Category: Netculture

Posted on

Twenty Years Of Hacking In About 4 Minutes

Twenty years of hacking in about four minutes. This is a short documentary on the life of ? Metro Olografix, one of the oldest and most active digital NGO in Italy.

Proud to be there since the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eoNBNaKfB4A

p.s. The video is full of trivia about people and technology. But unfortunately, Google can’t help. You have to rely upon memory, culture and experience. Brain, in other words 🙂

 

Posted on

A twenty years old jump into the future

Twenty years ago I jumped into the future.

I wasn’t actually aware of it. To me it was just matter of meeting “cool” people who, like me, loved (someone else’s:)) computers.

Twenty years after I’ve realized that I have been part of something great, though unacknowledged.

Join the Metro Olografix Twentieth Birthday Party at MO20.olografix.org.

Posted on

Don’t call us “monsters”

We are the Internet’s humanity.
Please, don’t call us “monsters”. Or “sorcerers”. Or “masked avengers”.
We are just human beings driven by a powerful desire to learn and communicate.
Crossing the physical distances, filling the cultural voids.
In a network made of people.

This is the incipit of the foreword I wrote to Giancarlo Livraghi‘s book “L’umanità dell’internet“, published in Italy about fifteen years ago.

A lot of time went by, but this is still the reason why I use the Internet.

—

* Questo è il testo originale:

Siamo l’umanità dell’internet. Non fateci passare per mostri. O per stregoni. O per “vendicatori mascherati”. Siamo semplicemente persone animate da una grande voglia di conoscere e di comunicare. Superando le distanze fisiche. Colmando quelle culturali. In una rete fatta di persone.

Posted on

The (Italian) Internet Bill of Rights To Get Momentum

Starting from Oct. 27 and for the next four months ahead, the “Commissione per i diritti e i doveri relativi ad Internet” (Commission for the rights and duties related to the Internet) of the Italian low chamber launched a series of hearing with the major Italian and European players to gather information and suggestion about this “revolutionary” initiative.

I wander who will have the … gut to tell them that:

  • there is no “mr. Internet”, the Internet as such being just a protocol,
  • the Internet doesn’t have rights. People do,
  • the European Convention of Human Rights already contains all the legal guarantee for a free (and law-abiding) use of the communication technologies, thus there is no need for another piece of nasty bureaucratic legislation,
  • the actual problem of the online ecosystem is the (still present) lack of a true commitment of the law enforcement and judicial community to properly understand the technical side of the issue so to create a reasonable case law,
  • the telco and ISP industry is paying a huge financial and technical cost for the illiteracy of lawmakers, public authorities, judges and law enforcers, with no actual benefit for the society,
  • these issues have been raised since 1994 and ahead, but nobody in the powers-that-be realm was available to hear it.

Let’s wait and see…

Posted on

There Is No Such Thing As “Business” Apple Store

By purchasing an Iphone and an Ipad through the Apple “Business” Store I discovered that to Apple there is no actual difference between a professional and a private customer: both orders fall within the same SAP pipeline and there is no “fast lane” for the corporate world (at least for the average “business Joe”.)

Furthermore, at least in Italy, Apple Financial Services (actually, GE Capital) ? doesn’t accept a digitally signed agreed, as on the contrary, the rest of the business and public administration bodies do.

Not too bad for a company that claims to be able to shape the future…

—

Post scriptum to Apple’s legal and/or public relations directors: of course I do have evidence of what I ? just wrote. Sometimes it pays to be a lawyer 🙂