Technology

The Bleeding Edge deftly exposes the catastrophic impacts of inequality, exploding the myth that technology has brought us ‘the best of all possible worlds.’ Examining the lives of workers at the bleeding edge of our high-tech world, Bob Hughes explains how the ‘escalating human impact on the earth has gone hand in hand with successful encroachments on egalitarian culture.’

A central argument of the book is that capitalism has given us gadgets that we did not ask for and…

In 2014, the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC: ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.’ ‘Whereas the short-term impact of [artificial intelligence] depends on who controls it,’ he later wrote, ‘the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all’.

Andrew Smart shares these concerns and proposes that, should superintelligent machines ever be developed, they should be given ‘the digital equivalent of LSD…

In my early teens I picked up a book from my sister´s shelves and quickly appropriated it as my own. Unknown to me then, it was to become a profound influence on diverse aspects of my life.

At that age I was already very interested in how things worked, and in dismantling and rebuilding anything that fell into my hands, from televisions to music boxes to steam engines. The book was all about alternative technology, full…

About three years ago, two Australian campaigners were surprised and frustrated to discover that the next generation of student activists were making the very same mistakes in organising that they had made at university. Nothing seemed to have changed. A lot of people have had a similar realisation.

Unlike a lot of people, however, Keira Paterson and Sky Christensen decided to do something about it. ‘Sky had this…

First of all, I need to say that moving to the Fairphone has been a major technical upgrade for me as before it I had a very basic smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Y), so my judgement will be influenced by this. Though I would like to add that I have never felt inclined to buy a high-priced smartphone before the Fairphone, as I never found the utility justified the price.

With the Fairphone, the clear breakdown of the costs of production, and the idea that I was investing in innovation and…

Nowadays, technology takes the lion’s share of military budgets and it is technological superiority, far more than numbers of soldiers, that determines who has military superiority. Not content with nuclear MADness, the military in different countries are busy developing cyber-warfare, directed energy weapons, enhancement of soldiers’ capabilities with brain-computer interfaces, drones that take their own targeting decisions, and robot soldiers. They’re also discussing biological weapons…

In June, a former CIA technical worker revealed US surveillance tactics, allowing the government access to phone records, individually stored data, and the servers of large social networking sites.

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden disclosed documents to WikiLeaks, calling the tactics of the US national security agency (NSA) ‘horrifying.’

Under the ‘Prism’ programme, which has been running since 2007, the NSA has access to the servers of Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Facebook…

Cheap and powerful

Texting can put important or urgent information directly into your supporters’ hands. Combe Haven Defenders (CHD) are the latest campaign group to venture into mass texting of supporters – here’s how and why they do it (cheaply).

In addition to Facebook, Twitter and their Wordpress blog, CHD has relied heavily on texting to keep people updated.

Over 90% of…

Anti-racism

http://www.united.non-profit.nl/pages/info18.htm
Accessed via the website of UNITED, a network of 550 European antiracist groups, this online guide contains a few detailed paragraphs on several aspects of working with the media, from drafting a press release to establishing your own magazine or radio station. Much of the information is relevant to other kinds of campaign groups. Also available in leaflet form,…

We receive important personal and social blessings from technology of all kinds, but for a quarter century we have been completely dominated by a seriously unexamined technology of which Sadie Plant (US author of Zeros and Ones, Digital Women and the New Technoculture) has written: “The impossibility of getting a grip, and grasping the changes under way is itself one of the most disturbing effects to emerge from the current mood of cultural change.”

This is compounded by
1)…

One morning, during the recent invasion of Iraq, I was at home when I idly flipped the tv on.”Daytime tv!” I thought - haven't seen this for a good while. Expecting a banal chat, problem or quiz show. What I got was real time combat coverage from the British military's advance towards Basra. Real, live, war - and at 9.30am.

We need to start our manifesto with epistemology. Not just…

In recent years the German anti-nuclear movement has been quite successful in organising nonviolent actions against Castor-transports en route to the intermediary storagehall for nuclear waste in Gorleben/Wendland. This November the German government has again needed 13,000 policewomen and men to guard this eighth transport, containing 12 carriages of nuclear waste. About 3000 anti-nuclear protesters have again succeeded in showing that the struggle over nuclear energy is by no means over.…

This book is fascinating, funny, at times truly hopeful - and at others pretty despairing - and certainly provocative. It took a year for the publishers to send it to us, and a further six months for me to find the time to read and review it. However, it has been worth the wait. If you are interested in the politics of technology in any way - read this book. It will stimulate your mind and make you ask questions.

Its author is frequently referred to as a “guru of cyborg…

A familiar subject by now for this slim new volume in the sharp, intelligent publisher's personal and polemical strand FOCI (Focus on Contemporary Issues) it maybe, but Open University social scientist Tim Jordan's exploration of alternative ways of being, interacting, protesting and resisting is heartfelt and wide-ranging.

Employing a global reach, he considers the actions of groups as diversely motivated as eco-activists, squatters, anti-vivisectionists, neo-fascists and anti-…

In his novel Slowness, Czech writer Milan Kundera makes the astute remark that we slow down to remember and speed up to forget. If this is true then, according to Norwegian Social Anthropologist Eriksen, we might be in danger of becoming an amnesiac species sooner rather than later, due to our fixation with acceleration.

His thesis here is simply and lucidly put: the exponential growth in “time-saving” communication technologies is leading paradoxically to less time being…