European Digital Rights: EU Surveillance (2012)

“The purpose of this booklet is to briefly outline current EU surveillance and security measures in order to give an insight into their scale and cumulative effect. In order to be legal under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, each security measure that limits fundamental rights is understood to be effective and a “necessary” and “proportionate” breach of the rights which our society considers to be fundamental.”

Written by Joe McNamee, Kirsten Fiedler, Marie Humeau, Daniel Dimov
Publisher European Digital Rights (EDRi), Brussels, 23 January 2012
The EDRi Papers, Edition 02
Creative Commons 3.0 License
20 pages

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European Digital Rights: Activist Guide to the Brussels Maze (2012)

“The purpose of this booklet is to provide activists with an insight into where EU legislative and non-legislative Proposals come from, what can be achieved at each stage of the administrative process. As the lifetime of any EU Proposal of any description is very long, it is important to know where to target any activity at any given moment. Every institution is very powerful and influential at certain moments and very much a spectator at other moments. We hope that this guide will help serve as a map of the Brussels maze.”

Written by Joe McNamee, Kirsten Fiedler, Marie Humeau
Publisher European Digital Rights (EDRi), Brussels, 23 January 2012
The EDRi Papers, Edition 01
Creative Commons 3.0 License
26 pages

commentary (Bits of Freedom) [Dutch]
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Ted Nelson: Computer Lib / Dream Machines (1974)

“Computer Lib is a book by Ted Nelson, originally published in 1974 by Nelson himself, and packaged with Dream Machines, another book by Nelson. The whole publication (referred to as just “Computer Lib” by Nelson and others) had two front covers to indicate the “intertwingling” of the two books, and was republished with a foreword by Stewart Brand in 1987 by a division of Microsoft Press. The book, which is subtitled “You can and must understand computers NOW,” and which Nelson says in the 1987 edition was inspired by Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, is a spirited manifesto that was inspiring to a generation of DIY computer-lovers. In his book Tools for Thought, Howard Rheingold calls Computer Lib “the best-selling underground manifesto of the microcomputer revolution.”

In Computer Lib, Nelson writes passionately about the need for people to understand computers deeply, more deeply than was generally promoted as “computer literacy,” which he considers a superficial kind of familiarity with particular hardware and software. His rallying cry “Down with Cybercrud” is against the centralization of computers such as that performed by IBM at the time, as well as against what he sees as the intentional untruths that “computer people” tell to non-computer people to keep them from understanding computers.

In Dream Machines, Nelson covers the flexible media potential of the computer, which was shockingly new at the time.” (from Wikipedia)

Publisher Hugo’s Book Service, 1974
132 pages

Reviews: d.h.f. (Byte Magazine, 1975), L.R. Shannon (New York Times, 1988), Vince Juliano (Connecticut Libraries, 1996).
Commentary: Noah Wardrip-Fruin (2003).

Book website
Author
Wikipedia
More information and reviews

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