Travel

Road to Gauntanamo

Have you seen the film Road to Guantanamo yet? If not then go see it. I have put it off for some time but now that I have – it absolutly terrified me. The story is about four young men who travel to Pakistan. One is about to be married and the others are there to attend.

Through a mix of youthful carelessness, bad luck and the chaos of war they are detained and considered to be members of Al-Qaeda. The brutal treatment and torture they face at the hands of the US military is absolutly barbaric. They are abused and tortured to obtain confessions – something which the military fail to obtain despite their treatment.

Even if they had obtained forced confessions from the men – what are these results worth? They are not the truth. And the treatment makes those carrying it out less human. The US cannot claim to be the “good-guy” anymore. Their brutality does not make them better than any other “evil” torturer which we would condemn elsewhere.

Despite the torture being carried out at Guantanamo and the number of detainees and the number of years they have been held it is important to remember that the US has not achieved one single conviction. It is only brutality without law. To those who want to claim the honour of fighting for their beliefs and country – the actions of the men at Guantanamo put your actions, your country and your armed forces to shame.

See this movie!! It is an important movie about the horror of war, the madness of belief over reason, against the evils of torture and the strength of those who are subjected to evil treatment.

What terrifies me the most is the ability of countries to commit crimes while being able to maintain a rhetoric of peace and humanity…

The movie website contains both the trailer and information about the infamous prison. Amnesty International has a broschure to accompany the film: The Road to Guantanamo Action Guide.
About the detainees at Guantanamo Amnesty International writes:

None of the detainees have been granted prisoner of war status or brought before a â??competent tribunalâ?? to determine his statusâ?¦The US government refuses to clarify their legal status, despite calls from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to do so. Instead, the US government labels them â??enemy combatantsâ?? or â??terroristsâ??, flouting their right to be presumed innocent and illegally presuming justification for the denial of many of their most basic human rights.

Posted on by mklang

Technology and Public Sphere

An exciting PhD seminar is to be held by the University of Bergen (14-17 November 2006)
The PhD seminar will focus on the works of John Dewey, Marshall McLuhan and Jürgen Habermas in addition to a range of contemporary writers. The session at the University of Bergen will discuss the main topics during plenary sessions and debates, in parallel panel sessions and study groups, and in the evenings. Professor Andrew Feenberg (Canada) and professor Brian Winston (UK) have confirmed their presence during the course.

Practical information:
Doctoral students from all European countries are invited. The course is free of charge. Non-Norwegian students will be given a travel refund of 300 euro upon completion of the course. Lunch and coffee are served every day complementary of the organizers.

All students must write papers related to our topics. A first draft must be written before November 1st, and after reviews and critique during the seminar, the final version should be handed in by January 1st 2007. The course gives 10 ECTS points for the participants, and a diploma will be issued for those who complete.

If you are interested, please contact chief organizer Lars.Nyre@infomedia.uib.no before September 1st, 2006, and include a paper abstract of 500 words. The abstract should contain a description of your area of interest, method and theory. The criteria for selection of participants will be strictly academic, and the list of participants will be published on September 2nd, 2006.
More information via Kulturteknikker.

(via Constructions)

Posted on by mklang

The guilt of a travelling techie

I replaced my iPod yesterday after the total collapse of my last one. Today I read about the iSweatshops. The iPods are assembled in China by mainly female workers. The workforceâ?¦

â?¦resides in “iPod cities” with as many as 200,000 employees. Outsiders are forbidden, and 15-hour workdays are the norm. As you might expect, the wages are low, even for China. (Foreign Policy).

Tomorrow I will fly to Barcelona to participate in the GPLv3 conference besides being an event that I am looking forward to, the privilege of visiting foreign cities is one I value. Recently the discussion on environmental damage caused by flights has taken speed â?? especially with the rapid rise of cheap tickets which increases our â??unnecessaryâ?? flights.

Monbiot writes: â??Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it.“

Monbiot is referring to the environmental effects of flying. He claims (convincingly) that while most of our reliance on fuels causing carbon emissions can be reduced without a too serious limitation to our freedom â?? this does not apply to flying. Reducing carbon emissions caused by flying means reducing the number of flights we take.

Both these arguments (iSweatshops & flying) have something important in common. They both bring into question things I appreciate. The question that must be posed from this information is â?? what shall I do about it?

When bringing this information to people he meets Monbiot writes of the listeners response: â??They just want to enjoy themselves. Who am I to spoil their fun? The moral dissonance is deafening.â??

The first impulse may be the ostrich approach â?? by sticking oneâ??s neck into the sand the bad news can be ignored. This approach should not be ignored â?? it works surprisingly well and is applied successfully by many. I tried this for a while â?? unfortunately it eventually wears thin. Another approach is self-denial. A no-excuses approach to technology and flights. This entails limiting everything to the bare necessities â?? without allowing for rationalisations. This involves denying oneself of many of the things that I appreciate â?? not an easy approach.

Can there be a middle-of-the-road approach? Is awareness better than ignorance? This argument would mean that our knowledge of the harm our choices entail legitimises our actions even if this has no real effect on physical events (better working conditions or environment). As much as I would like this, I cannot believe this is a solid approach to improvement.

The answer? Donâ??t look at me. I believe it is better to be aware than ignorant of the harm I do â?? even if this cannot mitigate the harm.

Posted on by mklang

Unrelated things: GPL conference & Filesharing

Some unrelated things which I put together in one post because I have been away from my blog until today (without any serious side effects).

Yesterday I was in Stockholm at the Swedish Parliament to discuss filesharing. No â?? not in the chamber! It was an enjoyable, open and interesting discussion â?? thanks for inviting me.

I also found out yesterday that the date for my thesis defence has been finalised. Once again travel plans of others had forced changes but now the date is set (for the last time! I hope.) So I will defend on October 2nd.

In addition to this I have been invited to join a panel at The 3rd International GPLv3 Conference: CCCB, Barcelona, Spain, June 22nd & 23rd. This is going to be very interesting.

I seem to have accidently forgotten (Freud who?)
to return my visitors badge…

Posted on by mklang

14th European Conference on Information Systems

Tomorrow the 14th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) begins. This is the biggest annual European IS conference and this time it has the additional bonus of being in my hometown. I have been accepted to the track on â??Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Societyâ?? with a paper entitled â??Informational Commonsâ??.

The venue: The School of Economics and Law

The conference tracks include: Communities and New Forms of Organizations – eBusiness – eGovernment – Enterprise Systems – Grand Challenges of System Development – Human Computer Interaction – Information and Knowledge Management – IS and Organizational Change – IT in Tourism and Travel – Living in, and Coping with, the society – Mobile Communication, Telematics and Ubiquitous Computing – New Technologies, Innovation and Infrastructure Development – Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Society – Philosophy and Epistemology of IS Research – Strategic Management of IS and IT – The Economics of IS

A harbour view near the opera

The programme (including a list of all papers) can be found here.

Posted on by mklang

Free Films Online

While the main discussion on online films revolves (rightly or wrongly) on pirates downloading material. This discussion sometimes forgets that we have now reached a period when a number of films are being released into the public domain. Here is a selection of films available at the Internet Archive. Browsing their collection is lots of fun and may seriously threaten thesis work.

Things to Come (1936), William Cameron Menzies (dir.), The metropolis of Everytown is a city threatened by world war. Pacifist intellectuals try to turn the tide but efforts go unheeded by the self-interested classes, and war arrives with tanks and aeroplanes and gas bombs. The war continues for thirty years, its original purpose forgotten. Everytown is destroyed by air raids and civilization degenerates… (imdb) (Public Domain).

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (dir. George Meiles), an old 1902 film from france about a small group of scientists that travel to space on a rocket to get to the moon. (Licensed via CC Att-NC-SA).

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) (dir. Roy William Neill) Based on the Sir Authur Conan Doyle story “The Dancing Men”, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are placed in WWII europe to help protect a scientist and his invention from the Nazis. (Licensed via CC Att).

The Kid (1921) (dir. Charlie Chaplin) The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length movie. It, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. (Public Domain).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) While travelling in Switzerland, the child of a well-off couple is kidnapped. She is held to ensure that her father does not reveal what he knows about a planned assassination. Since they can’t talk to the authorities, the parents plan to begin the search for their daughter on their own. This is the original, British-made movie from 1934 and is now in the Public Domain.

Mechanical Monsters (1941) A ten minute Superman cartoon where he battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army (imdb) (Public Domain).

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton) the story of a naive, college-educated dandy who must prove himself to his working-class father, a hot-headed riverboat captain, while courting the daughter of his father’s rival, who threatens to put Steamboat Bill, Sr. and his paddle-wheeler out of business. (Public Domain).

The New Adventures of Tarzan. (1935) (dir. Edward Kull) Not many realize this feature, along with ‘Tarzan and the Green Goddess’, were produced by E.R. Burroughs, himself. He wanted a screen portrayal of Tarzan as he had written him, a noble intelligent Ape Man/Lord Greystoke, not as Hollywood had made him (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”). And NO Cheetah.

Three Stooges – Color Craziness (1965) “The New Three Stooges” featured the animated adventures of Moe, Larry, & Curly Joe. The cartoons were introduced by live-action inserts with the real Stooges. These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color, and they also feature long-time Stooge collaberator Emil Sitka. (Public Domain).

Posted on by mklang

Umeå Cool

I have been invited to visit the cool people at Humlab in Umeå in the north of Sweden, on the 28 September.

Amongst other things UmeÃ¥ is involved in workshop for doctoral students with the theme â??Interaction in Digital Environmentsâ?? (21-22 August 2006). This workshop will be arranged by a local doctoral student network (Digital Interaction Research Network â?? DIRN) at UmeÃ¥ University. The network is composed of doctoral students from various departments and faculties with a common interest in the study of interaction in digital environments.

Speakers will be

– Jill Walker, Department of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen
– T.L. Taylor, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen
РPatrik Hernwall, School of Communication, Technology & Design, Șderțrn University College
РPatrik Svensson, HUMlab, Ume̴ University

The workshop arrangers will pay for traveling participantsâ?? costs for food and accommodations. The number of participants accepted to the workshop will be limited.

Posted on by mklang

Portable Anonymous Surfing

When I travel I am sometimes forced to use public terminals to communicate. While doing this I often consider how insecure this method is. It does not stop me from using public terminals but it does concern me.

Now a great little application has been developed to help in situations such as these. It is a combination between Tor routing and the portable Firefox browser called TorPark.

Installation is easy: All you do is download the software. Expand it. Drag and drop the folder onto your memory stick.

Then when you have to use Internet on a public terminal simply insert the memory stick, start the TorPark which then connects to the Tor network and launches the portable Firefox browser.

Tor is about anonymous Internet use and it makes you virtually untraceable online. In addition it also protects you from local snooping as well (more documentation here). TorPark allows you to do this on public machines.

The downside is that it slows down browsing and that it only works under Windows.

(Via Suburbia)

Posted on by mklang

Sneeze

Urgh. What a combination. Allergy and summer cold rolled into one. Instead of staying home tomorrow I will be travelling to Stockholm University to give a lecture on Creative Commons.

Instead of preparing I am more concerned about my sneezing. Naturally everything never needed to know about sneezing can be found online…

High speed photo of a sneeze by Andrew Davidhazy.

Sneezing is a complex reflex that begins with an irritation of the nose lining. After the irritation the impulses travel to the brain â?? which reacts by controlling the muscles around the abdomen, chest, diaphragm, neck, face, eyelids and nose into the sneeze.

Particles from the sneeze can travel up to three meters.

A Japanese tradition is that when you sneeze people are talking about you – so I must be a popular topic for conversation. Wikipedia has lots more!

Posted on by mklang

Chernobyl twenty years later

Its today twenty years since the accident at Chernobyl (Uranium Information Centre briefing paper #22 & IAEA Chernobyl FAQ) an example of how our reliance on technology can go wrong. The accident was brought about by the mixture of over-confidence in technology, fear of criticising the own organisation and the desire to increase production by conducting dangerous of questionable value.

According to the IAEA Chernobyl FAQ the disaster was the equivalent of 400 Hiroshima size bombs but they also add

However, the atomic bomb testing conducted by several countries around the world during the 1960s and 1970s contributed 100 to 1,000 times more radioactive material to the environment than Chernobyl.

Comforting news.

Caesium-137 fallout. Source: J.Smith and N.A. Beresford, “Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences” (Praxis, Chichester, 2005) (via wikipedia).

While Chernobyl is the icon of technological disasters it is important not to forget many â??smallerâ?? disasters that have occurred (and will continue to do so). There is a need to be vigilant of technology rather than to believe the infallibility of technical experts. The failure of Chernobyl did not occur because of a lack of experts but rather through the hubris of the experts in place and the lack of infrastructure available for â??lesserâ?? experts (or laymen if there had been any) to point out the dangers of the actions leading up to the steam explosion that destroyed the reactor core (Chernobyl sequence of events).

Since the disaster a 30km zone around the reactor has been evacuated. A side effect of this has been a resurgence of wildlife in the area (BBC story)

In a macabre form of tourism a motorcyclist has travelled within this zone and put a photojournal online this is part of a growing tourism into the dead zone to visit the abandoned towns.

Posted on by mklang