How to defend the Enlightenment:
On the publication of his new book In Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov tells British philosopher AC Grayling why the Enlightenment must be separated from scientism and cultural chauvinism.
Demonstration by Blaise Aguera at TED of the impressive work they’ve been doing behind the scenes on Bing Maps. (click through for the video)
Freedom of speech is on the offensive.
What an idea, a new business model for Iceland:
On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.
Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?
“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it.
ReadWriteWeb, a popular technology website, has a page that ranks highly in Google’s search results for “Facebook login”.
Check out the comments on the page. They’re filled with complaints from confused Facebook users who think that this is the new Facebook login page.
Quite clearly many people do not use bookmarks, or simply type “facebook.com” in the address bar but instead they Google for what they’re after and click on the first result assuming it is correct.
Professor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implications of advances in neuroscience that have made it possible to communicate with those in a vegetative state:
Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.
While I’m a big fan of the iPad’s ease of use, this aspect worries me.
In my circle of friends, family and workmates I’m the technological shaman who helps them acquire, use and heal their computers Macs.
I’ve always enjoyed this. Not so much the technical tinkering, but the practice of helping people to get on with what they’re using a computer for in the first place. In fact it’s always frustrated me that people like myself are needed in the first place. And even more so the dismissive attitude of so many of the technologists and computer geeks who frequent the technical forums that I myself gain much of my knowledge from. For them computers are not the problem, people are just bumbling idiots. Rather than design computers around people they think people should mold themselves to the way a computer works.
True to form many of them are apocalyptic about Apple’s new iPad. They see it as a toy, nothing more than an oversized iPod, even an affront to their computing prowess. How can one get serious computing done without a filing system, multiple windows or a mouse they cry! ((The truth is multi-touch input is infinitely more powerful than a mechanical pointing device.)) Fraser Speirs aptly refers to this as Future Shock.
Ultimately the iPad represents a couple of things to me: on the negative side it’s potentially the beginning of the end of the free and open internet as we know it. On the positive side it is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the desktop metaphor. And not a day too soon.
Someone has finally got serious about creating a powerful computer that’s easy to use.
No Right Turn on the risk to democracy that Paypal presents:
Paypal has blocked donations to the Arrest Blair campaign, supposedly on the basis that it “encourages illegal activity” (conducting a lawful citizens arrest of a rich and powerful figure apparently being illegal in the eyes of PayPal). It’s a blatantly political move — and its not the first time they’ve done it. Last week, they froze the assets of Wikileaks — a site which encourages and publishes anonymous leaks in the public interest, and is credited with “produc[ing] more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years”.
Ryan Paul writing for Ars Technica:
When making a purchase, online shoppers are confronted with a validation check that requires them to supply a password — in addition to the standard security code that is on the card itself — in order to prove that they are the real owner of a credit card. … Some of the credit card companies take advantage of [this system] by wrapping their implementations of the validation system in draconian terms of service that force users to agree to accept full liability for credit card fraud.
The Boston Globe’s obituary:
Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as “A People’s History of the United States,” inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.
AK Press Blog interview with Howard Zinn:
Since most mainstream/Left/liberal accounts of Howard Zinn’s legacy are likely to gloss over the man’s actual politics, here’s a 2008 interview by AK author, Ziga Vodovnik.