A new mailing list devoted to DRM. Here's the review from The Scout Report:

This new mailing list stemmed from discussions on digital rights management (DRM) at the Managing Digital Video workshop held this past August in Atlanta, Georgia. The list is designed to provide a forum "to discuss possible cooperative development of a DRM implementation for R&E, and to enable workshop participants to communicate about work being conducted in this area." Some of the first discussions will center around proposed collaborations between the ViDe VideoAccess Working Group and the Internet2 Video Middleware (VidMid) Video-on-Demand group as part of the recently announced NSF Middleware Initiative."

RIGHTS-L | Digital Rights Management Discussion Forum

Pastry is completely decentralized, scalable, and self-organizing; it automatically adapts to the arrival, departure and failure of nodes. A prototype implementation [...] up to 100,000 nodes [...] scalability and efficiency, ability to self-organize and adapt to node failures, and good network locality properties."

Pastry: Scalable, Decentralized Object Location, and Routing for Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Systems

"When a computer network connects people or organizations, it is a social network. Yet the study of such computer-supported social networks has not received as much attention as studies of human-computer interaction, online person-to-person interaction, and computer-supported communication within small groups. We argue the usefulness of a social network approach for the study of computer-mediated communication. We review some basic concepts of social network analysis, describe how to collect and analyze social network data, and demonstrate where social network data can be, and have been, used to study computer-mediated communication. Throughout, we show the utility of the social network approach for studying computer-mediated communication, be it in computer-supported cooperative work, in virtual community, or in more diffuse interactions over less bounded systems such as the Internet."

Studying Online Social Networks | Journal of Computer Mediated Communication

The Electronic Small World Project seeks to map the social connections among people using email. Using the tools of social network analysis, we hope to construct the first images of the social topography (as opposed to the technical or physical topography) of the Internet. This social map will help us understand how information moves through society, how different types of people are connected, and how small the social world in which we live really is.

The Electronic Small World Project

Initial release (in image-only form) of the first NRC review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).

Preliminary Comments, Review of the NNI

Chapter Titles:
    Description of the National Nanotechnology Initiative
    Critical Areas for a Successful National Nanotechnology Initiative

Nat'l Academy Press, Preliminary Comments, Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (2001), Table of Contents

This book shows how, by rather simple models, we can gain remarkable insights into the behavior of complex systems. It is devoted to the discussion of functional self-organization in large populations of interacting active elements. The possible forms of self-organization in such systems range from coherent collective motions in the physical coordinate space to the mutual synchronization of internal dynamics, the development of coherently operating groups, the rise of hierarchical structures, and the emergence of dynamical networks. Such processes play an important role in biological and social phenomena. The authors have chosen a series of models from physics, biochemistry, biology, sociology and economics, and will systematically discuss their general properties. The book addresses researchers and graduate students in a variety of disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, biology and the social sciences."

ISBN 3-540-42164-5. (You can buy it from Amazon and Fatbrain.)

From Swarms to Societies: Models of Complex Coherent Action

VNOS, the Visual Network Operating System, is the revolutionary platform that allows you to easily create visual, intent-oriented applications to monitor, manage, control or interoperate any device or collection of devices. Think of creating a logical flow diagram for how you'd like something to work, except when you're done with the diagram, it's a fully functioning application."

Visual Network Operating System (VNOS) and X-Internet: The Next Step Beyond the Web

The Pew Trust has just released a new report on the development of online communities and their social impact on life in America. Of note: 90 million Americans have participated in online groups; 84% of 'net users have used an online group. A quote from the director: "For vast numbers of Americans, use of the Internet simultaneously expands their social worlds and connects them more deeply to the place where they live."

Here's the outline of the report. Full text is available online.

Summary of Findings
Table of Contents
Part 1: Background
Part 2: The Internet, Communities, and the Virtual "Third Place"
Part 3: New community participants
Part 4: The differences among online group members
Part 5: The Internet and local scene
Methodology

Online Communities: Networks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties

"Venture capitalists are all saying: `This is the best time to invest,'" said Jesse Reyes, vice president at Venture Economics. "But if you look at these guys' portfolios, they're just not doing it," he said."

Venture funding down in Bay Area

I mentioned this on Fadori a while ago ... it's now available at your favorite neighborhood bookseller. I picked it up on Thursday and have just started reading it. If you liked _Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace_, check this out.

The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. What was responsible for its birth? Who is responsible for its demise?

In The Future of Ideas , Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. [...] The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights.

The choice Lawrence Lessig presents [...] is between progress and a new Dark Ages [...]

With an uncanny blend of knowledge, insight, and eloquence, Lawrence Lessig has written a profoundly important guide to the care and feeding of innovation in a connected world. Whether it proves to be a road map or an elegy is up to us.

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World