orientalism revisited > 03/11/06

Rider Haggard’s fin-de-siècle novel She is an adventure novel, an early Indiana Jones, of the colonial age. She is short for She who must be obeyed, a white queen whose name is Ayesha and the protagonist of the novel. In the novel, a Cambridge professor travels to the heart of darkness (yes, Conrad is here too) that is SHE.

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knowledge societies > 30/10/05

Looking at the UNESCO/WSIS Declaration of Principles for the internet, it becomes clear that the declaration rejects the bifurcation of, on the one, the information society as part of globalization on corporate terms and the subsequent increase in the digital divide and, on the other, knowledge societies that rely on affordable, free and open-source software and diversity in formats that enable global accessability regardless of the underlying technology.

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