politics

Andrew "Da-Man" Murray

Can you believe that I almost forgot to tell everyone about it? My friend Andrew has just published his first solo work! Too cool. Andrew’s book is called “The Regulation of Cyberspace: Control in the online environment” and is an excellent mix of academia, anecdote, politics, law, raw power and technology.

He cites examples as varied as the online coffee pot at Cambridge to the Live8 ebay scandals of 2005, draws from academic fields of information technology, law, philosophy and physics. His point? Basically the world of Internet regulation is much more complex than we care to accept. Regulation is neither hierarchical nor a question of social practice therefore we must bravely accept this and come to terms with the uncertainty of the situation…

Andrew D. Murray – The Regulation of Cyberspace is going to be influential and long lived. Get it from Amazon here!

Posted on by mklang

Iron Harvest

If we ignore the nationalistic/romantic ramblings of some deranged people there is a consensus that war is not a good thing. Certain wars (unfortunately not all) get a great deal of media attention – which may lead to popular cries for peace. â??Secretâ?? or unpublicized wars are harder to end.

The end of war is naturally worth working for. But it also brings with it a loss of interest in the region and the people involved. This is natural since most people (me included) tend to see the end of fighting as the solution. Naturally there is a need for reconciliation and rebuilding but thatâ??s about it.

But, this complacent attitude of mine was too be rudely disturbed when I came across the term â??iron harvestâ??.

The term is used by farmers in Belgium and France to describe the yearly amount of WWI ordinance found while plowing their fields. It’s more than 80 years since the war ended and still enough war garbage appears to motivate a term of its own.  â??The French Département du Déminage recover about 900 tons of unexploded munitions every year. Since 1945, approximately 630 French démineurs have died handling unexploded munitions.â?? (Wikipedia)

But naturally the problems do not stop with an old war. As recently as 2006 the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah in Lebanon resulted in up to one million unexploded cluster bombs (BBC News). Estimates made by U.N. officials indicate that 90 of all cluster bombs used were launched during the last 72 hours of the conflict (Washington Post)

These small lethal bombs are left lying about in fields and in ruins. This slows the pace of economic and social recovery since the fields are too dangerous to use and rebuilding takes much longer. Not to mention all the accidental casualties and fatalities which occur when people come into contact with these lethal bombs.

Theoretically such ordinance should be easily prohibited by the present rules of war but unfortunately they are not. Therefore special legislation is required. Belgium has gone the furthest among countries and banned cluster bombs completely. Other countries are also working towards this goal.

Replying to questions in Parliament, the Swedish Minister of Defence (December 2006) has stated the governments is 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.
Lets hope he keeps his promise.

Unsurprisingly, the UK and US are for cluster bombs â?? or rather against the banning of the bombs (great article by Monbiot)

Somewhere behind all the politics there is a designer. Once again we need to ask â?? what kind of mind designs technology like this? After a hard day at the drawing board does he or she go home to his family and smile? What will he/she till his/her children when they ask what he does? â??Daddy designs bombs which kill childrenâ??

I donâ??t think soâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Butterfly Effect

Small unimportant acts can have major effects. We may not see them when they small actions happen but then the results can explode in the future. Whether you choose to call it syncronicity or chaos theory it is mind-boggling when you think about it.

Or what about Theresa LePore? Remember her? She redesigned the Florida Ballot slips. These managed to confuse enough voters so that Bush won the election. Now after enough chaos in the Middle East to confuse anyone (and to cause no end of intended and unintended effects) they are about to hang Saddam.

Here is a great short movie called Spin (its on YouTube). I think its a nice illustration of the butterfly effect… It’s also a very cool short movie. Unfortunately I cannot embed it into the posting as this keeps breaking my blog.

Posted on by mklang

Umbrella City

Today I have been lecturing at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University College of BorÃ¥s. The course is called Theories of the Information Society and Information Policy and my lecture was on Information Politics. So basically I got to talk about my own subject for three hours. So cool. I just love guest lecturing…

When arriving at the station in BorÃ¥s I was informed that the kiosk at the station has a umbrella leasing system. Basically you can lease an umbrella for the day. You pay 60 kr and if you return the umbrella at the end of the day you get 40 kr back. What a totally impressive system. I have never seen this in Göteborg or in England (two places famous for their rain). It’s nice to see a city taking its climate seriously.

All I need now is to find a place that rents out bowler hats…
(image from here)
Posted on by mklang

Fashion rules the blogs

Checking some statistics on Swedish blogs only to find that right now seven out of the top ten blogs are fashion blogs (according to this counter). Now even if we discount the methodology used it is still a scary statistic.

Yes â??scaryâ??.

Even if we try to explain the fact by claiming technological arrogance and superiority. That maybe fashion oriented people visit blogs while many others use rss readers it still does not begin to match the statistic â?? seven out of the ten top blogs are focused on fashion.

Therefore the clothes we wear are more important to the population at large than any other subject or topic. Forget social issues, forget politics, forget technology, forget war, and forget sex. Fashion rules the blogosphere.

We have come a long way from Naomi Klein “No Logo” and the like…

In an attempt to capitalise on this information cartoonist Mattias Adolfsson has turned his blog into a fashion blog for one week only. But be warned â?? fashion isnâ??t what it used to be when Mattias looks at it!

Check out his “Showroom” series of sketches.

Posted on by mklang

Artifactuality and Material Culture

Here is a very cool sounding PhD seminar course: Towards a â??New Materialismâ??? Exploring Artifactuality and Material Culture in History of Science, Technology and Medicine

A monthly Ã?resund reading symposium arranged by History of Technology Division, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)/The Danish National Museum of Science and Technology, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, & Research Policy Institute, Lund University

Schedule & Reading:

Thursday October 5, DTU, Lyngby
Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (2004)

Thursday November 6, University of Lund, Lund
Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science (1995)
Thursday December 7, Medical Museion, Copenhagen
Sharon Macdonald, ed., Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (1997)
Thursday January 25, Museum in Copenhagen To Be Decided (TBD)
Bill Brown, ed. Things (2004)
Thursday February 22, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Soraya de Chadarevian & Nick Hopwood, ed., Models: The Third Dimension of Science (2004)

Thursday March 22, Museum in Copenhagen TBD
Larsson, ed., Cultures of Creativity: Birth of a 21st Century Museum (2006)
Thursday April 19, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (1997)
Thursday May 24, Museum in Copenhagen TBD
Tim Dant, Materiality and Society (2005)
Thursday June 21, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel, ed., Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005)

Register before 21 September – More information here. It’s very, very tempting…

(via Perfekta Tomrummet)

Posted on by mklang

Return of Eugenics?

All people in power are scary. From annoying taxi drivers who feel a need to spout their home-grown loony political theories believe they are right since nobody contradicts them (we just want to arrive at our destinations) to world leaders who interpret their position in office as a sign that they are “chosen” or “special”. Naturally they are elected. But the mechanics of elections should not be interpreted to mean that they are “chosen” in the sense of “the chosen one”.

There is of course the problem that peopl in power tend to become isolated from the people they serve. This enhances the impression that they are “chosen”.

Tony Blair is a good example. He has long been moving towards “resolving” the issue of problem children and those involved in anti-social behaviour (a scary catch-all criminal offence in the UK). This is scary but not crazy-scary.

Crazy-scary is when he now states that the effort to prevent or resolve these issues may include measures “pre-birth”.

He said the government could say to an unmarried teenage mother who was not in a stable relationship: “Here is the support we are prepared to offer you, but we do need to keep a careful watch on you and how your situation is developing because all the indicators are that your type of situation can lead to problems in the future.”

Anastasia de Waal, of social policy think tank Civitas, was quoted on the BBC’s website as saying: “It is teetering on genetic determinism this kind of saying that before children are even born they are labelled as problematic.”

Link: globeandmail.com : Blair wants state to prevent growth of problem children.

also: BBC News: Blair hits back over ‘baby Asbos’

(via Question Technology)
Instead of attempting to deal with the social issues that lie at the root – these kinds of actions are levelled at attacking those who are already in an impossible situation. I was taught not to kick people who are already down…

Posted on by mklang

So long, Pluto

Not every lifetime has the privilege of experiencing the discovery of new planets â?? in particular in our own solar system. But we are now living in an exiting time. Today a major decision will be made that will effect our solar system. We are going to remove some planets from the solar system.

So how many planets will there be in the solar system tomorrow? If you are a betting person then the safe money is on the number eight. This means that Pluto is out. Even though it has been accepted as a planet since its discovery in 1840 1930.

The reason (New Scientist) for the loss of Pluto is the acceptance of a new planetary definition that a planet must be the dominant body in its orbital zone, clearing out any little neighbours. Pluto does not qualify because its orbit crosses that of the vastly larger Neptune.

The other Pluto

Pluto may become either a “dwarf-planet” or planetoid. But even though the safe money is on the adoption of the new definition there is always the chance that the long shot will win and the pro-Pluto-as-planet lobby will succeed! Ok so I have no idea whether there is a pro-Pluto-as-planet lobby but can you picture the whole decision making body: the politics, the lobbying, the intrigueâ?¦ Being an astronomer must be exiting stuff right now.

Or maybe the whole thing is a ruse to be able to reprint all the astronomy booksâ?¦
Take a look at the cool BBC astronomy website.

Posted on by mklang

Illusory Technology Politics

The Pirate Party today announced the launch of the “World’s First Commercial Darknet” through a Swedish company called Relakks. From the press release:

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

But before anyone gets too excited it’s not the first and it’s not really that innovative. Read more on Relakks security page (in Swedish).

As the P2P blog points out this announcement has more to do with political spin than with technical or legal innovation. Besides sounding really cool there is nothing new here. This can only be interpreted as a sign that the Pirate Party are learning the political ropes really quickly. First rule of politics: It’s ok if you don’t do anything as long as it sounds like your are doing a lot.


From the movie: Wag the Dog

P2P blog also questions whether the users of the system are actually protected in reality. Or whether this is only an illusion. They support this question by pointing to weaknesses in the legal information at Relakks and also bring into question whether Relakks has the position, determination or will to defend file-sharers.

Yes I am grumpier than normal. My excuse is that I am sitting late into the night working on my thesis…again!

Posted on by mklang

Fingerprinting Children

Mandatory fingerprinting for all over children over 12. Does this sound like an idea straight out of a dystopian nightmare? Wrong! This comes from a report (EU doc no: 9403/1/06) from the EU Council Presidency meeting of 26 June 2006. And it gets worse individual states will be fingerprinting infants from day one â?? as soon as this becomes technically possible.

Why the age of six? Is it to protect the integrity of the youngest? No such luck. As the report states: â??Scientific tests have confirmed that the papillary ridges on the fingers are not sufficiently developed to allow biometric capture and analysis until the age of six.â??

This issue was previously discussed in the meeting of the Visa Working Party (EU doc no: 10540/06). This latter discussion shows an unanimous will to adopt compulsory fingerprinting and no real integrity objections to states to adopt fingerprinting at an earlier age.

In May the BBC reported that children under the age of five were being fingerprinted to attempt to ensure that fraudulent benefit claims made by asylum seekers were unsuccessful.

(via Statewatch)

Posted on by mklang