of War (free audiobook)

Sun Tzu’s classic the Art of War is this month’s free audiobook download from Learn Out Loud.

The Art of War is one of the oldest and most famous studies of strategy and has had a huge influence on military planning, business tactics, and beyond. First translated into a European language in 1782 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, it had been credited with influencing Napoleon, the German General Staff, and even the planning of Operation Desert Storm. Leaders as diverse as Mao Zedong, Vo Nguyen Giap, and General Douglas MacArthur have claimed to have drawn inspiration from the work. (Wikipedia)

The narrator is Christy Lynn.

This is only free to download during the month of November so do it now or miss the opportunity…

(via The Stingy Scholar)

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Postdocs at Humlab

Why not spend an exotic year at Humlab in Umeå (North Sweden)? They are offering Postdocs. Unfortunately I am not qualified since I have a Swedish PhD.

You are expected to have a PhD degree in a humanities discipline from an international (non-Swedish) university. You may not have been employed by Umeå University or had a postdoctoral scholarship at the university. The intention is to have all postdoctoral positions affiliated both with HUMlab and an appropriate department at the Humanities faculty. We are looking for applicants with documented interest in any of the four research areas, and a willingness to engage with digital humanities more broadly. You need to have excellent written and oral proficiency in English. HUMlab is a lively and convivial studio space with a wide variety of activities, research, technologies and cross-disciplinary interaction. It is expected that you will contribute to such an environment and you also share our interest in working with traditional humanities disciplines and other related areas. Furthermore you will be expected to participate actively in any of the four research groups associated with the initiative. Therefore you will need to live in Umeå during the post doc period.

This would definately be an exotic experience doing research among the cool people up north.
More info.

Posted on by mklang

How about that Ubuntu?

Most people move in tight social circles with shared norms and languages. For my part it’s techtalk, legalese  or academiaspeak . Every now and then, when I escape from my normal habitat, I am reminded that this is not the standard language in all circles. Sometimes amusing or confusing events occur.

xkcd has captured a moment like this…

Posted on by mklang

Darwinian Evolution Online

The Complete Works of Charles Darwin are to be found online â?? for free. So OK you are hard to please and you have seen books online before. But wait! This site offers more. You can even download Charles Darwin audio books â?? for free.

An amazing collection of Darwinâ??s works are available in MP3 hits like the â??Fertilisation of Orchidsâ?? (1862) to the â??On the Origin of Speciesâ?? (1859) all iPod ready.

This site contains every Darwin publication as well as many of his handwritten manuscripts. All told there are more than 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images. There is also the most comprehensive Darwin bibliography ever published and the largest manuscript catalogue ever assembled. More than 150 ancillary texts are also included, ranging from reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, descriptions of Darwin’s Beagle specimens and important works for understanding Darwin’s context. Free audio mp3 versions of his works are also available.

The site was launched on 19 October this year and is amazing. It is a testimony to the victory of content over web-design.

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang

Jewellrey Music Lyrics

Claire B has started a blog called The Mummy’s Bracelet. It based on her research in the area of death and jewellrey so we can look forward to some odd and interesting posts over there. In here premier post she asks her readers to help her come up with music with jewellrey lyrics to “…to create a musical soundtrack for my ongoing PhD project…”

Too right – I think more PhD’s should come with soundtracks.

I cannot think of any music with jewellrey lyrics – my mind goes blank and all I have is Diamonds are for ever (Must read Björn Hallberg’s critique of De Beer’s Blood Diamonds over at Battleangel) and Wagners Ring (which isn’t even about Jewellrey).

Posted on by mklang

Good News

Today has been a good day. Two pieces of very good news dropped in. The first is that the Technical Museum in Stockholm has asked us (Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef & I) to build a Freedom Toaster for an exhibition.

The second piece of good news is that we have received approval from the Dean of our faculty that we can form a Centre for Free Software. This means that FSF Europe will have a stronger base in Sweden and that we will be able to lay the foundations for a long-term research agenda in Free Software.

Obviously there is a lot more to say about this latter point but that will have to come at a later stage when we have begun to formalise what we want to do and what we are able to do. The founding people at the centre are Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef, Lennart Petersson, Alan Carlsson and myself.

Posted on by mklang

File Sharing

This week is university week at the University of Göteborg. This means that we give lots of lectures to the public. It’s fun to do this since the general public is demands a different form of presentation than students.

So in about twenty minutes I shall be holding a short lecture 45 minutes on the technical and legal implications and developments in file sharing.

To ensure that I catch and keep everyones attention I have lots of pictures of playmobile figues, at least 8 different pictures of Mona Lisa and a film of Bush & Blair singing a duet.

It should be fun – and maybe the audience will enjoy themselves…

Posted on by mklang

Academic Blogs in Sweden

Sakj is studying Swedish academic blogs and has but up a list of Swedish academic blogs. The list contains 29 blogs (yes – mine is included) but what surprises me is that there are only 29. So I am writing this post in an effort to find more Swedish academic blogs. If you know that your blog should be on this list then add it to the comments…

Oh, and several of them do write in English.

The List

Röda Nejlikan: PhD student (science and technology studies), Research Policy Institute, Lund University.

Models for Life in Virtual Game Worlds: PhD student (game design), Gotland University.

Doktorandbloggen: PhD student (physical chemistry), Uppsala University.

Unknown Alternatives: PhD (informatics), Umeå University.

Transforming Grounds: Professor, the School of Informatics, Indiana University & Umeå University.

Markmedia: Lecturer JMK (The Department of Journalism, Media and Communication), Stockholm University.

Soul Sphincter: PhD student (english literature and IT), Umeå University.

Nätkulturer: PhD student (interactive media and learning), Umeå University.

Andart: PhD (computer science).

Projectories: PhD Student (technology and social change (Tema-T)), Linköping University.

Mothugg: PhD Student (political science), Göteborg University.

Loci.se: PhD Student (history education), Ã?rebro University.

Forskarbloggen: researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Stochastically: Professor, Royal Institute of Technology?

Med fingrarna i ekorrhjulet: (anonymous) someone in nano science.

Jenny W: PhD Student (law), Uppsala University.

Infotology: PhD in Cognitive Science, & Associate Professor, Human Ecology Division, Lund University.

Berghs Betraktelser: Research fellow, Ratio and Department of Economics, Lund University.

Salto Sobrius: PhD Archeology.

Klimatbloggen: PhD student (oceanography), Göteborg University.

Mia++: PhD student (english) Uppsala University and English Studies at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona.

Kommenterat: PhD student, (informatics).

Perfekta Tomrummet: Associate Professor, Research Policy Institute, Lund University.

Emerging Communications: PhD student (english linguistics), Umeå University.

Net-life: PhD student (informatics) Umeå University.

the sum of my parts: PhD student (english linguistics), Umeå University.

Frepa.blog: Assistant Professor, dept. of Interactive Media and Learning (IML) at Umeå University.

Vetenskapsnytt: PhD student (computer science), Royal Institute of Technology.

On my rss reader I had three blogs that were not on Sakj’s list:

Marie Eneman: PhD Student (informatics), Göteborg University.

Patrik’s Sprawl: PhD Humlab & UmeÃ¥ University.

Tankeorganisation: PhD Student (physics), Uppsala University.

Posted on by mklang