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platforms

This tag is associated with 2 posts

FCJ-198 New International Information Order (NIIO) Revisited: Global Algorithmic Governance and Neocolonialism

By ⋅ March 8, 2016 ⋅ Post a comment

Danny ButtUniversity of Melbourne [Abstract] At the beginning of the 20th century, competing global telegraph networks struggled to monopolise the international circulation of information. Governments did not nationalise the cable industry (as they had telephony and the postal system) and even at the peak of “new imperialism” in 1910 only 20% of the world’s cable networks were state-owned (Winseck and Pike, 2009: 33). European governments instead used infrastructural subsidies to promote their telecommunication aims. Yet during this period of technological expansion and militarisation — perhaps relevant to our own — the nation state was far from hands off, as the market leading Marconi company discovered. Their resistance to wartime government control of their infrastructure led to the expropriation of their US assets. While the US Navy patriotically painted Marconi British puppets, Marconi’s bid for the troubled Reuters agency in England also failed due to political interference: the British Government secretly…

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FCJ-128 A Programmable Platform? Drupal, Modularity, and the Future of the Web

By ⋅ October 9, 2011 ⋅ One comment

Fenwick McKelvey. York / Ryerson Universities, Toronto I found Drupal in the summer heat of the riverside town of Rosario, Argentina during an internship with a women’s rights organisation in the city. The Canadian government funded me to help the organisation with their information technology, part of a program to promote Canada’s reputation as a leader in technology sector. Cynical of my government’s motives, but committed to the politics of free or open source software (FOSS), I helped the administrator migrate from proprietary software to free software alternatives. Their website relied on an aging copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver, a foreign application for most of the staff. I wanted in Rosario to create the ideal website for the NGO, but I did not have the ability to program such customised software. After some extensive searching, I happened upon the Drupal content management system (CMS) as a replacement. Drupal describes itself as…

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