Here are some more URL's. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
RRE home page: http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html
Pick Hit: Over in Glory: Favorites From Classic Gospel Groups
One reader asked me, "what are you looking for these days?". Since
I overwhelmingly just filtering what people send me rather than going
out and looking for stuff on my own, I usually don't think of it that
way. But the list has wandered around so much lately that I thought
it would be responsible to try to list some topics that I'm especially
hoping to get URL's about right now. I don't imagine that items will
be available ready-made on all these topics. But the issues aren't
going away, so if you notice anything, do send it along.
* Credible reports about next-next-generation computing. The world
is being flooded with overblown claims from vendors and overhyped
incremental results from research groups, so we need readings that
round things up. Which exotic computing media are you really likely
to be able to build microprocessors with? Is there middleware out
there that can really support millions of interacting mobile devices
or millions of distributed databases? What's all this stuff about
massively networked sensor arrays, and why aren't we freaked out
about them? Does anything change in scientific computing when you've
got a grid of billions of fast processors, or is it just bigger?
How do basic ideas of computing change in bioinformatics when you're
trying to model the absurd complexity of biological systems, which
(despite much popularization) are quite unlike past applications of
computing?
* Uses of computing in green architecture. Now that fashion-theory
has gone out of fashion, the architectural star system is going into
eclipse. Taking its place in the intellectual spotlight is something
that is genuinely interesting, namely green architecture, which
routinely generates new architectural forms that are at least as
compelling as the more aesthetically centered kind of architecture,
while also being driven by nontrivial problem-solving and grounded in
nontrivial science and engineering. Many of the new methods involve
computing, e.g., buildings that dynamically reconfigure themselves to
prevailing weather conditions. What kinds of architectural form arise
as sensors, effectors, and computers start making a real difference?
* The long-term planning of the conservative movement. When George
W. Bush took up residency in the White House, his people made a big
deal out of their strategy office, boasting that they were devoting
many more people to long-term planning than previous administrations.
So what are these people doing? Does anybody know? How do they
interact with day-to-day political work? There is clearly a vast
amount of long-term strategy in the work of Bush's speechwriters
-- a fact that may be completely invisible if you have not read the
conservative philosophical canon, which all liberals should -- yet
I've never seen anything significant written about the topic. And
it's not just the White House staff but the Heritage Foundation and
the like. I'm particularly interested in the intellectual life of
the Ashcroft Justice Department. The CPUSA used to have a doctrine
that Communist cultural workers should always stay one half-step in
front of the masses, no more nor less, and this is one more way that
the conservative movement seems to be modeled on the communists.
* New ideas, grounded in actual research, about the sociology of
globalization. I'm particularly interested in new social phenomena
that involve real-time (or at least rapid) interactions among people
across continents. Everyone knows that many global companies operate
24/7 with three shifts in different time zones, but what's happening
with real-time collaborative work between those time zones? How do
people manage those interactions from moment to moment, especially
in corporate contexts where they have enough bandwidth to get actual
work done? What's happening to music as DJ's travel around the world
hearing everything and buying records that they then carry around with
them? Has the culture of business executives who constantly travel
globally broken completely loose from the cultures of normal people?
* The current status of the war over the future architecture of the
Internet. How fast is that war really moving, if you step back and
look at the networks that actually have data moving through them, as
opposed to vendor announcements and standards committees and RFC's?
I've read two dozen articles debating the putative end of end-to-end,
yet through the haze of polemics it's hard to see the actual politics
without attending meetings that most of us aren't going to attend.
* The reintermediation of the music industry. At least 95% of the
public debate over the networked future of music has centered on the
war between the big record companies and the peer-to-peer networks.
It seems to me that neither side offers a reasonable picture of the
future of music. The music industry, in the broadest sense of the
term, consists of the full range of intermediaries between artists
and fans -- large and small labels, record stores, band Web sites,
Amazon, critics, promoters, radio, clubs, DJ's, etc -- and the net
makes it entirely imaginable that that whole ecosystem is going to
get reconfigured. It seems to me that the Napster/Gnutella/etc wars
basically just distract attention from that larger, slower ecological
shift. What new business models are emerging for musicians, DJ's,
labels, promoters, critics, anthologists, etc? Clearly there have
been major changes, starting with the music itself, for example the
role of DJ-as-musician and the extreme mixing-and-matching of genres
everywhere but on the radio. And then you have those millions of CD
burners. Who is writing intelligently about this?
* What's with all the spam from China? Traceroute suggests it's
coming from a lot of different hosts, which is actually good news
for China even as it's a drag for us. What's the sociology of this?
I realize that we saw a bunch of reports on the Internet in China a
few years ago, but I wonder if things have reached a whole new level.
There's a big difference between having a bunch of users on a small
number of services, where they can be monitored and censored etc, and
having users on a bunch of random hosts, where they can't.
war
US Blueprint to Topple Hussein Envisions Big Invasion Next Year
(does anybody believe this?)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/international/middleeast/28MILI.html?pagewanted=print
US May Be Reviving Iraq Issue as Smoke Screen
(might be a temporary link)
http://www.stratfor.com/fib/topStory_view.php?ID=204279
Human Rights Watch: No Evidence of Massacre in Jenin
(but their report isn't on hrw.org yet)
http://cgis.jpost.com/cgi-bin/General/printarticle.cgi?article=/Editions/2002/04/28/News/News.47858.html
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/israel/
Middle East Discussion Forum Documents Page
http://www.geocities.com/j_watts.geo/medfdocuments.html
The Loya Jirga: Transcending the Past With a "Pseudotradition"
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/opinion/28SUN3.html
Green Beret Vanguard Arrives in the Former Soviet Georgia
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/30/international/europe/30MILI.html
Child Rebels Raise Fear of Massacre
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/archive/2002apr/features/22apr-uganda.html
"Internet in the Sky" Will Guide Unmanned Vehicles Into Battle
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-04/uoc--it042202.php
civil liberties and security
the left-right coalition on privacy is back
(it's the people versus nearly every public and private interest group)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/politics/28PRIV.html
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/04/26/online-privacy.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48565-2002Apr25?language=printer
Plan to Use Driver's License Photos for "Line-Ups" Dropped
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2002/04/23/ke042302s192831.htm
testimony on turning the driver's license into a de facto national ID
http://www.freecongress.org/centers/technology/ccl/020416Statement.htm
Australian Officials Spy on Thousands of Calls a Day
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,4220299%255E2,00.html
digitized fingerprints tied to credit cards
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/68217_thumb27.shtml
Vivendi to Call New Shareholder Meet, Says Vote Hacked
(sounds fishy, but it's the first allegation I recall of e-voting being hacked)
http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/print_story.asp?story=26980452
brief survey of Internet censorship worldwide
(the fact that the net really does scare them is excellent all by itself)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12965
Committee to Protect Journalists
http://www.cpj.org/
Employees Seen as Computer Saboteurs
(that's the actual title)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1946000/1946368.stm
State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/
threats to free speech in Israel
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000030509apr29.story
Kissinger Begins to Stoop Under the Weight of Legal Scrutiny
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=288653
politics
French election: confrontations expected on May 1st
(the underlying problem is the sclerosis and hierarchy of French institutions)
http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,706613,00.html
use of the Web in running a political campaign
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.thompson.html
US House 2002 Analysis
("the most likely scenario is that the Democrats gain 7-11 seats")
http://www.mydd.com/politics/House2002.html
For Freedom's Sake, No Fast Track
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/fasttrack.html
A Case History in the Culture of Lies: The Washington Post
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020426Utwater.html
NRA: Gun Foes Practice "Political Terrorism"
(sick)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/nra.convention.ap/
jargon watch: take any dumb thing a liberal says and smear it on all liberals
(not just stereotyping, not just projection; it's the new hate)
http://www.trilobyte-mag.com/magicscience.htm
Bush Seeking to Squeeze School Loan Program
(let's see if liberals know a middle-class election issue when they see it)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/national/28LOAN.html
everything else
The Internet Is for Everyone by Vint Cerf
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3271.txt
Was Bill Gates Lying?
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-628.html#lnk3
Where's SDMI? Digital Music Protection Effort Flames Out
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/3157885.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Reforming the Administration of the DNS Root
http://www.proper.com/ICANN-notes/dns-root-admin-reform.html
Enforcing the GPL
http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-12.html
http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-13.html
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria_new/
Earth Simulator
http://www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/gallary/index_e.html
A Tyranny of Digital Controls Invades the Comfort of Home
(featurism driven by marketing geeks is the opposite of good design)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/technology/28GIZM.html
The Enron Nine
(i.e., the banks)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=greider
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/30/business/30BANK.html?pagewanted=print
The Crisis in Corporate Governance
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/02_18/B3781govern.htm
jargon watch: ignore the obvious explanation and instead extrapolate wildly
(the obvious explanation is that the policies create a conflict of interest)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/englund6.html
Making Sense of the Contemporary Firm and Prefiguring Its Future
http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s7205.html
Fields, Power and Social Skill: Critical Analysis of the New Institutionalisms
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/fligstein/fieldspower.pdf
What Europe Can Teach Uncle Sam
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,706976,00.html
two interesting perspectives on McDonald's and social responsibility
http://www.foodfirst.org/media/press/2002/mcdresponsibility.html
http://www.americanradioworks.org/features/mcdonalds/grandin1.html
The Ecologist
http://www.theecologist.org/
the dangers of hunting coyotes from airplanes
http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief.asp?ev_id=20020328X00418&key=1
end
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