Information Society Watch

November 2008, Jaffrey Rosen, NY Times

This news article investigates and draws out revelations for taking stock of Google's avatar as a gatekeeper and the implications for free speech on Internet as well as the increasingly pertinent question of regulation-by whom and how?

September 16, 2008, Reuters

A researcher from a leading research organisation after analysing web searches of over 10 milliom web users has come to the conclusion that pornography which has till now been the most sought after search term on the Internet is falling and in fact being replaced by social networking sites which people are using to communicate with each other.

2008, James Grimmelmann

Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us. Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself.

September 16, 2008, Declan McCullagh, Cnet News

Unknown to most people, a UN agency is quietly debating whether anonymity on the Internet should be done away with. A new set of technical standards which have been proposed by the Chinese government aims to trace the source of any sort of electronic communication, a move which can potentially make it impossible for anyone to remain anonymous and raises serious questions on privacy. It also means that anonomysing networks like Tor may be affected.

August 6, 2008, New York Times

Of all the hardware that consume the maximum amount of energy, personal computers are the worst polluters. With an aim to tackle this problem Microsoft, Climate Savers Computing Initiative - which is a non-profit and another organisation have tied up to create a unique software which manages PC power consumption. The new software allows for computers to go into a 'sleep' mode if it not being used for some time which saves upto 95% of the power consumption.

August 29, 2008, New York Times

It is a well known fact that the Internet as we know it was created in the US & it is equally true that till late most of the Internet traffic as we know used be routed through the US for economic reasons. But as this article points out, that trend is changing with traffic beginning to flow around the US through other locations. While this was expected given the fact that the Internet does not have a central focus of control, it does raise uncomfortable questions for the United States who are used to controlling the flow of content through the Internet.