s those and countless other examples prove, the concepts of “extremism” and “radicalizing” (like “terrorism” itself) are incredibly vague and elastic, and in the hands of those who wield power, almost always expand far beyond what you think it should mean (plotting to blow up innocent people) to mean: anyone who disseminates ideas that are threatening to the exercise of our power. That’s why powers justified in the name of combating “radicalism” or “extremism” are invariably — not often or usually, but invariably — applied to activists, dissidents, protesters and those who challenge prevailing orthodoxies and power centers.
My arguments for distrusting governments to exercise powers of censorship are set forth here (in the context of a prior attempt by a different French minister to control the content of Twitter). In sum, far more damage has been inflicted historically by efforts to censor and criminalize political ideas than by the kind of “terrorism” these governments are invoking to justify these censorship powers.
And whatever else may be true, few things are more inimical to, or threatening of, Internet freedom than allowing functionaries inside governments to unilaterally block websites from functioning on the ground that the ideas those sites advocate are objectionable or “dangerous.” That’s every bit as true when the censors are in Paris, London, and Ottawa, and Washington as when they are in Tehran, Moscow or Beijing.
Gary Edwards on 19 Sep 08"By combining unified communications, IM, SharePoint, and blogs and wikis while protecting its IP, Monsanto is advancing teamwork." InformationWeek has posted a number of technology innovation-implementation profiles. Monsanto is one of the best "collaborative" examples, although it's very similar to the model GE presented at Office 2.0. These colalborative concepts go back 1998, and the early work Ars Digita was doing with the first "Knowledgeware" - wiki applications. The first "use case" to be published was that of the global electronics giant, Siemanns. Notice the SharePoint - MSOffice integration as a key element in the Monsanto collaboration strategy. That connection "forced" Monsanto to rebuild their document databases and portals using SharePoint and SQL Server.
