Posts from — February 2003

EXTENDED DEADLINE
Travel support is expected thanks to the National Science Foundation.Ê Please
indicate when submitting abstracts if you need travel support.

Call for Papers: Graduate Student Conference
The Local and the Global: Contexts in Science and Technology
April 12-13, 2003
American Association for the Advancement of Science Headquarters
Washington, DC
Abstracts due by February 14, 2003

The conference is an opportunity for graduate students to present their
research in areas concerning science, technology and globalization,
particularly as they relate to the concerns raised in the post-9/11 world. It
will take place in conjunction with a workshop on science and technology
policy careers planned by the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, and immediately follow their annual S&T colloquium.
Abstracts (up to 250 words) for a 10-15 minute presentation should be
submitted by January 30, 2003 to stglobal@vt.edu. Submitted abstracts will
receive a response by March 1, 2003. Final papers will be included on the
conference website. Travel funding may become available for a limited number
of presenters. Students in need of travel funds should indicate so when
submitting their abstract. There may be a small ($25 or less) conference fee.
The organizers welcome submissions from graduate students whose research
focuses on challenges in the global science and technology arena. We are
particularly interested in research that concerns science, technology and
globalization in relation to (but not limited to):Ê

? Science and Technology issues in the post-9/11 world
? Technology transfer, international investment, and intellectual
? property rights
? Terrorism, public safety, public health and critical infrastructure
? Challenges to institutions, civil liberties and civil rights
? Science and technology in support of nation-building and development
? Science and technology from non-Western perspectives
? Multinational corporations and international regulation

The conference will be held April 12 and 13, 2003 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Headquarters in Washington, DC, and is sponsored by:

? George Mason University, School of Public Policy
? George Washington University, The Center for International Science and Technology Policy
? Virginia Tech, Science and Technology Studies Program

Further information on previous conferences, area lodging, schedule etc. is available on the conference website at http://www.gwu.edu/~cistp/stglobal, and
will be updated regularly.Ê If you have any questions, please contact either of the following organizers: David Bruggeman, dbrugg@vt.edu, or Christine Pommerening, cpommere@gmu.edu, or Edith Webster, ewebster@gwu.edu, or Meghan O'Reardon, oreardon@gwu.edu.

Confronting Empire. Confronting Empire

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness  and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones were being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling  their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Arundhati Roy in her inimitable style speaking at Life After Capitalism at the World Social Forum, 2003, Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 27, 2003, organised by Znet. [MetaFilter]

It should be clear, though it isn't, that this is in part in regards to Negri and Hardt's book Empire, which I haven't read yet, and at the rate people keep talking about it, probably won't though I do like much of Negri's other work.

So what I'm working on right now is a cut down of my paper for DAC in Melbourne. I went to the one at Brown two years ago, and it was quite fun.

The paper is about the political ontogenesis of vision in computer games. which means, in short, that the visual experiences in computer games reconfigures vision in a political way. As this is part of a series of paper on McLuhan's extension/amputation thesis found in Understanding Media that I hope will one day become my own book, I'm going to cut some of that argument out. However, the primary argument is generated from the work of Paul Virilio such as The Vision Machine, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, and Lost Dimension.

Kapor's Open-Source PIM. 3 Feb 2003: Extreme Tech tells us aboutChandler.”Kapor, the co-founder of Lotus Development Corp. and principal author of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application, first disclosed his PIM plans last October, as part of an ongoing blog on the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) web site. The OSAF employs nine paid members and four volunteers.” [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

if you want a PIM, there there is but one real solution, well 2, but really the second is more group oriented, anyway, it is Tinderbox by Eastgate. It handles information and makes it useful.

Translucent Databases. 3 Feb 2003: Unix Review takes a look at the bookTranslucent Databases.”There's actually more to “translucency” than the idea of programmatically encrypting individual items or classes of data. One of the values of the book, in fact, is that it goes to the trouble of enumerating related ideas and their consequences. I'm particularly fond of security variations that hide unencrypted data “in plain sight” by filling a channel with volumes of false data.” [RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix]

I've always thought that 'hiding in plain site' was the general strategy now for a highly adept secure information system. I mean given rss and the ability to contribute to multiple websites, you could easily pull off the old newspaper trick…

Net ranks as top information source. A UCLA study reveals Americans who go online rank the Internet as the most important information source, outpacing TV, newspapers and radio.  [CNET News.com] [[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ]]

hmmm, i kow that i use it, but as for the majority of american's i'm suspicious, but then i live in a place that has the most read newpaper for the population, etc. I do know that i don't watch tv news anymore…

From Good Morning Silicon Valley:

TIA+John Pointdexter. TLF: The Senate may have choked off government funding for John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program (TIA) — a Defense Department research project that aims to identify terrorists by analyzing personal data collected in computer databases — but that has done little to stop its progress. Indeed, according to those with knowledge of the program, TIA is no longer a simple “research project.” There is now working prototype of the system, and federal agencies outside the Defense Department have expressed interest in it….

[[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ]]

If you hear about a military information device as 'new' it is probably good to assume that is far past its beta testing. I wouldn't doubt that this system has been around for two or three years in some form or another, and was just modified and released as public knowledge. In releasing it, you achieve a variety of security goals. You narrow the useful communication channels that people will use for nefarious purposes. You slow the communication and thus logistical machines supporting them, etc. etc.

The PacketPC.

Something that's slipping in underneath the radar from Sony: a 60GB, WiFi-enabled, portable hard drive called the PacketPC that's the size of an iPod and comes with an LCD touch screen for text entry, GPS, and an MP3 player. David Galbraith points out what is really amazing about the PacketPC though:

Sony's enterprise backup service (a consumer service will be available later this year) means that the PacketPC will remotely sync via WiFi or Ethernet with an identical machine in a datastore. Lose your packet PC and clone replacement will be delivered by Fedex with 48 hours. The backup seems to be a simple disk image so there are no settings to really worry about, the offsite model is an exact clone of whatever is on your machine, and data is transferred in encrypted chunks for the enterprise service.

Two questions. One: Is the PacketPC for real? And two: Won't backing up 60 GB take an awful long time?
Read

[Gizmodo]

ooooo, new toy!

Weblogs and instruction – Brown Daily Herald. Quote: “Blogs — the much−talked about Internet trend — can serve as invaluable tools for their inventors, said Brian Weatherson, a Brown professor of philosophy and creator of a philosophy blog. ”

Comment: George Siemens is right .Ê A very brief piece.Ê The prediction at the end is way off however.Ê Who knows what we'll be doing in 5 years, let alone 20? [Serious Instructional Technology]

the more that i think about it, the more that I think i'm going to try using weblogs in my summer class this year…

Funny Latin Phrases. Quanto putas mihi stare hoc conclave ? That's “How many prostitutes does it take to change a lightbulb?” in Latin. No, actually it's “How much do you think I paid for this apartment?”. Here's hoping, in the wake of the BBC's superb The Roman Way series, written and presented by David Aaranovich, that good old Latin is on its way back, albeit in an Internet, soundbitey way. Those intending to smuggle some into MetaFilter should definitely start here. The owner, for instance, might find Ne ponatur in mea vicinitate useful – “Not in my backyard”. And Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione – “I'm not interested in your dopey religious cult” should prove popular in the God threads. Vale! [MetaFilter]

latin will always make a comeback, it is an eternal return….