Erin McKean writes an interesting article in the Boston Globe about the creation and use of new words and the unfounded fear of criticism some of the users of these newisms have. Whenever I see “not a real word” used to stigmatize what is (usually) a perfectly cromulent word, I wonder why the writer felt [...]

Over at Macuser Dan Moren replies to the question “why can’t all iPhone apps be free? posed by Anita Hamilton in TIME. Moren widens the question to apply to the whole concept of free stuff but naturally focuses on free software. His point is the way in which the public at large have connected the [...]

IFIP-TC9 HCC8 8th International Conference on Human Choice and Computers on Social Dimensions of ICT Policy University of Pretoria 25-26 September 2008 Thursday 25 September 9:00 – 9:30 Opening session Welcome speeches by conference organizers at the University of Pretoria 9:30 – 10:30 Plenary session: keynote speech Communication, Information and ICT Policy: Towards enabling research [...]

The French have gone and done it! Times Online reports: Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy. “There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told [...]

Finding new books is always exiting and I am looking forward to reading Two Bits: The cultural significance of Free Software by Christopher M. Kelty Free Software is a set of practices devoted to the collaborative creation of software source code that is made openly and freely available through an unconventional use of copyright law. [...]

The book Structures of Participation in Digital Culture is now available for download for free. Here is a part of the blurb: Structures of Participation in Digital Culture, …explores digital technologies that are engines of cultural innovation, from the virtualization of group networks and social identities to the digital convergence of textural and audio-visual media. [...]

On Thursday next week (14/2) I will be holding a seminar on technology and resistance. The goal of this seminar is to develop my material which will be included as a book chapter in an upcoming work. Here is an abstract: The purpose of this chapter is to look at the ways in which technology [...]

Free the Mind has blogged about the report Cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy [PDF] being discussed in the European Parliaments Committee on Culture and Education. Article 9 in the report attempts to address online piracy and should be seen as a step in the right direction. The authors have reached the [...]

The Indian Tata corporation have presented their new car the Tata Nano at a car show in New Delhi. The car is being described as as a people’s car due to it’s low price (100,000 rupees or $2,500). It will go on sale later this year. The main market for the car is to provide [...]

The Economist trashes the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in a recent column. The tone is negative from the start with the title One Clunky Laptop Per Child the reader quickly gets the idea. The main argument is however strange. The criticism is not about the idea but is focused squarely on the technology that [...]

A few posts back I talked about travel and was stupid enough to mention the vulnerability of technology while traveling. I could do this because fundamentally I am not a superstitious person and I was speaking about the risk of forgetting a vital part of technology like a cable. Naturally things like this do not [...]