Reading

Change of State

Do you read First Monday? Well to be honest I don’t usually have the time to read through every issue but I get the email alert for every new issue – its out on the first Monday of every month – and I tend to browse through the titles and find something interesting to read each month.

First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peerâ??reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, First Monday has published 795 papers in 132 issues; these papers were written by 951 different authors. In addition, eight special issues have appeared.

This month has a focus on Wikipedia which is naturally interesting but what really caught my eye was a chapter from Sandra Braman’s book Change of State: Information, Policy and Power.

Thanks to MIT Press and Sandra Braman, First Monday is pleased to present an excerpt from Sandraâ??s latest book Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power. This book examines the implications of the change of the governments from welfare states to informational states. Sandra describes how information policy in areas as diverse as intellectual property, border protection, privacy, and research funding affect issues such as identity, the nature of technological systems, and organizational structures.

The table of contents for Change of State follows with a link to chapter 9, â??Information, Policy, and Power in the Informational State.â??

The book is naturally amerocentric but promises some interesting ideas. It looks like another book to add to the reading list – check it out.

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Been Offline

Since I spent the weekend moving I have been unable to go online. Actually my online behavior of late can at best be called erratic. All due to the weekends activities. The tough part about this is not so much getting organised afterwards (which is terrible) but to attempt to catch up on all the reading. My inbox, rss reader and real life reading have piled up in an incredible way. This all makes me feel like Chaplin in the film “Modern Times“.

The lack of time to read is a common complaint. This is also connected to the increase in channels of information pouring in. Some of the choices are easy, while others are tough to lose for nostalgic reasons. Less or no television, skip the daily newspaper, more focused book reading, attempting to focus on one task at a time (rather than multitasking) and generally staying on top of all information flows by not allowing them to pile up.

Was it always like this? Obviously the couple of hundred feeds in my rss is new. How should one cope with the information one wants to maintain without becoming a simplified one-track person? In Republic.com Cass Sunstein writes about the daily me. This is the idea that users will tailor their information needs and ignore all “unnecessary” information. The result can be the creation of groups of outsiders who are unable to relate to their local groups.

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Rare Book Room

Wow – I have just found the Rare Book Room (via Stingy Scholar). It is an educational website intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.

Over the last ten years, a company called “Octavo” embarked on digitally photographing some of the world â??s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.

In particular the site contains:

1. Some of the great books in science, including books by Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, Darwin and others.

2. Most of the Shakespeare Quartos from the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the National Library of Scotland. It also contains the First Folio from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

3. A complete set of Poor Richardâ??s Almanac by Benjaman Franklin.

4. Very rare editions: Gutenberg â??s Bible (from the Library of Congress), Harvey’s book on the circulation of blood, Galileo â??s Siderius Nuncius, the first printing of the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta.

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Back in Sweden

Just returned from the London trip which went very well. I gave two lectures and a seminar at the London School of Economics. The first and second (same lecture on two different days) was on Internet Civil Disobedience. The focus was on the use of Internet technology in acts of civil disobedience with a focus on  denial of service attacks. The seminar was on the Democratic Effects of Attempts to Regulate Internet Technology – this is basically my thesis work and the discussion is on the negative effects that attempts to regulate the Internet have on democratic participation via the Internet. Both lectures and the seminar went very well.

The rest of the time was spent both in meetings and in a well deserved relaxation. As usual London offered the opportunity for lots of interesting new additions to my reading list. Besides the two mentioned earlier (Peter Singerâ??s One World: The ethics of globalization and a book edited by Roth, Worden and Bernstein called Torture: Does it make us safer? Is it ever OK? A Human Rights Perspective). I came across John Pilger Freedom Next Time (a fantastic book I have already read half of it – it is a wake up call for anyone who wants to see the way in which mainstream media stifles important stories relevant to human rights.

Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power (by Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark), From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk Eds) and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (James C. Scott) are three books which are highly relevant to my resistance work.

The list is nicely rounded up by Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies (Andy Oram editor) and Computer Ethics and Professional Responsibility (edited by Terrell Ward Bynum and Simon Rogerson).

To me this is a very exciting list of books the only problem is to find the time they deserve to be able to read the properly. To me book shopping in London is not really about the large and wonderful bookstores that contain everything. I tend to get lost among so many books, become indecisive and leave empty handed. I much prefer the eclectic mix to be found in good second hand or remainder bookstores.  These also have the additional benefit of being really cheap. The most expensive among this list was Pilger’s book which cost only 8 pounds for a new hardback.

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Industrial IT

The people at the Industrial IT group have got a blog (finally) some of them have been lurking around on this blog for some time its good to see that they have created a virtual soap-box of their own. The group resides in the far northern outback of Sweden in the city of Ume̴ Рthey also do some really cool work. Maybe its because its too cold to go out?

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Two Year Shelf Life

This is scary stuff almost on the same level as book-burning – ok so not really that bad but something feels wrong about this. Via the Swedish blog Biblioteksrelaterat I arrived at an article in the Washington Post Hello, Grisham — So Long, Hemingway? The article was about a library in Fairfax which was absolutely ruthless in getting rid of books which were not being read. Books that had not been checked out in 24 months are now removed from the library.

Naturally the library cannot save all books but 24 months? This is the shelf-life of knowledge and literature? The books in my home are not re-read every 24 months but this does not mean that they need to be replaced by the flavor of the day.

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Last Lines

The opening lines to any work are obviously of great importance. Many writers spend a lot of time and effort to get the line just right. One of my favourite opening lines is from Camus “The Stranger”. The confusion and sadness in the opening lines both sets the stage and sums up the confusion of the character.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I donâ??t know. I had a telegram from home: â??mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.â?? That doesnâ??t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.

Closing lines rarely recieve the same amount of attention – which is strange. The importance of opening and closing is not limited to fictional works. Academic works also attempt lift their work with opening and closing lines. Here are a few examples:

Democracy and its critics (Dahl 1989): Yet the vision of people governing themselves as political equals, and possessing all the resources and institutions necessary to do so, will I believe remain a compelling if always demanding guide in the search for a society in which people may live together in peace, respect each other’s intristic equality, and jointly seek the best possible life”

Water Wars (Shiva 2002): The struggle over the kumbh, between gods and demons, between those who protect and those who destroy, between those who nurture and those who exploit, is ongoing. Each of us has a role in shaping the creation of the future. Each of us is responsible for the kumbh – the sacred water pot.

A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971): Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.

Free Speech: A philosophical enquiry (Schauer 1982): There will always remain some hard cases, but many of them are not as hard as they may at first sight appear.

My own last line: Discarding the technology entails a limited, regulated use but will fail to recognise the full potential of disruptive technologies as an agent of change within the participatory democracy.

Some last lines attempt to sum up the whole work, some attempt to sum up the last chapter, others simply finish of the final chapter. Obviously there must be a last line in a book and this line need not have any particular function in itself – but it seems a bit of an anti-climax when the last line of a good book has no other desire than to end the book.

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More free books

Books that are free (as in beer) are simply irresistible and these two seem particularly relevant to my interests thats a big additional bonus! They are available online for free download or the old fashioned dead-tree version. Actually I shouldn’t be like that – I prefer the dead tree versions…

A collection of essays (edited by Joseph Feller and others) called: Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software some of it is familiar but it is nice to have it all collected in one place. It can be downloaded all at once here or chapter by chapter here.

The second one is John Logieâ??s book Peers, Pirates and Persuasion which is about the rhetoric of the peer-to-peer debates. A good analysis of the rhetorics of file sharing has been missing so I am really looking forward to reading this book. Download if here.

(Via Lex Ferenda)

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Back in the office

It’s kind of creepy. Back in the office my Far Side calender is on 23 January, some of the plants are almost dead, there is a pile of snail mail and little tasks which seem to have been ignored under the principle: “since he isn’t here…” Despite the fact that the temperature is -3 and there is an unseemly pile of work to be done – it’s good to be back in the chair.

While unpacking and organising yesterday I discovered that I had managed to buy “only” these books while in India (in part this was due to a book sale we were take to): The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (by Louis Fischer) this was recommended to me as the authoritative biography. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity (by Amartya Sen) I have not read enough of Senâ??s work but I do like his work. After reading the preface I know that I shall enjoy this work very much. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (by Amartya Sen) another of Senâ??s works, this one argues for a better understanding of multiculturalism against violent nationalism.

Madness and Civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason by Michel Foucault, I do not have my own copy so when this popped up at an Indian book sale: say no more! Inside the Wire: A military intelligence soldier’s eyewitness account of life at Guantanamo (by Erik Saar & Viveca Novak) not sure about the depth but it is a subject of great importance.

Wars of the 21st Century: New Threats New Fears (by Ignacio Ramonet) the nice thing about ending up buying books in India is that the focus shifts from the usual suspects that populate my local stores. Ramonet seems to be very relevant to my interests. Democracy’s Place (Ian Shapiro) simply could not resist this. War and the Media: Reporting Conflict 24/7 (edited by Daya Kishan Thussu & Des Freedman) a exciting anthology on the subject of war & media. The Art of the Feud: Reconceptualizing International Relations (by Jose V. Ciprut) this is an exciting fresh look which I just happened across at the sale.

Simply from the point of view of new input the trip was very rewarding.

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Book Prize

I am easy to please. I just found out that I have won a copy of â??I väntan pÃ¥ Lenins begravningâ?? by Amanda Lövkvist the book is about activists in St. Petersburg and the title is the somewhat cryptic “Waiting for Lenin’s funeral”. The book competition was organised by Johan Karlsson over at Mothugg – he is on the publishing team of the book publishers Silc.

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