Re: [liberationtech] Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12
On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 06:03:51PM +0200, Andre Rebentisch wrote: Am 10.05.2012 17:07, schrieb Pavol Luptak: This may be work in Norway where are highly ethical/moral politicians, but it does not work at all in my country (Slovakia) or other Central/Eastern European countries where are massively corrupted governments. Who corrupts government? Commercial interests. What do dominant Of course. But this is not a problem of commercial companies, but the government which is a single-point-of-failure because its monopoly for regulations/laws. The government is corrupted because from the economical point of view it is just cheap and effective for corporations to lobby the laws that protect their businesses. In a pure freemarket it would be much more expensive and difficult to corrupt all your competitors (or someone) because of its decentralized character. Without the government (or very limited government) the corruption would become much more expensive because there would be no single centralized institution to corrupt. commercial interests want? Government to not get in their way, lower taxes and/or state aid/contracts. In other words you advocate for suicide in fear of death. Lowering/increasing taxes is just a game for sheep-citizens, because FED can print arbitrary lot of money without your consent and using the inflation regulates your real tax burden (and of course all without touching your official taxes). And the same applies to ECB that can easily steal money from all EU citizens by printing new euros. That's a reason why it is a good idea not to have state monopolies to currencies and stop using these fiat moneys. In Slovakia open standards are mainly violated by our government :-) (and it is because strong lobby of Microsoft and other corporations). Indeed, because there is no sufficient expectation of your government officials to act on principled grounds and set regulation. But even when they your government officals sell out they get paid. Corruption usually trickles down. Probably two reasons why the situation is so bad in Slovakia: 1. No politician in Slovakia has been ever criminalized or sentenced because of his corruption scandals. 2. Systematic fail of democracy system that motivates politicians to maximizes their profit during 4-year election term (because after this period, there will be new politicians and their interests, so why not to steal just now? ) Generally speaking you believe that without market intervention cartels get winded up by market forces. That is often true. The ordoliberal view is that we know that in a perfect market no cartels exist, so we intervene and then let the silent hand do the rest to approximate that market allocation. I just do not believe in the central authority that is moral and fair. I have many logical reasons why fair and honest people do not tend to work for these autorities and why these authorities attract greedy and dominant people (at least in our government, maybe you have the honest government). I just think that we cannot afford to have centralized governments just because people are too bad and too greedy (and all these people are attracted by the governments because of their nature). Authoritatian systems (I include also democracy system here - because if you choose democratically your slaver, it will be still just your slaver) maximize the power of these bad/greedy people because of guaranted money of tax payers (without feedback) and exploitation of many advantages of state monopolies. And you are IT geeks and know that p2p decentralized systems are usually more stable and offer more freedom than centralized systems, so why do you think that we need strictly centralized governments instead of decentralized society? Government procurement is a powerful leverage on the demand side. I would also like to suggest that certain companies are more powerful than your small state, and your state is defined by what it could do for citizens. If it doesn't do that, then that is an indication of the powers of the high seas. That's true. But these big companies still do not have the privileges and monopolies that my small state has. And still there is a voluntarily relationship betweeen customers and these big companies and anybody can decide to accept or reject the company rules (and find another company). I admit that in the past central/authoritatian governments made sense and provided a lot of advantages for our society, but in these days our society is so complex, so interconnected between individuals, that is extremely difficult to control it by single central governments. Hayek's explanation is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNbYdbf3EEc Of course this won't change for another many years, because all governments do everything to show their citizens that they are extremely important and that they really need them. Pavol --
[liberationtech] CfP: Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries
http://www.ifipwg94.org/ifip-conference-2013 1st Call for Papers: WG 9.4: Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries 12th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries Conference Theme: Into the Future: Themes, insights and agendas for ICT4D research and practice Ocho Rios Jamaica, 19-22 May, 2013 Submission Deadline :November 23, 2012 The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) invites you to the 12th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries. The conference will be held in Jamaica, on 19-22 May 2013. The Working Group 9.4 of the International Federation for Information Processing gathers scholars and practitioners that deal with the issue on how ICT affects social development. In the last three decades this issue has been attracting scholars from information systems and a variety of other areas such as development studies, political science, political economy, social anthropology, and sociology. The theme of the 12th International Conference of the IFIP 9.4 Working Group 2013 in Jamaica is “Into the Future.” The importance of this theme is fundamental to our research domain, namely how might information and communication technologies shape the future of development within developing counties. At the conference we seek to not only present scholarly conference papers in and around the different tracks but also to provoke thought and discussion in and around how we might set the agenda for the future for ICT4D research and practice. Thus we seek to problematize the past, present and the future of ICT4D. To do this we welcome contributions from a wide range of perspectives. We want to think through the future agenda in the area of ICT4D for theory, methodology and practice. This requires us to not only make clear our own positions but to encourage us to actively question them. The conference thus will seek to promote critical debate across a range of perspectives. In order to organize the discussion, we propose 16 different tracks, listed below: 1. Applying systems thinking in ICT4Dhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-1-systems-thinking-in-ict4d 2. Caring for a Connected Humanity: eHealth, and the Transformation of Healthcare in the Global Southhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-2-caring-for-a-connected-humanity 3. Designing Applications, Services, Systems and Infrastructure for Development http://www.ifipwg94.org/track-3-designing-for-development 4. Early Childhood and ICT4D: Promises and Perilshttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-4-early-childhood-and-ict4d 5. How ICT Frame Development Goalshttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-5-how-ict-frame-development-goals 6. ICT’s, Collaboration Service Innovation: Bridging Boundaries and Cultureshttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-6-icts-collaboration-a-service-innovation 7. ICTD in the Caribbean - Articulating Unique Challenges and Solutionshttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-7-ictd-in-the-caribbean 8. Infusing Gender into ICT4D: Innovating Research, Practice and Policyhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-8-infusing-gender-into-ict4d 9. Open Inclusive Developmenthttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-9-open-a-inclusive-development 10. Open Source for Public Health Systems: Making them workhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-10-open-source-for-public-health 11. Organisational Applications of Web 2.0http://www.ifipwg94.org/track-11-organisational-applications-of-web-20 12. Sen’s Capability Approach and ICT4Dhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-12-capability-approach-and-ict4d 13. Social Media and Developmenthttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-13-social-media-and-development 14. Understanding the Actors: Actor-Network Theory in ICT for Development Researchhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-14-understanding-the-actors 15. University-Community Engagementhttp://www.ifipwg94.org/track-15-university-community-engagement 16. Into the Future: Themes, insights and agendas for ICT4D research and practice http://www.ifipwg94.org/track-16-into-the-future In addition to papers from the field of information systems, we also welcome multidisciplinary papers. Who Should Attend The conference will bring together academics, practitioners (from the private sector, NGOs, and public sector), and policy advisors who are involved with ICT and development in developing countries. Conference Papers and Submissions All papers will be double blind reviewed. Note that in case of acceptance, at least one author must have registered for the conference by March 1, 2013 for the paper to be included in the electronic proceedings. We look forward to welcoming you to IFIP 9.4 in Jamaica! ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest,
[liberationtech] Fwd: An update on Tahir
From: Kieran Donegan kdonegan...@gmail.com Hello everyone, It seems to have been a while since the last message to this list so I thought I'd give another update. Google has selected Tahrir as a project to be worked on for their Summer of Code program which is basically a program for students where they are funded to work on Open Source projects. I am the student who has been selected to work full time on Tahrir over the summer in hopes of building a working alpha version. Ian has agreed to mentor me for this process and has bought me up to speed with the code base. What I will be doing is developing a network maintenance system that will efficiently manage a small world network, a broadcast system for messages based on a gossip protocol and developing a GUI complete with contact management features with other basic things you'd expect from a micro-blogging platform. I will also ensure that everything will be conveniently packaged and easily installable for an end user. This will hopefully all be completed by before the end of August. Note however that this will only be an alpha and much more work will still be needed to offer full anonymity among other things and work on this will begin after the alpha is complete. Regards, Kieran ___ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click yes (once you click above) next to would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech
