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Fishing is the New Black: Contemporary Art Imitates the Digital
Marshall Mcluhan once said, “Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” Philosophers, on the other hand, think about things in retrospect and hence, as much as Derrida’s writings about the collapse of the semiotic structures of capture and meaning say about the Digital age, Mark Rothko’s art, a generation ahead of Derrida in depicting this collapse, can say about the future that it saw in visceral and energetic forms. To understand Rothko’s paintings we must sit through a short history of the different epochs of Being and their epistemological shifts before we get to the Digital Age about which Rothko had violent and destructive premonitions.
Structure, Sign and Play in the Digital
I have come to realize, in my research, that I have been looking for and staring at the various entry points of the Digital Humanities by looking at the primordial lighting arrangements and formative forces that are in play in it. So far, there have been some clear emergent patterns like the fact that the Digital Humanities is the story of the University itself and a condition of the socio-political and economic forces shaping our education system.
Digitize any Book in the Public Domain
The article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.
CIS Statement at ICANN 49's Public Forum
This was a statement made by Pranesh Prakash at the ICANN 49 meeting (on March 27, 2014), arguing that ICANN's bias towards the North America and Western Europe result in a lack of legitimacy, and hoping that the IANA transition process provides an opportunity to address this.
Enabling Elections
For making the 2014 General Elections in India participatory and accessible for voters with disabilities the Centre for Law and Policy Research and the Centre for Internet and Society have come up with a report. The report addresses the barriers that people with disabilities face during elections and recommends solutions for the same.
Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India
Given the impending elections in India across April and May 2014, a test was conducted to determine the accessibility of websites of the Election Commission of India, the Parliament and some key political parties in India. This report summarises the results of the test.
Digital Gender: Theory, Methodology and Practice
Dr. Nishant Shah was a panelist at a workshop jointly organized by HUMlab and UCGS (Umeå Centre for Gender Studies) at Umeå University from March 12 to 14, 2014. He blogged about the conference.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ: ତିନି ବର୍ଷର ସକ୍ରିୟ ଅବଦାନ ୧୦ ବର୍ଷର ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପକୁ ପୁନର୍ଜୀବନ ଦେଲା
The post is about the journey of Odia Wikipedia and the last three years of active contribution
Vachana Sanchaya: 11th century Kannada literature to enrich Wikisource
Kannada Wikipedian Omshivaprakash, Pavithra and I co-authored this article on digitizing Vachana Sahitya, a 11th century Kannada literature on WikiSource.
Broadcast Treaty: An Overview
In this blog post, CIS intern Varun Baliga, a third year law student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, presents an overview of the Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations, currently being deliberated by nations at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR).
European Union Draft Report Admonishes Mass Surveillance, Calls for Stricter Data Protection and Privacy Laws
Ever since the release of the “Snowden files”, the secret documents evidencing the massive scale of surveillance undertaken by America’s National Security Agency and publically released by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, surveillance in the digital age has come to the fore of the global debate on internet governance and privacy.
A Question of Digital Humanities
The emergence of digital humanities as a new field of interdisciplinary research enquiry has also seen growth in literature around the problem of its definition. This blog-post lays out some of the conceptual frameworks for the mapping exercise taken up by CIS to look at digital humanities in India.
Privacy worries cloud Facebook's WhatsApp Deal
Privacy activists in the United States have asked the competition regulator or the Federal Trade Commission to put on hold Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp. Why have they done this when Facebook has promised to leave WhatsApp untouched as a standalone app?
Net Neutrality and Privacy
The highly contentious and polarising debate on net-neutrality will have a large impact on shaping the future of the internet and ultimately on the users of the internet. One important issue which needs to be prioritized while debating the necessity or desirability of a legal regime which advocates net-neutrality is its implication on privacy.
WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 2 of 3)
From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th session. This blog post (Part 2 of 3) summarizes Days 3 and 4 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.
Open Source Project Brings 11th Century Kannada Verses Online
The post was co-authored by Pavithra Hanchagaiah, Omshivaprakash H L and Subhashish Panigrahi and published in the March issue of Foss Force.
NVDA e-Speak Text-to-Speech Project Update (March 2014)
CIS in partnership with the Daisy Forum of India is engaged in a project supported by The Hans Foundation to develop enhancements to the open source screen reader for Windows NVDA (Non Visual desktop Access) and e-Speak text-to-speech synthesiser in 15 Indian languages.
NTIA to give up control of the Internet's root
On Friday evening the U.S. government's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it was setting into motion a transition to give up a few powers that it holds over some core Internet functions, and that this would happen by September 2015. Pranesh Prakash provides a brief response to that announcement.
WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) 26th Session- Consolidated Notes (Part 1 of 3)
From December 16 to 20, 2013, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) met for the 26th Session. This blog post (Part 1 of 3) summarizes Days 1 and 2 of the proceedings of the 26th SCCR, based on my notes of the session and WIPO's transcripts.
004: A License to Share
In this blogpost Devika Agarwal, a 4th year student at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow, takes a first look at the Creative Commons 4.0 Licence.
