UPDATE: See this more recent post for information and photos of how to get a 2-pin bulb to fit in a BC3 fitting. This may well be the example which involves the most different ‘architecture of control’ issues so far – by a long way. […]
All posts filed under “Regulation”
West Coast code meets Far East code
Thanks to Mr Person at Text Savvy, I’ve just learned that this blog is blocked in China: Images from the Great Firewall of China test. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. From a censorship point of view, it’s bad, but it’s certainly interesting […]
The Privacy Ceiling
Scott Craver of the University of Binghamton has a very interesting post summarising the concept of a ‘privacy ceiling’: “This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users.” It’s the […]
Dilemma of horns
I was woken up (along with, I expect, lots of others) at about 5am today by a driver sounding his/her horn in the road outside – an arrogant two-second burst – then another replying (perhaps) with a slightly feeble one-second tone. I don’t know why; […]
Planned addiction as a method of control: a parasitic lock-in business model
The news that tobacco companies have increased the levels of nicotine in their brands over the last few years – especially those popular with certain groups – made me think further about architectures of control: “The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average […]
Some interesting aspects of built-in obsolescence
This San Francisco Chronicle review of Giles Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (which I’ve just ordered and look forward to reading and reviewing here in due course) mentions some interesting aspects of built-in (planned) obsolescence – and planned failure – in […]
Some links: miscellaneous, pertinent to architectures of control
Ulises Mejias on ‘Confinement, Education and the Control Society’ – fascinating commentary on Deleuze’s societies of control and how the instant communication and ‘life-long learning’ potential (and, I guess, everyware) of the internet age may facilitate control and repression: “This is the paradox of social […]
Ed Felten: DRM Wars, and ‘Property Rights Management’
At Freedom to Tinker, Ed Felten has posted a summary of a talk he gave at the Usenix Security Symposium, called “DRM Wars: The Next Generation”. The two installments so far (Part 1, Part 2) trace a possible trend in the (stated) intentions of DRM’s […]
Neuros: ‘Freedom by Design’
Following on from the last post about the Neuros MPEG4 recorder, looking on the Neuros website reveals something pretty unusual for a company involved in consumer product design – a clear statement of design philosophy, ‘What do we stand for?’ that’s heavy on content and […]
Embedding control in society: the end of freedom
Henry Porter’s chilling Blair Laid Bare – which I implore you to read if you have the slightest interest in your future – contains an equally worrying quote from the LSE’s Simon Davies noting the encroachment of architectures of control in society itself: “The second […]
EFF: Another Endangered Gizmo – the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2
Image adapted from Neuros website Via EFF DeepLinks, details of the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2, a product specifically designed to allow users to break through the arbitrary architectures of control imposed by other video devices and formats, and hence make the most of the content […]
Policing Crowds: Privatizing Security
The Policing Crowds conference is taking place 24-25 June 2006 in Berlin, examining many aspects of controlling the public and increasing business involvement in this field – ‘crime control as industry’. Technologies designed specifically to permit control and monitoring of the public, such as CCTV […]