Onlife

There are so many definitions of "globalization" that one may feel justified in believing that the phenomenon itself is too shifty to be captured with any precision and clarity. In a forthcoming paper ( Global Information Ethics: The Importance of Being Environmentally Earnest ), I have tried to identify six key trends that characterize contemporary globalization: contraction , expansion , porosity , hybridization , synchronization and correlation . The arrival of Google's calendar belongs to the "synchronization" trend. Human space in the twenty-first century has not merely shrunk thanks to cheap, pervasive and ubiquitous transports. ICTs have created a new digital environment, which is constantly expanding and becoming progressively more diverse. The origins of this global, transnational, common space are old. They are to be found in the invention of recording and communication technologies that range from the alphabet to printing, from photography to televis...

In a recent paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Ellis-Behnke and colleagues from Hong Kong University and the Institute for Neuroscience in Xia’an (China) have shown how hamsters, blinded following damage to their optic nerve, could have their vision partially restored by means of a nerve-bridging scaffold, made up of nanoparticle fibres. The nanoscale scaffold guides nerve tissue in its regrowing process,largelyy increasing its rate of success. Combine this discovery with the previous blog on artificial compund eyes and you start "seeing" an interesting picture. Will similar discoveries merge one day?

"Don't be evil, unless you have to" seems a more accurate and realistic motto. It would be, if uphold, already an extraordinary ideal, morally speaking. Too much evil is gratuitous, predictable and evitable, the result of careless attitude or absentmindedness. Stupidity, in a word, runs devil's business most of the times. Google is doing in China what companies do best: launching its business; negotiating with the political and social environment in order to survive first and then flourish; making (or at least laying down the conditions in order to make) profits. All this is fine. There is no moral scandal in accepting restrictions on what users may have access to. Censored information is better than no information at all. And a limited Google now is a Trojan horse tomorrow. The Chinese government probably knows that all too well. They certainly need no lesson on wisdom and long-term planning. So why are they opening the gates to such a loaded gift? The best way to l...

Ever wondered what the world might look like through the eyes of an insect such as a dragonfly or a simple housefly? Well, thanks to a team of bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley, we might be closer to discovering it. They have just created a series of artificial compound eyes (let me call them aces ), as reported in an article published in Science (click on the title above for a report). "They are the first hemispherical, three-dimensional optical systems to integrate microlens arrays - thousands of tiny lenses packed side by side - with self-aligned, self-written waveguides, that is, light-conducting channels that themselves have been created by beams of light, said Lee, the Lloyd Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley." With a bit of luck, aces will find applications in almost any optical instrument, from cameras to sensory detectors , from surveillance systems to endoscopies and image-guided surgeries. The army will certainly want...

Here are some news about new releases: - Google Calendar extension for Firefox has arrived. This extension notifies the user of upcoming events and lets one add events into one's calendar. - Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 has been released. - Google SketchUp has been released (it is free). The program allows you to create 3D models of buildings, houses, decks, and even space ships. It customizable and fairly easy to use. - Google has begun advertising Firefox on its homepage, putting extra pressure on MS-IE. This is the first time that Google promotes a third-party program on its homepage (the advertisement is seen only by users of Internet Explorer located in the US). - New version of Yahoo Mail available.

Cataloguing and ranking seems rather popular in this age of cheap computational power, pseudo-scientific projects and top-down control policies. If you have no ideas, make a list. Better still if you can self-appoint yourself as the judge of what makes it into the list and according to which ranking. Now, it might be interesting to know what the very best, the good and the, well, not-so good (read: junky) journals in philosophy are, but the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) Journals Project is not, so far, reliable in any reasonable sense. Actually, it would be rather laughable, if it weren't a worrying waste of money and a dangerous step in the wrong direction (read: renewing or withdrawing subscriptions on the basis of such misconceived list, or using it as a yardstick to evaluate applicants and faculty members). The attempt to rank all European and the best of non-European Philosophy journals by means of 4 categories (A, B, C and unclassified), may be worth ...

Firefox used to be the good guys' choice. But so was Google. And pro-environment policies. Or pro-life alternatives. The last attack on IE is a good reminder that we live in an ethically gray world. Animal activists will actually harm human animals to get other animals out of the labs. Firefoxers are now happy to intrude in the choices of users to free them from other intruders. History repeats itself a bit too boringly sometime. In Luke 14:23 one can read (New International Version (NIV) Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society): "Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full." "Make them come in" sounds very mild in English. The Latin translation left no doubts on the imperative nature of the suggestion: cogite or conpelle entrare . Force them to enter . Against their will, clearly. For their own good, obviously. And so Augustine used that passage to justi...