Paul Ford, an american software developer and weblog writer and Dru Jay, also a weblog writer, had an interesting conversation about how to think about culture of computing, culture of technology and culture of software. One interesting point is that they say, software has not a origin, there is only something like "progress". Second good point, from Dru Jay, is that it's a question of terms to put software or computing into a social context, tied up to a time before software and computing. For example, instead of talking about software geneaology it could make more sense talking about genealogy of "productivity", "information", or "communication" to include developments of the pre-computer age.

Well, all in all this is not really important. It's just nice to see, that also other people are taking a cultural view on this technology.

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The Boston Globe has a long article about how Google changes what we can find out about one another. They have a very good point in there, concerning court privacy : "Of course, most court information has long been public. But there is a profound difference between records buried in a county filing cabinet and the one-stop precision shopping you get from Google."

A very good point. This is not only a proof for the significant changes even single web services are doing to our society. It's also a warning to people who think, that you can import and export terms and concepts between online and offline world. That's not that easy! Yes, it's public. But it's differently public!

And an additional thought: Some people here at our institute had problems with the custom of writing in our ethno::log with so called screen names, or pejorative "micky-maus-names". Now you should know why. First of all, internet is different "public", as stated above. And second, the ethno::log is also for experimental thoughts. Even for not-already-scientific ideas and news. As most of us don't wan't the things they say in the institute kitchen printed in Current Anthropology, this screen names give you back the privacy, Google destroyed. Using a different name in the offline world maybe fraud. In the online world it's a widely used tradition which a different goal, as in this world are different circumstances.

You may also read this fanatastic short story concerning this topic.

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Just stumbled over this harvard institute, which sounds interesting: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. "The Berkman Center's mission is to explore and understand cyberspace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards, and need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions. "

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