For Immediate release
Contact: Fatima Lasay (fats@korakora.org)

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Advocates laud CICT chairperson on open source projects, remarks

In a letter issued July 2, members of a nation-wide network of open source advocates welcomed the remarks of the chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) during an open source summit in Cebu last week.

I have been thinking of Munir's post on asia-commons about my letter to the artist regarding IPR enforcement. The comments on the Copy South website also show that many are asking and looking for "a way forward."

Introduction

The short time-span in which the project is being realized, the complex and difficult nature of the subject matter and the complexity of human nature itself can easily result in confusion under organizers and participants alike with regard to the precise nature of the PROCESS/YON Retreat-Workshops.

These notes are intended to clarify our position on some of the theoretical issues that influence the practical implementation of the project for participants and organizers.

Dear friend in the arts,

You might be mildly aware that there is an ongoing campaign towards the strengthening of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) enforcement in the Philippines as the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced plans in April 2008 to pursue more aggressive IP protection schemes with its trading partners around the world.

Dear Jeremy Cooke,

In "GM food Monster or saviour?" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7426054.stm) you write in connection with GM foods "It is something that Americans, generally, do not even think about. Certainly, throughout the four years my family and I spent in New York we must have eaten hundreds of meals containing GM in blissful ignorance."

Note:

This is the second in a series intended to document and share my attempts at finding, installing and maintaining a Linux-based laptop computer. Feel free to post your own experiences. Comments, suggestions, corrections are all welcome!

Freeing the Windows-Bundled laptops

Luckily, while doing the rounds of computer shops in search for a laptop computer running on Linux (or any free/open source operating system), someone at the CompLink shop gave me a full-color catalog-price list.

Of course, most of the laptop and notebook computers have Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium installed in them. I asked the sales person if the customer could ask to have Vista removed. He said, yes. I asked if the customer could then pay for the computer less the price of the operating system, or get a refund. He said, no.

Dear Rory Stewart,

My name is Fatima Lasay, artist-writer based in the Philippines.

I would like to bring to your attention a BBC News article "Celebrating art in Afghanistan" announcing the launch of a project by your organization, Afghanistan's first contemporary art prize -- in particular a number of statements made in the News article which I consider propaganda that reinforces damaging perceptions upon the public.

On "They have laid bare the schism in this laudable project to bring cheap computing to millions of children across the developing world." From BBC News

Surely the real question underlying the One Laptop Per Child project is not the nature of the operating system -but the nature of "computing" itself.

This document is based on a short presentation/discussion I facilitated several days ago at ISIS International-Manila. Entitled "Death by ICT. A Critical Look at the Information Society", the presentation/discussion was intended to stimulate critical thinking about communication and technology concepts and how these concepts relate to and affect daily tasks, decisions and issues seemingly unrelated to ICT.

This same-titled document is an extended version of that presentation/discussion and is intended to open up more possibilities for analyzing ICT use and understanding within the expanding "Information Society." While this document is in outline form, it is open-ended and will be expanded to include more of my ideas and observations regarding some important issues:

1. The social catastrophe of the "new" when dealing with "new" technologies within the context of development.

2. The succumbing of the computer as a complex programmable computation machine into a device for communication and its dangerous implications on the so-called "Information Society."

3. The US military origins and the present doctrinal model of the Internet and its implications as a "social network" and as a ubiquitous and pervasive computing tool.

This document is a work-in-progress. As usual, comments, questions, corrections and suggestions are welcome.

Microsoft Office Open XML now a certified standard: Some issues

In an article by Catherine Saez on Intellectual Property Watch WTO/WIPO Colloquium Aimed At IP Teachers, teachers of intellectual property from developing countries have been invited to attend a two-week colloquium jointly organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) from 30 June to 10 July.

I wonder if the WTO/WIPO Colloquium will also attempt to dispel the myths of Intellectual Property Rights, or will these myths continue to be taught as doctrinal truths to university professors of law, management and economy from developing countries?

1. "Innovation and technology: Twenty-First Century"

In the journal "Leonardo", Volume 28, Number 4 -published by Pergamon Press in 1990 we read an article with the title directly above, written by Lowell T. Harmison (biophysicist, scientist, administrator) Maxwell Foundation, USA:

The article "ARPA's 50th Anniversary and the Internet: a Model for Basic Research by Ronda Hauben"(1) really does need close scrutiny -because (in my view) it sketches the rise of a pernicious Military-Industrial complex (as warned against by President Eisenhower) -but which has now become even more dangerous by linking up with educational and entertainment systems (the edutainment business) to become the Military-Industrial-Edutainment complex.....

In response to Document Freedom Day efforts of promoting, adopting and raising awareness for Free Document Formats and Open Standards, the Philippines-based art initiative Korakora.org is organizing an open on-line dialogue entitled "Surfers or Serfs: Digital Freedom or Digital Feudalism?"

Note:

This series is intended to document and share my attempts at finding, installing and maintaining a notebook computer that runs on fs/oss. Feel free to post your own experiences. Comments, suggestions, corrections are all welcome!

Also, I've updated the text and corrected many errors in the "Finding Linux" article I sent earlier. While I wrote the first draft rather hastily, I think it is important that I check back on it and carefully correct some errors and ambiguities. Laziness only adds to confusion. Some corrections / clarifications that I thought were important include:

Once upon a time, adults used to question things: They would ask themselves and others why some things were good and why some things were bad. This was called "discussion" and some people enjoyed it.

However, one day, a very clever person discovered that if you kept repeating how clever you were and how wonderful your products were, then after a while other people got too tired to argue with you and so they just went out and bought these products however "good" or "bad" they really were. This was called "advertising".

The BBC article "Lesson one: no Orwellian language"suggests that education has somehow been undermined through the corruption of the very language used to discuss education itself.

Professor Richard Pring of Oxford University believes that education has been taken over by an "Orwellian language" which has started to control the way we think and act, pointing out how the aims and values of education has become "dominated by the language of management."

More examples of this language are: