Radical media, politics and culture.

Technology

April 12, 2002 - 10:59am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Louis Lingg writes "National Academy Press has posted a pre-publication draft of 'IDs--Not That Easy: Questions About Nationwide Identity Systems,' a report generated from a study conducted by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council.

The report 'aims to highlight some of the significant and challenging policy, procedural, and technological issues presented by such a system, with the goal of fostering a broad, deliberate, and sophisticated discussion among policymakers and stakeholders about whether such a system is desirable or feasible.'

The report examines policy considerations, including benefits and drawbacks, as well as the technological challenges faced in implementing a nationwide identity system."

March 31, 2002 - 4:31pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind

John Perry Barlow Interviewed

By Rachel Konrad Staff Writer, CNET News.com

February 22, 2002, 12:00 PM PT

cnet news

The co-founder of the 12-year-old Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tries not to be bleak. But he sincerely worries that Microsoft will usurp e-commerce and AOL Time Warner will seize media, and the two forces will extinguish dissenting voices in a "diabolical" plot to own the economy and the human mind.

But Barlow, perhaps best known as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, isn't entirely forlorn. He's optimistic that courts will soon strike down the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 agreement that banned online distribution of companies' intellectual property. And he's hopeful that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates--the smartest man Barlow says he's ever met -- will hatch a plan to control the Internet that is so ridiculous that it
will spark a public boycott that ultimately will topple the software giant.

March 21, 2002 - 12:54pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
Technology


john perry barlow writes "The Accra Manifesto
Accra, Ghana
Tuesday, March 12, 2002 (revised Wed. March 13, 2002)


Since its beginnings, Cyberspace has provided new approaches for the
benign ordering of human affairs. As we begin to develop institutions
to govern the digital world, we must avoid returning to industrial
models that have generally failed in the analog world to assure
equity, liberty, and human inclusion. Instead, let us build upon the
promise of what has already proven effective in this social
experiment.

March 7, 2002 - 7:38pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

Ben Grosscup writes "Why Organize A Town Meeting Campaign On Genetic Engineering?

Summary:
This piece explores the exciting prospects of using a town meeting campaign to realize the directly democratic potential of the town meeting. The piece is immediately relevant to activists in Vermont who are currently working on such a campaign against genetic engineering, but it may also be useful to people in other parts of New England who have town meetings and people all over the world who have no town meeting in their community.

February 8, 2002 - 9:07am -- jim
Announcements
Technology

Automobility: A Conference

Hosted by the Centre for Social Theory & Technology at Keele University, UK, September 8th -10th, 2002.

Call For Interest: Papers, Discussants and Participants

Outline

Automobiles, their production, consumption and semiology, have vexed and intrigued theorists, governments, businesses, unions,
protestors and activists from their inception in the late 19th century to the present day. As a figure of the contemporary
landscape, the automobile coalesces the dominant concerns and themes of modernity, whether it be the rationalized, automated
production line of Henry Ford, or the seemingly insatiable appetite for speed and movement that is its counterpoint. As
undoubtedly important as the automobile is, the aim of this conference is to look beyond the car itself to consider the basic
conception of automobility that underlies it. To be automobile is to feel simultaneously autonomous and to have, at least the
potential for, movement. Yet paradoxically the automobile subject is anything but independent and autonomous. The lines of
subjectivization that automobilities traverse draw together complex webs of governance, desire, capital and resistances in order
to produce the phenomenon of an automobile self. Even further, automobility is characterised as much by motility as by mobility:
the potential for movement and independence seems to be indefinitely deferred as a future promise that perpetually reproduces the
desire for automobility.

February 7, 2002 - 1:36pm -- jim
Announcements
Technology

"New Technologies in Media Literary" Program

Annual Mediterranean Regional Summit AGORA 2002"

Athens, Greece, 15-18 June 2002

Supervised by the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute

Produced by European Childrens' Television Center www.3rd-ws.org

Organized by Childrens' Media Development

Focused on New Technologies in Media Literacy, AGORA 2002 aims to bring
together some of the most prolific researchers, producers and innovators
from the field of ICT and education, while providing unique opportunities
for synergies and investements in the fast developing marketplace of the
Mediterranean basin.

Enclosed find a synopsis of AGORA 2002 program, as well as details for
participation, to a unique platform of possibilities for synergies and
investments on the children's audiovisual environment of the Mediterranean
region.

January 25, 2002 - 1:14am -- nomadlab
Events
Technology

Anonymous Comrade writes: "

"Freedom Downtime" to Appear at New York City Film Festival

The 2600 documentary "Freedom Downtime" has been accepted at the New York International Independent Film and
Video Festival and will be screened in February.


The screening is scheduled for Saturday, February 9 at 2 pm at the Sutton 1 Theater, located at 205 East 57th
Street by 3rd Avenue.

January 21, 2002 - 12:33am -- nomadlab
News
Technology

hydrarchist writes: "Italian police have identified six members of a hacker group charged
with
attacking thousands of Web sites in 62 countries, replacing official
home
pages with anti-globalization slogans, finance police officials said
Tuesday. The group is one of the most important to be discovered in
terms
of the number and significance of its targets, officials said. The
hackers, all students between the ages of 15 and 23, began their
attacks
last July during the G8 summit in Genoa, which led to
anti-globalization
demonstrations. Hackers placed the slogan "Hi-Tech Hate" on Web sites,
police said. However, the attacks did not cause much monetary damage,
so
the hackers are not expected to be severely punished.

December 24, 2001 - 5:10pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
Technology

hydrarchist writes: ""First ever for slash.autonomedia.org: A video link!


Listen to Eben Moglen, General Counsel of the Free Software Foundation, convey some very bad news to those who love property! History hasn't gone away you see.

Incendiary, portentuous, and funny. A Fifty five minute prsentation: real video and quicktime formats.

http://www.ibiblio.org/moglen/

This is also a serious lecture on economics and reflection on anarchist production and distribution, historical in scope: from music to software and the problem of property... Can technology be the means to overcome alienation?


If the above description is not enough to have you salivate, here are the first lines of the lecture:

"
A spectre is haunting multinational capitalism -- the spectre of free information. All the powers of globalism have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Microsoft and Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and the European Commission.


Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have not been decried as
pirates, anarchists, communists?

Have we not seen that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power, whose talk of intellectual property was
merely an attempt to retain unjustifiable priveliges in a world irrevocably changing?


But it is acknowledged by all powers of globalism
that the movement for freedom is itself a power.

And it is high time that the movement for
freedom should publish our views in the face of the whole world
to meet this nursery tale of the spectre of free information with a manifesto of our own.


That's where it begins....."

December 23, 2001 - 8:47pm -- nomadlab
News
Technology

hydrarchist writes: " This article is taken from 2600.com.


On December 20, a ruling was issued denying Ford's complaint against 2600. Last April Ford Motor Company sued 2600 Enterprises for pointing fuckgeneralmotors.com at their website. The judge's decision reaffirms the right of domain name holders to point their websites where they choose. While the court avoided ruling on important First Amendment issues, it flatly rejected all of Ford's trademark infringement claims. "This is a decisive victory and we are absolutely delighted," said attorney Eric Grimm who argued the case for 2600. "The court ruled consistently with the law and all precedent."

Pages

Subscribe to Technology