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Social Informatics – Slovenia

Well its Social Informatics in Slovenia. So far I am impressed by the discussions but less so with Slovenia. The hotel was actually the worst I have ever stayed in, this is an impressive position with some strong competition. After the hotel the food is the next thing on the “whats wrong” list. There cannot be many vegetarians in Slovenia, and the ones that are here cannot be well fed. But the worst thing is that connectivity is patchy at best…
So the academic is suffering for his art.

But the papers have been very interesting so far and I am looking forward to the rest of the conference.

Posted on by mklang

Odds & Ends

Occasionally when writing my PhD I could attempt to image what the period between handing in and defence felt like. Just as I still try to image what the day after the defence feels like.

Naturally nothing is what it seems. My days are not spent in still contemplation and preparation but rather an endless list of tasks ranging from the trivial to the truly important.

I move from discussing with a reporter whether the investigators guidelines for modernizing the use of content delivery were biased in favour of the music industry or not (they are).  To the more trivial buying stuff at Ikea (how very Swedish). From preparing a very important personâ??s 10:th birthday to buying socks. Itâ??s high and low at the same time.

Today I am off to Slovenia (Maribor) for a conference in Social Informatics where I am looking forward to taking my mind of the waiting by engaging in real discussion. I shall be presenting a paper on Internet censorship and the different approaches to circumvent such practices.

Posted on by mklang

Anti-DRM Day in Göteborg

The 3rd of October has been announced as the â??Day Against DRMâ??. All over the world action groups are going out to protest against the uses and abuses of DRM. Naturally we will be active in Göteborg – more information below.

The point of the day is to be able to bring forward information to the general public and to show that the public concern about DRM is not limited to online virtual activity.

Anti-DRM actions in the past have taken the form of protesters, often wearing yellow (preferably haz-mat) suits protesting and handing out material.

Here is an example of an anti-DRM action which was held in Chicago on June 10, 2006

Naturally there will be an anti-DRM action in my hometown of Göteborg. So if you want the opportunity to see me in a yellow safety suit, why not join in and take a stand against DRM.

So you want to join in? or just watch the party? Well the dates and times are

3 October 08.30-10.15 Chalmersplatsen (outside Chalmers main entrance)
3 October 11.45-13.15 the corner of �. Hamngatan & �. Larmgatan (next to Kopparmärra)

If you let me know if you are interested in joining in then maybe I can organise a yellow suit for you!

For those of you who maybe follow this blog you will realise that the 3 October is the day after I defend my PhD. So this will be the day after the party…
More about DRM on Wikipedia

Posted on by mklang

Down with DRM video contest

Freeculture are organising a video competition to coincide with the Down with DRM day.

Enter the Down with DRM video contest for a chance to win a Neuros OSD – a portable digital VCR!

Joining in Oct 3rd – Day Against DRM, Free Culture will select the 5 best anti-DRM video entries and award a Neuros OSD to each creator. DefectiveByDesign.org is also looking to air selected anti-DRM videos on their website during the week of October 3rd, and we want to give them a hand.

Here are the official rules to enter Free Culture’s Down with DRM video contest:

  • Deadline for submissions: Sunday, October 1 at 11:59pm EDT
  • Criteria for video:
    • Anti-DRM themed
    • Short
    • Video, animation, or remix
    • Make it catchy â?? we want these videos to be viral
  • Please submit your video to the online video sharing network(s) that you prefer. Here are some examples:
  • Please tag your video with “downwithdrm” and “dbdoct3” so that people can search for it.
  • Preference will be given to submissions under free content licenses such as Creative Commons BY-SA, BY, PD, or the Free Art license.
  • E-mail downwithdrm@freeculture.org with a link to your video by October 1 at 11:59pm EDT.
  • Free Culture will select the top 5 entries and award the winners with a Neuros OSD (one per video)
Posted on by mklang

Download Free Classical Music

Visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum‘s website to download “The Concert,â?? a new classical music podcast offered under the Creative Commons Music Sharing license.

Download free recordings of classical music performed live in the museumâ??s Tapestry Room. These exclusive recordings from our regular concert series feature performances by acclaimed master musicians and up-and-coming young artists. A new program is posted every two weeks, so check back often, or receive automatic updates delivered directly to your computer or portable mp3 player with a free subscription.

You are free to share and reproduce these podcasts, and pass this great classical music along to your friends and family. The same goes for the individual tracks youâ??ll find sorted by musician and composer in the Music Library. We only ask that you let people know where you found it, and donâ??t alter the recording or use it commercially.

The podcast features unreleased live performances and includes music by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin for solo piano, orchestra, string quartet, and voice. A new podcast will be posted on the 1st and 15th of every month.

With “The Concert,” the Gardner Museum becomes the first art museum to encourage sharing and free distribution of its online programming by using a Creative Commons license.

Charlotte Landrum, the museum’s podcast project manager, says:

The single greatest thing about this is that the podcast is providing a really great chance for the public to hear and share recordings that might never have been heard otherwise, that were literally sitting on a shelf in the museum. There are two benefits: first, you get to hear new voices in classical music, artists that might not be distributed as widely on recordings; second, you get to hear master musicians, the ones who are more widely-recorded already, playing things that they may never have released commercially. We’ve already seen these ideas at work with so-called “popular” music online, but this is something new for classical music lovers.

(via Creative Commons)

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

Late News From Rome: CC is OK

So I am late, again! But in going through some old mails this was particularly interesting. It is relevant to a post I wrote (4 Sept – Call for Copyright Activists):

Rome, August 7th 2006.

For the first time in Italy, Siae (the Italian collecting society), with a non-expiring resolution active from July 25th 2006, (documento protocollato presso l’Ufficio Multimedialità al nr. 1/290/06/FDP) recognizes the opportunity and right for the public playing of ambient music inside a commercial space, without compensation to be paid, thanks to the adoption of copyleft licensing schemes (like CC, Art Libre, Copyzero x, Clausola Copyleft) or in the public domain.

Inside the ice cream shop Fiordiluna, in the heart of the Trastevere district in Rome, there is a multimedia space (32″ lcd monitor and Bose speaker system) managed by a Linux pc with free software on it, through which audio, video and literary works with copyleft-like licenses or in the public domain are publicly played.

This major historical achievement has been made possible by the work of Ermanno Pandoli (Giapster and Quindicino) who is a member of the Liberius digital window of the FrontiereDigitali network and who has represented the Fiordiluna ice-creamery to Siae.

Those interested in exposing their works inside the ice-creamery may inform the relevant groups inside the FrontiereDigitali network. To obtain more information on the legal and logitical procedures to follow it is also possible to contact the Liberius digital window.

English translation by Luigi Canali De Rossi, Master New Media Association.

This is an excellent way of bringing about change in the present copyright regime. By enabling businesses to avoid paying the collecting societies and (as in the case above) making a name for themselves we can see how creativity can make a difference. And how it can work outside the narrowly defined conventional music models.

Posted on by mklang

Free Software & Microsoft Sales Reps

Due to a colleague calling in sick I jumped in and gave a short presentation on Free Software & Open Standards to IT technicians at my university. Following my presentation two salesmen from Microsoft presented the corporate visions of the future and a short demo of the coming Vista and Office software.

The first salesman after hearing my presentation insisted on talking about how “Free Software” microsoft was. Since they were involved in several projects intended to define open standards this made, according to him, Microsoft – Free Software.

Should someone tell Balmer?

I bit my tongue when he spoke about all this and about trusted computing. It was all too much. He was so positive that the inconsistencies were only embarrasing.
He also was lyrical about schools without books and the fact that many university students are not able to use basic excel – something he felt the university should teach them. So I shut up while he praised the dumming down of universities.

I will get him during the break… Or maybe not… it’s just too embarassing to listen to.

Posted on by mklang

I Nailed Yesterday

Yesterday was an amazing day. The printers delivered 75 copies of my thesis as quickly as they could. They were so quick that when I opened the box the books were still warm â?? so now I know what â??hot of the pressesâ?? really means.

I took 51 books with me to the main university library. In return for 50 of my books I got a receipt. I took the last book with me to find the Dean of my faculty. He kindly interrupted a meeting to sign my book. Without his signature I cannot continue the process.

So with a signed copy of my thesis I returned to the office packed up my stuff, handed out a few copies to friends and colleagues before rushing home. From there the family followed me to the main university building to a notice board where I presented myself, my thesis and the documentation that I was allowed to proceed.

The women in charge gave me a hammer and nail which I used to hammer my thesis to the notice board. It was a very satisfying experience.

The process of hammering your thesis is the traditional form of publicising that the thesis has been made public. This is done three weeks before the actual defence so that unknown opponents have a chance to arrive at the defence armed to the teeth… Naturally the act of nailing is not as important as it used to be since the real publication of the date and time is done digitally. But it remains a very satisfying experience for the PhD student.

Update: I am officially on the list of upcoming defences.

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