Computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer takes a deep dive into the origins of fake news, conspiracy theories, reports of the paranormal, and other deviations from reality that have become part of mainstream culture, from image manipulation in the nineteenth-century darkroom to the literary stylings of large language models like ChatGPT.
"Dark MAGA: The Latest Cycle in the Far-Right Aesthetics Laundromat" by Tim Squirrell (2022).
"Many people reading about the latest development in right-wing extremist aesthetics might think little of it or find it laughable – after all, Dark MAGA attempts to make a septuagenarian former President look cool and edgy. The problem with this reaction is that it both writes off the movement as fundamentally unserious – which it is not – and allows for further amplification by journalists and others who cover Dark MAGA as light news."
A bit ironic given this is disseminated over the Internet...
The Internet would be far better if giant corporations didn't control platforms & endlessly surveille & profile & do so very unequally--to me that largely is a capitalism, governance & regulatory failure--power & control of infrastructure.
Fifteen years before the commercialization of the internet, millions of amateurs across North America created more than 100,000 small-scale computer networks. The people who built and maintained these dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSs) in the 1980s laid the groundwork for millions of others who would bring their lives online in the 1990s and beyond.
The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really works.
Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet
In her debut book, Extremely Online , Lorenz reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.
Meganets
How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities
There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar.
From the CBI Archives.
UCLA CS Prof Leonard Kleinrock, successfully transmitted the first message over ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford. The group intended to transmit the word “LOGIN,” but the system crashed just after they had sent the first two letters.
The Gutenberg Parenthesis
The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet
The Gutenberg Parenthesis traces the epoch of print from its fateful beginnings to our digital present – and draws out lessons for the age to come.
The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word.
1973 #Ethernet as one of the defining information technologies in modern communication was developed at #PARC by Chuck Thackers for #Alto#Computer s. What Bob Metcalf, Butler Lampson, and Dave Boggs built for the #ARPAnet is connecting us all today— via the #Internet, & @fediverse.
"The 'net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" was a comment about #Usenet, a #federated / #P2P system with gossiped (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol) message exchange which wasn't particularly picky about its transport layer (indeed you could load a spool on a floppy and mail it), not the internet.
With the price increase in every single tech subscription service of today already happening or coming, I think it's high time to reconsider whether we really need all the streaming, video games, task management programs, etc.
Because I understand the rising costs of living, but some companies are being utterly rude toward their paying customers.
Freedom House has kicked off promotion for the launch of the 2023 #FreedomOnTheNet ranking on 4 Oct.
As a primer, have a look at our recent article with @tanyalokot on how competing rankings have shaped global understandings of what internet freedom is (and isn't)
We adopt a relational approach to explain how & why such a complex landscape of internet freedom rankings has emerged and identify how the ranking organisations’ varying approaches to capturing internet freedom have played a role in defining and legitimating it as a global issue.
Please stop referring to the Chinese and Russian 'models' of internet control.
How Russia censors today is the complete opposite of what the 'Russian model' referred to when the idea of 'models' was first proposed (and China hasn't exactly been static either...)
I'm writing about Internet bills proposed by the Russian State Duma that either did not go anywhere (e.g. Milonov's 2017 social-media-by-passport proposal) or only much later or in heavily redacted form (such as the 2020 social media law). Which other bills should I include?
I'm trying to get a sense of the overall dynamics of proposals being floated at various times since 2012. Vague leads or hunches welcome!
Ich hasse es, dass Österreich es schlicht und einfach verkackt hat, sinnvolles Internet für alle auszurollen. Nicht mal in Wien gibt es Tarife mit >50 Mbit/s Upload (in meinem Bezirk) und das ist einfach lächerlich.
Es ist 2023 und wir haben Internet-Angebote wie anno 2000. Von LTE am Land will ich gar nicht anfangen, das ist oft auch einfach nur grottig.
Danke für nix, Politik, ihr habt es einfach verschissen. 😡
Interesting think piece by Yakov Feygin on Prigozhin's Concord that illustrates the usefulness of a political economy perspective on Russia - even if only to expose and question prevalent assumptions
Looking at internet censorship in Russia, I've noticed how often it still gets ignored that there even is an economic side to it. This is both silly (these are large businesses after all) and analytically problematic as it disregards the importance of neoliberalism.
This is not to say that the typical drivers and logics of authoritarian states do not apply. But they co-exist and need to grapple with the realities of contemporary globalised business and finance and the fact that often, you actually do need a business case for it to work
I'm writing about Internet bills proposed by the Russian State Duma that either did not go anywhere (e.g. Milonov's 2017 social-media-by-passport proposal) or only much later and/or in heavily redacted form (such as the 2020 social media law).
Which other bills should I include? I'm trying to get a sense of the overall dynamics of proposals being floated at various times. Vague leads or hunches welcome!
Okay telecom guys from #albania - no offense, but how do you keep track of this? Looks like a maintenance nightmare 😂
Still: Connecting a new house to the fiber network (yes, there is some fiber optics up there!) is probably just a matter of hours. Looking at you Germany! 👀
RANT: I hate the fact that my ISP can restrict access to certain sites
How can it possibly be, that an ISP, which I’m paying for gets to decid, which sites I’m allowed to have access to, and which not?...