Information Access - Articles Archive
from August 17, 2004 to May 26, 2004

"The US Congress offers webcasts of their hearings but these often evaporate into the ether unless citizens take the initiative to make live recordings," says Click to Vote founder John Parres, who's spearheading the launch of the non-partisan P2PCongress.org. "The P2P Congress website helps coordinate those efforts ... read more

Money as the measure of value and consumption as the measure of well-being means that when more money is spent -- that is, when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistic is up -- "the economy is healthy." It doesn't matter whether that money is spent ... read more

"Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is ... read more

Bloggers are special. A jumble of slanted, shouting voices have overcome our airwaves, infiltrated our newspapers, filled every corner of our waking lives, and they aren't going to stop. It's affecting all of us. You may have noticed that every argument seems just a little more ... read more

Freenet, the brainchild of Ian Clarke while a student at the University of Edinburgh, is a free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable ... read more

Personal involvement and agenda definition is what really counts. "Many people want simple solutions for political problems. They are not interested in complexities. When confronted with the fact that both major parties (in the US) are committed to the same agenda, their reaction is: “OK, but ... read more

In a television network the end devices are stupid, while the network itself is sophisticated. Control is exercised within the TV network itself. On the Internet, the opposite is actually true: an end-to-end deliberately dumb network with all of the intelligence concentrated at the periphery. "To ... read more

"Change is frustrating for everyone in organizations. Leaders know that often survival depends on change. Most employees however see change only as a threat and resist change. Change is seen by most as involving great effort and that in the end it often fails. But there ... read more

According to a //www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html">Progress Report, The New Freedom Initiative is a //www.whitehouse.gov/news/freedominitiative/freedominitiative.html">new project announced by the White House to "help Americans with disabilities ...". But apparently, President Bush plans to unveil next month a sweeping mental health initiative that recommends screening for every citizen and promotes ... read more

In a season of politically confrontational movies, documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald is aiming to do to the Fox News Channel what Michael Moore is trying to do to the Bush administration with his "Fahrenheit 9/11. A coalition of liberal-minded groups, led by the political action organizers ... read more

Slow life can be good, is the fascinating true story of a Japanese province governor who actively promotes a laid-back kind of life, the getting back to nature and giving renewed attention to social affairs. In sharp contrast with Tokyo's rapidly-paced lifestyle, the province of Iwate ... read more

"Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message. Boiled down to its essentials, it is this: "Yes, prescription ... read more

It really sounds like an April Fool's Day joke, but it is really not. Microsoft, that imperialist of the information-technology world, has actually succeeded in patenting the human body as a computer network. US Patent 6,754,472, issued to the company on June 22nd, is for a ... read more

This is a perfect list of the things I would recommend anyone not to do in case the Internet went suddenly down. For serious speculators of this issue, the best chance we have is to fuel and support those individuals and companies that are already working ... read more

"Not all governments around the world share the same problem. Japan and Greece have the highest numbers of adult cigarette smokers in the world, but the lowest incidence of lung cancer. In direct contrast to this, America, Australia, Russia, and some South Pacific island groups have ... read more

"Children play games, chat with friends, tell stories, study history or math, and today this can all be done supported by new technologies. From the Internet to multimedia authoring tools, technology is changing the way children live and learn. As these new technologies become ever more ... read more

Web has evolved into an alternative source for news judgment. "It's as if people let the news sink in, paused to register what beheading of an American, video-taped and broadcast... really means, and then said: Okay, now I want to see for myself. Show me, television ... read more

Here is an excellent annotated list of online resources devoted to cover the issues of corporate social responsibility, use of media for propaganda, media literacy, influence of corporate interestes in the media and inside education, globalization. These sites can be used to investigate or research some ... read more

Disinfopedia is a collaborative project that maintains a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Disnfopedia is an encyclopedia of people, issues and groups ... read more