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Weiye Loh

Your porn is not Canadian enough, CRTC warns erotica channels | National Post - 0 views

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    "For failing to broadcast sufficient levels of Canadian-made pornography - and failing to close-caption said pornography properly - a trio of Toronto-based erotica channels has earned a reprimand from the Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission."
Stacie Farmer

Texas School Board Set to Vote Textbook Revisions - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    "By sheer force of its population size, Texas has long held outsize influence on national textbook publishers, some of whom sent curriculum writers to take notes in the boardroom. That influence has waned somewhat in recent years, with the digital age allowing editors to tailor versions of their textbooks to individual states. " Is the ability to "tailor versions of their textbooks to individual states" going to affect the way students are learning? How effective is this really?
Ben M

The New York Times > National > Religion Journal: Faithful Track Questions, Answers and... - 2 views

  • 10 percent to 20 percent of those are related to religion.
    • Ben M
       
      blogs
  • Many blogs, particularly those by the most fervently religious, are anonymous.
  • She guards her anonymity because it lets her write things that some in her community might perceive as less than flattering, which could potentially compromise her daughters' ability to marry well, she said, though they are now respectively an infant and a toddler.
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  • "it generated a new sense of community that I didn't otherwise have" he said. "In newspapers you don't have the same interconnection with readers."
Allison Frost

China's Orwellian Internet | The Heritage Foundation - 0 views

  • However, for China's 79 million Web surfers-the most educated and prosperous segment of the country's popula­tion-the Internet is now a tool of police surveil­lance and official disinformation.
  • Democratic reform in China is highly unlikely to come from the top down, that is, from the Chi­nese Communist Party. It will have to emerge from the grass roots. If the Internet is to be a medium of that reform, ways will need to be found to counter China's official censorship and manipulation of digital communications. The cultivation of demo­cratic ideals in China therefore requires that the U.S. adopt policies that promote freedom of infor­mation and communication by funding the devel­opment of anti-censorship technologies and restricting the export of Internet censoring and monitoring technologies to police states.[
  • As the central propaganda organs and police agencies maintain and tighten their grips on information flow and private digital communications, the average Chinese citizen now realizes that political speech on the Internet is no longer shrouded in anonymity: Private contacts with like-minded citizens in chat rooms, or even via e-mail text messaging, are not likely to escape police notice.
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  • On July 31, 2004, hundreds of villagers of Shiji­ahecun hamlet in rural Henan province demon­strated against local corruption. Provincial police from the capital at Zhengzhou dispatched a large anti-riot unit to the village, which attacked the crowd with rubber bullets, tear gas, and electric prods.[12] Propaganda officials immediately banned media coverage of the incident, and the outside world might not have learned of the clash if an intrepid local "netizen" had not posted news of it on the Internet. The Web correspondent was quickly identified by Chinese cybercops and arrested during a telephone interview with the Voice of America on August 2. While the infor­mant was on the phone with VOA interviewers in Washington, D.C., he was suddenly cut short, and the voice of a relative could be heard in the back­ground shouting that authorities from the Internet office of the Zhengzhou public security bureau (Shi Gonganju Wangluchu) had come to arrest the interviewee. After several seconds of noisy strug­gle, the telephone connection went dead
  • In January 2004, Amnesty International documented 54 cases of individuals arrested for "cyberdissent," but concluded that the 54 cases were probably just "a fraction" of the actual number detained.[
  • In April 2004, The Washington Post described a typical cyberdissidence case involving a group of students who were arrested for participating in an informal discussion forum at Beijing University. It was a chilling report that covered the surveillance, arrest, trial, and conviction of the dissidents and police intimidation of witnesses. Yang Zili, the group's coordinator, and other young idealists in his Beijing University circle were influenced by the writings of Vaclav Havel, Friedrich Hayek, and Samuel P. Huntington. Yang questioned the abuses of human rights permitted in the "New China." His popular Web site was monitored by police, and after letting him attract a substantial number of like-minded others, China's cyberpolice swept up the entire group. Relentlessly interrogated, beaten, and pressured to sign confessions implicat­ing each other, the core members nevertheless with­stood the pressure. The case demonstrated that stamping out cyberdissent had become a priority state function. According to the Post, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin considered "the investigation as one of the most important in the nation." In March 2003, the arrestees were each sentenced to prison terms of between eight and ten years-all for exchanging opinions on the Internet.[9] Then there is the case of Liu Di, a psychology student at Beijing Normal University who posted Internet essays under the screen name of Stainless Steel Mouse. She is an exception among cyberdis­sidents-after a year behind bars, she is now out of jail. The then 23-year-old Liu was influenced by George Orwell's 1984 and became well known for her satirical writing and musings on dissidents in the former Soviet Union. She defended other cyberdissidents, supported intellectuals arrested for organizing reading groups, attacked Chinese chauvinists, and, in a spoof, called for a new polit­ical party in which anyone could join and every­one could be "chairman." Arrested in November 2002 and held for nearly one year without a trial, she became a cause célèbre for human rights and press freedom groups overseas and apparently gained some notoriety within China as well. Although she had been held without trial and was never formally charged, she was imprisoned in a Beijing jail cell with three criminals. In December 2003, she was released in anticipation of Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the U.S. Yet nine months after returning to the Beijing apartment that she shares with her grandmother, Liu still finds police secu­rity officers posted at her home. She has found it impossible to find a regular job, and police moni­tors block her screen name Stainless Steel Mouse from Web sites
  • Although President Hu's anti-porn crusade has superficially lofty goals, the nationwide crackdown conveniently tightens state control over the spread of digital information. In fact, more than 90 per­cent of the articles in China's legal regime govern­ing Internet sites is "news and information," and less than 5 percent is "other inappropriate con­tent."[
  • In February 2003, a mysterious virus swept through the southern Chinese province of Guang­dong, decimating the staffs of hospitals and clinics. According to The Washington Post, "there were 900 people sick with SARS [sudden acute respiratory syndrome] in Guangzhou and 45 percent of them were health care professionals." The Chinese media suppressed news of the disease, apparently in the belief that the public would panic, but: [News] reached the Chinese public in Guangdong through a short-text message, sent to mobile phones in Guangzhou around noon on Feb. 8. "There is a fatal flu in Guangzhou," it read. This same message was resent 40 million times that day, 41 million times the next day and 45 million times on Feb. 10.[36] The SARS epidemic taught the Chinese security services that mobile phone text messages are a powerful weapon against censorship and state control of the media. The Chinese government announced in 2003 new plans to censor text mes­sages distributed by mobile telephone.
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    written in 2004, a bit outdated, but gives great background into China's stance on internet censorship and individual accounts of citizens arrested and held (sometimes years without trail) for crimes committed online
jardinejn

Stuart Moulthrop - You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media - Pos... - 0 views

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  • Stoll excoriates "cyberpunks," virtual vandals who abuse the openness of scientific computing environments. Their unsportsmanlike conduct spoils the information game, necessitating cumbersome restrictions on the free flow of data.
  • Orthodox McLuhanite doctrine holds that "every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics" (Laws of Media viii).
  • Who decides what information "belongs" to whom? Stoll's "popular elite" is restricted to academic scientists, a version of "the people" as nomenklatura, those whose need to know is defined by their professional affiliation.
  • The telos of the electronic society-of-text is anarchy in its true sense: local autonomy based on consensus, limited by a relentless disintegration of global authority. Since information is now virtually an equivalent of capital, and since textuality is our most powerful way of shaping information, it follows that Xanadu might indeed change the world.
  • Electronic information, as Stoll sees it, lies in strict analogy with material and private property.
  •   "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system" (Gibson 51).
  • The vision of Xanadu as cyberspatial New Jerusalem is conceivable and perhaps eligible, but by no stretch of the imagination is it inevitable.
  • But it seems equally possible that our engagement with interactive media will follow the path of reaction, not revolution
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    Pros and Cons of the newly evolving concept of networking information back in the early 90s
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    Some interesting questions and speculations about potential controls on media from an early 90s perspective
Audrey B

Electronic Civil Disobedience and the World Wide Web of Hacktivism: - 1 views

  • In the spring of 1998, a young British hacker known as "JF" accessed about 300 web sites and placed anti-nuclear text and imagery. He entered, changed and added HTML code. At that point it was the biggest political hack of its kind. Since then, and increasingly over the course of the year, there were numerous reports of web sites being accessed and altered with political content.
  • By no means was 1998 the first year of the browser wars, but it was the year when electronic civil disobedience and hacktivism came to the fore, evidenced by a front page New York Times article on the subject by the end of October. Since then the subject has continued to move through the media sphere.
  • computerized activism, grassroots infowar, electronic civil disobedience, politicized hacking, and resistance to future war
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  • these five portals seem to provide a useful starting point for a more in-depth, yet to come, examination of the convergence of activism, art, and computer-based communication and media.
  • PeaceNet enabled - really for the first time - political activists to communicate with one another across international borders with relative ease and speed.
  • The international role of email communication, coupled to varying degrees with the use of the Fax machine, was highlighted in both the struggles of pro-democracy Chinese students and in broader trans-national movements that lead to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
  • the role of international email communication in linking together the world.
  • an overarching dominant paradigm that privileges discourse, dialogue, discussion and open and free access.
  • So the first portal of Computerized Activism is important for understanding the roots of today’s extraparliamentarian,
  • Computerized activism, defined more purely as the use of the Internet infrastructure as a means for activists to communicate with one another, across international borders or not, is less threatening to power than the other types of uses we see emerging in which the Internet infrastructure is not only a means toward or a site for communication, but the Internet infrastructure itself becomes an object or site for action.
    • Audrey B
       
      Twitter, YouTube, other forms of social networking that provide communication within the Internet infrastructure to become an "object or site for action"...
  • Infowar here refers to a war of words, a propaganda war. Grassroots infowar is the first step, the first move away from the Internet as just a site for communication and the beginning of the transformation from word to deed.
  • emerge fully cognizant they are on a global stage, telepresent across borders, in many locations simultaneously.
  • a desire to push words towards action. Internet media forms become vehicles for inciting action as opposed to simply describing or reporting.
  • war of words
  • war of words
  • war of words
  • lists, newsgroups, discussion lists, and web sites
  • A primary distinction, then, between earlier forms of computerized activism and forms of grassroots infowar is in the degree of intensity. Coupled with that is the degree to which the participants are noticed and seen as a force.
  • in grassroots infowar comes the desire to incite action and the ability to do so at a global scale.
  • Within a matter of days there were protests and actions at Mexican consulates and embassies all over the world
  • At the end of 1997, news of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas, in which 45 indigenous people were killed, quickly spread through global pro-Zapatista Internet networks.
  • following there has been a shift, the beginning of the move toward accepting the Internet infrastructure as both a channel for communication and a site for action.
    • Audrey B
       
      channel for communication=computerized activism. a Site for action= grassroots infowar...Combining the two leads to Electronic Civil Disobedience
  • tactics of trespass and blockade from these earlier social movements and are experimentally applying them to the Internet.
  • A typical civil disobedience tactic has been for a group of people to physically blockade, with their bodies, the entranceways of an opponent's office or building or to physically occupy an opponent's office -- to have a sit-in.
  • utilizes virtual blockades and virtual sit-ins
  • an ECD actor can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net.
  • a theoretical exploration of how to move protests from the streets onto the Internet.
  • street protest, on-the-ground disruptions and disturbance of urban infrastructure and they hypothesize how such practices can be applied to the Internet infrastructure
  • after the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas, there was a shift toward a more hybrid position that views the Internet infrastructure as both a means for communication and a site for direct action.
  • Electronic Civil Disobedience is the first transgression, making Politicized Hacking the second transgression and Resistance to Future War the third.
  • The realization and legitimization of the Internet infrastructure as a site for word and deed opens up new possibilities for Net politics, especially for those already predisposed to extraparliamentarian and direct action social movement tactics.
  • In early 1998 a small group calling themselves the Electronic Disturbance Theater had been watching other people experimenting with early forms of virtual sit-ins. The group then created software called FloodNet and on a number of occasions has invited mass participation in its virtual sit-ins against the Mexican government.
  • FloodNet to direct a "symbolic gesture" against an opponent's web site.
  • it launched a three-pronged FloodNet disturbance against web sites of the Mexican presidency, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, and the Pentagon, to demonstrate international support for the Zapatistas, against the Mexican government, against the U.S. military, and against a symbol of international capital.
  • hacks into Mexican government web sites where political messages have been added to those sites.
  • the young British hacker named "JF" who hacked into around 300 web sites world wide and placed anti-nuclear imagery and text. This method has been tried by a number of groups.
  • while ECD actors don’t hide their names, operating freely and above board, most political hacks are done by people who wish to remain anonymous. It is also likely political hacks are done by individuals rather than by specific groups.
  • As already stated there are critiques aimed at the effectiveness and the appropriateness of cyber-protests. In terms of effectiveness, three closely related types of questions have appeared regarding political, tactical, and technical effectiveness. Concerning appropriateness there are ethical questions, that may be also considered as political questions, and of course there are legal questions. Some of the legal concerns raise issues of enforceability and prosecuteability.
  • Are these methods of computerized activism effective?
  • If the desired goal of hacktivism is to draw attention to particular issues by engaging in actions that are unusual and will attract some degree of media coverage, then effectiveness can be seen as being high.
  • Rather hacktivism appears to be a means to augment or supplement existing organizing efforts, a way to make some noise and focus attention.
  • a period of expansion, rather than contraction.
  • To judge blocking a web site, or clogging the pipelines leading up to a web site, is to take an ethical position. If the judgement goes against such activity, such an ethical position is likely to be derived from an ethical code that values free and open access to information.
  • While it is true that some forms of hacktivity are fairly easy to see as being outside the bounds of law - such as entering into systems to destroy data - there are other forms that are more ambiguous and hover much closer to the boundary between the legal and the illegal. Coupled with this ambiguity are other factors that tend to cloud the enforceability or prosecuteability of particular hacktivist offenses. Jurisdictional factors are key here. The nature of cyberspace is extraterritorial. People can easily act across geographic political borders, as those borders do not show themselves in the terrain. Law enforcement is still bound to particular geographic zones. So there is a conflict between the new capabilities of political actors and the old system to which the law is still attached. This is already beginning to change and legal frameworks, at the international level, will be mapped on to cyberspace.
  • It seems that hacktivity has met and will meet resistance from many quarters. It doesn't seem as if opposition to hacktivist ideas and practices falls along particular ideological lines either.
  • hacktivism represents a spectrum of possibilities that exists in some combination of word and deed.
  • What remains unclear about hacktivism emerges when we start to ask questions like: what does this mean and where is this going?
    • Audrey B
       
      Twitter. At 3:30 people log/hack on to Twitter and form blockades so that Iranians can voice their beliefs and feelings towards the government in 140 characters. People are also hacking and creating proxy sites that allow Iranians to get online.
  • Theorizing about grassroots or bottom-up Information Warfare doesn't nearly get as much attention as the dominant models and as a consequence there is not much written on the subject. 11 The case of the global pro-Zapatista networks of solidarity and resistance offers a point of departure for further examination of grassroots infowar. One feature of Zapatista experience over the course of the last 5 years is that it has been a war of words, as opposed to a prolonged military conflict. This is not to say there isn't a strong Mexican military presence in the state of Chiapas. Quite the contrary is true. But fighting technically ended on January 12, 1994 and since then there has been a ceasefire and numerous attempts at negotiation.12 What scholars, activists, and journalists, on both the left and the right, have said is that the Zapatistas owe their survival at this point largely to a war of words. This war of words, in part, is the propaganda war that has been successfully unleashed by Zapatista leaders like Subcommandante Marcos as well as non-Zapatista supporters throughout Mexico and the world. Such propaganda and rhetoric has, of course, been transmitted through more traditional mass communication means, like through the newspaper La Jornada. 13 But quite a substantial component of this war of words has taken place on the Internet. Since January 1, 1994 there has been an explosion of the Zapatista Internet presence in the forms of email Cc:
  • Because of the more secret, private, low key, and anonymous nature of the politicized hacks, this type of activity expresses a different kind of politics. It is not the politics of mobilization, nor the politics that requires mass participation. This is said not to pass judgement, but to illuminate that there are several important forms of direct action Net politics already being shaped.
  • hackers' desires to make information free.
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    Concrete article for paper
Weiye Loh

A `Bad Writer' Bites Back - 0 views

  • The journal, Philosophy and Literature, has offered itself as the arbiter of good prose and accused some of us of bad writing by awarding us "prizes."
  • The targets, however, have been restricted to scholars on the left whose work focuses on topics like sexuality, race, nationalism and the workings of capitalism -- a point the news media ignored. Still, the whole exercise hints at a serious question about the relation of language and politics: why are some of the most trenchant social criticisms often expressed through difficult and demanding language?
  • scholars in the humanities should be able to clarify how their work informs and illuminates everyday life. Equally, however, such scholars are obliged to question common sense, interrogate its tacit presumptions and provoke new ways of looking at a familiar world.
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    A `Bad Writer' Bites Back By JUDITH BUTLER
Ben M

Faithful Track Questions, Answers and Minutiae on Blogs - 1 views

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    NYT article about the Mormon Feminist Housewives blog, the bloggernacle, and religious blogging in general
Ben Wagner

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation - 1 views

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    This article is a must-read for anyone who cares about education and academia
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