Canadian Intellectual Property Office gets its own quiz wrong | Academicalism

Canadian Intellectual Property Office gets its own quiz wrong | Academicalism: "The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has posted an online quiz on “IP basics,” inviting the average citizen to test one’s knowledge of copyright.

Weirdly, the second question in the Copyright section shows as correct an answer that is incorrect.

What constitutes a copyright infringement?
* Reproducing an article without the owner’s permission
* Playing songs on the radio without the owner’s permission
* Recording the performance of your favourite group without permission
* All of the above"

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Whether the digital era improves society is up to its users – that's us

Social media in particular has inexorably changed the world, driving openness and fear – but it is not beyond our control

Danah Boyd

Social media in particular has inexorably changed the world, driving openness and fear – but it is not beyond our control

The Guardian: 21-April-2012

By restructuring the networks, technology can destabilise hierarchical power. Those who can control the flow of information and those who can control people's attention are extraordinarily powerful. The only people more powerful than those who control the networks are those who can make the networks. It's no longer simply about broadcasting a message; it's about setting in motion mechanisms to draw attention to you. If you want power in a networked society, you need to orchestrate control over the information ecosystem.

Boyd tries to make sense of Castells's challenging list of types of power operating in networks

• Networking power is the power that comes from people's inclusion or exclusion from a particular environment.
• Network power is the power that stems from setting up the rules for inclusion or exclusion.
• Networked power is the power that underpins those who can set the rules by imposing their will on others.
• Network-making power is the type of power possessed by those who can connect people and flow information.

See Castells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skcUYhRaEas

The Economist: The third industrial revolution The digitisation of manufacturing will transform the way goods are made—and change the politics of jobs too

the Economist: 21-April-2012

A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services. The factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as long as it was black. But the cost of producing much smaller batches of a wider variety, with each product tailored precisely to each customer’s whims, is falling. The factory of the future will focus on mass customisation—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line.

BBC - Newsnight: Paul Mason: Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere

BBC - Newsnight: Paul Mason: Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere: "Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere
"

At the heart of it all are young people, obviously; students; westernised; secularised. They use social media - as the mainstream media has now woken up to - but this obsession with reporting "they use twitter" is missing the point of what they use it for. 
In so far as there are common threads to be found in these different situation, here's 20 things I have spotted:
1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future

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