Category: Culture

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Berto Jongman: New Chapter in Story of Dehumanization

Culture
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Ends on a very pro-human note.

New Chapter in the Story of Dehumanization


Ilkka Vuorikuru

Ilkka Vuorikuru
Ethical Technology, Posted: Dec 14, 2012

Last week I really thought that people like Francis Fukuyama and Jürgen Habermas have been right all along. Both have claimed in different writings that modern (and especially future) technology will cause our fragile human nature to deteriorate and in effect dehumanize us and our societies.[1]

. . . . . .

A person is an instance, self conscious instance, that can achieve happiness and understanding now and in the future. A neurone here or there is not something to worry about too much. In stead we should ready ourselves and our societies to leap beyond the body and of the person or the “I”.

The question is not what is happening to our brain (if anything) but how do we integrate it into the social media so that the end result is the same or better than we are now.

Read full article.

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Berto Jongman: The Oracle of Belgrade – Early Warning Ignored

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Interesting look back at early warning on Yugoslavia, and now into the future.

The Oracle of Belgrade

 

By John Feffer

Foreign Policy in Focus, December 13, 2012

Activist Sonja Licht took no pleasure in correctly predicting the tragedy of Yugoslavia.

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com. John is currently traveling in Eastern Europe and observing its transformations since 1989.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: The Oracle of Belgrade – Early Warning Ignored”

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Rickard Falkvinge: Four More Reasons Open File Sharing is a Virtual Public Library

Access, Culture, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Software
Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard Falkvinge

Four More Reasons The Pirate Bay Is Effectively A Public Library – And A Great One

Posted: 13 Dec 2012 06:57 AM PST

Infopolicy:  File sharing fulfills the exact same need and purpose as public libraries did when they first appeared, and is met with the exact same resistance – even in the same words. This article follows the previous observation that The Pirate Bay is the world’s most efficient public library.

Zacqary Adam Green’s piece comparing The Pirate Bay to the New York Public Library the other day was spot on, and we’ve seen it travel a lot around the world – in excess of 3,000 shares and counting. File sharing (and The Pirate Bay) is the most efficient public library ever invented, and its invention is a quantum leap for civilization as such. Imagine every human being having 24/7 access to humanity’s collective knowledge and culture!

Moreover, it’s not even a pipe dream that needs to be funded with forty gazillion eurodollars. All the technology has already been developed, all the infrastructure has already been rolled out, and the tools already distributed. All we have to do to realize this is, frankly, to remove the ban on using it.

In the book The case for copyright reform (download here), we can read the following:

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Four More Reasons Open File Sharing is a Virtual Public Library”

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Rickard Falkvinge: New York Public Library versus Online “Piracy”

Culture, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

 

Rickard Falkvinge

The Pirate Bay is the World's Most Efficient Public Library

The way media piracy works is that one person or group purchases a work, and then shares it with millions of other people. This supposedly deprives the author or artist of those millions of people’s money. One group has acquired over 50 million media items, and makes each of them available to approximately 20 million people — which must be a tremendous hit to creative professionals’ wallets. This notorious institution is called the New York Public Library.

It begs the question why every author, filmmaker, and musician isn’t up in arms about the New York Public Library’s rampant sharing, while there’s a ton of opposition to the sharing habits of BitTorrent peers who use The Pirate Bay. After all, The Pirate Bay’s community shares significantly less than the New York Public Library: just 1 million items in 2008 (and the collection certainly hasn’t grown 5000% since then). The reason that The Pirate Bay is offensive [efficient and pro-active], and the New York Public Library is not, is because of its efficiency.

Read full article.

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SchwartzReport: US Court Orders Tobacco Companies to Admit Lying — But Higher Court Has Blocked Mandate of Graphic Images

Culture, Knowledge, Politics

US court orders tobacco firms to admit lying

A US judge has ordered tobacco firms to pay for a public campaign laying out “past deception” over smoking risks.

The ruling sets out the wording of a series of “corrective statements” that the companies are being told to make over a period of up to two years.

Details of which media will carry the statements and how much they will cost are yet to be determined.

Read full article.

 

Click on Image to Enlarge

US court blocks graphic cigarette warnings

The US government cannot force tobacco firms to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, an appeals court in Washington has ruled.

It said the government's plan undermined free speech in America.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had wanted to put nine pictures of dead and diseased smokers to convey the dangers of cigarettes.

But tobacco firms had argued that the images went beyond factual information and into anti-smoking advocacy.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Absent a public uprising and a change in the electoral integrity of the US Government, it will take another 20 years for the truth to be pushed back into big pharma, big sugar, and big oil.  The truth, however, is making a comeback as a public good.  “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.”  Once a government gets back into the business of serving the public interest instead of special interests, transparency, truth, and trust will again become the signal attributes of a democracy.

See also:

Documentary: The Tobacco Conspiracy: Backrooms Deals of a Deadly Industry (free, loaded with quality content)

Video (26min) of tobacco leaf child labor in Malawi – towards the end is mention of fair trade farms working to replace the tobacco crop with tea leaves.

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Pierre Cloutier: Independence vs. Secession

Culture
Pierre Cloutier

Too many people consider secession bad, and do not understand the original right of independence.  Here is a YouTube in Spanish with English sub-titles is relevant to Groeland, Scotland, Quebec, and Catalunya.

This documentar [y directed by Dolors Genovès and broadcasted by Televisió de Catalunya compares the reality of Greenland, Scotland and Quebec with Catalonia, and reflects about the following questions: Is independence/secession democratic? Would these new states be economically viable? How would EU react?
English subtitles.   More information : http://www.tv3.cat/adeuespanya