Leettaschmidt

Copyright Librarian, LeEtta Schmidt, has written this helpful post about sharing and reposting on social media. We consume, save, copy, and share information all day long. Our online world facilitates this more than our physical world ever did. The ease with which we can post, comment, share, and re-post an idea is an underpinning foundation of what makes social media sites attractive and enjoyable. But when the idea takes the form of a photograph, sketch, poem, essay, or other original creative content, the ease can help all of us overlook the potentially infringing nature of sharing and reposting content created by others.

Copyright law in the U.S. was also constructed for ease of use in that everything we create, even emails, selfies, and rambling diatribes over Starbuck’s seasonal cups, is copyright to us as soon as we record it without the need to put a © symbol on it or register it with any government office. This copyright protection lasts the life of the author plus 70 years. Considering this, we can assume that most content online is protected by copyright law. What does this mean for sharing and reposting? Well, copyright law gives those authors the exclusive rights to copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivatives. And a copy online is as simple as forwarding an email, right clicking on an image and selecting ‘save as,’ or clicking that Evernote add-on in your browser and ‘clipping to Evernote.’ The exclusive right of distribution is similarly simple to run afoul of, just upload and share.

Before you get overwhelmed by that sneaking suspicion that the authorities might be after you, or, at least, watching your every move, a lot of sharing and reposting within social media sites is perfectly okay. Sharing links, because links are not a copy but a connection to the original material, is not considered copyright infringement (even though it has made news recently), and the way that Facebook automatically pulls in little thumbnails of what you link to has been established in copyright case law as a fair use of material (Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, Inc.). Similarly, some social media sites require that users agree to terms and conditions that give the site and its users permissions to repost; this is how Tumblr makes sure that its reblogging feature can work the way its users want it to work.
The same Terms and Conditions that establish that users should expect their content to be shared, also require users to promise that the only content they are going to add to the site is their own. Twitter and Tumblr‘s terms and conditions both require the user to ‘respect the intellectual property rights of others.’ Copyright is an Intellectual Property right along with Trademark, and Patent. Similarly, by using Instagram, you are swearing that you ‘own the Content posted by you,’ and to Facebook you are promising that you ‘will not post content…that infringes or violates someone else’s rights.’ So, as long as the content you upload to the site is your own and your sharing and reblogging of material is within the same social media site, then you should be alright. The biggest risk of infringement happens when you or another user upload content that belongs to someone else. This illegal content, like all other uploaded content, duplicates and spreads by sharing and reblogging until social media develops the reputation among artists and authors for being as lawless as the old wild west.

In East Asia, Buddhists celebrate the Buddha’s death and entrance into final enlightenment in February. But at my local Zen temple in North Carolina, the Buddha’s enlightenment is commemorated during the holiday season of December, with a short talk for the children, a candlelight service and a potluck supper following the celebration.

Welcome to Buddhism, American-style.

Early influences

Buddhism entered into the American cultural consciousness in the late 19th century. It was a time when romantic notions of exotic Oriental mysticism fueled the imaginations of American philosopher-poets, art connoisseurs, and early scholars of world religions.

Transcendental poets like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson read Hindu and Buddhist philosophy deeply, as did Henry Steel Olcott, who traveled to Sri Lanka in 1880, converted to Buddhism and founded the popular strain of mystical philosophy called Theosophy.

Meanwhile, connoisseurs of Buddhist art introduced America to the beauty of the tradition. The art historian and professor of philosophy Ernest Fenellosa, as well as his fellow Bostonian William Sturgis Bigelow, were among the first Americans to travel to Japan, convert to Buddhism and avidly collect Buddhist art. When they returned home, their collections formed the core of the premiere Arts of Asia collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

At the same time, early scholars of world religions such as Paul Carus made Buddhist teachings readily accessible to Americans. He published “The Gospel of Buddha,” a best-selling collection of Buddhist parables, a year after attending the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. This was the first time in modern history that representatives from the world’s major religions came together to learn about one another’s spiritual traditions.

The Buddhist delegation in Chicago included the Japanese Zen master Shaku Sōen and the Sri Lankan Buddhist reformer Anagārika Dharmapāla, who himself had studied western science and philosophy to modernize his own tradition. These Western-influenced Buddhists presented their tradition to their modern Western audience as a “non-theistic” and “rational” tradition that had no competing gods, irrational beliefs or supposedly meaningless rituals to speak of.

Continuity and change

Traditional Buddhism does in fact have many deities, doctrines and rituals, as well as sacred texts, ordained priests, ethics, sectarian developments and other elements that one would typically associate with any organized religion. But at the 1893 World Parliament, the Buddhist masters favorably presented their meditative tradition to modern America only as a practical philosophy, not a religion. This perception of Buddhism persists in America to this day.

The Buddhists did not deliberately misrepresent their tradition or just tell the Americans what they wanted to hear. They were genuine in their attempt to make a 2500-year old tradition relevant to the late 19th century.

But in the end they only transplanted but a few branches of Buddhism’s much larger tree into American soil. Only a few cuttings of Buddhist philosophy, art and meditation came into America, while many other traditional elements of the Buddhist religion remained behind in Asia.

Buddhism in America

Once it was planted here though, Americans became particularly fascinated with the mystical appeal of Buddhist meditation.

The lay Zen teacher Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, who was Japanese Zen Master Shaku Sōen’s student and translator at the World’s Parliament, influenced many leading artists and intellectuals in the postwar period. Thanks to his popular writings and to subsequent waves of Asian and American Buddhist teachers, Buddhism has impacted almost every aspect of American culture.

Environmental and social justice initiatives have embraced a movement known as “Engaged Buddhism” ever since Martin Luther King Jr. nominated its founder, the Vietnamese monk and anti-war activist Thich Nhat Hanh, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. His Buddhist Order of Interbeing continues to propose mindful, nonviolent solutions to the world’s most pressing moral concerns.

America’s educational system has also been enriched by its first Buddhist-affiliated university at Naropa in Colorado, which paved the way for other Buddhist institutions of higher learning such as Soka University and University of the West in California, as well as Maitripa College in Oregon.

The medical establishment too has integrated mindfulness-based stress reduction into mainstream therapies, and many prison anger management programs are based on Buddhist contemplative techniques such as Vipassana insight meditation.

The same is true of the entertainment industry that has incorporated Buddhist themes into Hollywood blockbusters, such as “The Matrix”. Even professional athletics have used Zen coaching strategies and furthered America’s understanding of Buddhism not as a “religion” but as a secular philosophy with broad applications.

The exotic appeal

But American secular Buddhism has also produced some unintended consequences. Suzuki’s writings greatly influenced Jack Kerouac, the popular Beat Generation author of “On the Road” and “The Dharma Bums.” But Suzuki regarded Kerouac as a “monstrous imposter” because he sought only the freedom of Buddhist awakening without the discipline of practice.

Other Beat poets, hippies and, later, New Age DIY self-helpers have also paradoxically mistaken Buddhism for a kind of self-indulgent narcissism, despite its teachings of selflessness and compassion. Still others have commercially exploited its exotic appeal to sell everything from “Zen tea” to “Lucky Buddha Beer,” which is particularly ironic given Buddhism’s traditional proscription against alcohol and other intoxicants.

As a result, the popular construction of nonreligious Buddhism has contributed much to the contemporary “spiritual but not religious” phenomenon, as well as to the secularized and commodified mindfulness movement in America.

We may have only transplanted a fraction of the larger bodhi tree of religious Buddhism in America, but our cutting has adapted and taken root in our secular, scientific and highly commercialized age. For better and for worse, it’s Buddhism, American-style.

Pamela Winfield has received funding from. The Association of Asian Studies (2013 - short term research trip to Eiheiji temple, Japan) Asia Cultural Council (2007 - 6 months research in Tokyo) Kobe College Corporation / Japan Educational Exchange (2001-2002 - dissertation research in Kyoto)

Ray was born in Mexico and moved to the United States with family members at age 10.

He told me in an interview in 2014, “I’m just a regular American like everyone else.” In middle school, Ray (a pseudonym to protect his identity) learned the Declaration of Independence and memorized all the presidents in order. His first job was replastering swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona. Ray had a son, who was accepted to officer candidate school to attempt to earn the title of U.S. Marine.

After 29 years in the United States – attending school, working and raising a family – Ray was deported to Mexico.

As an anthropologist, I set out to understand how people like Ray become socially entwined in U.S. communities. I spent 18 months researching and living with deported adults in northern Mexico. I interviewed 56 deported adults who had arrived to the United States before age 13, years or even decades ago.

In English, marked by East Coast pluck, Southern lilt or Southwest flatness, they told me of the ties that bind them to their U.S. home communities. Their experiences raise important questions about the human costs of deportation that Washington lawmakers must consider as they debate immigration policy – particularly as it affects so-called Dreamers, noncitizens who have lived most of their lives in the United States.

Belonging and alienation

The people I interviewed articulated a deep sense of national belonging in the United States. Alfonso (pseudonym) was deported in 2013 after living for 43 years in Tucson, Arizona, since the age of 2. He told me, “The U.S. is everything for me. It’s everything I feel, everything I’ve ever done. It’s who I am. You grow up up there and that’s your life.”

They also spoke of lives that, before deportation, had been enmeshed in the everyday activities, shared understandings, social networks, ways of communicating and values of their local communities. Divorced from home, deportees often felt incomplete, shut out or shut down.

Paco (pseudonym) was born in Mexico in 1971, taken to Phoenix, Arizona, with family at 6 months old, and deported in 2013. He said, “It’s the little things that matter, you know: birthday parties, a quinceñera, graduations. Things happen up there and it’s just once, and you don’t get that time back.”

Deportees also experience wrenching social, psychological and economic stress and alienation after expulsion. They enter unfamiliar worlds when released from U.S. government custody, into northern Mexico border cities.

Paco expressed his disorientation in Mexico: “For me it’s like they dropped me off in Africa … In a place I don’t know, where I have nothing. I don’t know nobody [and it’s] not my home. I have no ties to nobody.”

After deportation, life’s more meaningful projects became daunting – turning a living space into a home, determining a vocation, attending school, connecting deeply with others, or imagining a future. Dustin (pseudonym), a 38-year-old deportee put it simply: “I’ve had enough with this down here. I just can’t do it. It’s just not like up there.”

To be sure, a mix of family support, academic or job skills, hard work, ingenuity and sheer grit, allowed some returnees to reconfigure their lives. In rare cases, some described achieving fulfillment and happiness. But they represent a narrow minority.

Most speak of “getting by” or “making it.” Rabbit (pseudonym), a 22-year-old deportee said, “Depression hit me pretty hard.” Rabbit describes feelings of dispossession and dejection and an inability to live a “normal life.” In characterizing the unrelenting pressure his feels, he said that he “lived in some of the hardest places [in Phoenix], and they didn’t get me. It’s just, Mexico’s got a grip on me now, and won’t let go.”

Fixing immigration policy

The Trump administration’s announcement on Sept. 5, 2017 that it was rescinding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals consigned to Congress the responsibility of action on immigration legislation. Most of those I interviewed were given a lifetime ban from legally reentering the United States. They have little hope for returning home. But since DACA’s cancellation, DACA recipients still in the United States risk losing their protection from deportation. Deportees’ sense of belonging in the United States helps illuminate the potential ramifications of legislative inaction.

Lawmakers, citizen and media discourse often focus immigration debates on noncitizens’ potential economic and social benefits to the United States. Nevertheless, the U.S. government also claims to ground policy decisions in principles of basic human well-being. In finding a way forward, legislators should consider the experiences of the untold deportees who, like Ray, have had their lives disrupted by dislocation from home.

Tobin Hansen has received funding from the University of Oregon; the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego; the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; and the Social Science Research Council, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Millions of new cars sold in the US and Europe are "connected," having some mechanism for exchanging data with their manufacturers after the cars are sold; these cars stream or batch-upload location data and other telemetry to their manufacturers, who argue that they are allowed to do virtually anything they want with this data, thanks to the "explicit consent" of the car owners -- who signed a lengthy contract at purchase time that contained a vague and misleading clause deep in its fine-print. (more…)

Uht (pronounced oot) is the restless hour before the dawn, when Aurora herself is loitering somewhere below the eastern horizon, rosying up her fingers and getting ready for the day. But for now, it is dark. And in the antelucan hush you should be happily slumbering and dreaming of pretty things. If you are not, if you are lying there with your eyes wide open glaring at the ceiling, you are probably suffering from a severe case of uhtceare. There's an old saying that the darkest hour comes just before the dawn. However, that's utter tosh. If you get out of bed and peek through the window, you will see a pale glow in the east. But don't, whatever you do, actually get out of bed. It's probably chilly and you'll never get your posture in bed (technically called your decubitus) quite right again. You'll just have to lie there and try not think about how horrid it all is. Ceare (pronounced key-are-a) was the Old English word for care and sorrow, emotions that have an annoying habit of striking during the uht. For some reason these early hours are the time when you remember all your sins and unpaid bills and, perhaps, the indelicate thing you did last night, and as each of these creeps into your mind your uhtceare grows more and more severe. For an affliction so common, uhtceare is a very rare word. It is recorded only once, in a poem called The Wife's Lament, which, surprisingly, isn't about how awful and messy her husband is, but about how he has been exiled to a far country and left her here with her uhtceare and her vicious in-laws. Old English poetry is almost universally miserable, and Old English poets should really have bucked up a bit, but they did give us uhtceare and for that we should be grateful.

Amazon was the last major tech company to issue a "transparency report" detailing what kinds of law-enforcement requests they'd serviced, and where; when they finally did start issuing them, they buried them on obscure webpages deep in their corporate info site and released them late on Friday afternoons. (more…)

An addition to a bill in the Florida House of Representatives is looking at merging the USF System into one university. It would make USF St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee into satallite campuses. SPECIAL TO THE ORACLE

The University of South Florida has been a system comprised of separate campuses for over 10 years, but a bill in the Florida House of Representatives might be getting ready to change that.

While not the central focus of Bill 423, the current draft making its way through the House includes a clause that would call for USF to become one university with satellite campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee.

The full bill is looking at Florida Prepaid requirements and that form of the bill passed in the Florida Senate, but tacked onto the end is now a provision that USF come up with a plan to end separate accreditations of the three campuses and instead seek one accreditation and become one university.

In amendments to the bill, the Board of Trustees would be given until Jan. 15, 2019 to come up with a plan to unify the three campuses by June 2020. However, what all that means remains unclear.

One portion that the bill does spell out is that the university’s six-year graduation rate, freshman retention rate and other metrics for receiving state funds would be grouped together from all three campuses.

While the bill states exceptions with students enrolled prior to the bill passing and students who choose to leave the university system prior to the unification under a single accreditation, it still raises questions of where USF would stand in these metrics with the bill fully implemented.

For instance, at the beginning of the fall semester, USF System President Judy Genshaft announced that the Tampa campus now meets the required current benchmarks to be a pre-eminent university.

The current benchmarks include a 90 percent freshman retention rate and a 70 percent six-year graduation rate. At a BOT meeting in March, USF Tampa had a projected 95.7 percent freshman retention rate and a 68.1 percent six-year graduation rate.

However, the St. Pete campus had a 93 percent freshman retention rate and a 34 percent six-year graduation rate, with the Sarasota-Manatee campus having a 88 percent freshman retention rate and didn’t include a graduation rate in the March report.

Combining the metrics of all three campuses could have an impact on the school’s status as pre-eminent and thus the amount of state funding received.

Along with metrics, the university would have to figure out details from University Police staffing to diplomas at the new satellite campuses. However, until the bill is voted on by the House, what will happen to the university system remains up in the air.

University spokeswoman Lara Wade could not be reached for comment, but issued a statement to the Tampa Bay Times earlier in the day.

"Regardless of the outcome, we intend for each USF System campus to continue achieving higher levels of student success and scholarly activity, and as a result we will provide all students with the world-class education they came here to earn," Wade said.

Facebook last week announced a redesign of its news feed to prioritise posts from friends and family over those of news publishers.

While struggling news organisations are likely to take a hit on their social traffic, the move suggests that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been paying attention to criticisms around issues such as fake news and adverse mental health outcomes.

In many cases, the biggest shortcomings of these technologies are failures of design.

There is often a disconnect between what digital designers originally intend with a product or feature, and how consumers use or interpret it.

Ethical user experience design – meaning, for example, designing technologies in ways that promote good online behaviour and intuit how they might be used – may help bridge that gap.

Read more: Explainer: what is experience design?

A case study: the Twitter tick

The furor over Twitter’s blue verification tick is a good example of the disconnect between business intent and user interpretation.

The Twitter community has taken the tick to signify an endorsement of a Twitter user and their tweets, or a VIP status symbol indicating power and recognition.

Meanwhile, the company says the tick is intended to authenticate and protect the voices of high-profile users who are vulnerable to identity theft by imposters.

The confusion has caused outrage among Twitter users who accuse Twitter of endorsing white supremacists who spread hate speech on the platform.

The popular meaning of this function has developed over time within the Twitter community through collective action and opinion, and it speaks louder than formal explanation released by Twitter.

If Twitter’s intention was to mark authenticity, then perhaps it shouldn’t have chosen a tick, which commonly symbolises correctness or approval.

The public continues to urge Twitter to rethink its user verification process. Although the company recently clarified its rules to ban or remove verification from users who post violent and abusive tweets, the verification issue remains unresolved in the eyes of its users.

Tweets deemed in breach of the new rules, but seen by Twitter as “newsworthy” (Trump’s nuclear button tweet, for example) show the continued confusion over enforcement of the rules.

How can ethical user experience design help?

User experience design and research has so far mainly been applied to designing tech that is responsive to user needs and locations. For example, commercial and digital assistants that intuit what you will buy at a local store based on your previous purchases.

However, digital designers and tech companies are beginning to recognise that there is an ethical dimension to their work, and that they have some social responsibility for the well-being of their users.

Meeting this responsibility requires designers to anticipate the meanings people might create around a particular technology.

I have been researching the everyday experiences of users on Twitter with my colleagues at University of Southern Queensland’s Digital Life Lab. Preliminary findings show that users perceive “grey areas” when they are confused about rules, etiquette or whether they are using Twitter correctly.

Read more: Engineers, philosophers and sociologists release ethical design guidelines for future technology

Elements of design

An ideal user experience would reduce confusion and harm by blending four digital design elements: contextual, emotional, anticipatory and ethical.

Contextually aware design is capable of understanding the different meanings that a particular technology may have, and adapting in a way that is socially and ethically responsible. For example, smart cars that prevent mobile phone use while driving.

Emotional design refers to technology that elicits appropriate emotional responses to create positive user experiences. It takes into account the connections people form with the objects they use, from pleasure and trust to fear and anxiety.

This includes the look and feel of a product, how easy it is to use and how we feel after we have used it.

Anticipatory design allows technology to predict the most useful interaction within a sea of options and make a decision for the user, thus “simplifying” the experience. Some companies may use anticipatory design in unethical ways that trick users into selecting an option that benefits the company.

The ethical design manifesto created by UK start-up Ind.ie describes technology that reduces inequality and benefits democracy, is functional, convenient and reliable, and is delightful to use.

Devices, websites and social networks designed with these elements in mind work for the benefit of the user. For example, if a teenager is overusing or oversharing on social media, a pop-up notification might prompt the person to exercise or meditate instead.

Read more: Does Apple have an obligation to make the iPhone safer for kids?

If tech companies don’t respond to these challenges, it could damage their brands and the trust consumers place in their products.

Working within newly developed ethical frameworks, there is a need for human roles within tech companies to monitor and respond to emerging popular meanings around their products.

In this way, ethical user experience design could clarify “grey areas” and prevent harmful consequences on people, organisations and tech-dependent societies.

Faye Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Civil rights activist Harry Belafonte was inspired to become an activist while growing up and watching his mother. ORACLE PHOTO/AMANDA LOPEZ

Artist and social activist Harry Belafonte shared provocative, yet inspiring, statements about himself, his history and his views on present political situations and racial problems to approximately 700 people Tuesday night at the Marshall Student Center Ballroom.

As an opening statement, Belafonte said he had always been an activist. From birth, he was fascinated by his mother’s dignity and courage when dealing with hardships in America.

“She set the pace,” Belafonte said. “And I followed in her steps.”

Belafonte, 90, said his mother impacted his choices by saying that since she let him see the people of Jamaica, the country where she’d been born and raised, he began to understand more about the black community in the U.S.

“Here in America, there is a rage and an anger, that is, for me, quite overwhelming,” Belafonte said.

He then said that since he stopped singing he’s spent most of his time in the criminal justice system listening to the voices of the hundreds of thousands of men and some women who do not deserve to be incarcerated.

“There is an aspect to the American system who does not mostly look kindly to people of color,”  Belafonte said.

He reflected upon other questions he’s answered in past interviews about his motives for being an activist.

“The motive is very simple: poverty,” Belafonte said. “Poor people have a way of surviving that is really quite a tribute to the dimensions of human behavior.”

Giving the audience an inner perspective on his choices in life, Belafonte acknowledged major influencers with a pensive smile. Some of whom were Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lester Young, who encouraged him to sing.

“I am by all measure, one of the world’s finest actors,” Belafonte said. “It’s rested in the fact I’ve convinced you I’m a singer.”

Belafonte said that after he created a large platform, he became aware of the unusual power a performing artist has.

“My question was ‘what do you do with that power?’” Belafonte said. “Whenever I find injustice, I find people in need, I respond to the best of my ability.”

He explained that after he gained his following, MLK invited him to his speech at the Baptist Church. Belafonte joked that MLK had been meant to talk for 20 minutes, but they left five hours later.

“Almost every moment spent with Dr. King was spent with possibility,” Belafonte said. “In him, I saw a path.”

Belafonte continued, stating his thoughts about the current political status and the populace.

“We’ve taken a turn that’s quite devastating,” Belafonte said. “The last thing I could’ve ever imagined was that with all the sacrifice, all the pain and all the anguish that he went through to shape the character of this country would all amount to being represented by Donald Trump.”

He offered very strong words regarding Trump and called for a rebellion.

“I was curious that America should’ve come to this,” Belafonte said. “It was we who put him in office. Where’s black America? Where is its voice? The rebellion to this racist who sits at the top of the heap thinking he’s harmless and shaped the thinking of our children?”

Expanding on his thoughts on the current racial tensions, Belafonte commented on the constantly diminishing marks left by past civil rights activists.

“Here in America, I could never believe that Malcom X, Dr. King and Ella Baker existed,” Belafonte said.

Belafonte said a voice, like MLK’s, is necessary now more than ever.

“We blinked and I think we have to get back to business,” Belafonte said. “One could almost say we’re lost without oppression. Take away oppression and we become subhuman. There is something wrong with that equation.”

It’s easy to be a bit amused about Kodak’s new blockchain and cryptocurrency, the KodakOne. The old photography company is the classic case of a firm that failed to keep up with technological change.

But now Kodak is exploiting one of the most interesting characteristics of the blockchain (the technology behind Bitcoin) to reshape how we understand and manage intellectual property.

Just like Bitcoin demonstrated it was possible to have a digital currency that didn’t require third parties (banks or governments) to validate transactions, KodakOne hints at a future where intellectual property works without the need for third parties to enforce property rights.

Blockchains are a system of decentralised, distributed ledgers (think of a spreadsheet or database that is held on a number of computers at once). Transactions are verified and then encrypted by the system itself.

Kodak’s plan is to use the Ethereum blockchain to build a digital rights management platform for photographs. Photographers will register their photos on the KodakOne platform and buyers will purchase rights using the KodakCoin cryptocurrency.

The platform will provide cryptographic proof of ownership and monitor the web for infringement, offering an easy payment system for infringers to legitimise their use of photographs.

Read more: Demystifying the blockchain: a basic user guide

In one sense, KodakOne resembles one of the many supply chain (or “provenance”) applications for blockchain, which track goods and their inputs (think agricultural products or airplane parts).

But photographs are purely digital assets. In a sense, what we’re seeing is a new form of intellectual property.

In KodakCoin, the underlying asset – the thing that is being bought and sold, the thing that has the economic value – is no longer the photograph, per se. Rather, it’s the entry on the global blockchain ledger. Control of that entry constitutes ownership of the asset.

KodakOne only really gets halfway to this idea. Like so many blockchain applications, the question is how this elegant system will interact with the messy real world. It’s one thing to detect infringing uses of a photograph, it’s quite another to enforce terrestrial copyright law on unco-operative infringers. And KodakOne is hardly the only firm working on digital asset management on a blockchain.

A new kind of intellectual property

But there’s another, more pure example of what blockchains can do for intellectual property that is worth discussing – CryptoKitties.

CryptoKitties is a silly little blockchain game, but the economics are worth taking seriously. Players buy digital cats – cryptographically secure, decentralised, censor-proof digital cats – and breed them with each other. Each cat has a mix of rare and common attributes and the goal is to breed cats with the rarest, most-in-demand attributes.

That’s the game. But in fact what CryptoKitties has invented is a new form of intellectual property. Each cat is a completely unique, entirely digital good. And it is completely, cryptographically secure. It can’t be copied.

Usually the protection of intellectual property requires lawyers and courts. But with CryptoKitties, the intellectual property protection is part of the asset itself – it’s baked in.

This is what blockchains were invented to do. Before blockchains, digital goods could be easily duplicated. That’s a great feature – unless you want to create digital money. Digital money won’t work if everybody can just copy their money and spend it over and over again.

The creator of Bitcoin, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, solved this problem with Bitcoin’s blockchain. Previous attempts to solve the double-spending problem had relied on trusted third parties like banks to validate transactions. Nakamoto managed to get the network to validate itself.

Read more: Blockchain is useful for a lot more than just Bitcoin

KodakOne (and CryptoKitties) show us that intellectual property has much the same problem as digital currency – and may have the same solution. There’s no need for trusted third parties (governments) to enforce property rights. The blockchain does that for us.

Of course, there’s a lot of work to be done before we see real benefits from this sort of blockchain-enhanced intellectual property. CryptoKitties is its own new form of intellectual property – but can we retrofit “traditional” cultural goods like photographs, music and movies onto the blockchain?

Digitisation has challenged the protection of intellectual property like never before. Cultural producers need to find some way to be paid for their work. This is the direction we should be looking.

Chris Berg is a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and has two CryptoKitties.

Jason Potts has received past funding from the Australian Research Coucil. He is affiliated with the Institute of Public Affairs.

Sinclair Davidson is Professor of Institutional Economics at RMIT University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, and an Academic Fellow at the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance. He has been previously funded by Australian Research Council.

Butterflies and moths, the Lepidoptera, are among the most beautiful of insects, familiar to almost everyone through thousands of different species from all around the world. But how they evolved has been something of a mystery to scientists because of a surprising lack of Lepidoptera fossils.

Now researchers in the Netherlands have discovered Lepidoptera fossils that are older than any previously found, proving these familiar insects have been around for at least 200m years. The particular type of fossils found mean we have to rethink Lepidoptera evolution. They imply that the long tube butterflies and moths use to suck nectar from flowers actually developed before flowering plants did, so it must have originally evolved for a different purpose.

The fossil record of ancient Lepidoptera is surprisingly meagre. Although butterflies may appear to be delicate creatures, their external skeletons are made of the same tough material, chitin, that all insects are made of. And chitin, or chitin decay products, preserve really very well in the fossil record.

In fact, some of the best ever fossils are of insects entombed in amber. Fossil Lepidoptera have been reported from a few exceptional deposits. For example, butterflies are known from the famous Florissant fossil beds of North America dating from the Eocene epoch, 34 million-years-old. A fossil caterpillar with the characteristic spinneret (the body part that produces silk) typical of all modern butterflies and moths has been reported from 125 million-year-old Lebanese amber. But until now, the fossil record went back no further.

This is especially odd because the Lepidoptera are closely related to another familiar modern group of insects, the caddis flies or Trichoptera. This group has an excellent fossil record extending back to the Permian period of the Palaeozoic era (250m years ago). As these groups share a common ancestor, the earliest Lepidoptera should, theoretically, also be found in the Permian period.

Lucky accident

The newly discovered fossils aren’t quite that old but they do date to the end of the Triassic period, the beginning of the age of dinosaurs. The delicate fossils bear the highly characteristic scales of butterflies and moths. They were discovered entirely by accident when researchers tried to extract pollen grains from rock samples from a borehole in north Germany to date the strata.

The process dissolves the rock (usually with the incredibly powerful hydrofluoric acid) to leave behind an organic residue that is rich in tough organic material. While this is usually pollen material and other so-called phytodebris from plants, it can include the remains of sclerotised (toughened) exoskeleton from insects and other invertebrates. Bits of fossil scorpions can be found this way for example.

Not many insects have scales on their wings, and those found on the wings of butterflies and moths are very different from those of other insects that do possess them. A characteristic feature of lepidopteran scales is a herring bone (V-shaped) pattern of fine lines in between larger ridges that extend along the scale. There are also characteristic outlines and margins that distinguish butterfly scales. So there is no doubt that the fossil scales found in the German borehole are those of ancient butterflies and moths.

Just as interesting, the scales are from a group of butterflies and moths known as the Glossata. Almost all of todays’ butterflies and moths belong to this group, characterised by the tube-shaped mouth part known as a “proboscis” used for feeding on fluids such as nectar. There are some primitive moths with mandibular (biting) mouth parts, and indeed some examples of these have been found from the Early Jurassic epoch (around 190 million-years-old). But the latest discoveries are even older, and push the origin of modern butterflies with proboscises back another 70 million years.

This forces a serious rethink for evolutionary biologists. Until now we’ve thought that the highly modified sucking mouthparts of modern butterflies and moths evolved as flowering plants diversified in the Early Cretaceous, around 100m years after the newly discovered fossils were created.

The researchers who discovered the fossils suggest that Lepidoptera may have first evolved their long proboscis tubes to suck up any available liquids at a time when their environment had become a lot drier. We know this kind of climate change did happen on the super continent of Pangaea in Triassic times, but it’s probably too early to tell if this theory is correct. If the fossil record can be pushed back 70m years in one stroke, it may get pushed back even further, and we’d need another way to explain the change.

Whatever the trigger for the development of the butterfly proboscis, it was clearly an evolutionary innovation that resulted in phenomenal diversity and added immensely to the beauty of planet Earth. Let us hope that many more of these serendipitous discoveries can shed even more light on the wonderful story of biological evolution. The key is in looking for fossils.

David Martill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By combining actual scientific data with techniques used in Hollywood, researchers with NASA and other institutions have produced the most detailed multi-wavelength visualization ever produced of the Orion Nebula. Traveling at close to the speed of light, the three-minute journey will take you through a distant…

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Our lives run on Roman time. Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and public holidays are regulated by Pope Gregory XIII’s Gregorian Calendar, which is itself a modification of Julius Caesar’s calendar introduced in 45 B.C. The names of our months are therefore derived from the Roman gods, leaders, festivals, and numbers. If you’ve ever wondered why our 12-month year ends with September, October, November, and December – names which mean the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months – you can blame the Romans.

The calendar of Romulus

The Roman year originally had ten months, a calendar which was ascribed to the legendary first king, Romulus. Tradition had it that Romulus named the first month, Martius, after his own father, Mars, the god of war. This month was followed by Aprilis, Maius, and Iunius, names derived from deities or aspects of Roman culture. Thereafter, however, the months were simply called the fifth month (Quintilis), sixth month (Sixtilis) and so on, all the way through to the tenth month, December.

The institution of two additional months, Ianuarius and Februarius, at the beginning of the year was attributed to Numa, the second king of Rome. Despite the fact that there were now 12 months in the Roman year, the numerical names of the later months were left unchanged.

Further reading: Explainer: the gods behind the days of the week

Gods and rituals

While January takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, February comes from the word februum (purification) and februa, the rites or instruments used for purification. These formed part of preparations for the coming of Spring in the northern hemisphere.

The februa included spelt and salt for cleaning houses, leaves worn by priests, and strips of goat skin. These strips were put to good use in the festival of the Lupercalia, held each year on February 15. Young men, naked except for a goat-skin cape, dashed around Rome’s sacred boundary playfully whipping women with the strips. This ancient nudie run was designed to purify the city and promote fertility.

The origins of some months were debated even by the Romans themselves. One tradition had it that Romulus named April after the goddess Aphrodite, who was born from the sea’s foam (aphros in Ancient Greek). Aphrodite, known as Venus to the Romans, was the mother of Aeneas, who fled from Troy to Italy and founded the Roman race. The other version was that the month derived from Latin verb aperio, “I open”. As the poet Ovid wrote:

For they say that April was named from the open season, because spring then opens all things, and the sharp frost-bound cold departs, and earth unlocks her teeming soil …

There were similar debates about the origins of May and June. There was a story that Romulus named them after the two divisions of the Roman male citizen body, the maiores (elders) and iuniores (juniors). However, it was also believed that their names came from deities. The nymph Maia, who was assimilated with the earth, gave her name to May, while Juno, the goddess of war and women, was honoured by the month of June.

Further reading: Explainer: the seasonal calendars of Indigenous Australia

Imperial pretensions

The numerical names of the months in the second half of the year remained unchanged until the end of the Roman Republic. In 44 B.C., Quintilis was rebranded as Iulius, to celebrate the month in which the dictator Julius Caesar was born.

This change survived Caesar’s assassination (and the outrage of the orator M. Tullius Cicero, who complained about it in his letters). In 8 B.C., Caesar’s adoptive son and heir, the emperor Augustus, had Sextilis renamed in his honour. This was not his birth month (which was September), but the month when he first became consul and subjugated Egypt.

This change left four months – September, October, November and December – for later emperors to appropriate, though none of their new names survive today. Domitian renamed September, the month he became emperor, to Germanicus, in honour of his victory over Germany, while October, his birthday month, he modestly retitled Domitianus, after himself.

However, Domitian’s arrogance paled in comparison with the megalomaniacal Commodus, who rebranded all the months with his own imperial titles, including Amazonius (January) and Herculeus (October).

If these titles had survived Commodus’s death, we would not have the problem of our year ending with months carrying the wrong numerical names. But we would be celebrating Christmas on the 25th of Exsuperatorius (“All-Surpassing Conqueror”).

Caillan Davenport receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Humans have built high-rises since ancient Roman times, but it wasn’t until the 20th century that they became the default work space for a significant slice of the world’s workers. While these buildings are certainly efficient, they can cause real health issues.

Office buildings, where many Australians spend much of their time, are even worse than apartment buildings. Cubicles in offices usually consist of partitions made of particle board and vinyl carpet, synthetic flooring, a particle board desk and plastic or synthetic office chair, mostly lit by artificial lighting. The lucky few get natural light and a view from a window, but poor ventilation still spreads germs.

Read more: Why apartment dwellers need indoor plants

One excellent way to combat both sick days and stress is by filling your office with plants. Ideally, you want plants that will “scrub” the air of pathogens, improve the office’s mix of bacteria, and survive in low light with little care.

Fight formaldehyde (and other nasty chemicals)

One of the many chemical compounds given off by synthetic office furnishings is formaldehyde, which can irritate the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose and throat, and also cause allergic contact dermatitis.

Irritation of the eyes and upper respiratory tract, as well as headaches, are the most common reported symptoms of exposure to formaldehyde toxins. Other harmful chemicals in the office may include benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene, and even ammonia from cleaning products. High levels of carbon dioxide breathed out by a roomful of colleagues can give the room that “stuffy” feeling, particularly if there is no air conditioning.

Indoor plants will purify the air, reducing volatile organic compounds, including formaldehyde.

A NASA clean air study tested common indoor plants for the ability to filter pollutants, and found many are very effective at removing multiple kinds of organic compounds from the air (this chart is very handy for finding high performers).

To best remove indoor pollutants, try for one medium-sized plant per 2.2 square metres. Look for species with large leaves (the more leaf surface area, the more efficient it is).

Improve indoor bacteria balance

There are already trillions of bacteria in high-rise offices, but only a limited amount come in through open windows and air conditioning from the outdoor environment. Most of the bacteria, fungi and viruses come from people; we leave behind a microbial cloud from our skin wherever we go.

The office environment then creates new habitats for microbial communities that may be quite foreign to human skin, and may not be good for your health.

Beneficial bacteria on indoor plants and in their soil are an important addition to the office, stabilising the ecology of the built synthetic environment.

Plant-associated bacteria could also help to avoid outbreaks of pathogens by enhancing microbial biodiversity and balancing the complex network of the ecosystem. A wholesome balance may reduce the incidence of viral illness and the number of sick days among staff.

It’s not just the size of the plant that’s important here. Larger pots mean more root mass and soil surface for helpful bacteria and root microbes.

Beat stress

Over the past 30 years, research has shown that green spaces promote public health, and that contact with nature can shift highly stressed people to a more positive emotional state. One study identified eight ways people perceive green urban spaces (described as Serene, Space, Nature, Rich in Species, Refuge, Culture, Prospect, and Social) and confirmed the importance of considering plant life when creating public places.

Offices, particularly those with many people, poor ventilation or low natural light, should also consider plants and green spaces a necessity.

There are a few basic principles for a good office plant. It must be hardy and easy to maintain, and able to survive without water over weekends (or when the regular plant-carer goes on holiday). Many plants will do the most good in cubicles and spaces away from windows, so they need to be adapted to low light.

It’s also a good idea to avoid plants that flower extravagantly, which may cause allergic reactions. Check with your colleagues before introducing new plants.

Read more: Hay fever survival guide: why you have it and how to treat it

Some of the best all-rounders across these categories are Devil’s Ivy, Bamboo Palm, Kentia Palm, Variegated Snake Plant (also known as mother-in-law’s tongue), and the Peace Lily, but there are many beautiful plants that will improve your atmosphere and mood.

So if you’re heading back to work in an office soon (or know someone who is), why not bring along an indoor plant?

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

There are 6,000 tweets sent a second. In the time you have read this sentence, 42,000 tweets will have been sent. At an average of 34 characters per tweet that’s 1,428,000 characters.

Worldwidewebsize daily estimates the size of the internet. On the day of writing, it amounted to 4.59 billion pages and a billion websites. This is the “indexed” internet, and doesn’t include the “dark web” or private databases.

The size of the web is measured in two ways. The first is “content” – storage capacity was estimated in 2014 as 10²⁴ bytes, or a million exabytes. The second is “traffic”, measured in zettabytes. Global traffic recently passed one zettabyte, the content of 250 billion DVDs.

More conventionally, the UK published 184,000 books in 2013 – globally, the largest number per inhabitant. Add the increasing ways of measuring a human being in terms of data – DNA sequencing, online family trees, genetic coding, bank accounts, online information of all kinds – or the amount of scientific data being produced and read around the world and the amount of information in the world is staggering. Even the amount of storage most people need for photos and documents has grown hugely in the past few years.

As a species, we are producing information at a massive rate. The “reading” of the mass of data has led to new predictive models for social interaction. Businesses and governments are scrambling to make use of this data as human beings seem ever more readable, manageable and – possibly – controllable through the comprehension and manipulation of information.

But just how might all this information be stored? At present, we have physical libraries, and physical archives, and bookshelves. The internet itself is “stored” on hard-disk servers around the world, using enormous amounts of power to keep them cool. Online infrastructure is expensive, energy hungry, and vulnerable; its longevity is also limited – see Die Hard 4.0 for a dramatisation of this.

Libraries of the future

The future of information storage may sound dull, but it is a crucial issue for anyone interested in the way that societies remember. A good example is family history, where public archives, such as census records and tax information, are increasingly accessed online. Millions of users around the world use subscription sites such as Ancestry or Findmypast to access this public information and to create their family trees using online software. This proliferation of information raises ethical issues about access (public records being used by private companies to make a profit) and about how this data is stored, managed and used.

We all have a stake in the way that libraries and archives might work in the future, how they might be configured, and what might be stored – and why. Do we really need to store every tweet ever sent? Making any kind of choice over what to store – what to collect, commemorate, archive – provokes a complex discussion. Technologies for accessing – “reading” – information need to be somehow futureproofed, or we will end up with huge amounts of information that cannot be used.

So: what to do? There are wide-ranging discussions at present, from what information to store (including various biobanks full of biological specimens), to how to store it, to where to store it (the Arctic, various locations in space, under water). Most of these discussions are occurring within scientific communities; some technological companies are involved. Those who have spent years thinking about memory, commemoration and archiving – historians and librarians – are often on the fringes of the discussion.

Nanocrystals and DNA

Various different organisations are exploring physical ways of storing humanity’s information. Physical storage on nickel disks (read by microscope) or laser-written barcodes on silica glass have been suggested. Highly experimental – and at present energy-hungry – nanotechnology looks to write information at the near-molecular level (although the use of the word “write” is very much out of date here). Nanotechnological storage would be “read” through sophisticated microscopy and is sometimes the “effect” of chemical change or quite complicated processes, such as nanocrystals converting radiation (infra-red) into something “visible”. Some of the more baroque storage models range from a flash data memory vault on the moon to private companies sending digital content to Mars, to satellites orbiting the earth.

But most of the activity at present seems to be biological. Various scientists have begun to explore the possibility of using DNA to store information, called Nuclear Acid Memory (NAM).

This would involve the data being “translated” into the letters GATC, the base nucleic acids of DNA. DNA strands would then be created which could be translated back into the “original” by being sequenced. Researchers recently stored archival-quality versions of music by Miles Davis and Deep Purple and also of a short GIF in DNA form.

DNA is durable and increasingly easy to produce and read. It will keep for thousands of years in the right storage conditions. DNA might be stored anywhere that is dark, dry, cold, and arguably would not take up a great deal of room.

Much of this technology is in its infancy, but developments in nanotechnology and DNA sequencing suggest that we will be seeing the applied results of experimentation and development within years. Wider questions arise about the ethics of collection and to what extent these processes will become mainstream. Print, and to a certain extent digital, have become common and reasonably democratic ways of transmitting and storing information. It remains to be seen whether future storage and writing will be as easy to access, and who will be in control of humanity’s information and memory in the coming decades and centuries.

Jerome de Groot receives funding from AHRC.

It is the beginning of another year, which means the welcoming of new works into the public domain for Public Domain Day 2018. Today, countries around the world will expand their public domain with creative works whose term of copyright protection ended in 2017. As public domain works, these books, films, compositions, and works of art can be copied, shared, and remixed without copyright restrictions.

We have written before about the extension of the term of copyright protection under U.S. law and its impact on our public domain (we’ve also written about the ability of copyright owners to bypass this lengthy wait and dedicate their works to the public domain via Creative Commons CC0). As a result of this extension of copyright and Congress’s decision to apply the extension of copyright protection retroactively to existing works, those of us in the United States will need to wait until January 1, 2019 before we see new published works enter the public domain.

For now, the U.S. public domain will add a much smaller group of works—unpublished works whose author died in 1947 and were not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to 1978.

For an interesting read on some of the published works that are entering the public domain in countries around the world, head over to The Public Domain Review for their picks for the Class of 2018.

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By Maria Scheid, Copyright Services Specialist at Copyright Services, The Ohio State University Libraries

Whether snuggled up at home or out partying with family and friends, the dawn of the new year is something to toast to. But not so long ago, the people of Britain were commemorating the start of the forthcoming 12 months in a very different way – with books.

In the early 20th century, Edwardian Britain was gripped by a reading craze. On the playground at school, on a tea break down the mines, or in the drawing room of a mansion, men, women and children of all classes and ages were rarely without a book.

The idea of giving a book as a gift became popularised in the Victorian era. Books were bought for others to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and, of course, Christmas. In fact, by the end of the 19th century, books had come to be so expected at Christmas that one Times reporter claimed that “Christmas would not be recognised without them”.

Books at Christmas is not something unique to British culture. Icelanders have long given books to each other on Christmas Eve and stayed up all night reading them. The custom is so deeply ingrained in Icelandic culture that it causes an annual jólabókaflóðið (“Christmas book flood”), as countless copies of around 700 volumes are published in just over four months. But it is the way that Edwardian Britons used these books that is quite unusual.

As mass consumerism and the formation of a commodity culture grew, the Victorian practice gradually spread to the new year. By 1901, no Edwardian stepped into the new year without a book. But the reason of this was not down to a tradition of gift-giving, it was guided by superstition. The Edwardians believed that bad luck would fall upon any family who did not have a book in hand when the clock struck midnight on December 31.

Predicting the future

Books were said to foretell a family’s fortune for the year. So, on New Year’s Day, families would gather around the fireplace and practice bibliomancy. This involved opening the new book on a random page and reading the passage to predict what would happen in the coming year.

Bibliomancy (from biblio meaning “books” and mancy, “divination by means of”) has a long spiritual tradition. Its origins lie in the Ancient Roman sortes, which involved using the texts of Homer and Virgil to predict the future (The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World, Leonard Victor Rutgers). Although the Bible explicitly condemns divination, it was widely adopted throughout the Middle Ages as a “magical medicine” that removed negative forces. In popular culture, bibliomancy occurs frequently throughout works of fiction, from Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.

If Edwardians had been unfortunate enough not to receive a new book on New Year’s Eve, the Bible was chosen. A family member (typically the father) would ask a question, open the Bible at random, close his eyes and circle the text with his finger. When the “spirit” told him to stop, he would open his eyes and read the “answer” wherever his finger landed.

Increased secularity meant that in the absence of a new book or the Bible, much-loved classics like Charles Kingsley’s novel Westward Ho!, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, and Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan could all be used to “predict” the future.

In Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, bibliomancy is routinely practised by the protagonist Gabriel Betteredge using the pages of Robinson Crusoe.

When my spirits are bad – Robinson Crusoe. When I want advice – Robinson Crusoe. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much – Robinson Crusoe. I have worn out six stout Robinson Crusoes with hard work in my service.

Although Collins was sending up this popular fad, bibliomancy was an important part of Victorian and Edwardian book culture. It was used by eminent figures including poet Robert Browning, who took to bibliomancy to find out about the fate of his attraction to fellow poet, and his later wife, Elizabeth Barrett. Though he made the unusual choice of Cerutti’s Italian Grammar for the divination, upon randomly opening it his eyes fell on the sentence: “If we love in the other world as we do in this, I shall love thee to eternity.”

Sadly, bibliomancy did not always make for happy endings: some were led to commit crimes and others were even known to have killed themselves over the result of a reading. On April 2 1866 The Belfast Morning News reported the story of a man who stole a set of spoons from a house because he believed that the Bible had told him to do so. He was, consequently, fined and sentenced to hard labour.

Toady bibliomancy is only practised by a few, but if you find yourself at a loss this New Year’s Eve, grab a book from the shelf. Whether it comes true or not, the text you find could inspire a positive outlook for the year ahead.

Lauren Alex O' Hagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The piece around workplace jargon is moving forward, with the team hitting the ground running. We’ve got our ducks in a row, have drilled down into our learnings — let’s run it up the flagpole and see the result.

Clearly we need to enter 2018 with a fresh set of expressions for the workplace.

Now, I could suggest some spanking-new ones, but lexical novelty comes with risks — besides, we’re all a bit weary of innovation in the workplace.

Read more: Catchphrase to cliché: how corporate-speak became common in our everyday lives

So in the spirit of recycling, I suggest we recruit golden oldies to inject energy into modern managerial jargon, some linguistic gems from the past that deserve a second go.

Reaching out with saucy oars

Linguistic bugbears are always in the eye of beholder, but singing from the same hymn sheet seems to get up most noses. Old nautical jargon might be just what’s needed here, specifically — in the quill or jumping in quill. These are expressions that also meant “working in harmony”.

The quill here isn’t a feather, but an early version of coil (of rope). If you’re all jumping in quill, you’re nicely coiled up in concentric rings, so no need for synergizing either.

The world of business has also given us out over one’s skis. The message is “don’t get too far ahead of yourself”. Skiers I gather are irritated by this one because they feel the imagery is wrong, and those of us who aren’t into winter sports are simply confused.

If the idea is acting prematurely or recklessly, can I suggest we resurrect another couple of nautical expressions? Ships or boats that were rashly venturing were once said to be with saucy rigging or with saucy oars — titillating images for a change:

“They might have been sailing with saucy rigging with that restructure.”

Being loaded for bears when you hit the floor running

Something that makes regular appearances in our workplace memos is getting your ducks in a row, in other words, being organised. Its origin isn’t clear — ceramic flying ducks on a wall, rows of mechanical ducks at the fairground, balls (sitting ducks) lined up to be potted on the pool table.

It could also relate to real live ducks close together and about to be shot, or even the mother duck with her brood. All were possible inspirations.

I’m very tempted to suggest the incorporation of another duck expression here, the 17th century curiosity anatiferous “producing ducks” (from Latin anas (anati) “duck” + ferus “making”)?

But I suspect we need a stronger image for the modern corporate world. So how about being loaded for bear(s), a North American expression from the 19th century that also meant being fully prepared? Here you have to imagine hunters geared up for an bear encounter.

If you’re loaded for bears before the next meeting, you’re ready for anything.

Ideating or bethinking outside the box

The message from many management gurus is that plain and simple English words are what we need to achieve clear communication, and in the interests of de-jargonising modern corporate-speak we could even revive a few.

Sibsomeness, somredness, onehead, onehood all once referred to different aspects of unity of spirit, mind and action. While they lack the profitable association of corporate synergy, that meaning can be supplied:

“The team work resulted in a sibsomeness that was very productive.”

We like to investigate matters meticulously but are thoroughly sick of drilling down or peeling the onion. Now, we could bring back bolting the flour with its different image of a bolting-cloth or sieve. But why not Old English through-seek, with more or less the same meaning and a one thousand year-old pedigree.

The English word furtherhead was overwhelmed by French-inspired priorities and prioritize, and never took off. But as something that can be both noun and verb, it’s a handy replacement for these two foreign-derived expressions:

“The department has failed to futherhead safety within the industry.”

Ferking forthward

Let me finish with going forward, a kind of sentence tag that I equate with the teaspoonful of sugar following the tablespoonful of cod liver oil:

“This is our strategy going forward.”

There’s a fine Old English expression that could replace this overworked corporate morale booster — ferking forthward meaning moving forward, or helping something on its way.

In the modern version of the verb, prepositions are flexible. And whether it’s ferking out, up, off or forward, throughout its long and complicated life this verb has always had direction, action and bucket loads of purpose at its core:

“This ongoing restructuring of the business is a necessary step in creating a leaner organisation ferking up.”

There’s a little extra something here, too. It comes from the subtle vowel change that during the 16th century transformed ancient ferk to the modern-day F-word (undoubtedly this transition was assisted by other sources — successful expressions are usually mongrels).

Now, I know it’s easy to tilt at the jargon of others. But when expressions start doing something to people’s neck hairs, it’s time to let them go.

Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Recently, a friend of mine and I had a conversation on Twitter about shipping. Specifically, that we share a Star Wars ship: Rey and Kylo Ren (please be kind, commenters). We shared a couple jokes and thoughts about The Last Jedi and Reylo, and then went our separate ways.

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You probably remember those tantalizing tech predictions from the 1990s. The world wide web was going to become a paradise for access to information and civil discourse. The internet would allow people of different cultures to come together and learn from each other. The information superhighway was supposed to make…

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On December 14, a majority of FCC commissioners voted to gut net neutrality protections, limiting the power of ISPs to block, throttle, degrade or assign preference to some online content and services over others. This 3-2 vote to roll back strong, enforceable net neutrality protections was made in the face of widespread protests. Here is where we are today.

What Happened
This FCC decision opens the door for very different consumer experiences of the internet, especially within libraries for the patrons and communities they serve. For now, these changes are likely farther in the future. The country’s largest ISPs have told customers they will not see a change in how they experience the web (although past records don’t look bode well). With so many eyes on them right now and the certainty of a legal challenge, it is unlikely these companies will take any immediate action that will draw scrutiny. That said, significant changes are almost certain. In particular, ISPs could create faster delivery lanes for their own content (since many of these companies have media interests). This would make it harder for third-party or competing content (like content created by and in libraries) to reach people with the same quality of service.

Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel dissented in last week’s decision and detailed some of their concerns about the potential harms to the public interest and the internet ecosystem as we know it.

What’s Next?
As we’ve noted before, the FCC vote is not the final word. There are a several avenues supporters of net neutrality could take:

1. Right after the vote, members of Congress announced their intent to attempt to nullify the FCC’s actions. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) gives Congress the ability and authority to do this; the CRA allows Congress to review a new agency regulation (in this case, Pai’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” Order) and pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval to overrule it. This would repeal last weeks FCC order, restoring the 2015 Open Internet Order and keeping net neutrality protections in place. This Congressional action would be subject to Presidential approval. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) have both announced their intentions to introduce resolutions to overturn the FCC’s decision using the authority granted by the CRA and Democratic leadership in both Houses have urged their colleagues to support this move. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) plans to introduce legislation to codify net neutrality rules. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, is also calling for Congress to preserve the net neutrality rules. Timing: Congress will have 60 legislative days from when this order is published in the Federal Register. That could be about 5 or 6 months. Other legislation could take even longer.
   
2. The FCC will be sued about this decision. Just hours after the vote, 18 state attorneys general announced they would be taking the FCC to court. “There is a strong legal argument that with this action, the federal government violated the Administrative Procedure Act,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in his statement.

   And advocacy groups Free Press and the National Hispanic Media Coalition have also announced they will take the Commission to court, disagreeing with the FCC on their interpretation of the Communications Act. They argue the FCC did not justify its action with any real facts for abandoning Title II classification for broadband ISPs.One important thing to remember is that going to court does not mean a judge will grant an injunction on the rules. And without an injunction, ISPs can still move forward with opening up internet fast lanes while the legal challenges make their way through the courts. Timing: We will know more after the rules are published in the Federal Register (probably any time in the next 60 days) and as cases are announced.

3. In addition to legal action, several states and localities have indicated they would like to hold ISPs accountable for ensuring a neutral net for consumers in their areas. It is still very early. Some suggestions, like those from the Governor of Washington, are not yet formal legislative proposals. It is worth noting the FCC order specifically pre-empts state and local legislation, but it is not clear yet how expansive this pre-emption will be and whether it will pass legal muster. We will be watching these proposals closely and will update members about which pieces are moving and comport with the strong protections and the principles we have supported. Timing: Many state legislatures introducing bills for their coming sessions, so we expect to see more motion over the next few months.

What ALA is Doing and What You Can Do
ALA is reviewing its options and the best course of action with regard to legal challenges to last week’s vote. In the past, we have submitted extensive friend of the court briefs.

We are also working with allies to encourage Congress to overturn the FCC’s egregious action. You can email your members of Congress today and ask them to use a Joint Resolution of Disapproval under the CRA to restore the 2015 Open Internet Order protections.

ALA will continue to update you on the activities above and other developments as we continue to fight to preserve a neutral internet.

The post After the FCC vote: continuing the fight for net neutrality appeared first on District Dispatch.

It’s easy to argue that the internet as it exists now is not “neutral”, with some companies and websites creating tech empires and online monopolies. But the decision of US telecoms watchdog, the Federal Communications Commission, to remove regulations that overtly guarantee net neutrality – the basic principle that all information on the internet should be treated equally and should be equally accessible – will certainly not improve matters.

By removing the net neutrality regulations passed in the US in 2015, the balance is tipped in favour of those companies who are able to pay internet service providers and telecoms companies to prioritise the transfer of their data. This is not just a hypothetical position experts theorise might happen: it is already happening in countries such as Guatemala where net neutrality norms have been undermined, with internet access provided in tiers that offer different speed of access for a different monthly fee.

The economic implications of this and what it means for smaller or innovative companies in a competitive marketplace are clear. But there are other hidden victims of a failure to protect net neutrality and deter the monopolisation of the internet. To find them, we must make a short detour into media theory.

The knowledge gap

In 1970 Philip Tichenor, George Donohue, and Clarice Olien proposed the influential Knowledge Gap Hypothesis, which in essence suggests that as the amount of mass media grows, consumers from a higher socio-economic background tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than those from a lower socio-economic background, and so benefit more from it. They suggested this happens for various reasons, including often being the target of this media, and having easier access to it. This means that, despite the apparently egalitarian potential of access to information enjoyed by people from across the socio-economic spectrum, in fact access to knowledge alone may not address socio-economic disparities – and may even exacerbate them further.

Five years later the same authors refined these ideas, suggesting ways to reduce this potential knowledge gap: media focused on events and issues that directly affect local communities, for example, or media that addressed forms of social conflict, and that dealt with shared issues and concerns.

Other factors have since helped close the knowledge gap – most notably access to the internet, described as a “tool for creating a more informed citizenry” by US academics Elizabeth Corley and Dietram Scheufele, and the rise of social media. At the same time, disparity of internet access based on income is quickly shrinking: recent data shows internet use among those earning under US$30,000 a year increased from 54% in 2008 to 79% in 2016, catching up those earning over US$75,000, who have stayed at a steady 95-97% over the same period.

In many ways, the internet fulfils the aim of reducing the knowledge gap by creating an environment through which communities can come together to discuss shared interests. It doesn’t just provide access to news and information, but offers a means to take part in shaping the narratives and pushing for direct action. The internet has provided the means to allow communities to develop, and use social media to reflect their needs and concerns.

Not all knowledge is useful

But, as has become clear recently, other factors affect the degree to which the general public is well informed. The rise of “fake news”, disinformation, and fringe beliefs such as flat-Eartherism, now distributed with ease through social media, has left the public potentially more confused than ever. The Pew Research Center reports that 64% of Americans are confused even to the basic facts of current events, which suggests that although internet access is a useful tool, we cannot assume that the information received is always correct, neutral, or beneficial. As was the case with much of the fake news spread during the 2016 US presidential election of Donald Trump, this disinformation can often be targeted at those from a specific socioeconomic background.

Given this, it’s questionable whether the internet has indeed reduced knowledge gaps, or if it has opened new divides in how and what we understand in a post-truth world. Nonetheless, any attack on net neutrality is likely to further restrict who has access to what information, and at what cost. The social impact of this could easily drive a wedge into and reopen any remaining knowledge gap, undoing some of the benefits achieved so far.

Which voices are amplified online?

The internet has, to an extent, amplified voices from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and it’s vital that rolling back net neutrality doesn’t erode what inroads these less-heard voices have made against the socio-cultural norm. Knowledge on the internet is already problematic. For example, much of Wikipedia is written by white males from the global north, despite being seen as a repository of “the world’s knowledge”.

Spaces for a greater range of voices to take a role in shaping the knowledge available online must be created – not reduce access to only those who can afford it on platforms that pay for quicker access. A tiered internet that is tied to the ability to pay will likely further minimise the diversity of voices online.

There is every chance, looking at the examples of countries that have already removed net neutrality, that websites given faster and easier access will be sites from tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter – companies that have the commercial clout to achieve preferential arrangements with internet providers and telecoms firms, but which often do not reflect or protect disenfranchised communities. Facebook, for example, has nominally added more than two options for gender classification, yet research suggests the platform still classifies all users by a gender binary. Similarly, Twitter’s continued failure to effectively deal with abuse including, but not limited to, racism and misogyny means the site, by design, does not afford the same voice, freedom, or protection to all users.

These popular platforms have a long history of ignoring, mistreating or misrepresenting at-risk communities. Given that they already account for a huge proportion of internet use, it is likely that with the removal of net neutrality, mistreated communities will continue to be marginalised. Similarly, if we slow down, target and punish local blogs and sites aimed at local news and specific communities we potentially undo the conditions through which the internet has lessened knowledge gaps.

There is a long way to go in order to ensure the internet is a space where people from diverse backgrounds are able to access and contribute to knowledge. But removing net neutrality is a step backwards, and will only serve to further silence disenfranchised communities, and reverse the positive steps so far taken to close the knowledge gap.

Harry T Dyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.