Adding a haphazard artistic touch to most cities are the street artists. They apply their art in many different ways here it is in the form of a small flag tied up to the railing of a bridge in Göteborg. The flag bears the word “stress” but is it for or against stress?
UNESCO has recently published a report entitled “Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies” – The work was carried out by Mary Rundle and Chris Conley (Net Dialogue) at UNESCO’s request. Here is the text from the press release
In presenting results of this examination, the report first tells an introductory story of how the technologies covered relate to one another. Next, infoethics goals are presented. Then, for each technological trend surveyed, the report contains a short chapter drafted in lay terms to provide an overview of the relevant technology and to highlight ramifications and concerns. The report then summarizes this infoethics analysis and revisits the story of the emerging technologies. Finally, the report offers recommendations on ways to advance infoethics goals in anticipation of these oncoming technologies.
The ethical, legal and societal implications of ICTs are one of the three main priorities of UNESCOâ??s Information for All Programme and UNESCO was recently designated as the Facilitator for the implementation of Action Line C10 â??Ethical Dimensions of the Information Societyâ?? of the Geneva Action Plan adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society.
The full report is available here. At a first glance the 89 page report seems interesting and relevant. I am looking forward to reading it.
(via Question Technology)
Time flies. Actually I think it leaks away like water in a rusty bucket. Anyway I was intending to put some of my London pictures online when I got back but I seem to have been rushing around with no time at all. Days where my calender has looked deceptively empty have turned out to be full of stuff that needs to be done. Anyway here is a limited selection of my pictures.
The first is a picture of a Crazy Frog doll. I get the impression that it is more a dropped dolly than a statement but I do like the fact that the person who picked it up has placed it on the rim of a dustbin – somehow profetic of the move from obscurity to fame to obscurity again.
This is followed by a series of street art – the yellow rat was on a lamp post on Oxford Street
The next one was an interesting mix of shapes and colours, making the end result a collaborative work of art.
This stencil of two men was in a quite alley just off Tottenham Court Road.
The last one is significant of the lack of media plurality and was written in chalk on a newsagents box and bears the text “One source isn’t choice”
Not sure if the collection is representative – but it is what cought my eye when I was walking around.
The global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth has not only got a powerful message but it has now also managed to win an Oscar. Naturally being a politician Al Gore must expect to see this bring new attacks. I came across this Gary Varvel cartoon which is a brilliant example of balancing ideology and strategy (more on this below but first the cartoon). Don’t get me wrong – An Inconvenient Truth is an important documentary and the recognition of an Oscar only helps to promote it’s important message on global warming.
On ideologies and strategies
A few days ago Stellan Vinthagen were discussing the problem of awareness, activism and the need to travel to meet people. The crunch of the dilemma is this:
Most activists are concerned about the environment (not only environmentalists). Yet to be able to carry out effective activism international cooperation is necessary. International cooperation requires travel (despite the Internet and its ilk). Therefore people who are concerned about the environment need to travel.
So how does one reconcile ones ideologies and strategies? In other words if the ideology is about making the world a better place (and travel has a negative impact on this – especially air travel), and the strategy requires international collaboration (which requires travel).
In addition to this is it worse to harm the environment intentionally or unintentionally? Causing intentional harm is most often seen as being far more wrong than unintentional harm (but not always).
Imagine two people (A and B) on a low-budget airplane bound for London. A is traveling to go shopping he/she is unaware of the effects of travel on the environment and is only vaguely aware of global warming. We do not know if A would care about the environment even if he/she was informed about the issues. B is traveling to an international meeting of environmental activists. He/she is greatly concerned about the effects of air travel on the environment but hopes that this meeting will provide an opportunity for more coordinated actions to bring about real changes to help the environment. A will also go shopping in his/her spare time in London.
A therefore is causing unintentional harm but traveling for frivolous reasons. B is causing intentional harm but hopes this is for a good cause. Is there a difference? Does the environment care about the intentions of its destroyers?
Stellan and I did not arrive at any real conclusions in our discussions we just recognized that it is a problem…
Can you shut down your computer for a full day? Why not take the Shutdown Challenge and switch of the old box for a full day on 24 March. This is the kind of challenge which makes you think: I am not addicted I can shut down any time I want to… But I don’t want to!
Actually I have no idea why I should want to promise to shut off my computer on a day a month from now. If I did actually turn off it would probably be more like an accident rather than a planned event. I never was much of a Luddite, I will have to fail this test…
Todayâ??s op-ed piece in the local newspaper Göteborgs Posten is written by Frida Blom the chairperson for Svenska Freds- och Skiljedomsföreningen which is Swedenâ??s largest organization for piece peace. The reason for her article is the Norwegian conference beginning today aimed at bringing about a reduction in the use of cluster bombs.
Apparently Sweden is going to back away from earlier promises to lead and call for reductions in the use of cluster bombs. In December 2006 the Swedish Minister of Defence replied to questions in parliament stating that the governments was going to play an active role in international work against cluster bombs including working for an international ban and actively participated in the coming Norwegian conference on banning cluster bombs. The minister also stated that he was going to do away with Swedenâ??s supply of a (all?) cluster bombs (bombkapsel 90), create a Swedish ban on cluster bombs, and stop the production of bombkapsel 90 for the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighter.
Now it seems that the Minister has discovered that Sweden needs cluster bombs to defend Sweden. So he unfortunately cannot keep his word.
The latter position is either ignorance or bullshit on a higher level. Cluster bombs are not useful defensive tools. They are small bombs which spread over a large area. Many do not detonate, which has the effect of making re-building society after a war a costly and painfully slow process.
So why would the minister change his mind? Cash is king. No point in trying to sell the fighter planes if you also cannot sell the messy stuff.
Aaa â?? Swedish neutrality. Hypocrisy on a higher level.
The Bad Vista blog has an interesting post about Dell. Apparently the company is looking for ideas how they can improve their systems. Besides letting them know which hardware they should have, Bad Vista recommends letting them know that selling their computers with preinstalled with free software, or without any operating system would be a way of promoting freedom.
You can go here to propose your idea and to vote for ideas you support. If you register an account with them, your vote counts for 10 anonymous votes.
Bad Vista also has created a nice t-shirt on Cafe Press
On Friday it’s time for me to give a lecture on Technology and Human Rights for the local masters course on human rights. The nice part about this lecture is that it gives me the opportunity to collect and explore different strands of my work and present them to a new audience. My interest in this area began some time ago and resulted in 2005 in the collected edition Human Rights in the Digital Age which I edited together with Andrew Murray.
Discussing technology and rights can at times feel a bit banal. Human rights activists struggle to free people from torture and death so isn’t technology a small waste of time? There is no way in which it would be fair to compare technology and rights to the work of activists against the death penalty. But there is a major problem if all issues must be resolved in the order of magnitude. Speech rights may be less important to someone facing the death penalty but this does not mean that we should ignore speech rights until we have managed to abolish the death penalty.
For the lecture on Friday I am planning to look at three different areas.
The first area is going to be the use of the Internet as a “place” for political participation. I want to discuss the Internet as an area of political discourse and in particular show its possibilities and its fundamental flaws and limitations. This area should include freedom of speech and freedom of association.
The second area is privacy. In particular I want to focus on the merging of online and offline data. Or to put it another way the combination of spatial information (where you are) with the information traces stored in databases (who you are) to show the advanced control mechanism being created.
The final area is the aggregate use of technology. In this section I want to show the audience that with each piece of technology we may implement for our comfort we also form and shape our lives. In particular we also shape the way in which our lives may be controlled by others. This incremental implementation of technology does not bring large protests since no large rights are threatened overall. However the net long term result is darker than anything Orwell would have dreamed about.
The overall goal is to make the audience a bit paranoid about technology – to make them question the choices we are all making in our rush towards a more convenient way of life. Not bad for a Friday…
Local graffiti seems to be well in tune to the special days of the calender. Today the signs all labeled with a text in French:
But what on earth happened to google? Did they get so exhillarated by Valentines that they managed to lose their L. Or is this a sign? Oh, well Happy Valentine’s Googe…
It’s election time in the local Mumbai elections and among the people I have spoken to the general feeling is that politicians lie and cheat to get into power and then once in they ignore all the election promises that they made. Sounds familiar…
Actually outside the media and bills posted on walls the actual election has been very quite. Considering that Mumbai has a population of over 12 million you would have expected more action. My media coverage has been thin, mainly the overly positive (to almost everything) Times of India which is basically pushing people to go and vote – even if they leave a blank vote. Mainly it seems to be local celebrities talking about the importance of democratic participation.
There is not much political graffiti mainly handbills but there is an exception and that is the blue paint of which is seen in a few places
But the most intimidating seems to be some of the ads which attempt to bully the voters into choosing their party…
