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Royal Society Report: "Human enhancement and the future of work"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 23, 2013

Jan. 23, 2013

http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/human-enhancement/workshop-report/ PDF qui: http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects… 07 November 2012 The Human enhancement and the future of work <http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/human-enhancement/> project explored potential enhancements arising from advances in science and engineering that are likely to impact on the future of work. Key messages identified by participants at a workshop in March 2012 included: * *Enhancement technologies could change how people work*. Work will evolve over the next decade, with enhancement technologies potentially making a significant contribution. Widespread use of enhancements might influence an individual's ability to learn or perform tasks and perhaps even to enter a profession; influence motivation; enable people to work in more extreme conditions or into old age, reduce work-related illness; or facilitate earlier return to work after illness. * *Empirical data are needed to guide policy*. 'Known unknowns' need to be addressed by studies on short- and longterm impacts (both positive and negative) of enhancements on individuals with detailed consideration of social and ethical impacts using deliberative dialogue with users, potential users and wider society and the development of a market map to guide commercialisation. Continuous monitoring to inform the re-assessment of any policy or regulatory decisions is vital but will also require these underpinning data. * *Policy must be informed by open dialogue*. We must engage publics in open dialogue about the prospects of enhancement technologies and how they might be used at work, particularly given that use at work would affect the entire population, both those employed and not employed. Sources of input should include users of enhancements, older populations, trade unions, as well as those with expertise with novel innovations and technologies. Policy-makers and publics must be equipped to recognize circumstances in which, for example, claims around the benefits of new technologies are inflated. * *The cost of technologies will be crucial*. Cost and cost--benefit analysis are clearly key factors in determining who funds provision, which in turn will impact on equality and justice. Cost also drives investment decisions and will therefore be important in determining commercialization opportunities. * *The availability of enhancements will be influential*. Although the cost of some enhancement technologies will render them inaccessible to all but the very few, raising questions of equality and justice, other technologies such as pharmacological cognition enhancers, are already readily available through the internet---posing imminent challenges for effective regulation. Likewise, digital devices and services with the potential to influence cognition are emerging continuously with little research into the risks and benefits. * *Interdisciplinary approaches will be key to moving forward*. In developing new technologies, whether they are cognitive training or bionic limbs, interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate better understanding of how best to proceed. This also applies to implementation: if any enhancement is seen as valuable, scientists need to work together with social scientists, philosophers, ethicists, policy-makers and the public to discuss the ethical and moral consequences of enhancement, and thus to harness maximum benefit with minimal harm. The report of the workshop is a record of the discussion that took place at the event, and does not necessarily reflect the policy of the academies.

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Campaigns against the privatization of digitized public domain material in France
by Philippe Aigrain Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

Dear all, A small point of information on what be of interest to all of you. For several years, the French National Library BnF (as well as the French National Audiovisual Institut INA) have been engaged in negotiating public-private partnerships for digitizing part of their collections. These agreements receive public funding through a stimulus plan (named "grand emprunt" = "great loan" under the former government and "investissements d'avenir" = "investments for the future" under the new government). The agreements regard collections that include public domaiun material, orphan works, out-of-publication works and commercially distribued works, with different provisions. For now two years, a debate developed, first in 2011 in specialized international circles of library digitizing policy, then through coverage by the on-line media ActuaLitté (http://www.actualitte.com/) and by myself, in particular on the specifics of agreements regarding public domain material. On 15 January 2013, just during the wave of emotion surrounding the death of Aaron Swartz, the Ministry of culture, the Commissariat à l'investissement and BNF announced the signature of two agreements regarding respectively ancient books (incunables and books until 1700) with ProQuest and 78 and 33rpm sound recordings of patrimonial value (only part being public domain) with Believe. These agreements create 10 years of commercial exclusive rights for the private party, the library being authorized to distribute on-line only 5% of the works, and to give access to the rest when digitized only in its premises (during the 10 years). Similar agreements exist in other countries, in particular in the UK, but it should be noted that, according to information published by the signatories, the rights of the public and libraries are tramped upon by the French (unpublished) agreements to a significantly greater degree than in the Google Books agreements, even though the new policy is supposed to represent an alternative. I have published an analysis on 16 January http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=6333 (in French) stressing that the agreements constitute a privatization of the public domain, are in contradiction with the Europeana Charter (the President of BNF also chairs Europeana) and with the recommandations of the European Commission Comité des Sages, and of course with COMMUNIA Public Domain Manifesto and recommandations. I also analyzed how the public private partnerships are likely to be economically more costly for the government than procurement for digitizing under the library own terms, and called to their immediate publication, their cancellation. I stressed that there were likely to result in French-speaking public domain material being mostly available from societal projects (Internet Archive, Gutenberg, WikiSource, UbuWeb and P2P file sharing) or from the US DPLA. I also stressed that it was every citizen's right and duty to share widely the works digitized under these agreements or by others that would enter in one's possession (by legal means) as to prevent the privatization of the public domain. And that if technology or legal artifacts were used to prevent entry in possession of these files by their users, they should be legally and politically challenged. Yesterday, 6 organisations published a press release also demanding publication and cancellation of these public-private partnerships : COMMUNIA association, Regards Citoyens, Open Knowledge Foundation France, Framasoft, SavoirCom1 and La Quadrature du Net : http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/non-a-la-privatisation-du-domaine-public-par… ActuaLitté has extendly covered these positions : http://www.actualitte.com/usages/refuser-la-privatisation-du-domaine-public… http://www.actualitte.com/usages/bnf-vendre-le-domaine-public-n-est-pas-le-… Specific calls have started to be published by librarians against the agreements, including calls to sharing public domain digitized material, though many express sympathy in private byr are still hesitating to speak out publicly due to "duty of reserve" requirements for civil servants. International support will be appreciated. Our apologies for not having had time to provide English translations of all our materials. Feel free to produce translations yourselves. Best regards, Philippe Aigrain

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Personal Democracy Robots?
by Matteo G.P. Flora Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

Personal Democracy Robots?<https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/pnhoward/personal-democracy-robots/> Freedom to Tinker A few weeks ago I wrote a post for Slate arguing that it is time to consider developing—and maybe even using—democracy robots<http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/31/twitter_bots_for_democra…> on Twitter. Preprogrammed messages released on a strategic schedule could have an impact on public opinion in sensitive moments for an authoritarian regime. The EFF’s eloquent Jillian York<https://www.eff.org/about/staff/jillian-york> retorted “let’s not<http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/04/pro_democracy_twitter_bo…> ”. In short, I argued that the other side is using social media armies and bots in their campaigns to manipulate the opinion of their publics, diasporas overseas, and even international opinion. Since authoritarian governments are investing in such technologies, D-bots could be an important part of a systematic response from the democracies that want to promote democracy. *Most of these crafty bots generate inane commentary and try to sell stuff, but some are given political tasks. For example, pro-Chinese bots have clogged Twitter conversations about **the conflict in Tibet*<http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/twitter-bots-target-tibetan-protests/> *. In Mexico’s recent presidential election, the political parties played with **campaign bots on Twitter*<http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428286/twitter-mischief-plagues-mexico…> *. And even an **aspiring parliamentarian in Britain*<http://insidecroydon.com/2012/11/26/jasper-admits-to-using-twitter-bots-to-…> * turned to bots to appear popular on social media during his campaign. Furthermore, the Chinese, Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan governments employ their own social media experts and pay small amounts of money to large numbers of people (“50 cent armies”) to generate pro-government messages, if **inefficiently*<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201211111642310699.html> *.* Freedom House’s recent Freedom on the Net report<http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/FOTN%202012%20Ove…> actually identifies a longer list of countries where paid commentators and account hijacking allows regimes to spread misinformation. <http://ftt-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/2012.jpg> Of course, Ms. York is right to question how D-bots would get around the mechanisms that Twitter has for cutting down on the traffic that clogs up its networks. *How, exactly, would one (or a dozen) Twitter account(s) that tweet links to stories about democracy be effective in combating an army of Twitter accounts targeting individuals with propaganda? It would merely leave the conversation to the bots, all of which would quickly be relegated to spam by Twitter anyway: The social media platform’s algorithms are set up to detect repeated messages, while those not automatically detected can easily be reported by users. The alternative—targeting the bots to tweet at anti-American or anti-democratic accounts—is not likely to be any more effective.* And she makes the smart argument that the better strategy would be for average citizens who are proud of their democracies to take to social media. I wonder if a volunteer social media troop for having substantive interactions about democratic values with people living in authoritarian regimes would have as much impact as the paid armies of basiji militias, Russian youth nationalists or Chinese microbloggers. The impact of d-bots or authoritarian a-bots would only ever be on the small population of elite technology users. This is an important subgroup however, especially in political sensitive moments like corruption scandals or rigged elections. The magic of social media is in interactivity, so simply blasting out links to news content is only the first step in disseminating ideas about how political life can be organized. And the research suggests that the most recalcitrant supporters of regimes should not be targeted by media campaigns precisely because they are set in their ways. Reaching out to mommy bloggers, poets, and sports enthusiasts may be the best way to draw larger numbers of people into political conversations they might not have otherwise. Whether or not the State Department should be funding experiments in building d-bots may be a moot debate. One of the interesting trends we’ve seen is the surprising way in which average citizens in the West have been dedicating their own computing resources to support social movements in authoritarian countries. There are a growing number of tools to let average users build their own twitter bots<http://www.pcworld.com/article/242338/10_twitter_bot_services_to_simplify_y…>. So in the next major political crisis in Russia, China, or Iran, will people be releasing their own bots? -- Matteo G.P. Flora - The Fool srl - CEO & Founder C.so Magenta, 43 | 20123 Milano | http://thefool.it off. +39.02.00618826 | mob. +39.347.9676430 Direzione e Coordinamento Giacomini Investimenti S.p.a.

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Paper: "Info-nauti - Cittadini in rete" (Ceccarini e Di Pierdomenico)
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

Luigi Ceccarini e Martina Di Pierdomenico Info-nauti Cittadini in rete L'articolo, con un approccio descrittivo, studia il nesso tra l'utilizzo della rete, come stru- mento di informazione, e il profilo civico e politico di questi utenti. Quanti usano internet con regolarita? per informarsi sono definiti info-nauti. Richiamano la figura del buon cittadino, sofisticato e competente. Sono esigenti e critici rispetto alla politica. Partecipano di piu?, anche a parita? di risorse sociali e culturali. Una componente importante degli info-nauti e? quella dei giovani. Le loro abilita? tecnologiche e una diversa cultura politica rispetto agli adulti abbozzano le trasformazioni che il ricambio generazionale portera? sul fronte della cittadinanza politica e della sfera pubblica. Parole chiave: nuovi media, partecipazione politica, democrazia elettronica, in- formazione politica, sfera pubblica. Sono libero di condividere con voi su questa lista il PDF in allegato grazie al consenso degli autori, del Prof. Mazzoleni (direttore della rivista "Comunicazione politica") e del Mulino - che ringrazio tutti. juan carlos

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Bruce Sterling, "THE HACKER CRACKDOWN, Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

Sulla scia delle discussioni post-morte Aaron Swartz, segnalo quanto nella mia ignoranza ho appena scoperto, ovvero, che il notissimo libro del neo-garante Nexa Bruce Sterling, "THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier", è anche disponibile online per usi non commerciali [1]: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/101/101-h/101-h.htm Ciao, juan carlos [1] per approfondimenti leggete la "Preface to the Electronic Release of The Hacker Crackdown", http://www.gutenberg.org/files/101/101-h/101-h.htm#preface

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attuazione direttive su cookies e data breach notification
by MANTELERO ALESSANDRO Jan. 22, 2013

Jan. 22, 2013

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Re: [nexa] la bufala della fine del monopolio Siae - stasera in radio
by Simone Aliprandi Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

Per chi si fosse perso la diretta, ecco il filmato-podcast dell'intera puntata. http://aliprandi.blogspot.it/2013/01/serata-radio-diritto-autore-siae.html In realtà la questione della fine del monopolio Siae è stata solo il punto di partenza; poi abbiamo parlato di molti temi caldi e controversi in materia di gestione dei diritti d'autore e connessi. Un caro saluto. S.A. Il 21 gennaio 2013 17:30, Simone Aliprandi <simone.aliprandi(a)gmail.com> ha scritto: > Questa sera alle ore 22 sarò ospite - assieme a Guido Scorza - del > programma radio di Nicobenz, per discutere e far luce (se ancora ce ne > fosse bisogno) su questa bufala circolata nei giorni appena prima di > Natale. > Ecco i dettagli per collegarsi: > http://nicobenz.blogspot.it/2013/01/siae-la-bufala-della-fine-del-monopolio… -- Simone Aliprandi - http://www.aliprandi.org

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la bufala della fine del monopolio Siae - stasera in radio
by Simone Aliprandi Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

Questa sera alle ore 22 sarò ospite - assieme a Guido Scorza - del programma radio di Nicobenz, per discutere e far luce (se ancora ce ne fosse bisogno) su questa bufala circolata nei giorni appena prima di Natale. Ecco i dettagli per collegarsi: http://nicobenz.blogspot.it/2013/01/siae-la-bufala-della-fine-del-monopolio… Un caro saluto. -- Simone Aliprandi - http://www.aliprandi.org

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L'Internet libre et ouvert est-il menacé ?
by gianluca quaglia Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

L'Internet libre et ouvert est-il menacé ? http://www.planete-plus-intelligente.lemonde.fr/organisations/l-internet-li… -- qgl

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7° Nexa Lunch Seminar - 23 gennaio 2013
by Giuseppe Futia Jan. 21, 2013

Jan. 21, 2013

Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-7> NEXA 7° Nexa Lunch Seminar Mercoledi 23 Gennaio 2013, ore 13.00 - 14.00 Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (primo piano) http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-7 L'intelligenza collettiva per organizzare la conoscenza sul Web Speaker Federico Cairo Ingresso libero This event will be webcast live: http://nexa.polito.it/upcoming-events L'organizzazione della conoscenza presente sul Web è uno degli strumenti principali per ridurre l'/information overload/ sperimentato quotidianamente dagli utenti di Internet. In occasione del 7° Nexa Lunch Seminar *Federico Cairo*, research fellow del Centro Nexa su Internet & Società, illustrerà il suo lavoro di ricerca, riguardante la *classificazione automatizzata dei documenti in Rete per mezzo dei concetti presenti su DBpedia <http://dbpedia.org/About>*. Nato nel 2007 dalla collaborazione di Università Libera di Berlino <http://www.fu-berlin.de/en/>, Università di Lipsia <http://www.zv.uni-leipzig.de/> e OpenLink Software <http://www.openlinksw.com/>, DBpedia è un progetto per l'estrazione di dati strutturati dal "corpus" di Wikipedia e alla pubblicazione dei dati stessi sul Web in formato Linked Data <http://linkeddata.org/>. L'opportunità dell'utilizzo di DBpedia per la classificazione della conoscenza sul Web è sostenuta sia da aspetti puramente tecnici sia da valutazioni più teoriche. Essendo DBpedia collegata a un vasto "corpus" multilingue preannotato di carattere enciclopedico (Wikipedia), essa risulta tecnicamente molto adatta ad essere utilizzata per procedimenti automatici di natural language processing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing> e di text mining <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_mining>. Ma la cosa più interessante è che i concetti presenti in DBpedia sono il risultato di un *consenso semantico raggiunto in maniera collaborativa* dalla comunità degli internauti. Un criterio efficace di classificazione sul Web, infatti, non può essere imposto dall'alto, ma deve seguire gli stessi principi di libertà e trasparenza che hanno da sempre costituito l'essenza di Internet. La conoscenza contenuta in Wikipedia, e di conseguenza in DBpedia, è frutto di quell'intelligenza collettiva e di quella cultura collaborativa che sembrano emergere come i tratti costitutivi delle comunità in Rete. I software che utilizzano Wikipedia e DBpedia per l'estrazione e l'arricchimento dei contenuti sul Web, come per esempio TellMeFirst <http://tellmefirst.polito.it>, progetto vincitore di un grant Working Capital Telecom 2011 <http://www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it/2011/10/tellmefirst/> e ulteriormente sviluppato all'interno del Centro Nexa da Federico Cairo e Giuseppe Futia, fanno appunto leva su questa "saggezza della folla", mostrandone le potenzialità e i benefici per gli utenti di Internet. /Durante l'incontro saranno disponibili panini e bibite per coloro che si saranno registrati su http://lunch07.eventbrite.com/ entro il 21 gennaio/. Speaker - e informazioni supplementari [cairo] FEDERICO CAIRO, research fellow presso il centro Nexa e dottorando di ricerca al Dipartimento Interuniversitario di Studi regionali (DIST) del Politecnico di Torino, si è laureato in Filosofia presso il Collegio Superiore dell'Università di Bologna (2005) e in Ingegneria dell'Informazione presso il Politecnico di Torino (2008). La sua attività di ricerca si concentra principalmente sulle tecnologie del Semantic Web per gli archivi digitali e su motori di ricerca basati su ontologie. Dopo aver collaborato come ontology engineer con CSI-Piemonte e CELI sui progetti CoOPERARE (2010), dati.piemonte.it (2010), OPSA (2011), è stato uno dei vincitori dell'edizione 2011 di "Working Capital - Premio Nazionale Innovazione" di Telecom Italia con il progetto TellMeFirst, un'applicazione di arricchimento dei testi via Linked Open Data. Letture Consigliate * Exner, P., Nugues, P. (2012) /Entity extraction: From unstructured text to DBpedia RDF triples/. The Web of Linked Entities Workshop (WoLE 2012) * Mendes, P. N., Jakob, M., García-Silva, A., & Bizer, C. (2011). /DBpedia Spotlight: Shedding Light on the Web of Documents/. Text (pp. 1-8). Facultad de Informática (UPM) * Bizer, C., Lehmann, J., Kobilarov, G., Auer, S., Becker, C., Cyganiak, R., & Hellmann, S. (2009). /DBpedia - A crystallization point for the Web of Data/. Web Semantics Science Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, 7 (3), 154-165. Elsevier. Maggiori informazioni su Federico Cairo sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://www.linkedin.com/in/federicocairo Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e il ciclo di incontri "Nexa Lunch Seminar" Il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) è un centro di ricerca indipendente che studia da diversi punti di vista le varie componenti di Internet, la "più grande invenzione del secolo" secondo il Premio Nobel Rita Levi Montalcini. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it. I "Nexa Lunch Seminar <http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars>" costituiscono un ciclo di incontri proposto dal Centro Nexa su Internet & Società e si svolgono ogni quarto mercoledì del mese dalle ore 13 alle ore 14. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare e confrontarsi sugli argomenti scelti per il dibattito, insieme con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Ogni secondo mercoledì dal mese, dalle ore 18 alle ore 20, continua il consueto appuntamento con i "Mercoledì di Nexa <http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi>". See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Maggiori informazioni sui Nexa Lunch Seminar e i Mercoledì di Nexa, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved> Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter

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