Images

Freedom of the press

First I would like to state right off – I did not (still do not) want to get involved in the satirical images of the Prophet discussion.

The BBC report that the Swedish government have closed down a far right news site which contained the images (via Suburbia).

The Swedish government has moved to shut down the website of a far-right political party’s newspaper over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad..It is believed to be the first time a Western government has intervened to block a publication in the growing row…
Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds described Kuriren’s move as “a provocation” by “a small group of extremists.”

“I will defend freedom of the press no matter what the circumstances, but I strongly condemn the provocation by SD-Kuriren. It displays a complete lack of respect,” she said in a statement.

Again – Without wanting to get involved in the fight about the cartoons.
The politician claims to be defending the free press while closing it down. This is retoric from another age, another country another ideology. An interesting thing to add to this is a “what if” experiment. Would the government react in the same way if one of the largest daily newspapers printed the same material? Does political courage in Sweden only apply if the opponent is weak?

How’s that for a thought this weekend?

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23 days

Todays production was +1478 bringing the total up to 177 pages and 87 064 words. It was a good day.

And the countdown is still in the twenties. Today was lots of work on filters & censorship (Look at OpenNet iniative). On Yahoo! helping China chase cyberdissidents and Google creating a ideologically clean (Chinese style) search engine for China. Its obvious that the companies are bending over backwards to gain access to the Chinese market. Despite all the corporate retoric their actions speak louder than words.

censorship
Censorship by Eric Drooker

Reading tip for the weekend: Rosemary Coombe “Commodity Culture, Private Censorship, Branded Environments, and Global Trade Politics: Intellectual Property as a Topic of Law and Society Research“

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25 days

Todays total is 84 660. This means today’s count was +831 words. The main focus of todays writing was on autonomy and the effects of censorship – very cool stuff. Today’s recommended reading is Stuart Hamilton’s doctoral dissertation “To what extent can libraries ensure free, equal and unhampered access to Internet-accessible information resources from a global perspective?” (another link here).

In addition to this I gave a lecture entitled “What is eCommerce” which included a list of top ten dot com deaths from Cnet. Founded in the UK as an online fashion store, Boo.com eventually burned through $160 million before crashing in May 2000. I took the picture in London in 2001. Its an sticker I found near Seven Dials. Not a good slogan considering the fate of Boo…

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26 Days

Today the deleting and the writing almost cancelled each other out. Previous counts have only recorded changes in the 100s of words but today the change is +40 words (exact number). The total today is 83 829 words or 170 pages.

Photo Hans Runesson (1985)

The photo above was taken at a neo-Nazi demonstration in the Swedish town of Växjo in 1985. The woman could not contain her anger any more and ran out among the neo-Nazi demonstrators and hit one of them with her handbag. Her act is a true example of civil courage.
The topic of the day was online civil disobedience. Part of the focus was on the online discussion between the Electrohippies and the Cult of the Dead Cow which took place in 2000. The Electrohippies wrote Client-side Distributed Denial-of-Service: Valid campaign tactic or terrorist act? to which Oxblood Ruffin wrote the Response of the Cult of the Dead Cow.

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Memory & Art

This painting has been with me since I was born. Its almost strange to have had something for this long and still discuss who owns it. Does it belong to the culture from where it came? Many cultures claim art that has ended up in foreign countries. Does it belong to the artist? Intellectual property is life + 70 years and moral rights last forever… What did my distant relative agree upon (and with whom) when he bought the painting in Africa and transported it to Sweden? It has since then travelled to many other places in the world. Does it matter? One day I must write a longer analysis on this topic… a book maybe?

pilipili

About the artist: Pilipil Mulongoy
Born in 1916, he occupies an exceptional place in Congolese painting; they call him the Sorcerer of African luxuriance. Son of a fisherman from Lualaba, he participated in hunting and fishing where he gathered these themes which he later transposed onto his canvas. Pilipili Mulongoy studied in the atelier and later, the Academy of Beaux-Arts of Romain Desposes in Lubumbashi where he developed an essential understanding and skill in the plastic arts in the vast African subcontinent. Pilipili became a professor and integrated a new studio, the “Hangar” at the Academy.
The text was taken long ago from somewhere else… I would love to acknowledge the source but I cannot remember or find where I found it. Another flaw with a copyright system is that you have to remember things like this! (last part in italics added later).

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Teaching term

Today my teaching for this term begins with the course eCommerce. This year I have some surprises for the students in that I have revamped the course and invited lots of new people to give lectures on different aspects. The students will also have to create an online business, play a trust game & write an essay. Too much? I dont think so.

shopping

The main goal is to get the students involved in thinking about the practical side of eCommerce so that they can both develop a critical sense of proportion to the hype and to most of the eCommerce litterature. This term its not enough to study I want the students to do something!

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Future war

future of war

An illustration of a futuristic battle taken from the October 21st 1916 issue of the German news weekly, ‘Die Wochenschau‘ (The Weekly Review). Translation of the caption: ‘Fighting machines of the future :battle between a gigantic trenchdestroyer and a powerful electrically driven ‘circlecruiser”.

via Space and Culture

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Blackboards

The blackboard is slowly slipping away but it wasnt all that long ago when there were passionate debates about the black vs the white board. Today the blackboard is loosing fast. The last bastions of blackboards can be found in the more technical universities (are engineers more conservative?), while the business schools have almost abandoned chalk forever (are they shallow & without history?)

einstein blackboard
Einsteins Board

An exhibition “Bye Bye Blackboard…from Einstein and Others” at the Museum of the History of Science at the University of Oxford has an exhibition of blackboards. The pride and joy being one preserved from a lecture given by Einstein in 1931.

Blackboards were wiped after use: they were meant for immediate communication, not for record. Even as they were being used, their messages were continuously revised, erased and renewed. But when Einstein came to Oxford in 1931, he was already an international celebrity. After one of his lectures a blackboard was preserved and has become a kind of relic. It is the most famous object in this Museum.

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First Monday Conference

The online journal First Monday has reached the grand old age of 10 – and is holding a conference to celebrate the fact. Who said that us academics arent a fun bunch?

first monday logo

First Monday Conference FM10 Openness: Code, science and content
15-17 May 2006, at The University of Illinois at Chicago

Celebrate ten years of First Monday!

More information http://numenor.lib.uic.edu/fmconference/

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Trust & ATM

While I realise that the ATM runs on software, the full implications of this did not hit me until today when I had to wait until the ATM rebooted. Looking at the whole booting up sequence for NT 4 and seeing it do a virus scan did not really fill me with confidence towards the machine. In addition to this the ATM boot procedure stopped a long time with a view of the classic windows desktop with the icons for my documents and internet explorer showing.

ATM

The moral of the story is that the less you know the more you are able to trust. This means that trust is inversly proportional to the amount of relevant information. In other words if you talk about how secure a system is then you force people to become concerned with security when they really did not consider the system to be insecure. Showing the NT4 boot and the virus scan is obviously not done to inspire confidence but seeing it happen made me think about the vunerability of these systems.

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