Notes on “The Revolution will be Digitised” by Heather Brook 2011
Written on 13 October 2011 by WR
I am motivated to extract these quotes and offer them here because I believe that Heather Brook has done and is doing, an excellent job to help us understand how to navigate the information maze we face now. I want to support this.
In this book she points to ways in which attempts we may make to find out stuff may be obstructed by governments or corporations. So even if you don't read her book you can go to some of the websites through the links in the quotes.
WR
P14.
“On 17 July 2009, thousands of people who had downloaded 99-cent copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 to their Kindle eBook readers found the titles suddenly deleted. It transpired that Amazon.com remotely deleted the titles from purchasers’ devices after discovering the publisher lacked the proper rights. Amazon refunded customers’ money but many were furious. Some likened it to a bookstore clerk coming to your house when you are not at home and taking the books from your bookshelf.”
P24
Most of what hackers believe can be boiled down into four basic principles:
Freedom of information …..
Meritocracy of ideas …..
Joy of learning and knowledge ……
Anti authoritarianism …….
P26
“ …….. Noisebridge’s governing principles: Be excellent to each other.”
(from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”)
P29
“Sudo Leadership”
from “substitute user do”
“… operating systems like Unix …. The super user or root user is the one with the highest privileges ……… The command “substitute user do” allows a regular user to perform a command as the superuser , so sudo leadership is about letting people take the lead on things in which they have an interest but without being the leader for ever.”
P44
Sci – Fi Writers ….
Bruce Sterling, William Gibson
“The Shockwave Rider” (1975) John Brunner
“Cryptonomicon” (1999) Neal Stephenson
P70
“the journalism of verification”
P73
“The press is not like any other business and what it sells shouldn’t just be rehashed press releases or celebrity gossip, but the civic information necessary for people to understand their society and participate in it. It is a check on political and financial power, or at least it should be.”
P73
Nick Davies “Flat Earth News”
“…. The journalism of verification has been largely abandoned by the owners of the modern media conglomerates.”
P74
“A perception of indifference doesn’t equate to a lack of interest.”
P75
Assange left his laptop in David Leigh’s room.
[My (WR’s) comments / thoughts:
I wonder why Assange’s unconscious wanted the laptop left?
I wonder why Leigh’s unconscious wanted the laptop unnoticed?]
P84
“…….. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who were both influenced by the “Father of Liberalism” John Locke and who took the view that monopolies of any kind, whether for government information or business, were bad for society.”
P85
Thomas Jefferson’s letter …. become a rallying cry for copyright reform:
tinyurl.com/22udzn/
P86
In 2004, Parliament’s Clerk of the Scrolls tried to shut down – for breach of copyright – a civic website.
theyworkforyou.com
P87
Lawrence Lessig founded Creative Commons, wrote “Free Culture” 2004.
P104
William Safire “You Are a Suspect” Nov 2002
tinyurl.com/cozfs6
P111
FBI can obtain signalling information
tinyurl.com/2j8g4t
Steven Bellovin – Columbia University Professor
P131
Techwriter: Danny O’Brien
“On the Net, you have public, or you have secrets.”
[WR : What does “private” mean to Brookfield?
P132
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 – defined privacy as – the right to be left alone.
P139
Ben Laurie
Security activist
[If you want to know how unique your computer is then I suggest trying the EFF’s Panopticlick at
panopticlick.eff.org]
and
“They (Facebook) occasionally make statements along the lines of “We respect users’ privacy” but their actions prove that they do not. I think it’s very clear that they don’t give a damn. Facebook’s business model is to know and reveal as much as possible about you because that’s how it makes money and that’s how it spreads. But the same argument applies to Google and search (engines): Facebook have to be privacy non-respecting, then the next guy who was less privacy respecting would take over from them. I do blame Facebook because its clearly a conscious decision you make, but it’s also inherently obvious that the most successful social network will be the least privacy respecting.”
P155
Re data broking:
“Even worse, some make you pay to have your own information removed.”
tinyurl.com/6h2a3q6/
tinyurl.com/5tegjwj/
P158
“…. even in Europe, with its Data Protection directive, citizens have little power to uncover where their data is going.”
P159
“Use the tools that are available to you to protect the private information that is important to you. Mostly its about paying attention.”
