By the end of the file one walks away with a profound respect for Zinn and a deep distaste for the buffoonish goons in the FBI who followed and monitored him. There is no reason, with the massive expansion of our internal security apparatus, to think that things have improved. There are today 1,271 government … Read more Chris Hedges on Howard Zinn’s FBI file
There was a good article about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Paul Assange, by Raffi Khatchadourian, in the June 7 issue of the New Yorker.
As technology is more and more the means of surveillance and control and not just information access and interaction, the role of the Hacker has become central to new scenarios of freedom and rebellion. That’s why I’ve always loved 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. I recently saw the Spring 2010 issue and was glad to see … Read more 2600 piece on the Voyager ILS
A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation into Cyberspace Author: Adam Klein Price: $25.00 Published: June 2010 ISBN: 978-1-936117-07-9 A Space for Hate speaks to the media and information topic of hate speech in cyberspace, but more specifically, how its inscribers have adapted their movement into the social networking and information-providing contexts of … Read more New book: A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation into Cyberspace
There is a hot issue in librarianship that I think has great significance in terms of how society and the institution of libraries is changing. The issue is how the profession will deal with claims by native cultural groups who desire that their cultural works, documents, and artifacts be kept in public libraries, but with … Read more Wayne Bivens-Tatum on Librarians and “Traditional Cultural Expressions”
Lawsuit Challenges Police and Secret Service Crackdown on Journalists Covering Protests at Republican National Convention CONTACT: press@ccrjustice.org May 5, 2010, Minnesota and St. Paul, MN —Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) with co-counsel De Leon & Nestor and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, filed a federal lawsuit against the Minneapolis and St. Paul police … Read more Goodman vs. St. Paul
A very intelligent op-ed on Truthout about the present situation for public intellectuals: Lewis R. Gordon, “The Market Colonization of Intellectuals.” I’m not a regular reader of Truthout, but maybe I will pay more attention to it now. Gordon is writing about the new economics of academia, and intellectual work within and outside the academy. … Read more The Market Colonization of Intellectuals
Today’s New York Times has an informative little item comparing the environmental impact of producing an ipad versus that of a paper book: “How Green is My iPad?“
I just bought a Motorola Droid, which is Verizon’s Android-based smart phone, Android being Google’s OS for mobile devices. Its integration with Google gives me a lot of “power” to integrate my online tools with my mobile device, which is very satisfying. I experience it as empowering, and my attention is focused on learning what … Read more The Power of Google is Power
The talk I gave in Alberta on February 5th was recorded. The recording is now on the web in mp3 form. Toni Samek’s introduction feels a bit grand, but the real me will be on the mic shortly. The recording itself came out all right. Not all of the audience questions are audible, but as … Read more Podcast of Alberta Talk: Disintermediation 2.0
Notice that I am not using the word “ontology.” I’ll get into why later, but if you’ve read any Heidegger you can guess… Hope Olson, Sandy Berman, and many others who have done work based on theirs, have shown how classification systems tend not to represent all users well. Hope Olson has described the problem … Read more Quick note on taxonomic transparency
Jaron Lanier has a new book, You Are Not a Gadget (NY Times review), which I have to add to my reading list and bump up a few notches. There is an excerpt from it in the February issue of Harper’s: “The Serfdom of Crowds.” He’s writing along the lines of some of what I … Read more Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget
Slides to go along with my talk at the University of Alberta in Edmonton this morning…
My friend Ramona Islam shared with me an interesting blog post by chemist Jean-Claude Bradley, discussing the reliability (or non-reliability) of scientific reference sources that are considered trusted within the discipline. I find it especially interesting in terms of implications for projects like Wolfram Alpha and other attempts to build automated reasoning systems around inconsistently-defined … Read more A chemist on “trusted sources”
Something is happening in Minnesota that is worth noting if you’re interested in the public sphere. There is a mining project in the Iron Range that is awaiting state approval. It would be the first mining project in the Iron Range that would mine copper and precious metals instead of the usual iron that has … Read more Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer will not be in attendance
This post is a presentation of two lists of priorities – first, priorities of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), and second, a list of the kind of issue that I think SRRT ought to emphasize instead. The first list is as complete a list as I was able to compile of the subjects of … Read more Two sets of priorities
From Salon: “Is the Internet melting our brains?” “No! The author of “A Better Pencil” explains why such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself.” By Vincent Rossmeier. From The Australian: “
Call for Papers *Politics, Libraries and Culture: Historical Perspectives* *Library History Round Table (LHRT) Research Forum, June 2010* * * The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) seeks papers for its Research Forum at the 2010 ALA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., June 24-29, 2010. The theme of the Forum … Read more Call for Papers – Politics, Libraries and Culture: Historical Perspectives
“Verbiage” is a derisive word describing prose that uses many words to say not a lot, or more particularly, prose that uses words carelessly, to create impressions without attending to what the words actually mean in a specific sense. For techies, “verbiage” is stuff that English majors add later for the benefit of end users, … Read more “Verbiage,” “Intuitiveness,” respect for language, respect for users
Yes, I know I’m supposed to be user-centered and all that, but I think the great wave of populism we’re seeing now is going to lead to bad things. Some friends say it’s a time of opportunity, that maybe the blind rage of the common man can be directed toward support of progressive policies. Perhaps, … Read more “Most People”