book

Phone Tracker

The technology to track via mobile phones has been around for a long time. Despite this, most telecoms have been slow to offer this ‘service’ to a general public. Most probably this delay has its background in the need for more sofisticated administrative and technical solutions rather than ethical questionmarks.

The telecoms company Sprint has now begun to offer its Family Locator service

Sprint Family Locator gives you and your family peace of mind in the palm of your hand.

Locate Your Children in real-time, from either a registered “Parent” mobile handset or from the web.

Safety Checks let you know that your children have arrived at home or school on time.

For Only $9.99 a Month have quick, easy, and secure access to the location of up to 4 Sprint-Nextel handsets.

The emphasis is on paranoid parenting (Furedi 2001) i.e. to scare parents and create insecurity so that a need for a solution. This makes accepting the solution offered (in this case the family locator) is the only sensible thing to do. Never mind the fact that spying (even on your own children) is wrong. That those spied upon will devise creative solutions to avoid being spied upon. And that all systems such as these once implemented will be abused through some form of function creep.

Earlier similar posts: Spying on Cars and Privacy, GPS and Children.

Posted on by mklang

To Do Lists

What a great idea for a book. A collection of lists!

Sasha Cagen is the founding editor of To-Do List: a magazine of meaningful minutiae, and the author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics.

She is collecting to-do lists to be published in a book by Simon & Schuster in October 2007.

“To-do” is interpreted broadly: the lists could be boys/girls I have kissed, movies to see, lifelong goals, etc.

I have a couple of old post-it notes to send!

More info here.

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on by mklang

Book Cover Design Competition

My phd thesis goes to the publisher in May and I need a book cover for the work. My own attempts have been less than exciting so here is a competition for all you creative people.

Design a cover for my thesis and I will use it. Your work will appear on the 200-300 copies printed, you will naturally recieve full credit for your work and a copy of the book.

The title of the work is “Disruptive Technology” the undertitle (which should not appear on the cover) is “The Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy”

All submissions need to be in by May 10.

Spread the word!

UPDATE (13 April)

Some questions about the competition & thesis.

Format: Not entirely fixed but approx: Height 23 cm, width 15 cm, length 260 pages.

Colours: No limitations other than the budget does not allow glossy photo-quality covers.
The basic argument of the thesis is: While governments talk about the advantages that technology may bring to the democratic process they are more concerned with streamlining administrative procedures rather than promoting true democratic interaction. When unconventional/innovative uses of technology appear the regulatory desire is to prohibit rather than promote. A draft version of the thesis is available here.

The thesis will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license

Posted on by mklang

Guaman Poma

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote his 1200-page book in 1615 Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (New Chronicle and Good Government) to convince King Philip III of Spain to reform Spanish rule in South America. The book includes 398 full-page drawings. Its aim was to provide the Spanish king with an Andean perspective on colonial Peru.

The Royal Danish Library has digitised it and made it available online here. Some background about the manuscript by the editor Rolena Adorno can be found here.

The tenth Inka, Tupac Inka Yupanqui (p. 110)

Posted on by mklang

Scientific Publication in Europe

In the report Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe (full report here), Commissioned by Directorate-General for Research (January 2006) the following recommendations are made:

A1. Guarantee public access to publicly-funded research results shortly after publication.
A2. Aim at a ‘level-playing field’ in terms of business models in publishing
A3. ‘Extended Quality’ rankings of scientific journals
A4. Guarantee perennial access to scholarly journal digital archives
A5. Foster interoperable tools to improve knowledge, visibility, accessibility and dissemination
B1. Promote pro-competitive pricing strategies
B2. Scrutinize future significant mergers
B3. Promote the development of electronic publications
C1. Setting-up an advisory committee
C2. Further investigation

The market for scientific publications has been under development for a long time. Now the situation we have arrived at is warped. The writers apply for grants (often government grants) to research and write. Sometimes the writers even apply for grants to publish their material. When the material is published the libraries (often funded by public money) then pay to buy back the books or subscribe to the journals.

Very often the system implies that public funding pays for access to the same knowledge several times over. This is a subvention of the scientific publishing industry.

In addition to this the university text book industry has grown into a virutal monopoly where the major players control almost entire markets depending upon subject area. Mergers between the companies have created massive media companies that control the publication of university text books. This is reflected in the price of the litterature.

Posted on by mklang

Desirable Thing No. 1

New computer technology creates new desires and needs. I want to add a list of desirable things not necessarily new things but just the stuff of desire.

Desirable thing no 1. Mac Computer. I began ages ago using Mac computers at school, the first computer I bought was a Mac. Then mac died a bit and I went through a series of PCâ??s from brand names to unknowns. From Windows to Linux. But last year I bought a Mac again. Its design, functionality and all round ability to anticipate and solve problems have made me return to where I began.

Where it all began…

Posted on by mklang

Public Domain Comic

Law books are traditionally text heavy with little or no pictures. Very rarely including humor or light entertainment. Therefore it is great to see what law professors can do when they want to change this!

The Center for the Public Domain have created a cool comic explaining copyright and the public domain. It takes the form of classic horror comics and describes the adventures (or misadventures) of the hero Akiko, the documentary film maker. I thought it was geat! So go look at “Tales from the Public Domain: Bound by Law” by Aoki, Boyle & Jenkins

Read it online or download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Reading tip

In an chapter entitled “Exploring Creative Commons: A Skeptical View of a Worthy Pursuit” Niva Elkin-Koren writes:

It may well be that there is nothing wrong with copyright per se, but only with the way these rights were exploited by copyright owners in recent years. Changing social practices may have a powerful signalling effect, the importance of which could not be overstated. Yet, establishing a workable and sustainable alternative to the current copyright regime would require enforceable legal measures that would restrain the power of copyright owners to govern their works. To achieve this goal it would not be sufficient to facilitate self-restraint and encourage copyright owners to treat their copyright as guardians, protecting it from any attempt to restrict access and reuse. In the long run, creating an alternative to copyright would require a copyright reform.

The chapter is part of the book The Future of the Public Domain, (P. Bernt Hugenholtz & Lucie Guibault, eds.)
Kluwer Law International, forthcoming 2006. It is also available at SSRN.

Posted on by mklang

then there were five days left…

Cool – I can literally feel the tension. Tomorrow I am giving a guest lecture on the Impact of Internet Technology on Human Rights which is fun but as any good supervisor will tell you – this is not the time for fun…

The thesis is still swelling – maybe I should see a doctor? Sorry that was an aweful joke. Today has added 1363 words to make the messy total at 94 881. This late addition was the addition of a larger conclusion in the form of implications of this work.

I also received an interesting book package today including Rampton & Stauber’s book “Trust us, we’re experts” – more info here, and the incredibly cool book by Torbjörn Tännsjö “Du skall understundom dräpa!” (translated: thou shallt sometimes kill!). Tännsjö is a very interesting professor of philosophy at Stockholm University.

Posted on by mklang