Julian Warner
School of Management and Economics
The Queen’s University of Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN, UK

A presentation open to further development is given. The idea of technology, including information technology, as a human construction is taken as the basis for the themes to be developed. The possibility of constructing an information dynamic, continuous with the dynamic of capitalism, is considered. Differentiations are made between forms of semiotic labour: semantic from syntactic labour and communal from universal labour. Information retrieval systems and the departure from the labour theory of copyright are considered in relation to the forms of labour distinguished. An information dynamic is constructed. The potential and limitations of syntactic labour are considered. The analytic value of the distinctions developed is differentiated from the possible predictive power of the dynamic indicated. The Semantic Web is viewed from the perspective of these considerations.

Introduction

A high degree of discursive coherence is characteristically demanded for scholarly communication, in written and published form. Discursive coherence, and the finished appearance of a printed product, can give the illusion of closure to a dialogic process. Greater informality is allowed for oral presentations. In this context, I wish to take advantage of the nature of electronic communication, capable of combining oral and written elements (Warner and Cox, 2001), and present observations aphoristically, but still permanently and with a definite rhetorical structure.

The justification for this mode of presentation lies in the developing nature of the field (consciousness is lagging behind reality). For:

Another error … is the over early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods; from which time commonly sciences receive small or no augmentation. … knowledge, while it is in aphorisms and observations, it is in growth: but when it once is comprehended in exact methods, it may perchance be further polished and illustrate and accommodated for use and practice; but it increaseth no more in bulk and substance. (Bacon, 1973:.32)

The knowledge embodied in this article then remains open to growth.

The ‘exact methods’ referred to by Bacon are often associated with writing, most famously in Bacon’s own observation ‘writing [maketh] an exact man’ (Bacon, 1985: 209). Exactness has also tended to attract cultural prestige. Yet reservations on the value of exactness can be found (Warner, 2001a), even, as here, for the development of sciences.

Exactness will also occur as a substantive theme of the discussion, particularly in connection with the possibilities and limitations of syntactic semiotic labour (a concept to be developed and explained).

The Semantic Web, as a proposed information system, would be subject to the conditions which influence the production and use of other systems. In particular, in terms of the distinctions to be developed, encoding universally consistent semantics into web-pages (Berners-Lee, Hendler, & Lassila, 2001) can be regarded as description labour expended at the point of production, with the aim of increasing control and reducing human labour in selection and use. More familiarly, semantic categories are to be modelled in syntactically detectable distinctions (Berners-Lee, et al., 2001).

Technology as a human construction

A view of technology as a radical human construction will be taken as the basis for subsequent discussion. Classically, this view was developed by Marx, primarily, although not exclusively, with regard to industrial rather than information technologies:

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. (Marx, 1973: 706)

Control mechanisms (’self-acting mules’) and message transmission technologies (‘electric telegraphs’) are mentioned in this passage, but they are not its primary focus.

The idea of technology, capable of performing autonomous labour, as industrial technology would have been broadly true of Marx’s historical period:

Only in large-scale industry has man succeeded in making the product of his past labour, labour which has already been objectified, perform gratuitous service on a large scale, like a force of nature. (Marx, 1976: 510)

Information technologies for message transmission were increasingly diffused from the mid-1860s and these are acknowledged by Marx, in a later passage which takes an inclusive view of communication:

the last fifty years have brought a revolution that is comparable only with the industrial revolution of the second half of the last century. On land the Macadamized road has been replaced by the railway, while at sea the slow and irregular sailing ship has been driven into the background by the rapid and regular steamer line; the whole earth has been girded by telegraph cables. (Marx, 1981: 164)

The industrial technologies of the 19th century, such as the steam-hammer ‘that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell’ (Dickens, 1946: 150), would have contained control mechanisms for variation in force, even if such mechanisms are not fully acknowledged in the classic concept of the simple machine (Minsky, 1967: 7). Primitive logic machines, such as Jevons’ logic piano, were also developed in the late 19th century (Gardner, 1958).

More recently, the Marxian conception of technology as a radical human construction has been extended to information technologies, understood, rather schematically, as a form of knowledge concerned with the transformation of signals from one form or medium into another (Warner, 2000b). From this perspective, the language, including the written language, used by Marx can be seen as a cumulative creation of the ‘general intellect’. Congruently with the growth of message transmission technologies, the late 19th century also witnessed the diffusion of non-verbal and abbreviated forms of writing, in logical notations, telegraphic codes, and shorthand.

The extension of a concept describing industrial technologies to include information technologies implies a continuity from industrial to information societies, with both potentially subsumed under capitalism. Familiarly, within discussions of the information society, continuities are counterposed to disjunctions with industrial and capitalist eras (Webster, 1995). A Marxian perspective can again be both novel and informative, in this context:

It is not what is made but how, and by what instruments of labour, that distinguishes different economic epochs.

…

The writers of history have so far paid very little attention to the development of material production, which is the basis of all social life, and therefore of all real history. But prehistoric times at any rate have been classified on the basis on the investigations of natural science, rather than so-called historical research. Prehistory has been divided, according to the materials used to make tools and weapons, into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. (Marx, 1976: 286)

Developments in the instruments of informational labour must be acknowledged, with the computer, as a universal information machine, displacing calculation and, increasingly, writing by hand, as well as special purpose information machines. Yet an underlying and underpinning continuity also exists, strikingly revealed in the theoretical development of the computer from an account of mathematical operations as the writing, erasure, and substitution of symbols. It questionable whether modern information technologies constitute a transformation in material production rather than a significant addition (Warner, 1999a). An understanding of information as a perspective rather than as a disjunction from pre-existing forms of social organisation is, then, preferred here (Warner, 1999b).

If we acknowledge continuities (while not denying contrasts), can we detect or construct an information dynamic which is continuous with the dynamic of capitalism?

Awakening of dead labour

Classically, living labour is required to reawaken the dead labour embodied in machinery and thereby to confer use- and exchange-value on inert stuff (Marx, 1976: 527; Warner, 2000b). The fictional or mythic analogue to this process is supplied by Frankenstein giving life to his creation:

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. (Shelley, 1998: 38-39)

The awakening of dead physical or industrial labour by human action has analogies in the use of information technologies, specifically, in one interpretation of non-determinism in automata theory, where determinism is understood as the automatic transformations in the intervals between human intervention (regarded as non-determinist).

An information dynamic

Can an information dialectic or dynamic then be constructed and detected in empirical developments?

Dialectics or dynamics have been constructed for other fields. For instance, in medicine a dialectic has been detected between the amelioration of known maladies and the consequential rise of enemies to health. The fundamental dynamic of capitalism has been seen as the substitution of dead for living labour, with the aim of decreasing the current costs of production. This process of substitution then yields benefits (teleologically, the historic role of capitalism):

a permanent tendency to increase the social productivity of labour is the main civilizing by-product of capital accumulation, the main objective service which capitalism has rendered mankind. (Mandel, 1976: 60)

In bibliography, the desire of bibliographers to bring order out of chaos is continually frustrated and fed by the urge of the authors, including bibliographers, to publish.

To construct an information dynamic, partly continuous with the fundamental dynamic of capitalism and inclusive of the dialectic between order and chaos in bibliography, some distinctions must be made between forms of human intellectual labour.

Human intellectual labour

A distinction specific to intellectual labour, although it has analogues in physical labour, must be made between semantic and syntactic labour. A distinction derived from existing discussions, and there already partly applied to semiotic products, can be made between universal and communal labour.

Semantic and syntactic labour

Semantic labour is concerned with the content, meaning, or, in semiotic terms, the signified of messages. The intention of semantic labour may be the construction of further messages, for instance, a description of the original message or a dialogic response.

Syntactic labour is concerned with the form, expression, or signifier of the original message. Transformations operating on the form alone may produce further messages (classically, this would be exemplified in the logic formalised by Boole).

Both semantic and syntactic labour are expensive when directly performed by humans. Education, both formal and informal, has been regarded as constituting the production costs of intellectual labour (scholars will be acutely aware that exchange value of intellectual labour need not be directly commensurate with its production costs and that semiotic labour can be conducted in the leisure enabled by other forms of labour). The objects of semantic labour can become objects of syntactic labour when a process is modelled or formalised, although the opening quotation from Bacon would suggest a restricted possibility of further growth. Syntactic labour need not be simple: consider the complexity of logical systems, for instance (a non-constructivist view of mathematics would admit the possibility of syntactically generating acceptable, but complex and yet unknown, statements).

A dual impulse to formalisation, and to the diffusion of formalisms, can be detected. The cultural value of exactness may motivate attempts at formalisation and positively influence their reception. The reduced labour involved in the operation of formalised processes (contrast direct multiplication with the use of logarithms) may impel both their construction and their diffusion. In their diffusion, formalisations renew the prestige of exactness and demonstrate the economic advantages of reduced labour.

The transition from oral to oral and written linguistic communication could be regarded as the opening possibility of a distinction between syntactic and semantic levels of consideration, when applied to human and social not mathematical, or, more narrowly, numerical domains.

Universal and communal labour

A distinction between universal and communal labour is made by Marx:

We must distinguish here, incidentally, between universal labour and communal labour. They both play their part in the production process, and merge into one another, but they are each different as well. Universal labour is all scientific work, all discovery and invention. It is brought about partly by the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on earlier work. Communal labour, however, simply involves the direct cooperation of individuals. (Marx, 1981: 199)

Universal labour, understood as science, discovery, and invention, could be regarded as an aspect of the general intellect which transforms the process of social life. Communal labour is crucial to the awakening and use of universal labour, both as embodied in technologies and written texts. In the narrative of Frankenstein, universal labour would be represented by the learning used by Frankenstein and by the instruments of life, and communal labour, here mediated through a single individual, in the application of that learning and those instruments.

With regard to ‘building on earlier work’, disciplines are understood to differ in the extent to which they are cumulative. Disciplines marked by the extensive use of syntactic operations, most obviously mathematics, are regarded as more strictly cumulative than the human sciences, and, even more the texts and artefacts studied in the human sciences (consider the reduction of Shannon’s seminal work in 1938 on analogies between Boolean logic and switching circuits to material for secondary education, over the subsequent 50 years).

Empirical application of distinctions

Since the late 19th century, information technologies which can be used to perform syntactic labour have been increasingly developed. These technologies have been adopted for public domain information retrieval systems and have also influenced the development of copyright. I will consider information retrieval systems and copyright, but my further purpose is to suggest that distinctions between forms of labour, and the dynamic constructed, could inform understandings of other areas of information activity.

Information retrieval systems

I wish, in this context, to confine attention to system predominantly concerned with written language. Oral and non-verbal forms of graphic communication, which have undergone less clearly marked historically accumulated forms of coding, present different issues for retrieval system design. Most obviously, they do not necessarily offer readily distinguishable syntactic units with potential semantic significance.

Two antithetical, if not always clearly distinguished, traditions can be detected in information retrieval system design and evaluation. The idea of query transformation, understood as the automatic transformation of a query into a set of relevant records, has been dominant in information retrieval theory. A contrasting principle of selection power has been valued in ordinary discourse, librarianship, and, to some extent, in practical system design and use. Philosophical antecedents to the idea of selection power can also be found (Warner, 2000a) (consider also the etymology of intelligence, from the Latin inter-legere, to choose between). The debate between query transformation and selection power may not be resolvable within either paradigm, but, in this context, I wish to take the privilege of assuming selection power as the founding principle for system design, evaluation, and use.

Selection power may be the design principle, but selection labour could be regarded as the primary concept, from which selection power is derived. Let us assume a resistance to labour (I note here a congruence between Marx and Zipf) and that a relatively fixed quantity of selection labour is shared between system producer and searcher, with variation of the distribution between those poles.

Selection power is valued by a searcher as it reduces their selection labour (and an exhaustive serial search may not be a practical possibility). Description labour by the system producer tends to aim to increase the selection power of the searcher and reduce their selection labour (description labour is understood to include cataloguing, or document description, and classification, or subject categorization, incidentally revealing the congruence between their aims). The semantic and syntactic intellectual labour embodied in documents described is here treated as a given. The description labour of the system producer can contain elements of syntactic labour, for instance, transcription or transformation of the object-language of documents described into the metalanguage of index representations, and of semantic labour, for instance the application of thesaural terms derived from a controlled vocabulary or of cataloguing codes to the description of documents. In the 19th century, both syntactic and semantic labour might have involved continuous human intervention (consider the creation of Palmer’s Index to The Times and the primarily syntactic labour of transcribing newspaper headlines as index entries); in modern practice, syntactic labour is delegated to humanly constructed technologies, and, accordingly, human intellectual labour becomes almost exclusively semantic.

Universal labour is understood as information technologies, in both their hardware and software aspects, and communal labour as the awakening or use of those technologies, including semantic record description.

A diagram may clarify these distinctions and their application to information retrieval systems (see Figure 1). The classification of systems from highly to loosely structured is tautological in that it is derived from the objects described and the framework of description, but may still be informative.

The Financial Times, in its various searchable manifestations, provides a peculiarly pure example of the distinction between syntactic and semantic labour. It is available as a web-resource without payment at the point of use, with largely syntactically generated search facilities which operate on identifiable units of the source (at: http://news.ft.com). It is also available with additional description, generated from human semantic labour (which could be syntactically assisted), from a number of vendors. For instance, the Dialog available file labels articles by geopolitical region and product/industry names, including NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code. Direct payment at point of use is made for the resources which embody additional semantic labour. The continuity of such sources is market testimony to readiness to pay for additional selection power (and further evidence for the congruence of the concept with ordinary discourse understandings and everyday practice). Provision of both types of resource involves similar access to the universal labour embodied in information technologies and comparable communal labour to reinvigorate those technologies.

The costs of human labour in description can be more broadly considered. For instance the costs of creating a catalogue record to the standards required for World Cat are in the order of US $40. The labour in description may contain syntactic elements, for instance, in transcription, but will be predominantly semantic. Costs of syntactic labour, by contrast, in storage, manipulation, and transmission of records have diminished historically, and continue to diminish, as communal human labour is transformed into universal labour. Labour invested in record description increases the selection power and reduces the selection labour of the searcher.

Returning to the overall schema embodied in the diagram, we can see that producers of information systems, from highly to loosely structured, have comparable access to universal intellectual labour, embodied in the language they use, and, specifically, in the information technologies available. Comparable, although contrasting, levels of communal labour would be required for system design and maintenance. Strikingly different levels of direct human labour are given to document description: for records in library and union catalogues, intense semantic labour is required (whose intensity could be related to the exactness required); for Internet directories, selection and description of resources, although to less exacting standards; for Internet search engines, very little, if any, additional semantic labour. The communal labour invested in the description of resources reduces the selection labour of the searcher (with both forms of labour reflecting the high costs of direct human employment).

The model can be validated, from macro- to micro-levels. At a macro-level, syntactically based systems proliferate (consider the variety of Internet search engines), while semantically enriched systems, such as World Cat, may occupy unique market positions. Simultaneously, their search facilities, products of universal labour, are converging in appearance and power. At an intermediate level, the function of library cooperatives has changed over time, moving along the horizontal axis of the diagram, from adapting universal labour to a concern with sharing the descriptive labour of cataloguing (from awakening Frankenstein’s monster to distributing its limbs). At a more micro-level, the relative costs of communal and universal labour, considered in relation to market demand, form the decision framework for the conversion of historical resources from paper to electronic form (including Palmer’s Index to The Times). For information retrieval systems, the communal labour invested in description at production reduces the labour required at use (proposals for coding in the semantic web could be understood as part of this dialectic). The distribution of direct human labour between producer and searcher may depend on the nature of the market for the product.

Information retrieval systems, then, can be seen to exhibit the fundamental dynamic of capitalism, the substitution of dead for living labour, although semiotic rather than physical labour. The specific, and already known, dynamic of bibliography between order and chaos is accentuated. Chaos is further enabled by the reduced costs of making information public. Possibilities for order are enhanced by the availability of delegated syntactic labour (although the limitations of such labour are becoming painfully known). The resources giving control themselves contribute to overall disorder (consider Search Engine Watch in relation to Theodore Besterman’s A World Bibliography of Bibliographies and classic concerns with bibliographic proliferation).

Copyright

I wish here to review the striking reversal of the labour or ’sweat of the brow’ theory of copyright by the Feist judgement of 1991 and to suggest that a similar dynamic, between living and dead labour, underlies the reversal and its date of occurrence.

The classic liberal justification for intellectual property, including copyright, is given by the United States Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power

…

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Discussion of copyright have tended to refer to the balance between the two ends of promoting science and the useful arts and protecting the property rights of authors. A more careful reading suggest that property rights were to be given to authors as a mechanism to promote the public good and not as an end in themselves (although the late 18th century marked the emergence of the author as a figure fully entitled to economic reward for their labour). Judicial interpretation and public understanding has tended to focus on the rights of authors to be rewarded for their labour. This focus became known as the labour or ’sweat of the brow’ theory of copyright. The legislature, oriented towards the present and future rather than precedent, and compelled to review practices, may have been more mindful of the overall public good. Less noticed than the labour theory of copyright is the transformation of copyright in practice, at least in part, to a mechanism for projecting the labour of authors (or, with many forms of publication, the investment of publishers (Wilson, 1990)).

A potential conflict exists between public good and property rights in intellectual productions. Specifically, property rights can conflict with the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. For example, the description or abstract of a document may approach the document described. It the document is factual, this gives property in facts, which would be a restraint on freedom of speech (Wilson, 1990).

The Feist judgement, concerned with intellectual property in telephone directories, acknowledges and reverses the labour theory of copyright:

Article I, § 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity.

…

The Copyright Act of 1976 and its predecessor, the Copyright Act of 1909, leave no doubt that originality is the touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works. The 1976 Act explains that copyright extends to ‘original works of authorship,’ 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), and that there can be no copyright in facts, § 102(b). A compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been ’selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.’ § 101 (emphasis added). Thus, the statute envisions that some ways of selecting, coordinating, and arranging data are not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection. Even a compilation that is copyrightable receives only limited protection, for the copyright does not extend to facts contained in the compilation. § 103(b). Lower courts that adopted a ’sweat of the brow’ or ‘industrious collection’ test — which extended a compilation’s copyright protection beyond selection and arrangement to the facts themselves — misconstrued the 1909 Act and eschewed the fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or ideas.

…

Rural’s selection of listings — subscribers’ names, towns, and telephone numbers — could not be more obvious and lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression. In fact, it is plausible to conclude that Rural did not truly ’select’ to publish its subscribers’ names and telephone numbers, since it was required to do so by state law. Moreover, there is nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically in a white pages directory. It is an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be expected as a matter of course.

…

It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of the compiler’s labor may be used by others without compensation. As Justice Brennan has correctly observed, however, this is not ’some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme.’ Harper & Row, 471 U.S., at 589 (dissenting opinion). It is, rather, ‘the essence of copyright,’ ibid., and a constitutional requirement. The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ Art. I, § 8, cl. 8. Accord Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. (Feist, 1991)

The epistemology implied by the judgment conceives of facts existing independently of their discovery. The idea of selection, and of the degree of creativity in selection, also recurs. Most strikingly, the labour theory of copyright is reviewed, critiqued, and dismissed.

Why should this reversal of the labour theory have occurred at that time and place? The Supreme Court can override precedent and may resemble the legislature in its concern for public good and for interpreting the Constitution. The United States was being increasingly influenced by concepts of copyright held in other jurisdictions, marked by the, still minimalist, Berne Convention Implementation Act 1988 (although jurisdictions explicitly valuing dissemination above property rights, for instance the Soviet Union, would have been only indirectly influential) (Warner, 1999a). In terms of the dynamic developed here, the direct human labour involved in the selection, ordering, and presentation of data was no longer sufficiently substantial to warrant protection. The judgment regards this form of selection labour as ‘an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be expected as a matter of course’.

A similar dynamic, the, principally the substitution of dead for living labour, has been detected in domains seldom viewed from a single perspective. The congruence in time, and, to some extent, in geopolitical region, between the development of the Internet and the departure from the labour theory of copyright is striking.

An information dynamic

Can an information dynamic then be constructed (see Figure 2)?

Historically, human intellectual labour begins as semantic labour (natural signs could be regarded as analogous to objects of labour provided by nature) (Warner, 2001b). Over time, and through collective human endeavour, semantic labour can be transformed into syntactic labour, which can reduce the direct human intellectual labour required for semiotic processes. Particularly since the late 19th century, syntactic labour can be modelled and executed mechanically. In these processes of transformation, from spoken to written language, and, further, in computational modelling, a degree of exactness has to be imposed, which may reduce the vitality of the field. In the transformation to computable form, greater exactness is demanded (and this may expose as imperfect formalisations previously accepted as self-consistent). To interpret the results of these syntactic transformations, human semantic labour is required and the cycle is renewed.

Two distinct, but related, approaches could be taken to this dynamic:

First, a priori to assert that universal (machine) labour cannot be semantic in character (following (Searle, 1980)).

To accept this, but then to suggest theoretical potentials and limitations on transformation of or modelling of semantic as syntactic labour.

The second approach promises to be more productive.

Some potentials and limitations can be suggested, connected with the self-identity of the sign and the limitations of exactness (or the exposure of the historical illusion of exactness):

Heraclitus observed that no man stepped into the same river twice. In relation to the stream of oral speech, discussions have questioned the existence of synchronic synonymy. The diachronic analogue to synonymy, replication over time, has been discovered to be difficult to establish for oral forms, considered as signals, and, for the purposes of logical translation, for the signified for oral and written forms.

The only identity required in formal logic is identity of the sign (Wittgenstein, 1981). It could be suggested that we can impose this convention of identity for certain purposes, within mathematics and logic, but not with fully publicly circulated messages. Once messages are fully in the public domain, their producers lose control over their transformation and interpretation.

Loss of control may be a source of richness. From one semiotic perspective, all tautology (and, for Wittgenstein, logic consisted of tautologies) is a refusal of life.

Recognising the potential and limitations of syntactic transformations may enhance our valuing of human intelligence and sympathies. Technology, regarded as a human construction, changes our conception of what it means to be human.

From the perspective developed here, doubt must be cast on the possibility of establishing universally consistent coding proposed for the Semantic Web. The proposal can still be assimilated to the dynamic detected, particularly to the dialectic between labour in production and in use. Further considerations would be the costs of the labour in production and the difficulty of imposing control on distributed entities.

Conclusion

What is the value of this analysis? Previously unrelated developments can be viewed from a common perspective, enhancing our understanding of patterns. Particularly for information retrieval, research is brought simultaneously closer to ordinary discourse understandings, everyday practice, and to the human and social sciences.

The analysis may have predictive as well as analytic value, for instance for the proliferation of syntactically based information retrieval systems (although the predictive value of analyses of human domains is complicated by the effects of analyses on the consciousness and actions of human subjects and their activities).

References

Bacon, F. (1973). The advancement of learning. Edited by G.W. Kitchin. Introduction by Arthur Johnston. London and Melbourne: Dent.Bacon, F. (1985). “Of studies”. In F. Bacon. The Essays. Edited with an introduction by John Pitcher. (pp.209-210). Harmondsworth, Middlesex and New York: Penguin Books. Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., & Lassila, O. (2001). “The Semantic Web.” Scientific American. 279(5). Available at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00048144-10D2-1C70-84A9809EC588EF21&catID=2 [Site visited 11th July 2002] Dickens, C. (1946). Great expectations. London etc.: Oxford University Press.Feist (1991). Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc. No. 89-1909. Supreme Court Of The United States. January 9, 1991, Argued. March 27, 1991, Decided.Gardner, M. (1958). Logic machines and diagrams. Brighton: Harvester. Mandel, E. (1976). Introduction. In K. Marx. Capital: a critique of political economy. Volume One. Introduced by Ernest Mandel. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. pp.11-86. Marx, K. (1973). Grundrisse: foundations of the critique of political economy (Rough Draft). Translated with a Foreword by Martin Nicolaus. London etc.: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. Marx, K. (1976). Capital: a critique of political economy. Volume One. Introduced by Ernest Mandel. Translated by Ben Fowkes. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. Marx, K. (1981). Capital: A critique of political economy. Volume Three. Introduced by Ernest Mandel. Translated by David Fernbach. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. Minsky, M.L. (1967). Computation: finite and infinite machines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Searle, J.R. (1980). “Minds, brains and programs”. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 3, 417-457. Shelley, M. (1998). Frankenstein or The modern Prometheus. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Warner, J. (1999a). “Information society or cash nexus? A study of the United States as a copyright haven.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 50, 461-470.Warner, J. (1999b) “An information view of history.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 50, 1125-1126.Warner, J. (2000a). “‘In the catalogue ye go for men’: evaluation criteria for information retrieval systems.” Information Research. 4, 4. Available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/4-4/paper62.html [Site visited 12th July 2002]Warner, J. (2000b). “What should we understand by information technology (and some hints at other issues)?” Aslib Proceedings. 52, 350-370.Warner, J. (2001a). “Not the exact words … : writing, computing, and exactness.”, in: J. Warner. Information, knowledge, text. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001. pp.33-46.Warner, J. (2001b). “Is there an origin to graphic communication.”, in: J. Warner. Information, knowledge, text. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001. pp.105-109. Warner, J. and Cox, C. (2001). “As sharp as a pen: direct semantic ratification in oral, written, and electronic communication.” Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science, Washington, November 2001.Webster, F. (1995). Theories of the information society. London: Routledge, 1995. Wilson, P. (1990). “Copyright, derivative rights, and the first amendment.” Library Trends. 39, 92-110.Wittgenstein, L. (1981). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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.  Marxists are mainly concerned with analysing the way education involves the transmission of ideas and beliefs about the nature of the social world. The reason for this is that education is a process that enables a ruling class to reproduce its domination of other social classes.

. Some ideas in Marxist theory could be applied to more complex systems, ranging from biology to cosmology, and also could be useful in analyzing the mountains of data generated by modern experiments that use electronic data collection.

. Computer science has pervasive social consequences, thus, it is increasingly obvious that technical activity needs to be responsive to the social aspects of computing.

. What is needed is development of more sophisticated IT systems that are based on a better understanding of human psychology.

. Volunteers are drawn to these projects  to join a new online social circle, for  intellectual curiosity, while others see them as opportunities to be part of important scientific or cultural undertakings.

. A Marxist aproach to applied artificial intelligence and  knowledge-based software engineering.

. Research on autonomous multi-agent systems and autonomy oriented computation systems.

The words of President Obama to the students of Hampton University.

In a commencement speech Sunday, he warned them about the superficialities that are engendered by gadgets.  “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations–none of which I know how to work–information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” he told his audience, according to the AFP.

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” he reportedly said. The concern, he added, is that such a proliferation of dubious information is “putting new pressures on our country and our democracy.”

It’s hard not to sympathize with his sentiment. Instant access to instantly concocted information does put additional pressure on everyone’s critical faculties. Yet it also allows people better access to opposing points of view, to opportunities of verification, to asking their fellow humans for help and guidance.

Cuatro senadores estadounidenses han solicitado a Facebook que cambie la forma en que comparte información con otras compañías. Los cuatro, todos demócratas, argumentaron que las nuevas políticas de Facebook están poniendo en riesgo la privacidad

de los sitios web de 400 millones de usuarios.

Facebook por su parte mantiene que los clientes tienen la capacidad de no compartir la información personal dando cuenta de esa voluntad a la compañía y optar por salirse del programa. Los senadores dijeron que que muchos clientes no conocen esa opción. En esta misma línea crítica con la política de privacidad de Facebook ha salido una vez más el grupo de activistas de Moveon.org que ha denunciado que el nuevo programa comparte información personal de los usuarios, con sitios web externos, sin su consentimiento.

Moveon.org ya lanzó una campaña contra Beacon, el programa de publicidad que Facebook lanzó en el otoño de 2007. La críticas generadas y las demandas judiciales forzaron a Facebook a suspender el programa. Ahora Moveon.org quiere repetir su “éxito” y ya son más de 45.000 los seguidores de su grupo Facebook, respect my privacy!.

Por otra parte la prestigiosa y activa Electronic Frontier Foundation ha publicado una detallada cronología del progresivo abandono que Facebook ha hecho, en su normativa interna, de las políticas que deberían garantizar la privacidad. La EFF denuncia que Facebook se ha convertido en una plataforma obligada a hacer pública la información personal de los usuarios para compartirla con sus socios comerciales y orientar sus estrategias publicitarias.

Vía | cnet news / Excelsior

When you buy a book or movie online–or make a political contribution–do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?

Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But recently, Facebook began doing just that. People across the country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed on their Facebook News Feeds.

Facebook encourages companies to get “word-of-mouth promotion for your business” to “millions” by using the feature that makes this happen. Sign the petition today

A lot of us love Facebook–it’s helping to revolutionize the way we connect with each other. But they need to take privacy seriously.

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to Facebook.

Facebook’s impending fight with D.C. (FAQ)

by Caroline McCarthy

You probably have a Facebook account–well over 400 million people do. You’ve probably noticed that the look and feel of your profile have recently changed (again).

And you’ve probably heard a lot recently about Facebook changing its privacy policies (again). Maybe you’ve even seen something about a rumor that Facebook employees say offhand that CEO Mark Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe in” privacy–and how some people very high up in Washington are starting to take notice. Will government intervention in Facebook be saving you from unwanted snooping or just interfering in your Mafia Wars games? A lot’s still unanswered, but here’s what you need to know now.

What happened?
Basically, mounting concerns about Facebook’s handling of users’ private data have hit a tipping point: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) petitioned the Federal Trade Commission early this week to request that the agency address the issue of social networks’ privacy policies. The next day, Schumer teamed up with three other Democratic senators on an open letter to Zuckerberg to express similar concerns.

There was no scandal to ignite it all. This happened because of a series of big announcements by Facebook earlier this month at its F8 developer conference, all of which detail its ambitions to be the arbiter of digital identity or, if you like transportation metaphors, to own and control the roads that bring together the far-reaching corners of the social Web. It’s complex, but to sum it all up, your Facebook profile information will now be able to be transported to third-party sites in far deeper ways than its Facebook Connect universal log-in service offered.

To set the groundwork for this, Facebook has modified the content of user profiles to once again push more of it public by default. Through a new feature called “Instant Personalization,” Facebook users now must specifically opt out if they don’t want third-party partners–currently limited to beta partners Yelp, Microsoft, and Pandora–to have access to their friends list as well as those friends’ publicly available Facebook information.

Why is this happening now?
To be sure, Facebook has had six years to build up a stockpile of highly personal user information. The company’s servers are home to photos, videos, private messages, and far more–and this is nothing new. But generally it’s not mere storage that raises lawmakers’ concern, it’s when that data might be shared. As we’ve seen in the government scrutiny over behavioral advertising, when third-party networks and partners are brought into the mix, that’s when D.C. starts to take notice.

To look at the situation in terms of tabloid headlines, sharing user data is an easy-to-grasp, hot-button issue prone to the tossing around of adjectives like “creepy” and “Orwellian,” it riles up both the left and the right, and one thing that politicians don’t like is an unbridled Big Brother growing like a weed out of Silicon Valley. Plus, this is where social networks start to veer into the territory of existing advertising regulations on both the state and federal level, so it’s much easier for critical lawmakers to point fingers.

But Facebook’s been sharing data with third-party partners for years now. There was the ill-fated Beacon advertising program, which was modified and then eventually shelved after protests from liberal activist group MoveOn.org and eventually a class-action lawsuit. But on a more successful note, Facebook’s developer platform (first launched in spring 2007) and original Facebook Connect product had been integrating third-party partners into the social-networking site for quite some time.

There have been plenty of minor to moderate criticisms of Facebook’s handling of user data, particularly with regard to third-party partners and advertisers, over the years. And plenty of state and federal laws have been invoked, from California consumer privacy laws to the relatively obscure Video Privacy Protection Act of 1987 to commercial appropriation laws that usually only apply to celebrities.

But there’s no big, sweeping policy designed to apply specifically to social networks, and that is why we’re seeing this attention from a handful of senators. Facebook’s recent moves are its most audacious ever with respect to user data and third parties–just look at all the reactionary headlines full of phrases like “own your identity” and “rule the Internet”–and for the most part right now there is little legal precedent.

So, should there be a law against this?
That’s not entirely clear. Schumer and his colleagues aren’t claiming that Facebook’s new “Open Graph” initiatives are illegal. The main argument on behalf of lawmakers is that Facebook has modified its privacy policies so liberally and so frequently that it’s left users anywhere from befuddled to betrayed. Past changes to Facebook’s privacy policies have left users wondering whether it was giving itself license to make private photos public or even selling data to advertisers without letting users opt in first.

One of the reasons that Facebook was able to grow as big as it has was because it started from such minimal roots. In early 2004, when Zuckerberg was building the site in his dorm room, many an average Internet user was uncomfortable using his or her real name on the Web, let alone uploading albums full of photos or sharing a GPS-enabled location. The original Facebook was a private social-networking site for students from a single college–as verified by e-mail address. Even after it was open to any member to join, it was still hidden behind a log-in wall. Most of Facebook’s modifications are like continental drift: so slow that members, perhaps, were unaware of how dramatically the product was changing from the one they’d originally signed up for.

Metaphor time. Let’s say you are renting a home in a housing development where there are 10-foot-tall brick walls separating each house from the next. Over the years, the corporation that owns the development starts to remove those walls, brick by brick, while charging the same amount for rent. At some point, they’re low enough so that people complain and say that the company is at fault for changing the product that you agreed to pay for every month. The complication here is that a Facebook account is free, so the flip side of the argument is that because Facebook members aren’t paying, the company does not have an obligation to maintain those terms. Expect this to be a point of contention.

Why hasn’t this kind of force been directed at Google?
Well, it has. Lawmakers have scrutinized Google’s enormous scope quite a few times over the years, from questions facing its acquisition of DoubleClick to how it handles the privacy implications of behavioral advertising. It’s been subject to antitrust scrutiny in general, too. And the Department of Justice was about to start poking its nose into a proposed Google-Yahoo search deal until Google itself pulled the plug.

Again, this is an issue where the matter of concern to politicians is not the massive trove of user information that Google stores, but the likelihood that it will share this with third parties or abruptly make parts of it public. It may be a blessing in disguise that Google’s endeavors into social networking have been lukewarm at best. Had Google Buzz, which was greeted at launch with scathing criticisms of its handling of user privacy, been a bigger success, D.C. might have spoken up. Ten privacy commissioners from around the world petitioned Google CEO Eric Schmidt with concerns about Buzz, but the U.S. FTC wasn’t part of it.

Did Facebook see this coming?
Yes: just take a look at some of the company’s hiring patterns. Two years ago, the company hired Google veteran Elliot Schrage as its head of global communications and public policy. Schrage brought with him a legal background and a history of dealing with both lawmakers and lobbyists; late last year, the company hired D.C.-based former journalist Andrew Noyes to handle Beltway-specific issues like “enhancing cybersecurity and online safety, expanding digital privacy protection through user control of data, and protecting free speech” (per a statement from the company at the time). It’s obvious that Facebook knew that as it grew, it would have to start dealing with lawmakers, lobbyists, and regulators. This is a company that wanted to establish a presence in government circles before it necessarily needed to.

At the same time, we’ve heard from insiders that the nature of the recent concern from D.C. lawmakers has indeed made Facebook nervous. The company knew that they’d be coming into the Beltway’s crosshairs but they were not expecting the immediate force so soon after this month’s F8 conference. Right now, Facebook is undoubtedly concerned not just by the potential clamps that regulation, FTC or otherwise, could put into place, but by the negative PR that might turn off consumers and advertisers like it did with Beacon.

So when does Mr. Zuckerberg go to Washington?
We asked, but Facebook has not yet replied to an inquiry about whether the company may be pulled onto Capitol Hill any time soon. If Google’s history with D.C. is any indication, yes, we’ll be seeing Facebook executives from Palo Alto head east to put their best face forward.

What might change?
In the short term–as in the past–Facebook may make some modifications, however superficial, to alleviate image concerns that could affect its relationships with advertisers and other partners or cause user dissatisfaction to snowball. We saw this with Beacon, which was eventually shuttered, and with prior modifications to Facebook’s privacy policies that users found confusing or unnerving.

It’s unlikely that Facebook will give in to critics’ requests and go so far as to make “Instant Personalization” an opt-in rather than opt-out program, since that could completely derail the program’s effectiveness–for better or for worse. Changes on the current privacy front may be more in the language used to clarify them than in the privacy controls themselves.

If Schumer has his way, there will be far more long-term changes as well, with social-network privacy deserving of its own FTC regulation–and that would affect companies beyond Facebook, from Twitter to Google to the dozen or so “geolocation” start-ups out there. This could take some time to push through, though the FTC’s handling of blogger freebie disclosures (something that affects far fewer people directly than social-network privacy) shows that it’s willing to tackle digital-media issues in a swift manner that the tech industry doesn’t always consider to be in its best interests.

For now, Facebook is standing firm. A response letter from Schrage to the senators insists that “the collective changes we announced last week will result in more control for users, not less” and that “we welcome a continuing dialogue.”

By Ryan Paul | Last updated February 10, 2010 7:20 PM

Launchpad is a Web-based platform for collaborative software development, and it’s designed to enable collaboration among programmers, users, and the wide spectrum of other kinds of contributors who participate in the process of building and deploying software. It provides free project hosting for open source software developers and offers a number of important features, including a bug tracker, a version control system, a package building service, mailing lists, and an integrated framework for managing crowdsourced translations.

The Launchpad service is developed and operated by Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution; it is one of the key enablers of Ubuntu development and is used extensively by the Linux distribution’s multitude of contributors. When it was originally launched in 2004, the service itself was not an open source software project. In response to strong encouragement from the Ubuntu community, Canonical released Launchpad’s source code last year under the open source GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).

In addition to facilitating Ubuntu development, Launchpad is the home of over 16,400 open source software projects, including some well-known applications like MySQL and Zope. It hosts more than a quarter of a million code branches and over half a million bug reports. It is arguably one of the most popular project hosting destinations for open source software projects.

Bazaar

Launchpad’s sidekick is a distributed version control system (DVCS) called Bazaar. The current incarnation of Bazaar was developed in 2005 by Martin Pool, an employee of Canonical. One of the chief advantages of Bazaar is its intuitiveness and ease of use. It has excellent documentation and offers a much gentler introduction to distributed version control than some of its competitors.

(Readers who are unfamiliar with concept of distributed version control might want to have a look at the article we wrote about it last year, which includes an introductory explanation and a comparison of some of the popular implementations.)

Bazaar encourages a development workflow that makes heavy use of branching. When an individual contributor wants to work on a project, they create their own branch into which they push their changes. When the changes are ready, the contributor will propose merging the branch back into the trunk. The maintainers will evaluate the code and then either perform or reject the proposed merge.

There are no limits to the number of branches that a contributor can create. Branches can be made for minor changes that fix a few lines of code or for major overhauls that touch every corner of the code base. The beauty of this branch-centric model is that it makes it easy for third-party developers to actively modify the program and publish their changes in parallel without needing direct commit access to a central repository.

Using Bazaar for version control, Launchpad is largely designed to facilitate that development process and make it as seamless as possible. It hosts branches, offers support for proposing merges, and has a built-in code review system through which maintainers can discuss changes with contributors; it totally obviates the need for individual developers to e-mail patches.

The Bazaar command-line and graphical tools are designed to integrate well with Launchpad. When you commit a revision, for example, you can specify the ID numbers of bug reports on Launchpad that are associated with the code change. The branch where the revision is pushed will show up on the Launchpad pages that display those bug reports. In the project’s bug report list on Launchpad, a little icon will appear next to every bug report that has an associated branch. This makes it very easy for a maintainer to see, at a glance, which bug reports have pending fixes from contributors.

Posted January 15th, 2010 by Armin Medosch

This text argues that the erosion of privacy is not a by-product of information and communication technologies, but a systemic property of informational capitalism. The foundational myths of the information society motivate and legitimise the building of control systems applying probabilistic techniques to control future risks. At the root of this configuration are antagonistic labour relationships which have determined the path of technological development since the Industrial Revolution. Those tendencies have reached a culmination in the recent neo-liberal crisis. The digital commons offers itself as an incomplete and tentative remedy.

Note: This text is a draft version of a contribution to OPEN, Cahier on art and the public domain, Nr. 19. This text benefitted substantially from written comments by Brian Holmes and John Barker.

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The things you think about. The things you believe. The things you read and watch. The things that make you confident and the things that make you fearful are the very foundation of wealth generation–on a lot of levels.

The pricing of stocks and other assets reflect beliefs about their value. These beliefs aren’t just the thoughts and opinions of analysts and big-time market movers, they reflect your ideas, too. Now, your personal belief may just represent a fraction of that price, but when merged with the collective sense, you have mass market psychology.

On the micro-level, this belief influences the price of individual stocks. This then can turn into movement at the macro level as your beliefs connect and interact with other beliefs.

How Markets Use Information To Set Prices
The Use of Contingent Contracts

How Markets Use Information To Set Prices

The Use of Contingent Contracts

By Mike Moffatt, About.com Guide

The Wealth Singularity is a point when the power of technology has become so massive that wealth and abundance becomes ubiquitous.

The theory is based on the works of leading futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge, who believe that the exponential growth in computing power will lead to a Singularity. Technology, whether it’s the wheel or the personal computer, also leads to a leap in productivity and the ability to generate wealth.

That Singularity may be closer than you think.

Recently, James Canton, CEO of San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures think tank, said at the Singularity University that artificial intelligence, a key piece of technology in the Singularity, is already making it into the consumer mainstream. In fact,  AI is about 30 percent there, enough to drive big changes in the market very soon. As CNET reports:

“It’s not clear when such a system will be functional, he acknowledged, given that it would require a great deal of artificial intelligence that has not yet made its way into consumer technology. But it’s not so far off, he suggested. In fact, he said, as much as 30 percent of the technology necessary for such concepts to be part of our everyday lives has already been built. And what’s in the lab today, he pointed out, is in the marketplace tomorrow.”

AI makes a lot of wealth-generating technology possible. Everything from investment technology to manufacturing will be more powerful. This will filter through the economy–gradually at first. But, with the exponential nature of these breakthroughs, the acceleration could be quick.

Adaptation is another story. As in other financial revolutions, first adopters and those who can spot trends will benefit the most from this new wave of change.

You can learn more about the technology that’s driving the wealth singularity and how you can take advantage of it in our eGuide, the Wealth Singularity.