public

Free Aunty Beeb

The BBC is one of those world institutions, a social and cultural backbone which we almost always take for granted. Naturally one does not achieve such status without making wrong turns. Thankfully there are those who are quick to point out the errors and attempt to show the correct path. Much like one may lead an old aunty to the table there are activists who disagree with the BBC’s use of DRM technologies.

The site Free the BBC contains a letter to the BBC with the main arguments (relevant to the BBC) against DRM. Many of the arguments have been heard before but I particularly liked this new one:

The BBC royal charter establishes a number of goals and operating conditions including “promoting education and learning”, “stimulating creativity and cultural excellence”, and “bringing the UK to the world”. DRM runs contrary to all of these purposes. DRM limits education by restricting copying for public educational purposes, and even inhibits private study. It stifles creativity by trying to make even incidental remixing impossible. Finally, it arbitrarily limits the BBC’s reach by forcing viewers to use particular proprietary software applications. DRM advances corporate interests over the public interest, which is in flagrant opposition to the charter.

So what are you waiting for? Go there, read the letter containing the arguments and sign it!

For those of you who found the title slightly cryptic: The BBC is sometimes referred to as Aunty Beeb.

Posted on by mklang

Harvard Thesis Repository

With so many discussions on Free Culture, Open Access and the problems connected with making academic publishing available outside academia it is surprising how few good places there are to find thesis’ online.

This is why I was happy when Peter Murray-Rust pointed me towards the Harvard College Thesis Repository (a project of Harvard College Free Culture).

Here Harvard students make their senior theses accessible to the world, for the advancement of scholarship and the widening of open access to academic research.

Too many academics still permit publishers to restrict access to their work, needlessly limitingâ??cutting in half, or worseâ??readership, research impact, and research productivity. For more background, check out our op-ed article in The Harvard Crimson.

If you’ve written a thesis in Harvard College, you’re invited to take a step toward open access right here, by uploading your thesis for the world to read. (If you’re heading for an academic career, this can even be a purely selfish moveâ??a first taste of the greater readership and greater impact that comes with open access.)
If you’re interested in what the students at (ahem) the finest university in the world have to say at the culmination of their undergraduate careers, look around.

The FAQ explains much of the process. It is also good to see that they are applying Creative Commons Attribution License

Q. What permissions do I have to grant to free my thesis?

A. To make sure your thesis is always available for scholars to build on, we ask that you give everyone permission to do the things you’d want to be able to do with a scholarly work you liked: download the work, read it, keep copies, share it with other people, and adapt it into fresh works. The specific legal permission we ask for is the Creative Commons Attribution License, the same one required by the world’s leading biology journal PLoS Biology and the other journals of the Public Library of Science.

My only (small) complaint is that I wish the repository was clearer in showing the license terms for their content. I only found it in the faq. Normally I would not bother reading the faq. To increase the usability of the site the terms should be on the download page and preferably on the essay file.
Despite this I think this is an excellent initiative and I would hope that the fact that Harvard has taken a step such as this would work as an incentive for other universities to follow suite.

Posted on by mklang

DNA & Racial Profiling

The Register reports that by 2010 (only three more years) half of all British black males will be included in the police DNA database.

Government figures show there are 244,695 black British males on the DNA database, said the Libdems in a statement today. Using government estimates that there will be 4.5 million people on the DNA database in three years, official predictions of population growth and ethnicity, the Libdems have predicted that there will be 288,652 black males on the database.

That’s 51.9 per cent of black males and 68 per cent of black males of an “arrestable age”.

There is, already, 45 per cent of the black British male population on the DNA database, according to the Libdem numbers.

The fact that the technology is neutral (a questionable assertion at best) does not mean that the effects of the uses of technology will be fair and equitable.

Posted on by mklang

Old Maps

There is something fascinating about maps, especially old maps. Maybe it’s because they are attempts to explain the world, or new views of the world revealing patterns and shapes or maybe just attempts of other people to find their way.

The webpage for the Norman B. Levanthal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has a pile of old maps in digital format (The library has digitised many highlights from their 200,000+ collection of maps and atlases from all times and places) and an excellent mapviewing tool which allows you to zoom in on the details.

detail of Novus planiglobii terrestris per utrumque polum conspectus (1695)

Start with the virtual tours for an overview.

Posted on by mklang

Questioning Technology

Kevin at Question Technology was at the CHI 2007 conference and found a really interesting paper and presentation called “Questioning the Technological Panacea: Three Reflective Questions for Designers” (Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson).

They discussed three questions that product designers should ask:

  1. “Given a technological solution, are there other, possibly non-technological solutions that could address the same problem equally well, if not better?”
  2. “Is the problem being addressed perceived as a problem by the proposed users, or is the situation being unnecessarily problematized by designers?”
  3. “By focusing on a specific problem, is the solution treating a symptom and hiding the cause?”

This paper was part of the “alt.chi” program at CHI, which is a forum for unusual work that wouldn’t ordinarily get published by the conference.  Alt.chi submissions are posted and reviewed in an open public forum.

Read the paper!

Posted on by mklang

War blogs silenced

Wired News reports that In a directive (dated 19th April) US troops have been ordered not to blog without first clearing each post with a superior officer. There is also a discussion going on at the Wired Blog Danger Room.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

It’s hardly a surprising move. It’s doubtful whether blogs were revealing security information (US troops should be better trained in this case) but on several occasions information on blogs and films of YouTube (for example Iraqi kids run for water) have caused embarrassing situations which hardly have improved anyone’s opinions of the war.

Posted on by mklang

Greener Apples

No need to be cynical or pessimistic about the effect of lobby campaigns or the power of collecting people online. Greenpeace launched an environmental campaign against Appleâ??s lack of environmental policy. On 2nd May Steve Jobs published a second public letter (the first was against DRM) listing environmental hazards connected with Apple computers and the steps Apple was taking to remedy the situation.

It is generally not Appleâ??s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Appleâ??s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and theyâ??re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today weâ??re changing our policy.

This is a good first step towards taking Apple to the forefront of environmental concerns as well as its firm position as a design leader. This approach also shows that design and environmentalism are not incompatible.

Greenpeace has responded on their campaign site with the words “We are cheering!”…

It’s not everything we asked for.  Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures’ pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve!

It’s nice to know that the machine of my choice has just made a little less guilty.

Posted on by mklang

Devil's Bible on Tour

Devil_medium_small_1News from Humaniorabloggen (the humanist blog) about the Codex Gigas, more often referred to as the Devils Bible.

From the Royal Library website (The Swedish National Library): The Devil’s Bible contains the Old and New Testaments in pre-Vulgate Latin translations, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, Josephus’ History of the Jews in a Latin translation, the Chronicle of Bohemia, written by Cosmas of Prague, etc. The manuscript was written in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlazice in Bohemia. It is called the Devil’s Bible after the impressive picture of that potentate. According to legend the scribe was a monk who had been confined to his cell for some breach of monastic discipline and who, by way of penance, finished the manuscript in one single night with the aid of the Devil whom he had summoned to help him. In 1594 the manuscript was acquired by the Imperial Treasury in Prague. When the Swedish army conquered the city in 1648, it was brought to Sweden and presented to the KB the following year.

The Codex (89,5 x 49 cm, weighs 75 kg and is 624 pages long) and was written on, the calf skin vellum (previously believed to be ass skin vellum). During the last year it has been analyzed and digitalized and is now going to be sent to Prague for a few months for an exhibition at the Prague’s Klementinum palace, the National Library seat, from this September till January 2008.

digitalization process at The Royal Library

The name “The Devils Bible” comes from the fact that the Codex Gigas contains images of the devil (pictures above). The Czech Republic will receive copies of the high quality digitalization and will borrow the Codex. The results of the digitalization and analysis are available online at the Royal Library’s website later this year. There has naturally (?) been discussions concerning the return of the work but apparently The Czech Republic does not contest Swedish ownership.

Cultural artifacts are always a sensitive issue in particular if they were taken in times of war or imperialist occupation. Some items in museums are more connected to specific cultures (the Egyptian collections in Berlin and London for example) but works such as the Codex Gigas are much more complicated to associate with one specific nation state.

Posted on by mklang

Dangerous Blogging

In a local  free paper there was an article about how a job applicant did not get a job since his girlfriend wrote in her blog that that she hoped he did not get the job because she did not want to move. The newspaper angled the story to make it ominous – that the employer had “secretly” (that’s the word they used) read the girlfriends blog.

It’s totally amazing that this is even a story. Isn’t it totally natural that a would-be employer googles job applicants? I think so. It’s strange to think that some people see their public blogs as somehow being private…

Posted on by mklang

Landmines – ban the technology

Certain technological artefacts should never have been designed, manufactured or used. Among these is the landmine. Its horrible impact is not only on the combatants but rather on the civil population which needs to live with the slowly decaying lethal devices for decades after the land was sown with them. Organisations such as the No More Landmines in the UK are working to ban them as legitimate weapons. These organisations need all the support that they can get.

The problem is that people are interested in a conflict while it is active and making headlines. When “peace” is achieved public interest declines considerably. This is unfortunate as the landmines remain. The cost of removing landmines is extremely high and almost impossible to meet for worn torn countries.

So how does one attempt to ensure that people’s interest remains focused on the landmine problem? Well artist & activist Will St. Leger came up with a novel and shocking approach. On Sunday 1st April he placed 100 fake ‘landmines’ made from stenciled metal plates in park around Dublin, Ireland.

Will explains: “The reason for doing this was to get people asking themselves “what if the world I walked in was littered with landmines?” They’re nearly all gone now, the Police took away most of them when a tourist called the emergency number to report ‘Landmines’. Afterwards, I wondered who the people of Laos, Cambodia and Iraq gonna call when they step on real landmine?”

landmines1.jpg

 (via Wooster Collective)

Posted on by mklang