Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Hooray for unilateralism! (he says, in his most sarcastic tone!) But there’s no oil in Cuba so why overthrow Castro? Oh yeah, it’s election season.

Report to the President: Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba

CHAPTER 1: HASTENING CUBAÕS TRANSITION As an essential part of AmericaÕs commitment to stand with the Cuban people against the tyranny of Fidel CastroÕs regime, President George W. Bush mandated that the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba identify additional means by which the United States can help the Cuban people bring about an expeditious end to the Castro dictatorship.

An exercise in clarity: RSS (Signal vs. Noise)

A collection of responses to this challenge: “Explain RSS in 10 words or less to someone who reads news online (and a possibly few blogs although they may not necessarily know them as ÒblogsÓ), but doesnÕt know what a newsreader or aggregator is.”

Information & the Quality of Life.

Professor David Levy of the Information School at the University of Washington
organized a two-day, invitation-only
“Conference on Information, Silence, and Sanctuary.”
Speakers included Bill McKibben, John Seely Brown, and Geof Bowker.

Too much information and too little time to digest it. Attention pulled in a thousand directions, and by the very technologies Ð cell phones and handhelds, email and the Web, cable TV and satellite radio Ð that promise to inform and connect us. An accelerating pace of life leaving no time to relax or reflect. These are some of todayÕs common complaints in our information-rich, technology-infused society. Increasingly, people express a longing for a more harmonious life, a life better balanced between work, family, and community; between fast-paced productivity and leisurely reflection; between compulsive consumption and just plain living.

An article on the conference:
Unplugging the Addiction To Information Overload
Professor Urges Protection of Psychic Space, Quiet Time by Blaine Harden,
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A03.

Internet governance debate heats up. by Stephen Bell, Wellington. Computerworld
Friday, 16 April, 2004.
Focus on how internet is used and abused says Vint Cerf.

This isn’t getting much coverage in the U.S. (this article is from Computerworld, New Zealand), but very important decisions are at stake.
The UN Global Forum on Internet Governance was held on 25 and 26 March 2004 at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Vint Cerf, one of the Òfathers of the internetÓ was there as was Paul Twomey, president and CEO of internet governing body ICANN. Much of the debate centers around what should be governed as well as who.

More coverage can be found here:

• CircleID
• The Association for Progressive Commmunications

RAND Study: Many Federal Sites Not Terror Risks (registration required).

The Rand Corp. said the overwhelming majority of federal Web sites that reveal information about airports, power plants, military bases and other potential terrorist targets need not be censored because similar or better information is easily available elsewhere.

The study, conducted between mid-2002 and mid-2003, found no federal Web sites that contained target information essential to a terrorist — in other words, information a terrorist would need to launch an attack.

“It was a gigantic mistake, and I hope the study brings some rationality back to this policy,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ project on government secrecy. “Up to now, decisions have been made on a knee-jerk basis.”

The full report, Mapping the Risks: Assessing the Homeland Security Implications of Publicly Available Geospatial Information is available on RAND’s website.

Show Business Pleads to Keep Digital Law.
By Jonathan Krim.
Washington Post Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page E04.
House Bill Could Loosen Restrictions on Copying CDs, DVDs for Personal Use.

At a hearing on a House bill that would
loosen some of the restriction on copying imposed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) representatives of the
MPAA and RIAA clashed with proponents of the bill.

From the article:

Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, waved his Apple iPod for committee members to see and said he failed to grasp when he voted for the DMCA in 1998 that it would restrict his rights to make use of music he had legally purchased.

“We went way overboard,” he said. “It needs to be corrected.”

“It’s just like a fork,” said Gary J. Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association, many of whose members make products that allow digital copying, mixing and editing. “You can eat with it, and you can use it to kill someone.” Banning the fork, he said, makes no sense.

Here’s an interesting article from Library Journal called, Born with the Chip. The article describes how the library will need to adapt in order to deal with those “born with the chip” — the current generation who view computers not as technology, but as “part of their cultural DNA.”

These nine impact factors provide insights into the coming generation: their expectations for using information (format agnostic, nomadic, multitasking); their learning behaviors (experiential, collaborative, integrated); their beliefs (principled, adaptive, direct). David Penniman, dean of the School of Informatics, University at Buffalo, NY, once said, “In order for the library to remain what it is, it must change. If it doesn’t change it will not remain what it is.” This next generation will challenge libraries in ways undreamt of today, likely in ways greater than the challenge of the Internet, as we seek to meet the needs of a new generation of users.

[Thanks LibraryJuice]

ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit. By Dan Eggen, Washington Post,
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A27.

When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.

But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules.

Here’s a good overview article on e-voting from Salon.com Technology | Will the election be hacked? (sorry, you’ll have to watch an ad from Salon or pay for premium service. There’s a rant for another time ;-] )

Even a self-described Christian arch-conservative, former Diebold systems manager Rob Behler, says the company failed to adequately test its troubled equipment — and balked when he warned them of widespread problems with the machines. Last summer, computer scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University found major security flaws in the Diebold machines, concluding that the Georgia system falls “far below even the most minimal security standards.” And in January, experts at RABA Technologies, a consulting firm in Maryland, discovered additional failures in that state’s Diebold systems. Internal Diebold e-mail shows that company engineers knew about the problems and in some instances chose to ignore them.

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) has just come out.

US Public Beliefs on Iraq and the Presidential Election
A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Study [April 22, 2004]

See their homepage to see the questionnaire and press release.
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