NewsScan Daily, 17 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 17 June 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"  
       Terror Over Internet Protocol?
       Searching for Art Wherever Keywords Lead
       Hate Sites
       The Success of Online Banking
       Tech Execs Say Educational System Needs Greater Productivity
       Union Versus Microsoft on Offshoring

FEATURES        
       Flash Card
       Worth Thinking About: Technospiritual Bumptiousness

TERROR OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL?
     A senior Justice Department official has told a Senate committee that
law enforcement faces new threats from Internet-based telephone services,
and warned that legislative efforts to deregulate VoIP (Voice over Internet
Protocol) services could undermine the ability of law enforcement officials
to investigate criminal or terrorist activity. The Justice Department has
asked the FCC to require Internet phone companies to design electronic
conduits in their networks that would make it easier to tap conversations.
James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology says that a
better approach would be for investigators to work cooperatively with
Internet phone providers. (Washington Post 16 Jun 2004)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47882-2004Jun16.html

SEARCHING FOR ART WHEREVER KEYWORDS LEAD
     In a new high-tech artwork created at Northwestern University in
Chicago, a live TV news broadcast is displayed at the center of a
wall-mounted array of nine computer monitors, and computer software is used
to scan the broadcast's closed-caption stream and select keywords to find
images on the Internet to illustrate the story. However, AI expert and MIT
professor Marvin Minsky is critical of systems that try to retrieve relevant
knowledge from text without understanding what the text actually means:
"Although this system may entertain some people and even give them some new
ideas, to my mind, nothing justifies the use of inadequate systems by
labeling them as art." (New York Times 17 Jun 2004)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/technology/circuits/17info.html

HATE SITES
     An international conference in Paris has been exploring ways to fight
anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic propaganda on the Internet. "Our
responsibility is to underline that by its own characteristics -- notably,
immediacy and anonymity -- the Internet has seduced the networks of
intolerance," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told the conference
attendees. However, U.S. Asst. Attorney General Dan Bryant urged caution in
taking actions that would violate rights of free speech, and suggested that
the appropriate test is always whether a particular Web site is or is not
engaged in criminal activity: "We believe that government efforts to
regulate bias-motivated speech on the Internet are fundamentally mistaken.
At the same time, however, the United States has not stood and will not
stand idly by, when individuals cross the line from protected speech to
criminal conduct." (AP/San Jose Mercury News 16 Jun 2004)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8938819.htm

THE SUCCESS OF ONLINE BANKING
     A new comScore Networks study of online banking at the nation's ten
largest financial institutions has found that 22 million consumers logged in
to their accounts in March -- almost a 30% increase from a year earlier. Jim
Larrison of comScore says: "The banks are doing a lot of promotion of their
services. The leaders are also spending a lot of time and technology
resources creating applications that are really user-friendly." A Bank of
America executive explains: "We find that as customers use of online banking
and bill pay grows, they become much more loyal customers. They also have
higher balances and higher loan balances." (AP/USA Today 16 Jun 2004)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-06-16-online-banking
_x.htm

TECH EXECS SAY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM NEEDS GREATER PRODUCTIVITY
     Top executives of Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, McAfee, and other leading
technology companies have urged Congress to promote math and science in U.S.
schools. "Why can't we get in the educational system the same increase in
productivity that we've gotten in the rest of the economy?" asked Art
Coviello of RSA Security. Bill Conner of Entrust Inc. said that schools
should offer better opportunities in math and science for women and
minorities, and should help eliminate "nerd" stereotypes about science
students: "We need to turn up the volume, make it OK and cool to be in math
and science." (AP/Los Angeles Times 17 Jun 2004) http://tinyurl.com/yrjuq

UNION VERSUS MICROSOFT ON OFFSHORING
     The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers claims to have identified
documents that expose Microsoft's intention to hire low-cost foreign vendors
to write its software: "These documents clearly show that as a major
software vendor they're looking at the highest skilled, highest trained
workers to try to move their work abroad." A Microsoft spokeswoman says the
company has long hired outside vendors in India and around the world, but
that the company's core technology work will continue to be done in-house:
"We're in a cyclical business, so that's part of it. In the work we do,
there are areas of expertise. It makes sense to go to the experts because
it's not intellectual property, core technology. We'll continue to do that."
The documents in question show that Microsoft paid its U.S. workers $60 an
hour for software developers, $72 for senior software developers, and $90
for software architects, whereas for workers in India it paid hourly rates
of $23, $31 and $36. (Seattle Times 16 Jun 2004)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001957020_microsof
t16.html

*****  

FLASH CARD
     "What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid
of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that
which he thinks he already knows." (Epictetus)

WORTH THINKING ABOUT: TECHNOSPIRITUAL BUMPTIOUSNESS
     Canadian history professor David Noble thinks that modern technology
may be deluding scientists with an exaggerated sense of their power over
nature:
     "The military development of man-machine systems gave rise to both
'virtual reality' computer simulation systems (described by Jason Lanier,
who coined the term, as 'computerized sensory immersion') and 'cyberspace'
(the term invented by science-fiction writer William Gibson), the on-line
world of computer-mediated communication (via the Internet, originally the
Department of the Army ARPANET). Enmeshed in computer-based communication
and simulation systems, human beings experienced an 'enhancement of the
senses' and the seemingly infinite extension of their mental powers and
reach--delusions of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that fueled
fantasies of their own God-likeness.
     "'Our fascination with computers is more deeply spiritual than
utilitarian,' computer-industry consultant and philosopher Michael Heim has
argued, tracing its roots back to the seventeenth- century mathematician and
philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 'When on-line, we break free from
bodily existence,' from our 'earthy, earthly existence,' and emulate the
viseo dei, the perspective of God, the "all-at-oneness" of divine
knowledge.' 'What better way to emulate God's knowledge,' Helm wrote, 'than
to generate a virtual world constituted by bits of information. Over such a
cyber world human beings could enjoy a god-like instant access.' Indeed, the
designers of one of the earliest civilian computer-communication networks, a
community bulletin board created in 1978 for the San Francisco Bay Area,
opened their prospectus with the words: 'We are as gods and might as well
get good at it.' As one sociologist described them, these pioneers of
cyberspace were charged with a 'technospiritual bumptiousness, full of the
redemptive power of technology.' 'Much of the work of cyberspace
researchers,' she wrote, 'assumes that the human body is "meat"--obsolete,
as soon as consciousness itself can be uploaded into the network. The
discourse of visionary virtual world builders is rife with images of
imaginal bodies, freed from constraints that flesh imposes.' 'The body in
cyberspace is immortal,' declared one enthusiast."
     [See  
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140279164/newsscancom/ref=nos
im for David F. Noble's "The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and
the Spirit of Invention"
-- or look for it in your favorite library. We donate all revenue from our
book recommendations to adult literacy programs.]

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