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.

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.

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

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:

Is Media a Danger to Democracy?
From the Third World Traveler
by Robert Parry, American Dispatches magazine (formerly iF magazine), Feb. 2000

Shortly before New Year's 2000, writer Robert D. Kaplan penned a New York Times commentary about the world's future.

While thousands of people converged in Makati yesterday (Feb 29) for the inter-faith rally seeking President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's ouster, the shape of the country's future leadership is being designed via the automated ARMM elections (August 11, 2008 as per RA 9333), a test pilot leading to the 2010 presidential elections (May 10, 2010).

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
Last Updated: Friday, 27 January 2006, 18:05 GMT
By Adam Brookes
BBC Pentagon correspondent

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

In reference to The Economist article "The Laptop Wars", The Economist.com asks: "Will charity or profit end the digital divide?"

Do you think that there is a "digital divide" in your country? What does "digital divide" mean?

The Economist.com says, "Nobody disputes the merits of making laptops available cheaply to children in the developing world."

The laptop wars
Jan 8th 2008
From Economist.com

Will charity or profit end the digital divide?

1. One Laptop Per Child extends promotion
11/25/2007 | 01:11 AM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A promotion in which a customer buying a $188 computer in the US and Canada automatically donates a second one to a child in a developing country was extended until year's end, organizers said Thursday.

Vendor Lock-In
- From the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs. Lock-in costs which create barriers to market entry, may result in antitrust action against a monopoly.

F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Worldview. Ethnography of Local Knowledge. (Quezon City: Punlad Research House, Inc., 2001), p. 25-28.

F. Landa Jocano, Filipino Worldview. Ethnography of Local Knowledge. (Quezon City: Punlad Research House, Inc., 2001), p. 161-192.

Jesus T. Peralta, Glimpses: Peoples of the Philippines. (Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2003. Originally published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2000), pp. 8-12.

At this point, I would like to expound upon that operational aspect of diwà, pagsasadiwà or “articulation”, as a crucial cognitive-linguistic facility in art and the creative practices.