TidBITS#848/25-Sep-06
=====================
  Issue link: <http://db.tidbits.com/issue/848>

  You may be an inforg and not even know it. In this issue, we welcome
  back Professor Luciano Floridi for a forward-looking article on how
  we're adapting to the infosphere and what's in store as humans and
  technology continue to merge (and no, we're not talking cyborgs). In
  other news, Apple releases Security Update 2006-005 and AirPort
  Update 2006-001 to deal with potential AirPort exploits, the iTunes
  Store sells 125,000 movies during the first week of movie sales,
  Adobe attempts to clarify the future of GoLive, and Glenn Fleishman
  reviews Rogue Amoeba's Fission audio editor.

Articles
    Disney Sells 125,000 Movies in First Week on iTunes Store
    AirPort Updates Stop Wi-Fi Exploit
    The Future Beyond Tomorrow, Courtesy of Adobe
    Fission Manipulates Audio Tracks of All Stripes
    Peering into the Future of the Infosphere
    Take Control News/25-Sep-06
    Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/25-Sep-06


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Disney Sells 125,000 Movies in First Week on iTunes Store
---------------------------------------------------------
  by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8682>

  Playlist is reporting that Walt Disney President and CEO Robert Iger
  said that 125,000 downloadable movies had been purchased in the week
  since Apple's debut of movies on the iTunes Store. That sales level
  generated $1 million in revenue for Disney, which works out to $8
  per movie. This implies Apple is taking in between $2 and $5 per
  movie since most, if not all, of the movies were in their first week
  and thus cost either $10 or $13; now most of the newer movies cost
  $15.

<http://playlistmag.com/news/2006/09/19/disney/>

  Playlist also reports Iger as predicting that Disney would receive
  about $50 million in revenue from selling movies on the iTunes Store
  in the first year. Extrapolating out from $8 per movie, that would
  imply that Disney would sell 6.25 million movies via the iTunes
  Store by this time next year. Those numbers are important, since
  they need to be high enough to scare other movie studios into
  wanting to work with Apple or risk leaving big money on the table.
  No results have yet been forthcoming from the competing Amazon Unbox
  service, which features movies from studios other than Disney
  properties.

<http://www.amazon.com/unbox/>


AirPort Updates Stop Wi-Fi Exploit
----------------------------------
  by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8683>

  Apple last week released a pair of updates, Security Update 2006-005
  and AirPort Update 2006-001, which resolve a trio of related
  potential exploits in which a local attacker could inject a
  maliciously crafted frame into a wireless network. In theory, such
  an attack could cause system crashes, execute arbitrary code, or
  elevate privileges, though Apple took pains to note that there are
  no known instances of these exploits. Although you can download the
  individual updates from the Apple Downloads page (only one is
  necessary), you must pick the correct one for your machine.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304420>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/>

  Since AirPort Update 2006-001 covers only two specific builds of Mac
  OS X 10.4.7 - whereas Security Update 2006-005 handles Mac OS X
  10.3.9 and other specific builds of Mac OS X 10.4.7 (with different
  downloads for 10.3.9 and for PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs running
  10.4.7) - we encourage you to let Software Update download the
  correct version for your system. If you're running Mac OS X 10.3.9
  and Software Update doesn't show Security Update 2006-005, you must
  first install AirPort 4.2 and AirPort Extreme Driver Update 2005-001
  (I suspect Software Update will provide them as well).

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airport42formacosx1033.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/airportextremedriverupdate2005001.html>

  Although Apple's release notes are terse as usual, these updates
  undoubtedly come in response to the Wi-Fi exploit demonstrated by
  David Maynor and Jon Ellch at the Black Hat 2006 conference. Apple
  did not credit Maynor nor Ellch for these fixes, however, which is
  an implicit statement that Apple refuses to acknowledge that the two
  researchers contributed to uncovering the flaws. An Apple
  spokesperson denied that SecureWorks, the firm for which Maynor
  works, provided information that led to these patches. Rather, the
  spokesperson told several media outlets and TidBITS that news of the
  SecureWorks demonstration prompted Apple to conduct an in-depth code
  audit that led to identifying these vulnerabilities. (See "Wireless
  Driver Hack Could Target Macs and Windows," 07-Aug-06 and "Apple
  Issues Careful Wi-Fi Exploit Denial," 28-Aug-06.) SecureWorks has
  not responded to any media outlet with additional clarification at
  press time; the company is also in the middle of a merger, which
  could be why they're not commenting. What's most important is that
  Mac users who apply the patches are no longer vulnerable to these
  particular exploits.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8628>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8655>


The Future Beyond Tomorrow, Courtesy of Adobe
---------------------------------------------
  by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8684>

  Adobe wrote in to tell us that my article about GoLive CS2 being
  dropped from the the forthcoming Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 bundle and
  replaced with Dreamweaver 8 was incorrect. Sort of.

<http://db.tidbits.com/article/8679>

  The press release for the announcement noted, "Future versions of
  Adobe Creative Suite will integrate Dreamweaver as a replacement for
  Adobe GoLive. Adobe will continue to develop GoLive as a standalone
  product." However, the future, according to the email I received,
  isn't just any time after the present point. Rather, the future is
  the time _beyond_ the release of Creative Suite 2.3 later this year.
  Dreamweaver will be bundled with, but not integrated into, the 2.3
  version of the suite.

<http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200609/091806CreativeSuite.html>

  Some other future release - we're talking about the future beyond
  the future now, most likely Creative Suite 3.0 next year - will
  integrate Dreamweaver into the suite, after which GoLive will become
  a standalone product.

  Perhaps Adobe PR should have a group viewing of "The Adventures of
  Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension," in which they can peruse
  the motto of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, "Where the future begins
  tomorrow." Bonus points for anyone who can figure out the other
  Buckaroo Banzai reference in this issue.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne>


Fission Manipulates Audio Tracks of All Stripes
-----------------------------------------------
  by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8685>

  Rogue Amoeba last week released Fission, a simple audio-manipulation
  program which can handle AIFF, MP3, unprotected AAC (m4a), and Apple
  Lossless format files. Fission's most notable feature is lossless
  editing of AAC and MP3 files, a capability that's currently unique
  with regard to AAC and for MP3 found only in certain high-end
  editing programs or in the discontinued and now free Audion music
  player. Freeverse's $80 Sound Studio 3 uses third-party support for
  editing MP3 and AAC, and can import and export in those two
  compressed formats, but it can't provide lossless, native editing
  that avoids re-encoding when saved.

<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/fission/>
<http://www.panic.com/audion/>
<http://www.freeverse.com/soundstudio/>

  Like Rogue Amoeba's other products, Fission has focus - it's aimed
  at helping you trim, split, and clean up audio files, but doesn't
  offer all the features of other audio editors. In other words,
  there's a Delete item in the Edit menu but no Paste. You can remove
  audio by selecting it and clicking the Cut button at the top of the
  audio window. Choosing Cut & Split or using the Split tool divides
  an audio file into several clips, each of which is saved as a
  separate file when you're done with the file. Fission also replaces
  the Save command in the File menu with Save Audio (Command-Shift-S,
  like most Save As commands) to avoid overwriting the original file
  you're editing. Finally, a Crop tool removes everything in the file
  except the current selection.

<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/fission/features.php>

  The idea is that you can trim unwanted bits from audio you've
  captured or created, such as commercials in the middle of radio
  shows, "ums" and static from a podcast, or even the gratuitous
  applause at the end of a live recording. Fission can modify selected
  segments for fade-ins and fade-outs, too.

  When you're working with an AAC or MP3 file, Fission makes changes
  directly to the original audio data, avoiding a cycle of decoding
  and re-encoding that would produce quality loss. The program can
  also export to any audio format available through QuickTime,
  including AIFF and WAV. Rogue Amoeba makes much of the fact that you
  can create ringtones for some cell phones by trimming and fading
  files, and then saving them as MP3 or AAC to phones that can import
  those audio formats for ringtone playback.

  Fission's interface is delightful, offering the scrub approach to
  selection, in which dragging a playhead through the audio plays back
  whatever is at the playhead, skipping through it at the speed you're
  dragging. After making a selection, you can drag a playhead on the
  left to scrub backwards, or on the right to scrub forwards.
  (Scrubbing can be disabled from the Preferences dialog box, too.)

  Fission costs $32 and is a universal binary; there's a demo in which
  saved audio is intentionally degraded with a series of audio fades.
  Owners of Audio Hijack Pro can obtain a $14-off coupon. Fission
  requires Mac OS X 10.4 and is a 2.5 MB download.

<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/fission/download.php>
<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/>
<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/store/fission/ahpcoupon.php>


Peering into the Future of the Infosphere
-----------------------------------------
  by Luciano Floridi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8686>

      If you can look into the seeds of time,
      And say which grain will grow and which will not,
      Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
      Your favours nor your hate.
         -- Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene III, 59-62.

  [And now for something completely different... Back in 1995, we
  published a three-part article by Luciano Floridi in which he looked
  into the future of the Internet. After a reader ran across the
  article and drew my attention to it, I asked Professor Floridi if he
  would like to tackle the topic yet again. He did, and you can now
  read his thoughts about how we can expect to see the Internet weave
  its way further into our lives. -Adam]


**Eleven Years Ago** -- In 1995, I was invited to give a keynote
  speech at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, to celebrate UNESCO's
  50th anniversary (UNESCO is the United Nations Educational,
  Scientific, and Cultural Organization). On that occasion, I was
  asked to predict what sort of transformations and problems were
  likely to affect the development of the Internet and our system of
  organised knowledge in the medium term. That speech turned into an
  article, a synthesis of which was published by TidBITS in three
  parts (see "The Internet & the Future of Organized Knowledge"; for a
  non-abridged version see "The Internet: Which Future for Organised
  Knowledge, Frankenstein or Pygmalion?"). They say there are only two
  kinds of predictions: wrong and lucky. Mine was lucky, and so I
  thought I might tempt fate once more.

<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1267>
<http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/pdf/frank.pdf>

  This time, however, I shall not be concerned with the system of
  organised knowledge. Rather, I shall focus, more generally, on
  future developments in digital information and communication
  technologies (ICTs) and their impact on our lives. And since there
  is no merit in predicting the obvious, I will avoid issues such as
  rising concerns about privacy and identity theft, spamming, viruses,
  or the importance of semantic tagging, online shopping and virtual
  communities. I will, instead, seek to capture the new worldview that
  might be dawning on us.


**Digital ICTs as Reshaping Technologies** -- In order to grasp the
  scenarios that we might witness and experience in the near future, I
  need to introduce two key concepts: "infosphere" and "radical
  reshaping."

  "Infosphere" is a word I coined years ago on the basis of
  "biosphere," a term referring to that limited region on our planet
  that supports life. By "infosphere," then, I mean the whole
  informational environment made up of all informational entities
  (including informational agents), their properties, interactions,
  processes, and relations. It is an environment comparable to, but
  different from, "cyberspace" (which is only one of the sub-regions
  of the infosphere, as it were), since the infosphere also includes
  offline and analog spaces of information. We shall see that it is
  also an environment (and hence a concept) that is rapidly evolving.

  By "radical reshaping," I mean a very radical form of change, one
  that not only structures a system (e.g., a company or a machine)
  anew, but also fundamentally transforms its intrinsic nature. In
  this sense, for example, nanotechnologies and biotechnologies are
  not merely changing the world in a significant way (as did the
  invention of gunpowder) but actually reshaping our world in that
  both enable us to create fundamentally new substances that didn't
  previously exist and enable us to interact with and manipulate the
  world in previously unimagined ways.

  Using these concepts, my basic claim can now be formulated thus:
  digital information and communication technologies are radically
  reshaping the very nature of the infosphere, and therein lies the
  source of some of the most profound transformations and challenging
  problems that we shall experience in the near future, at least as
  far as technology is concerned. In the rest of this article, I mean
  to clarify and substantiate this simple claim by highlighting three
  fundamental trends in the reshaping of the infosphere and some of
  their significant implications.


**#1: The Rise of the Frictionless Infosphere** -- The most obvious
  way in which these new information and communication technologies
  are reshaping the infosphere concerns (a) the transition from analog
  to digital data and then (b) the ever-increasing growth of our
  digital space. Both phenomena are very familiar and require no
  explanation, but a brief comment may not go amiss.

  In a 2003 study on information storage and flows, Lyman and Varian
  write that "Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media
  produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two
  percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly
  in hard disks. [...] Five exabytes of information is equivalent in
  size to the information contained in 37,000 new libraries the size
  of the Library of Congress book collections."

<http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm#summary>

  Although the production of analog data is still increasing, the
  infosphere is becoming more digital by the day. A simple example may
  help to drive the point home: the new Large Hadron Collider that is
  being built at the CERN to explore the physics of particles will
  produce up to 1.5 GB of data per second, or an estimated 5 petabytes
  of data annually, a quantity of data hundreds of times larger than
  the Library of Congress's print collection (estimated at 20
  terabytes) and about as large as Google's whole data storage,
  reported to be approximately 5 petabytes. (If you're having trouble
  with these units, a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes, and an exabyte is
  1,024 petabytes.)

<http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte>

  This radical reshaping of the infosphere is largely due to the
  fundamental convergence between digital resources and digital tools.
  One of Alan Turing's most important intuitions was that, in our
  radically reformed infosphere, there is no longer any substantial
  difference between the processor and the processed, so digital tools
  deal effortlessly and seamlessly with digital resources in a way
  that simply wasn't true in the analog world.

  The convergence of digital tools and resources potentially
  eliminates one of the most long-standing bottlenecks in the
  infosphere and, as a result, there is a gradual erasure of friction,
  the forces that oppose the flow of information within a region of
  the infosphere. Reducing friction in the infosphere thus reduces the
  amount of work and effort required to generate, obtain, process, and
  transmit information in a given environment, by establishing and
  maintaining channels of communication and by overcoming obstacles in
  the flow of information such as distance, noise, lack of resources
  (especially time and memory), amount and complexity of the data to
  be processed, and so forth. Given a certain amount of information
  available in a region of the infosphere, the lower the friction in
  it, the more accessible that amount of information becomes.

  Because of their "data superconductivity," information and
  communication technologies are well known for being among the most
  influential factors that affect friction in the infosphere. We are
  all acquainted with daily aspects of a frictionless infosphere, such
  as spamming, and concepts such as micropayments, which become
  possible only when there is no friction in the transmission of
  payment information between parties. Three other significant
  consequences are:

* We have no right to ignore information. It will become progressively
  less credible to claim ignorance when confronted by easily
  predictable events (e.g. as George W. Bush did with respect to
  Hurricane Katrina's disastrous effects on New Orleans's flood
  barriers) and painfully obvious facts (e.g. as British politician
  Tessa Jowell did with respect to her husband's finances in a widely
  publicized scandal).

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/02/wkat02.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/02/ixworld.html>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessa_Jowell_financial_allegations>

* There will be vast common knowledge. Because of the amount of
  information available on any given topic, we will have no right to
  claim ignorance, not just because the information was available, but
  because everyone else will know that the information was available.

* From these two consequences, it follows that, in the future, we
  shall witness a steady increase in the responsibilities of our
  information agents, whether they be people, companies, or bots that
  seek out information on our behalf.

  The upshot is that information and communication technologies are
  making humanity increasingly accountable, morally speaking, for the
  way the world is, will, and should be. That's a huge change from
  times not so long ago when all-powerful gods were deemed responsible
  for every otherwise inexplicable event, and it forces us to accept
  ever more responsibility for our own actions in every sphere.


**#2: The Global Infosphere Is Becoming Our Ecosystem** -- During the
  last decade or so, we have become accustomed to thinking about our
  online lives as a mixture between an evolutionary adaptation of
  people to a digital environment, and a form of post-modern,
  neo-colonization of the digital environment by people. This is
  probably a mistake. Information and communication technologies are
  as much recasting our world as they are creating new realities. The
  threshold between here (analog, carbon-based, off-line) and there
  (digital, silicon-based, online) is fast becoming blurred, but this
  is as much to the advantage of the latter as it is of the former.
  Adapting Horace's famous phrase, "captive cyberspace is conquering
  its victor."

  The digital is spilling over into the analog and merging with it.
  This recent phenomenon is variously known as "ubiquitous computing,"
  "ambient intelligence," "The Internet of Things," or "Web-augmented
  things." It is, or will soon be, the next stage in the digital
  revolution.

<http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/internetofthings/>

  Basically, the increasing digitalization of both artifacts of the
  physical world and of our entire social environment suggests that
  soon it will be difficult to understand what life was like in
  pre-digital times (to someone who was born in 2000, the world will
  always have been wireless, for example) and, in the near future, the
  very distinction between online and offline will become blurred and
  eventually disappear. To put it dramatically, the infosphere is
  progressively absorbing all other spaces. Let me explain.

  In the fast-approaching future, an increasing number of objects will
  be able to learn, advise, and communicate with each other. A good
  example is provided by RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification), which
  can store and remotely retrieve data from an object and give it a
  unique identity, like a barcode. RFID tags can measure less than
  half a millimeter square, and be thinner than paper. Incorporate
  this tiny microchip in everything, including humans and animals, and
  you have created what I'm calling "ITentities." This is not science
  fiction. According to a report by market research company InStat,
  the worldwide production of RFID tags will increase more than
  25-fold between 2005 and 2010 and reach 33 billion. Imagine
  networking these 33 billion ITentities together with all the
  hundreds of millions of PCs, DVDs, iPods, and other digital
  communication devices available and you see that the infosphere is
  no longer "there" but "here." And it is here to stay.

  Nowadays, we are used to considering the space of information as
  something we log in to and log out from. Our view of the world is
  still modern or Newtonian: it is made of "dead" cars, buildings,
  furniture, clothes, which are non-interactive, irresponsive, and
  incapable of communicating, learning, or memorizing. But what we
  still experience as the world offline is bound to become a fully
  interactive and responsive environment of wireless, pervasive,
  distributed, a2a (anything to anything) information processes, that
  works a4a (anywhere for anytime), in real time. This interactive
  digital environment will first gently invite us to understand the
  world as something "a-live" (artificially live), i.e. as comprising
  agents capable of interacting with us in various ways (shoes, for
  example, used to be "dead" artifacts, but you can now interact with
  the pair of Nike shoes you are wearing through your iPod). Such
  animation of the world will, paradoxically, make our outlook closer
  to that of pre-technological cultures which interpreted all aspects
  of nature as inhabited by animating spirits.

  The second step will be a reconceptualization of what we experience
  in informational terms. It will become normal to consider the
  physical world as part of the infosphere, not so much as envisioned
  by the Matrix movies, where the "real reality" is as hard as the
  metal of the machines that inhabit it; but in the evolutionary,
  hybrid sense represented by an environment such as New Port City,
  the fictional, post-cybernetic metropolis of the Ghost in the Shell
  graphic novel. The infosphere will not be a virtual environment
  supported by a genuinely real world; rather, it will be the world
  itself that will be increasingly interpreted and understood
  informationally, as part of the infosphere. At the end of this
  shift, the infosphere will have moved from being a way to refer to
  the space of information to being synonymous with Being. I suspect
  we shall find this sort of informational metaphysics increasingly
  easy to embrace.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_series>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell>

  For the skeptic, there are plenty of daily examples that offer
  tangible evidence of such radical transformations. "Robotic
  cookware" is already available. MP3 players will soon be able to
  recommend new music to their users by learning from the tunes their
  owners enjoyed. Many online services, ranging from Pandora to
  MyStrands, already do this. Your next fridge will inherit your
  tastes and wishes from the old one, just as your new laptop can
  import your favourite settings from the old one, and it will
  interact with your new way of cooking and with the supermarket Web
  site, just as your laptop can talk to a printer or to another
  computer. We have all known that this was possible on paper for some
  time; the difference is that it is now actually happening in our
  kitchens.

<http://www.vitacraft.com.nyud.net:8090/rfiq/home.html>
<http://www.semanticaudio.com/>
<http://www.pandora.com/>
<http://www.mystrands.com/>
<http://www.lginternetfamily.co.uk/homenetwork.asp>

  As a consequence of such reshaping of our ordinary environment, we
  shall be living in an infosphere that will become increasingly
  synchronized (time), delocalised (space), and correlated
  (interactions). We shall be in serious trouble if we do not take
  seriously the fact that we are constructing the new environment that
  will be inhabited by future generations. We should be working on an
  ecology of the infosphere if we wish to avoid problems such as a
  tragedy of the digital commons. In other words, we are leaving our
  children not just a slew of planetary environmental problems, but
  problems that will infect and contaminate the infosphere as well.

  Unfortunately, I suspect it will take some time and a whole new kind
  of education and sensitivity to realise that the infosphere is a
  common space, which needs to be preserved to the advantage of all.
  One thing seems indisputable, though: the digital divide will become
  a chasm, generating new forms of discrimination between those who
  can be denizens of the infosphere and those who cannot, between
  insiders and outsiders, between the information-rich and the
  information-poor. It will redraw the map of worldwide society,
  generating or widening generational, geographic, socio-economic, and
  cultural divides. But the gap will not be reducible to the distance
  between industrialized and developing countries, since it will cut
  across societies.


**#3: The Evolution of Inforgs** -- We have seen that we are probably
  the last generation to experience a clear difference between offline
  and online. The third transformation I wish to highlight concerns
  precisely the emergence of artificial and hybrid agents, i.e.,
  partly artificial and partly human. Consider, for example, a family
  as a single agent, equipped with digital cameras, laptops, Palm OS
  handhelds, iPods, mobile phones, camcorders, wireless networks,
  digital TVs, DVDs, CD players, and so on.

  These new agents can already operate in the infosphere with much
  more freedom and control than was possible just a few years ago. We
  shall increasingly delegate or outsource to artificial agents our
  memories, decisions, routine tasks, and other activities in ways
  that will be increasingly integrated with us and with our
  understanding of what it means to be an agent. This is rather well
  known, but two other, separate aspects of this transformation may be
  in need of some clarification.

  On the one hand, in the reshaped infosphere - progressively
  populated by artificial and hybrid agents, where there is no
  difference between processors and processed, online and offline -
  all interactions become equally digital. They are all interpretable
  as "read/write" activities, with "execute" being the remaining type
  of process. It is easy to predict that, in such an environment, the
  moral status and accountability of artificial agents will become an
  ever more challenging issue.

  On the other hand, our understanding of ourselves as agents will
  also be deeply affected. I am not referring here to the
  science-fiction vision of a "cyborged" humanity. Walking around with
  something like a Bluetooth wireless headset implanted in your ear
  does not seem the best way forward, not least because it contradicts
  the social message it is also meant to be sending: being on call
  24x7 is a form of slavery, and anyone so busy and important should
  have a personal assistant instead. The truth is rather that being a
  sort of cyborg is not what people will embrace, but what they will
  try to avoid, unless it is inevitable. Nor am I referring to a
  genetically modified humanity, in charge of its informational DNA
  and hence of its future embodiments. We shall probably see genetic
  modifications of humans in the future, but it is still too far away,
  both technically (safely doable) and ethically (morally acceptable),
  to be discussed at this stage.

  What I have in mind is a quieter, less sensational, and yet crucial
  and profound change in our conception of what it means to be an
  agent. We are all becoming "connected informational organisms," or
  what I'm calling "inforgs." This is happening not through some
  fanciful transformation in our body, but, more seriously and
  realistically, through this radical reshaping of our environment and
  of ourselves.

  By remolding the infosphere, digital information and communication
  technologies have brought to light the intrinsically informational
  nature of human agents. This is not equivalent to saying that people
  have digital alter egos, some Messrs. Hyde represented by their @s,
  blogs, and https. This trivial point only encourages us to mistake
  digital ICTs for merely enhancing technologies. The informational
  nature of agents should not be confused with a "data shadow" either
  (coined by A. F. Westin in 1968, a "data shadow" is a digital
  profile generated from data garnered from a user's online habits).
  The more radical change, brought about by the reshaping of the
  infosphere, will be the realization of human agents as
  interconnected, informational organisms among other informational
  organisms and agents.

  Consider the distinction between enhancing and augmenting
  appliances. The switches and dials of enhancing appliances are
  interfaces meant to plug the device into the user's body
  ergonomically. Think of Bluetooth headsets and the cyborgs of
  science fiction. In contrast, the data and control panels of
  augmenting appliances are instead interfaces between different
  possible worlds: on the one hand there is the human user's outside
  world, and on the other hand there is the dynamic, watery, soapy,
  hot, and dark world of the dishwasher; the equally watery, soapy,
  hot and dark but also spinning world of the washing machine; or the
  still, aseptic, soap-less, cold, and potentially luminous world of
  the refrigerator. These robots can be successful because they have
  their environments "wrapped" and tailored around their capacities,
  not vice versa. Imagine someone trying to build a droid like C-3PO
  capable of washing their dishes in the sink exactly in the same way
  as a human would. It makes no sense.

  Now, to be clear, information and communication technologies are not
  augmenting or empowering in the sense just explained. They instead
  create environments that the user is then enabled to enter through
  (possibly friendly) gateways. It is a form of initiation. Looking at
  the history of the mouse, for example, one discovers that our
  technology has not only adapted to, but also educated, us as users.
  Douglas Engelbart once told me that he had even experimented with a
  mouse to be placed under the desk, to be operated with one's leg, in
  order to leave the user's hands free. HCI (Human-Computer
  Interaction) is a symmetric relation; we both learn and adjust our
  behavior to fit our technology.

<http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/>

  To return to our distinction, while a dishwasher interface is a
  panel through which the machine enters into the user's world, a
  digital interface is a gate through which a user can be
  (tele)present in the infosphere, as telesurgery clearly shows. This
  simple but fundamental difference underlies the many spatial
  metaphors of "cyberspace," "virtual reality," "being online,"
  "surfing the Web," "wireless gateway," and so forth. It follows that
  we are witnessing an epochal, unprecedented migration of humanity
  from the physical world we can see and touch to the infosphere
  itself, not least because the latter is absorbing the former. As a
  result, humans will become inforgs and will coexist with other
  (possibly artificial) inforgs and agents operating in an environment
  that is friendlier to digital creatures. As digital immigrants like
  us are replaced by digital natives like our children, the latter
  will come to appreciate that there is no real difference between the
  infosphere and the physical world, only different levels of
  abstractions. And when the migration is complete, we shall
  increasingly feel deprived, excluded, handicapped, or poor to the
  point of paralysis and psychological trauma whenever we are
  disconnected from the infosphere, like fish out of water.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesurgery>
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1552211.stm>

  One day, being an inforg will be so natural that any disruption in
  our normal flow of information will make us sick. Even literally. A
  simple illustration is provided by wearable computers and current
  BAN (Body Area Network) systems, which are "a base technology for
  permanent monitoring and logging of vital signs [...] [to supervise]
  the health status of patients suffering from chronic diseases, such
  as diabetes and asthma." Both phenomena are properly understood from
  an inforg (not a cyborg) perspective.

<http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2005/tc2005038_5955_tc119.htm>
<http://www.ban.fraunhofer.de/index_e.html>


**Are We There Yet?** It would be useful to have some idea of what
  sort of empirical evidence we should look for that might signal the
  emergence of the infosphere as the real and only environment in
  which we human inforgs will be living. How will we know that what
  has been predicted above is actually happening? By way of
  conclusion, here are five suggestions.

  1) Sufficient battery life: One important problem that we shall face
  will concern the availability of sufficient energy to stay connected
  to the infosphere non-stop, not just through our working day, but
  through the rest of our waking hours (and possibly even while we
  sleep). It is what Intel calls "the battery life challenge." Today,
  we know that our autonomy is limited by the energy bottleneck of our
  batteries. The infosphere, and hence life as an inforg, will become
  a reality the less we have to worry about running out of power in
  our laptops, cell phones, iPods, and other devices that enable our
  participation in the infosphere.

<http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/hw03032.htm>

  2) Google Objects: You will know that ITentities have finally
  arrived when you will be able to use a search engine to find objects
  in the house ("where are my glasses?") or in the office ("where is
  my stapler?") in the same way that you locate a book in a library
  through its electronic catalogue.

  3) Children of the PC: For clear signs of digital migration in
  recent generations, some evidence can be gathered by looking at the
  evolution of the software game industry. For example, in the United
  States, the average age of players is increasing, as the children of
  the post-computer revolutions [Like us! -Adam] are reaching their
  late thirties. By the time they retire, in three or four decades,
  they will be living in the infosphere full-time.

<http://www.pacificepoch.com/uploads/docs/20060124_Sample_-_Pacific_Epoch_Online_Game_Report_PreRelease.pdf>
<http://www.theesa.com/files/2005EssentialFacts.pdf>

  4) How do I know I am an inforg? If you spend more time connected
  than sleeping, you are an inforg. On average, Britons, for example,
  already spend more time online than watching TV.

<http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/intacc0702.pdf>

  5) Virtual assets? One way of checking whether the new metaphysics
  has arrived is to look for the emergence of a serious economy of
  virtual assets. This involves two steps:

  At the time of writing, End User License Agreements (EULA) of
  massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as World of
  Warcraft still do not allow the sale of virtual assets. This would
  be like the EULA of Microsoft Word withholding from users the
  ownership of the digital documents created by means of the software.
  This is inevitably changing, as more people invest hundreds and then
  thousands of hours building their avatars. Indeed, although it is
  forbidden, there are thousands of virtual assets on sale on eBay. A
  quick check on 14-Mar-06 showed that the starting bid for a "World
  of Warcraft WTB rank14 or epic geared druid" was $1,500, a price
  higher than the value of the average computer used to access that
  piece of information. Sony, more aggressively, already offers a
  "Station Exchange," an official auction service that "provides
  players a secure method of buying and selling [in dollars] the right
  to use in game coin, items and characters in accordance with SOE's
  license agreement, rules and guidelines." John Seely Brown,
  previously the director of Xerox PARC, has claimed that the
  estimated amount of money trading hands in the underground market in
  virtual assets exceeds the gross national product, not of Tuvalu or
  Liechtenstein, but of Russia ($315 billion in 2002). Whether or not
  he is exaggerating for effect, since it's impossible to track black
  market sales precisely, we're still talking about tens if not
  hundreds of billions of dollars changing hands in trade for virtual
  assets.

<http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/>
<http://pict.sdsu.edu/jsb_lecture18jan05.pdf>

  Again, for the skeptical reader, a comparison and some hard evidence
  might be useful. In recent years, according to The Economist
  (16-Feb-06), many countries have followed the United States in
  counting acquisition of software not as a current business expense
  but as an investment, to be treated as any other capital input that
  is repeatedly used in production over time. This has meant that
  spending on software now regularly contributes to gross domestic
  products. So software is acknowledged to be a (digital) good, even
  if somewhat intangible. It should not be too difficult to accept
  that virtual assets too may represent important investments. As for
  the hard evidence, the phenomenon of so-called "virtual sweatshops"
  in China is highly indicative. In claustrophobic and overcrowded
  rooms, workers play online games, like World of Warcraft or Lineage,
  for up to twelve hours a day, to create virtual goods, such as
  characters, equipments or in-game currency, that can be sold to
  other players (warning: this YouTube video is rather disturbing).

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4>

  Once ownership of virtual assets has been legally established, the
  second step will be to check for the emergence of property
  litigation (this is already happening: in May 2006 a Pennsylvania
  lawyer sued the publisher of Second Life for allegedly having
  unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his
  virtual land and other property) and insurance that provides
  protection against risks to these virtual assets. It won't be a
  revolution in business, but it might be comparable to the pet
  insurances you can currently buy at your local supermarket. Again,
  World of Warcraft provides an excellent example. The six million
  players (as of 01-Mar-06, this is larger than the whole population
  of Norway, for example) who will have spent billions of person-hours
  constructing, enriching, and refining their avatars will be more
  than willing to spend a few dollars to insure them. In the near
  future, this will look normal.

<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70909-0.html>
<http://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/insuring/ins_petinsurance_pet_skip.shtml>


**Conclusion** -- Eleven years ago, I concluded the UNESCO paper with
  the following sentence: "Today we are giving the body of organised
  knowledge a new electronic life, and in so doing we are constructing
  the digital heritage of the next millennium. Depending on how we
  meet the challenge, future generations will consider us as new
  Pygmalions or as old Frankensteins." It seems that this is still
  largely true, if perhaps with two provisos.

  On the one hand, the comment can now be expanded to the whole
  infosphere: the life and nature of our informational ecosystem
  depend entirely on us and will require all our creative attention
  and care. On the other hand, what we shall become as inforgs, and
  how we shall behave within the infosphere, will determine our
  success as the only biological species capable of creating a
  synthetic environment to which it then must adapt.

  Marcus Aurelius once wrote that "Everything that exists is in a
  manner the seed of that which will be." I agree, but then I would
  add that this is why a philosophy of information that can look into
  today's technology is our best chance to shape a better tomorrow.


**Acknowledgements** -- I am grateful to Adam C. Engst for having
  prompted me to write this paper and to Gian Maria Greco, Ken Herold,
  Gianluca Paronitti, Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson, Miguel Sicart, and
  Matteo Turilli for discussions of several ideas concerning Ghost in
  the Shell and online games during our meetings. Paul Oldfield kindly
  checked the last draft.

  [Luciano Floridi is a member of the Dipartimento di Scienze
  Filosofiche, Universita degli Studi di Bari and the Faculty of
  Philosophy and IEG, Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford. A
  longer and modified version of this paper is in press and will be
  coming out in the 23(1) issue of "The Information Society."]

<http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~floridi/>
<http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/>


Take Control News/25-Sep-06
----------------------------
  by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8687>

**Take Control Tackles Thanksgiving Dinner** -- A quick note for our
  Canadian friends: if you're thinking about Thanksgiving on October
  9th, take a look at our just-released "Take Control of Thanksgiving
  Dinner." It's a very cool experiment in applying Joe Kissell's
  skills in breaking a complex task into easily accomplished steps.
  Joe has walked thousands of people through upgrading Mac OS X,
  setting up backups, and maintaining their Macs, but those tasks are
  nothing compared to hosting Thanksgiving dinner. We've all put a ton
  of work into designing the ebook to help with planning and cooking a
  huge meal, including a 19-page "Print Me" file that contains
  shopping lists, recipes to tape up in your kitchen, and customizable
  schedules to keep everything on track. You can think of the ebook as
  a "Getting Things Done" approach to Thanksgiving, or a geek's guide
  to the most complex meal most of us will ever prepare. (If you're in
  the U.S., you have some time before worrying about Thanksgiving, and
  for anyone elsewhere in the world, Thanksgiving dinner is mostly an
  opportunity for culinary tourism.)

<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/thanksgiving.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0042-TB848-TCNEWS>


Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/25-Sep-06
------------------------------------
  by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
  article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/8688>

**coconutWiFi Reveals Nearby Networks, Status** -- This helpful menu
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/954/>


**Crossing platforms with PowerPoint** -- A PowerPoint presentation
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/955/>


**Problems with Image Capture** -- A reader notes troubles with
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/956/>


**Adobe Creative Suite 2.3** -- Adobe's announcement of Creative Suite
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/957/>


**HD program eraser for Mac?** What's the best way to ensure that
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<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/959/>


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