In the last ten years ICTs (information and communication technologies) have been increasingly used by militaries both to develop new weapons and to improve communication and propaganda campaigns. So much so that military often refers to ‘information’ as the fifth dimension of warfare in addition to land, sea, air and space. Given this scenario does… Read More »The unexpected turn: from the democratic Internet to the Panopticon
Coming to a mini-mart near you. The FDA has just approved nine very grisly looking warning labels—to be slapped on cigarette packs throughout the USA. But will they work to cut smoking … or will they backfire?
Here are some of the top reasons why these labels may not only fail to achieve the FDA’s desired outcome, but could actually do the opposite – leading to more smoking, not less.Read More »Shocking behavior: Government scare tactics, smoking, and public health
Would a transparent society where we could all watch each other be a better society? A recent paper has made me wonder whether the big problem might not be privacy, but purists.
Read More »Panopticon Problems: Purists rather than Privacy?
Right now, by sheer chance I am sitting in the same chair, in the same place in Stockholm, as when I first heard the news about the Chernobyl accident. But today it is the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan that has had an explosion.There are interesting lessons in how the two disasters have been playing out. Read More »A tale of two reactors
by Anders Sandberg
Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington goes to war against bad science: Selective use of science ‘as bad as racism or homophobia’. He argued: ‘We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of racism. We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of people who [are] anti-homosexuality…We are not—and I genuinely think we should think about how we do this—grossly intolerant of pseudo-science, the building up of what purports to be science by the cherry-picking of the facts and the failure to use scientific evidence and the failure to use scientific method’. Is he right that we should be intolerant of bad science?
The Ture Sventon books are a series of Swedish children’s detective stories written by Åke Holmberg 1948-1973. They are locally well-known and appreciated, but henceforth Ture Sventon i Paris (1953) will likely not be republished. The reason is that the publisher Rabén & Sjögren wanted to remove the word “neger” in the book, and the Swedish Writers’ Union (who owns the copyright to the books) refused this change, since it would change the character of the book. They acknowledged that it was a word with a racist resonance but also a part of cultural history, and hence it could not be removed or replaced with “colored” or “black”. They suggested adding an explanatory introduction instead. The publisher choose not to reissue the book.
In English-speaking countries another recent controversy is about the new edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces use of the word “nigger” with “slave” and “injun” to “Indian”. Again, literature experts complains that this fundamentally changes the novel (which after all is an anti-racist book) and might have deeply upset the author, yet others think that this will allow it to be read more in schools or public. Are we seeing examples of well-intentioned acts of “cultural vandalism and obscurantism that constricts rather than expands the life of the mind”, or just attempts to reduce impediments for the public to read the works?
Read More »Ad usum Delphini: should we Bowdlerize children’s books?
Governments around the world have condemned Wikileaks recent release of US diplomatic cables, often while simultaneously denying they matter; the reactions are tellingly similar to the previous reactions from the US military simultaneously claiming the leaks were highly illegal, dangerous and irrelevant. At the same time many have defended the release as helping transparency. As David Waldock twittered: "Dear government: as you keep telling us, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear".
Is this correct?
Read More »If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear: Wikileaks and RIPA
Do we have a right to be forgotten? That was the question posed to me by BBC Newsnight in the light of the EU Commission's latest draft framework for data protection policies. EU Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding stated that “The protection of personal data is a fundamental right”, and set out to fix current privacy protection measures in the light of changing technology and globalization. Among other things users should be able to give informed consent to the use of their personal data, and have a "right to be forgotten" when their data is no longer needed or when they want their data deleted.
Read More »Retaining privacy: the EU commission and the right to be forgotten
The Register warns that Dixons risks future of humanity with Star Wars-themed ads: the electronics chain, not satisfied with merely human customers also as a publicity stunt broadcast its ads into deep space, presumably for aliens to receive. This is done using the firm Deep Space Communications Network, who offers to beam messages into space using their satellite dish. Earlier this year an invitation to the Klingon opera 'u' was beamed towards Arcturus using a Dutch radio telescope. Are these stunts putting mankind at risk?
Read More »Inviting invasion: deep space advertisments and planetary security
From October the 12th to the 14th London will host the RSA conference, which gathers together information security experts from across the world to discuss the most pertinent emerging issues in information security.
The safeguarding of users’ privacy is one of the most important and frequently discussed issues in the field of information security, and is therefore a major topic of the RSA conference. In particular, BT's chief technology officer, Mr Schneier expressed his concern about how web companies deal with users’ privacy; he stressed the need for regulations and laws to create or encourage improved management of this issue (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11524041).
