Read an interesting book on the topic. “Many practices which are considered traditional are in fact quite recent inventions, often deliberately constructed to serve particular ideological ends.”
August 20, 2009
July 13, 2009
More weird and less weird things in Japan
It’s been a while since my last Japan visit, but a friend of mine pointed out this newest craze:
Earwax cleaning is now mainstream entertainment; more information behind these links. Click here for Yamamoto Ear Cleaning Parlour… And here Moe Pillow Earcleaning Service.
August 14, 2008
Eckhart Tolle on awakening to your life’s purpose, part 2
Excerpts from the book “A New Earth”.
…
- When you are still, you are who you are beyond your temporal existence: counsciousness-unconditioned, formless, eternal.
- Your inner purpose is to awaken.
- What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself.
- Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them.
- If helping others gives meaning to your life, you depend on others being worse off than yourself so that your life can continue to be meaningful and you can feel good about yourself.
- We are not speaking of clock time, but of psychological time, which is the mind’s deep-seated habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment.
- But why did anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. You forgot your main purpose. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.
- Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself…
- When you meet with people, at work or wherever it may be, give them your fullest attention… The field of awareness that arises between you becomes the primary purpose for the interaction.
- Whereas the notion of purpose before was always associated with future, there is now a deeper purpose that can only be found in the present, through the denial of time.
- Seen from beyond the limitations of thinking and therefore incomprehensible to the human mind, everything is happening now. All that ever has been or will be is now, outside of time, which is a mental construct.
August 12, 2008
Recent reads
Japanese language
Tanizaki Junichirou
In ei rai san
Chijin no ai
Yukiguni
Natsume Souseki
Kokoro
Kawabata Yasunari
Yama no oto
Sakaguchi Ango
Darakuron
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke
Rashoumon
Torokko
To Shishun
Hana
etc. short stories
Yu Miri
Kazoku Cinema (Family Cinema)
Oooka Shouhei
Nobi (Field Fires)
Murakami Haruki
Norway no mori (Norwegian Wood)
Dance Dance Dance
Hitsuji wo meguru bouken (Sheep Adventure)
Sekai no owari to hardboiled wonderland (The End of the World and the Hardboiled Wonderland)
1973 nen no natsu no pinball (Pinball of Summer 1973)
Kaze no uta wo kike (Listen to the Wind’s Song)
Ooe Kensaburou
Hiroshima nooto (Hiroshima Notes)
Shisha no ogori
Dazai Osamu
Shayou
Ningen Shikkaku
German language
Max Frisch
Homo Faber
Stiller
Hermann Hesse
Siddharta
Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game)
Steppenwolf
French language
Albert Camus
L’etranger
Russian literature (translated)
Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
English language
John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
J.D.Salinger
Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare
Macbeth
Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead
Executioner’s Song
Eckhart Tolle on how to live in the present
Read “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle.
I surely don’t buy all that spiritual level speculation, but there are still plenty of good ideas in the book. Here some excerpts (including some of the spiritual stuff which I find hard to agree with, and some observations which I do find good. Decide for yourself which parts to agree with…)
- …our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?
- … our state of consciousness creates our world…
- On our planet, the human ego represents the final stage of universal sleep, the identification of consciousness with form. It was a necessary stage in the evolution of consciousness.
- The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.
- The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.
- If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop.
- You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need.
- Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.
- Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life…activities that you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating, or stressful. But don’t include anything that you hate or detest doing… whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity. You will soon find that what you do in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, tedious, or irritating, is actually becoming enjoyable… This is finding the joy of Being in what you are doing.
- The ego’s wanting always tries to take from something or someone; enthusiasm gives out of its own abundance.
- Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.
- At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfyunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego.
- Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence.
- ”Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”… The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others”, all life-forms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source.
April 4, 2008
July 28, 2006
Economy and indicators
Collecting a batch of informative or insightful speeches, documents etc.
~~~
Speech by Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner; “A World of Opportunity: China and the future of international trade”; June 2006 at Renmin University, Beijing. http://www.europa-eu-un.org/articles/en/article_6024_en.htm
~~~
European innovation, problems and solutions (a collection of keywords from various sources)
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Lisbon agenda not enough?
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Market for innovative goods and services (needs action on internal market, services, regulations, culture, IPR/patent system, procurement, standards etc.)
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Focusing of resources (implies also withdrawing resources from some fields)
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Financial tools and environment, and mobilizing venture capital
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Mobility of resources, including people
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Political will and action (including real budgeting)
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Technology platforms, European Institute of Technology etc.
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Improving university-industry partnerships
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Improving national as well as EU level innovation systems and policy
~~~
Collecting a batch of economic indicators that make SENSE in analyzing a country & the global economy without going into esoteric calculations… Welcome all contributions.
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Exchange rates, dollar vs. euro etc.
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Oil prices, supply and demand
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US Federal Reserve, rates
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Stock exchange indices, quarterly and annual reports from companies
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Labor statistics
- Geopolitics
- Gold etc prices
July 7, 2006
Noam Chomsky quotes
These are quotes from the book “Imperial Ambitions”, first published in 2005.
…
You aren’t supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That’s a very dangerous idea, and therefore it’s been wiped out of history.
…
In a 1919 essay called “The Sociology of Imperialisms,” the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote:
There was no corner of the world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest-why, then it was the national honor that was insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.
(Interesting that Schumpeter is quoted here… He is supposedly the father of entrepreneurship studies, and of the idea of creative destruction. -blog author-)
…
(question to Chomsky) The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci wrote, “A main obstacle to change is the reproduction by the dominated forces of elements of the hegemonic ideology. It is an important and urgent task to develop alternative interpretations of reality.” How does someone develop “alternative interpretations of reality”?
I deeply respect Gramsci, but I think it’s possible to paraphrase that comment – namely, just tell the truth. Instead of repeating ideological fanaticism, dismantle it, try to find out the truth, and tell the truth. It’s something any one of us can do. Remember, intellectuals internalize the conception that they have to make things seem complicated. Otherwise what are they around for? It’s worth asking yourself what’s really so complicated? Gramsci is a very admirable person, but take that statement and try to translate it into simple English. How complicated is it to understand the truth or to know how to act?
…
Social Security is based on a principle that is considered subversive and that has to be driven out of people’s heads: the principle that you care about other people… There is huge pressure to turn people into pathological monsters who care only about themselves, who don’t have anything to do with anyone else, and who therefore can be very easily ruled and controlled. That’s what lies behind the attack on Social Security. And it reflects a deep imperative that runs through the whole doctrinal system.…
They have to make sure that the people they are ruling do not understand that they actually have the power. That is the fundamental principle of government.
…
At some point, people recognize what the structure of power and domination is and commit to doing something about it. That’s the way every change in history has taken place. How that happens, I can’t say. But we all have the power to do it.
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Guilt can be a way of preventing action. You comfort yourself by saying, “Look how noble I am. I confessed that I did something wrong, and now I’m free.”
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We’re being oppressed. And in fact that’s a strain that goes right through U.S. history. There’s a book by Bruce Franklin, a literary theorist, that traces this strain through American popular literature, going back to the colonists. We are always just on the verge of extinction. We’re being attacked by demonic enemies who are just about to overwhelm us, and then, at the last minute some superhero or amazing weapon appears and we’re able to save ourselves.
…
That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone’s neck and they’re about to destroy you. The same is true with any form of oppression. And it’s psychologically understandable. If you’re crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can’t be, I’m a murderous monster. It has to be self-defense. I’m protecting myself against them. Look what they’re doing to me. Oppression gets psychologically inverted: the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself.
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Many of the basic institutions of our society are totally illegitimate. Do corporations have to be controlled by management and owners and dedicated to the welfare of stockholders instead of being controlled by the people who work in them and dedicated to the community and the workers? It’s not a law of nature.
…
Some media mentioned in the book:
Alternative Radio www.alternativeradio.org
The Boston Globe www.boston.com
Financial Times www.ft.com
Harvard International Review http://hir.harvard.edu/
The New York Times www.nytimes.com
March 21, 2006
Weird and less weird things in Japan
This must be such a typical blog topic… "gaijin saw weird things in Japan". I could call it interesting things in Japan, but w-words such as weird or wacky seem to fit much better 
Contemporary issues in no particular order:
Kouda Kumi 幸田久美 倖田來未 Singer. The word on the street in Tokyo was that she is really in. She writes her name in a weird way, which means "not arrived yet". www.koudakumi.com
Imo shochu potato liquor. This must be Japan's answer to single malt whisky.
109. Shopping tower in Shibuya. Still popular.
Dog life counselor. Saw it on tv. Shrink for dogs. This is a job that requires a license in Japan. Here is an example http://www.petshousemaid.com/aboutus.htmm
Nomaneko. Another cat from Japan! Hugely popular! Press start. Move over Kitty and Norakuro!
http://mysohko.up.seesaa.net/image/maiyahii.swf
Mobile Suica. Japan is rushing ahead in mobile services as they mostly have in the recent years. An RFID chip in your mobile phone enables you to use it as an instant credit card, train ticket, info collection device, and so on and on. There are services in planning that will enable you to just point at a restaurant, and the menu & food reviews & rankings by recent customers will instantly be downloaded onto your phone. Maybe these services are already in place. Finding city maps and train timetables onto your mobile phone in a few seconds is already old stuff. It was around already in 2001. http://ubiks.net/local/blog/jmt/archives3/003483.html
Ni-to (niito) Young people who do nothing. Just stay at home and lead an uninspired existence. I wonder if the word has something to do with the American native Arapaho word for "timid"? I am timid = niito'einoo. He (she) is timid= niito'eit.
Kirin beer. The beer label supposedly has “Kirin” written somewhere on the animal. I could not find it.
Hard Gay. Fooo!!! He holds Yahoo Japan accountable "for stealing his trademark shriek" (in Japan, Yahoo is pronounced YAFOO) The man dresses in a black leather or latex vest, shorts and hat. Tokyo has now several types of Hard Gay clothes sets on sale. Total makeover and all the clothes, or just the hat, sunglasses and studded collar. From 4000 Yen up to around 7000. Check out at Don Quijote stores near you….. www.boingboing.net/2005/09/11/hard_gay_visits_yaho.html http://blog.kung-foo.tv/archives/001535.php
Don Quijote (popular shop chain in Japan) Incredible collection of anything you may or may not want. For some reason I could not find their homepage.
Gorie. I dont know what to say. Check out this website for upcoming performances. She(?) is probably the little sister of Hard Gay. www.randc.jp/gorie/profile.html
Toyoko Inn / Livedoor & Horiemon. Recent corporate scandals in Japan. Maybe this is a sign that the economy is picking up?
Roppongi Hills & Roppongi Heartland. Quite cool complex of hotels, bars etc in Roppongi area. Go to Heartland bar to be seen and more with the young, beautiful and upwardly mobile. www.kirin.co.jp/brands/HL/shop/main_eng.html
Maid Cafe. "Welcome back my Master!" Get served your coffee by a cute Japanese maid in a cartoon-type dress. For example here. http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~miacafe/miaeng Someone is commenting on stuff like this here: http://blog.myspace.com/ojiimachiemi, and here is a clip from what happens inside: www.zippyvideos.com/2427358083579486/cafe/
Akiba kei. People who like to frequent the Tokyo Akihabara area. www.marchen.to/~picasso/cg/foool/train/ A cartoon about it. Whats going on here?? (update: the "Train Man" or Densha Otoko was supposedly an otaku guy who helped a cute young girl on the train when she was harassed by a group of drunkards. He seeked help from people at 2Channel chat site for conquering her heart. And he succeeded. Now they are together and a movie has come out about it.)
2 Channel. Hugely popular discussion site for everything. http://www.2ch.net/
Moe- もえー 萌えっ I am not exactly sure what this word means. I guess it is supposed to describe cute cartoon charater-like girls or cute small animals. A search with the Japanese word yields photos of girls and fluffy puppies.
Takakura Ken. Always popular actor even outside Japan
www.japan-zone.com/modern/takakura_ken.shtml
Tokyo Tower (a bestselling book) Written by Ekuni Kaori.
Guguru. To google something. The imperative form is "gugutte".
Privatization of Japan Post
Zannen
Nandedayo-
Shiga!! Saga!! Chiba!! http://www.geocities.co.jp/Milkyway-Aquarius/9603/sabfile/shinbashi.swf
Darts
Capsule hotel
March 19, 2006
Mundane sociology
Rather than study extraordinary phenomena, livelihoods or massive movements created by people, why not focus on the small moments and habits in life? There is a very interesting journal, but for some reason defunct… Past issues available here: Journal of Mundane Behavior http://www.mundanebehavior.org/index2.htm
Ethnomusicology. How do different tones, rhytms etc. combine to create moods and how do these connect with the emotions, or the air of a culture?
How about doing a through time-motion study of a week everyday life? Compare it with a thorough narrative of the thoughts and feelings of the subject? Some interesting insights will surely surface…
When concentrating on work in the office, then leaning back with a stretch and sigh, what are the feelings and thoughts that pop to mind while leaning back and disengaging from the work?
Why do pedestrians sometimes feel they are on a collision course with the person walking towards them in the opposite direction, and how do they decide who should slightly change walking direction to avoid collision?
How do people move in a crowded or empty elevator? What is the effect of elevator music?
What is the effect of colors in the room you live or work in?
Why, how and when are we suckers for flattery?
What do we look at in a person (physical) and what elements of their appearance fills our consciousness (mental)? A statistical or time-motion study is also possible…
What catches our attention in a painting?
Will keep adding my silly questions 
March 18, 2006
Modern Chinese writers and literature
My random collection.
Shou Huo 收获, a literary magazine http://www.qikan.com/gbqikan/mag.asp?issn=0583-1288
Beijing Wenxue, Zhongpian Xiaoshuo Yuebao 北京文学 中篇小说月报, literary magazine from Beijing which I am exploring right now.
Qiao Ye 乔叶, a writer who has a nice fresh style! http://www.qikan.com/gbqikan/view_article.asp?titleid=rmwx20060102&yuedu=1
March 14, 2006
Oldest extant philosophy
Text borrowed from Stanford University. Please pardon me for the moment. Planning to gather some relevant intercontinental philosophical texts here.
Plus links to Laozi resources
Chinese Ancient Texts Database http://www.chant.org
National Digital Library of China http://www.nlc.gov.cn
One version of Laozi Daodejing 唐 易 州 龍 興 觀 道 德 經 碑 本 http://ef.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/ccw/01/lg0.htm
Searchable database of Laozi and other ancient texts http://210.69.170.100/s25/index.htm
Impressive collection of Laozi originals and translations http://home.pages.at/onkellotus/TTK/_IndexTTK.html
A Laozi database project http://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/MPC/datab.html
Very interesting Chinese text reading interface, not only for Laozi http://zhongwen.com/dao.htm
Another Laozi text online http://www.cnd.org/Classics/Philosophers/Lao_Zi/
Guodian bamboo slip Laozi online http://bamboo.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/
Guoxue http://www.guoxue.com/
www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Daoists/daojia.html
Until recently, the Mawangdui manuscripts have held the pride of place as the oldest extant manuscripts of the Laozi. In late 1993, the excavation of a tomb (identified as M1) in Guodian, Jingmen city, Hubei province, has yielded among other things some 800 bamboo slips, of which 730 are inscribed, containing over 13,000 characters. Some of these, amounting to about 2,000 characters, match the Laozi (see Allan and Williams 2000, and Henricks 2000). The tomb is located near the old capital of the state of Chu and is dated around 300 B.C.E. Robbers entered the tomb before it was excavated, although the extent of the damage is uncertain. The bamboo texts, written in a Chu script, have been transcribed into standard Chinese and published under the title Guodian Chumu zhujian (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), which on the basis of the size and shape of the slips, calligraphy, and other factors divides the Laozi material into three groups. Group A contains thirty-nine bamboo slips, which correspond in whole or in part to the following chapters of the present text: 19, 66, 46, 30, 15, 64, 37, 63, 2, 32, 25, 5, 16, 64, 56, 57, 55, 44, 40 and 9. Groups B and C are smaller, with eighteen (chs. 59, 48, 20, 13, 41, 52, 45, 54) and fourteen slips (chs. 17, 18, 35, 31, 64), respectively.
On the whole, the Guodian “bamboo-slip Laozi” is consistent with the received text, although the placement or sequence of the chapters is different and there are numerous variant and/or archaic characters. Particularly, whereas chapter 19 of the current Laozi contains what appears to be a strong attack on Confucian ideals — “Cut off benevolence (ren), discard rightness (yi)” — the Guodian “A” text directs its readers to “cut off artificiality, discard deceit.” This has been taken to suggest that in the course of its transmission, the Laozi has taken on a more “polemical” outlook. However, the Guodian “C” text indicates that ren and yi arose only after the “Great Dao” had gone into decline, which agrees with chapter 18 of the current Laozi.
It is not clear whether the Guodian bamboo manuscripts were copied from one source and were meant to be read as one text divided into three parts, whether they were “selections” from a longer original, or whether they were three different texts copied from different sources at different times. The “A” and “C” texts give two different versions of what is now part of chapter 64 of the Laozi, which may suggest different sources. One scholar at least has suggested a chronology to the making of the Guodian Laozi bamboo slips, with the “A” group being the oldest of the three, copied around 400 B.C.E. (Ding 2000, 7-9). It is possible that the Guodian texts only furnished some of the textual “raw material” or “building blocks” that were used later to create the Laozi (Boltz 1999). In other words, they were independent writings and not versions of or excerpts from the Laozi, which in this scenario did not yet exist when the Guodian texts were made. Nevertheless, taking into account all the available evidence, it seems likely that a body or bodies of sayings attributed to Laozi gained currency during the fourth century B.C.E. They may have been derived from earlier, oral or written sources. By the mid-third century if not earlier, the Laozi probably reached more or less its final form and began to attract commentarial attention.
…
The Guodian and Mawangdui manuscripts are certainly older than the received text of the Laozi, but this does not necessarily mean that they are therefore closer to the “original,” if there was an original. As opposed to a linear evolutionary model, it is conceivable that there were several overlapping collections of sayings attributed to Laozi from the start, each inhabiting a particular interpretive context, from which different versions of the Laozi were derived. Although some key chapters in the current Laozi that deal with the nature of Dao (e.g., chs. 1, 14) are not found in the Guodian corpus, the idea that the Dao is “born before heaven and earth,” for example, which is found in chapter 25 of the received text is already present. The critical claim that “being [you] is born of nonbeing [wu]” in chapter 40 also figures in the Guodian “A” text. This seems to argue against any suggestion that the Laozi, and for that matter ancient Chinese philosophical works in general were not interested or lacked the ability to engage in abstract philosophic thought, an assumption that sometimes appears to underlie evolutionary approaches to the development of Chinese philosophy.
The Guodian and Mawangdui finds are extremely valuable. They are syntactically clearer than the received text in some instances, thanks to the larger number of grammatical particles they employ. However, they cannot resolve all the controversies and uncertainties surrounding the Laozi. Perhaps the two approaches identified above are not mutually exclusive. Different written collections of Laozi sayings, leaving open the time and the way in which they were first formed, circulated during the fourth century. Overlapping in some cases and with varying emphases in others, they address both the nature of Dao and Daoist government. These were then developed in several ways — e.g., some collections were combined; new sayings were added; and explanatory comments, illustrations, and elaboration on individual sayings were integrated into the text. The demand for textual uniformity rose when the Laozi gained recognition, and consequently the different textual traditions eventually gave way to the received text of the Laozi.
(dis?)information society
Update: the WSIS Golden Book has been published on 24th February 2006. It is supposed to be a record of the commitments made at the Tunis information society summit in 2005. So, now it is time for implementation… http://www.itu.int/wsis/goldenbook/
Read some web & book sources on the issue of global information society. There are fresh plans being put into action around the world, by governments academia and various types of organizations. To quote the Berkman Center: what the heck does it all MEAN? If you have good analyses or websites on this, especially concerning Asia, please do submit to me =)
Besides new sources and analyses, I would like to collect a comprehensive and comprehensible list of indicators that help in analyzing what’s going on. Statistics… and qualitative signals.
Some relevant sources:
“What is information society and what are all these summits?”; basic info from Switzerland & other sources. This kind of info aggregation should be done in media better and more often. What kind of information society is it that leaves 75% of the population in the dark about what’s happening because they are not familiar with the jargon..? How many people know exactly what a “summit” is? www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=2104&sid=4486550 www.answers.com/topic/information-society
UNESCO texts on information society http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12845&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Europe’s Information Society. Ambitious website name. http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_en.htm
Innovative Actions Network for the Information Society, funded by the European Commission www.ianis.net
“Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration” 2001 http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56326.pdf
World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) website www.itu.int/wsis. Info on the 2003 and 2005 summits can also be found here.www.worldsummit2005.org
WSIS timeline www.apc.org/english/wsis/#timeline
News service for the WSIS www.wsis-wire.net
EU portal on WSIS http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/internationalrel/global_issues/wsis/index_en.htm
Commentary on WSIS by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Uni http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/wsis
United Nations ICT Task Force www.unicttaskforce.org
Building the Information Society, agenda for change by the International Telecommunications Union (which is a part of United Nations activities). They have a meeting coming up on February 1st. http://www.itu.int/reform/index.html ”Two discussion forums on this topic are now available to collect inputs and opinions… Member States and Sector Members, as well as those stakeholders that have an interest in ITU activities, are requested to provide comments and inputs on how ITU might further adapt itself to the post-WSIS environment” so go ahead and get involved.
Singapore Infocomm Development Authority www.ida.gov.sg/idaweb/marketing/index.jsp
List of reports by the Ireland Information Society Commission (Ireland has been doing well in the ICT sector; this could be worthy reading..) www.isc.ie/about/reports.html
“All about Finland’s information society” http://e.finland.fi
Information Society Germany 2006 plan http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/1857/336
“Zambia’s readiness for the information society” http://cinsa.info/portal/index2.php?option=content&do_pdf=1&id=132
EU China Information Society Project www.eu-china-infso.org
List of information society related web pages for Asia Pacific http://www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_observatory/pages/Regions/Asia_and_Pacific/index.shtml
Global Competitiveness Report. ICT & information society has a lot to do with competitiveness of a country or economic unit. www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/Global+Competitiveness+Programme%5CGlobal+Competitiveness+Report
Tech pioneers in ICT sector www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/2006+Tech+Pioneers+in+Information+Technology
Just for fun at the end… Japanese emoticons! http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks
January 23, 2006
Tech news & sites
Created a long collection on links and then boom, web crash. Well, this was open source day so here a couple of links
January 22, 2006
Mobile phone culture in China
A Chinese friend just told me he has sent over 6000 SMS within a half year. Multiply that by the urban population…
