[widdershins] ...still curious...

[jesterhoax]

*pokes* 

from

Perth Australia 

-----Original Message-----
From: widdershins-bounces at attrition.org
[mailto:widdershins-bounces at attrition.org] On Behalf Of Gmx Private 01
Sent: Tuesday, 12 October 2004 8:40 PM
To: widdershins at attrition.org
Subject: [widdershins] ...still curious...

Hey All...

Widdershins was one of the first Mailing Lists I was on...

It is fun to see so many people responding after such a long time : )

Cheers,

g

PS 2 Articles... as a start for a temporary reactivation...


####

The Fear Factor

John Horvath   26.08.2004 
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/18187/1.html

European Security Research Programme: The business side to the war on terror


In the beginning of August, the Department of Homeland Security in the US
raised its terror alert from yellow (elevated) to orange (high), meaning
there is a high risk of a terror attack. As a result, armed police with
machine guns stood at barricades in front of designated buildings in places
like New York and Washington. 

Not only are many Americans confused by the alert system established in the
wake of 9/11 -- namely the various colour schemes and what they entail --
but many have also grown weary of the repeated warnings. 
Indeed, the reaction to the August alert was one of skepticism, in that it
was widely suspected that the Bush administration used the terror alert for
political advantage. Such skepticism subsequently gained a measure of
credibility as it later emerged that much of the intelligence that the
terror alert was based on was dated -- up to three years old. Tom Ridge, the
head of Homeland Security, simply responded by saying that although the
intelligence may have been dated, his department only recently received it. 

A new mega-industry of fear is emerging 

While this latest political fiasco in the US can be said to be symptomatic
of the Bush administration, it goes without saying that politicians the
world over have been, in one way or another, also taking advantage of the
recent wave of fear generated by the war on terror (as opposed to the terror
itself). In many ways, it's a replication of the Cold War, the only
exception being that the "enemy" 
isn't a recognised state power. This, in turn, makes this second Cold War
ambiguous and one with potentially no end in sight. 

While many are aware of the political implications to the war on terror, few
realise how governments and big business have been turning paranoia into
profits. A new mega-industry has emerged, and many governments are now
turning their attention -- and money -- to it. 

Because threats are supposedly very fluid and unpredictable in today's
world, security is regarded as not purely a military matter, but one which
requires the pooling of resources -- intelligence, police, judicial,
economic, financial, scientific, and diplomatic -- all under the umbrella of
modern technology. Consequently, with the increasing flexibility and
complexity of modern technology, many new discoveries inevitably span both
civilian and military fields. In other words, a device originally developed
for security purposes could have commercial spin-offs. It's this potential
for developing dual-purpose killer-apps which have governments and big
business ploughing funds into the fear industry. 

European security research 

As a result, in Europe a coherent strategy has been developed to coordinate
all military and civilian research across the European Union (EU). This
includes a billion-euro boost in research spending for security-related
projects. Accordingly, EU member states will have their their security
systems harmonised to create a single EU-wide security structure. This means
networks to exchange information and run EU-wide crisis-management
operations will be set up in addition to the coordination of all military,
security, and civilian research. If all goes according to plan, a
fully-fledged European Security Research Programme (ESRP) should be up and
running in the EU by 2007. 

Unlike other research programmes adopted by the EU, this one would see
governments more financially involved. The rationale for this is that since
some of this research must be geared to government requirements and cannot
be adapted for commercial use, up to 100% government funding may be needed.
Moreover, in order not to be left behind, the ESRP's budget should match
that of the Department of Homeland Security in the US. This would
necessitate giving security research in the EU a boost of 1 billion euro per
year. 

As with the defense industry, the fear industry is generally seen by pundits
as good for industrial growth and the economy. Not only this, it's one of
the few avenues of corporate welfare still left open to big business. What
is more, with the increased sense of insecurity being peddled by
politicians, it looks set to grow even further as technology is relied upon
to detect and "neutralise" an increasing array of potential security
threats. For the European Commission (EC) in particular, it's hoped that
with its research experience and expertise in other fields such
pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and telecommunications, Europe will be able
to soon develop a top-class security system that it can then sell to
governments elsewhere. 

In order to get things moving for this new security programme, the EU
General Affairs Council already agreed back in November 2003 to create an
agency to promote research for future defense needs. Its remit was to set up
rules and procedures and build networks between sponsors, companies,
research centers, and "customers" in the run-up to the launch of the ESRP.
The ultimate aim is to nurture technologies that could have both civilian
and military uses. 

Consequently, at the end of June this year a preparatory action was launched
by the EC, resulting in a submission of around 175 proposals. 
Just over 70% of the proposals relate to technical mission-related research
projects, addressing a wide range of security topics such as situation
awareness, protection of networked systems, protecting against terrorism,
crisis management, and interoperability. The remaining proposals relate to
supporting activities such as studies on security research road maps,
identification of critical areas and understanding human factors, as well as
technical feasibility studies, awareness, and best practice activities. 

The proposals were submitted from a variety of sources. It should come as no
surprise that large industry was well represented (including the
aeronautics, information and communications technology, system integrators,
and defense sectors). Most proposals originated from the EU-15, but the EC
also points to "important participation" from the new member states of
Central and Eastern Europe. 

Security technology produces new problems and binds resources 

Although the EC considers the preparatory action a relative success, if the
EU wishes to eventually fund the full version of the ESRP, many existing
research programmes will have to pay in terms of decreased support and
slashed budgets; others may have to be abandoned altogether. In order to
justify such a drastic move, the EC's response is simple: current research
planning fails to promote dual purpose technologies, thereby missing out on
some of the potential industrial innovations that could bring benefits
across the board. 

Despite the promises of more security, on the one hand, and economic growth,
on the other, what is missing in the overall equation are the people in the
middle -- the citizenry -- who are supposed to gain an increased sense of
security. Unfortunately, much of what is proposed is actually quite
controversial as there are unresolved issues of privacy and confidentiality
which must be dealt with first. 

Take, for instance, the notion of "information fusion". Information fusion
basically means the collection and collation of data from many sources in
order to yield intelligence. Examples include gathering information from
sources such as telephone calls, hotel registrations, and airline bookings
to identify individuals who may pose a terrorist threat, or analysing
hospital admissions and sales of pharmaceuticals to warn of an unfolding
biological attack. The problem here is that the distinction between "work as
prescribed" and "work as practised" is frequently overlooked. 

Another concern is that this massive security programme is being developed
not so much as to guard against terrorist attack, but to suppress domestic
opposition, such as the anti-globalisation movement. 
For many heads of government, there is little distinction between terrorism
and protest. Indeed, some have even gone so far as to categorise protesters
as terrorists. 

Rather than concentrating on the symptoms of terror using state-of-the-art
security systems -- which in a few years will be redundant anyway as those
bent on wreaking havoc will use either new technology or the innovative
application of so-called "primitive" 
methods -- more effort and resources should be put into dealing with its
underlying causes. International terrorism, organised crime, and the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are the three greatest fears
Europeans have, this according to a recent EU poll. In particular, the set
of threats governments the world over face are energy insecurity, nuclear
proliferation, poverty, drought, and failed states. 

Given this, it's quite apparent that the problems facing the world today
have more to do with the politics of colonialism and imperialism than with
the need for a more robust security apparatus. 

Links 

Telepolis Artikel-URL: 
http://www.telepolis.de/english/inhalt/te/18187/1.html 

--------------------
Copyright © 1996-2004. All Rights Reserved. Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hannover    



####

Culture and Technology

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/konf/18168/1.html

On the sunny side of life?

Henrieke Schmidt   22.08.2004 

In Sweden?s sun city, Karlstad, Internet researchers from some 30 countries
surfed through the cultural specifics of the Web 

Karlstad, a idyllic small town in the Swedish Warmland (!), has the
reputation of being the sunniest city of this Northern country: this makes
it an especially appropriate place for a conference dedicated to the light
and the dark sides of the global Internet. As a place in the virtual sun may
still be considered a privilege, marginalization, homogenisation and
hybridisation of culture(s) were at the heart of the debates. 

The motto of this 4th conference on  "Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology
and Communication" [1] was "Off the shelf or up from the ground" ? in
consequence and with regard to the dissolving utopia of the "global
village," the Internet researchers from about 30 countries focused on the
differences, the potential conflicts and cultural discrepancies in
cyberspace understood as a "urban metropolis" 
(Ess/Harvard). 

The tricky causalities ? the complex relationship between culture and
technology 

In correspondence to the old question of "What Came First: the Chicken or
the Egg?" the researchers? community set off in the quest for the
causalities in the relationship between culture and technology. Minna
Kamppura and Markku Tukiainen gave an overview of the definitions of culture
used in a sample of research-papers on the topic and stated a remarkable
deficit of adequate concepts. Nevertheless, all efforts taken in the first
open discussion to compensate for this lack and to come to a precise and
widely agreed on definition of "culture" turned out to be vain, which led to
quite some frustration with the fluidity of the matter. Indeed, the title of
the conference already reveals a weak point by opposing culture and
technology, even though the latter is - at least as an artefact - always a
product of culture. 

Wei Lu from China tried to offer a solution to the problem by presenting a
"new model of technological evolution" intended to reconcile technological
and cultural determinism in a process of reciprocal interaction. Even if
this approach does not offer revolutionary insights, it nevertheless
demonstrated ? to the end of the conference ? a turn away from linear
explanatory models. This was of even more importance as throughout the
conference linearity and causality had been the guiding principles, though
already in one of the early presentations Maja van der Valden had postulated
an equality of different models and patterns of knowledge. With regard to
the fact that the conference was attended mostly by Internet researchers,
this phenomenon is even more astonishing because the principle of linearity
which is thought to be mainly valid for the western civilization was only
some years ago seen to be threatened, if not simply overcome by hypertext! 

Logo of Karlstad University  

The same refers to the conference organization as a whole, which proved to
be quite traditional. The presentations as well as the panels were
characterized by a very strict and conventional structure. Likewise, the
discussion of methodological approaches (Agourram/Saucier, Würtz) was
largely characterized by statistical and sociological research methods which
are very useful but do not leave much room for alternative forms of
presentation. Perhaps the most innovative solutions could be found in the
panels dedicated to online education and e-learning and which concentrated
on techniques and methods suitable to encourage collective forms of working,
teaching and learning on the Net. 

Carnival of Cultures ? the Case Studies 

Fortunately, the participants did not resign, even though confronted with
the lack of a consistent definition of their object, and turned ? 
in best practice of cultural studies ? to their case studies. With regard to
the presented papers, it then turned out that ?culture? in most cases was
understood as a conglomeration of national and ethnic characteristics. 

The "chineseness" of the Chinese Internet ? only on first view as a matter
of course ? was discussed by H.-J. Bucher, who raised as well the issue of a
"universalistic" versus a "particularistic perspective" 
which collide in the analysis of national and ethnic specifics in global
media. Quite a number of papers were dedicated to the historically and
culturally determined specifics of the adaptation of ICT in the post-soviet
States of Middle Asia (Markova, Mei), in the Baltic republic Estonia
(Vengerfeldt/Runnel) and in Russia (Voiskounsky, Schmidt). The influence of
traditional patterns of behaviour on the political usage of the Internet in
Japan (Nakada et
al) was investigated into as well as the particular circumstances of ICT
applications in Africa and South-America (Addison/Sirkissoon, Beardon,
Miscione/Aizenberg, Rodrigues, et al). 

But maybe the most interesting contribution was made by a participant in one
of the discussion sections, who expressed her concern regarding a possible
relapse into cultural essentialism if the analysis of behaviour patterns in
ICT were too tightly focused on an isolated investigation of national or
ethnic groups. The idea of (re)searching cultural specifics on the global
network is constantly threatened by the (re)production of cultural
stereotypes. 

The Internet ? technology of domination or liberation philosophy? 

A special focus was laid on the investigation of the ICT access and usage by
indigenous peoples (Herring/Estrada, Dyson, Kampf, Radoll). 
Questions of a gender-specific usage were discussed as well, though not as
extensively (Crump, Simon). Against this background, the still contentious
question was put forward whether the Internet is or is not a technology of
domination reinforcing social discrimination rather than smoothing over
existing discrepancies. The assembled research community admitted in a
self-critical way its own privileged situation of inhabiting the sunny side
of (net)life. In whose name and with whose voices can the question of a just
use of Internet technologies ever be discussed, if at all? Concerning the
popular rhetorics of a "digital divide" often referred to in this regard, it
was stated that even this seemingly political correct metaphor is no longer
adequate as it suggests the inferiority of off-line existence and implicitly
discriminates local knowledge which may be incompatible with standards and
norms of the Western information society. 

The problematics of ICT, (re)presentation and power were than illustrated on
the basis of a significant number of case studies accentuating the pros and
cons of ?development.? Thus ? for example - ritual collective artwork of
Australian aborigines seems to be endangered by a second expropriation in
the anonymous global data worlds (Radoll). On the other hand, a
multi-lingual Internet could help to rescue small languages at the edge of
extinction to survive in a kind of virtual reservoir (Herring/Estrada). The
theoretical premises as well as some first propositions to smooth out the
conflict of local interests and global norms were presented in different
papers on the standardization of language, technology and jurisdiction on
the Internet (Pargman/Palme), with a special focus on copyright (Adaime,
Burk, Debnath/Bahl). 

"A hole in the (virtual) wall" ? unconventional forms of Internet usage 

Especially exciting were those presentations paying attention to alternative
forms of Internet usage by the seemingly unprivileged and marginalized
cultures: these focused not only on the advantages of Western ICT usage, but
as well on its limitations which are often due to the perception of the
media as a "normal" one. Thus the escape from spatially closed
Internet-environments in South America or India, where the individual usage
of ICT corresponds neither to the economic situation nor to the patterns of
cultural behaviour, underlined the potential creativity of these
non-conventional solutions (Rodrigues). 

A literal "Hole in the [virtual] Wall" describes a project of the same name
initiated in India (Cappelle/Evers/Mitra): in some rural districts of India,
computers with Internet access are installed in alcoves in the wall offering
the village children access throughout the day. 
Mostly without any guidance and largely in self-controlled fashion, the
children got acquainted in a playful way with computer and Internet
technology and proved to be quite innovative: surfing and gaming turned out
into a collective happening with dozens of children hanging around the
computers, typing and drawing together. 

"Just use" ? a sunny vision? 

The conceptual orientation of the conference on "just use" of ICT resulted
into a strongly normative attitude. The idea and the concept of "liberation
philosophy" was astonishingly popular (Walker), in a deliberate contrast to
more sceptical approaches concerning the emancipatory potential of ICT which
were expressed even in sunny Karlstad. With regard to the ongoing Internet
pessimism which, by stressing the threats of terrorism and globalisation,
achieves sometimes of an even apocalyptic dimension ? a good portion of
sunny visions may well be a important ingredient to further Internet studies
(McIlroy, Ess/Sudweeks). 

Further information 

The CATaC-conference series started in 1998 and are organized by Charles Ess
(Drury University, USA) and Fay Sudweeks (Murdoch University, Australia). A
discussion-list [2] offers a forum for announcements and discussion of
further activities and planned publications. The contributions to the actual
conference are published in the conference proceedings: 

Ess, Charles / Sudweeks, Fay (Ed.) (2004): Cultural attitudes towards
Technology and Communication 2004. Proceedings of the Fourth International
Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication,
Karlstad, Sweden, 27 June ? 1 July 2004. Murdoch 
University, Murdoch.       

Henrike Schmidt is a researcher at the Institute of Russian and Soviet
Culture at the Ruhr-University, Bochum (Germany), and is currently working
on a  joint research program [3] on "Cultural identity performances on the
Russian Internet" (with Katy Teubener, Institute of sociology, University of
Münster), funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (Germany). 

Links 

[1] http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac
[2] http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac
[3] http://www.russian-cyberspace.org

Telepolis Artikel-URL: 
http://www.telepolis.de/english/inhalt/konf/18168/1.html 

--------------------
Copyright © 1996-2004. All Rights Reserved. Alle Rechte vorbehalten
Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hannover    




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