The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a Corporate Coup in the Making
Trade agreements that emphasize openness should be treated with caution. When the term partnership is used, an even warier eye should be cast at texts, negotiations, and agreements. Where is the pin that underlies the agreement? On November 13, 2013 WikiLeaks released the draft text of the entire Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the Trans-Pacific […]
Floating Twitter and Fleeting Tweets: The Illusions of Technology
“This is the story of the next half-century as we effectively become cyborgs” – Joshua Foer [1] It says much that one of the great technological achievements of the last 20 years is a creation emphasizing the writing of 140 characters: the tailored, high-speed medium of communication that has effectively created a virtual community, with […]
Kafkaesque World of Data Mining by the NSA, Search Engines and Social Media
In the surreal world we live in, reality has become stranger than fiction. The information super highway could have produced a completely transparent world, yet the elusive corporate and governmental nexus of Big Brothers has surrounded itself with layers of opacity, secrecy and deception. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens are probed, exposed and have become open books […]
Tribute to Aaron Swartz: Information Guerrilla Warrior
The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11, 2013. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited […]
Data Mining: The Price to Pay for Our “Free Parking” in Cyberspace
I can hear him now: “Come one, come all. Enter my parking lot and spend as much time as you want and it is free.” So says the P.T. Barnum of cyberspace. Welcome to the biggest parking lot in the world. At one time that parking lot grew so big it threatened to eat itself. […]
