Dopo l'appuntamento mondiale a Nairobi in Kenia, si e' aperta a Trento la quarta edizione nazionale dell'Igf-Internet Governance Forum http://www.igfitalia2011.it/. Centinaia di esperti e rappresentanti di imprese, amministrazioni locali, associazioni e Partite IVA della Conoscenza si confrontano all'interno di quattro macroaree tematiche dedicate a "Tecnologia e ricerca", "Società e cultura", "Diritti e doveri" ed "Economia e condivisione", con la possibilità di confronto libero su ulteriori questioni. A Trento si rifletterà sulle esperienze nazionali ed europee del Partito Pirata, della promozione della "Direttiva Europea di iniziativa popolare" sulle libertà digitali, utilizzando l'opportunità offerta dall'articolo sulla Citizen Initiative del Trattato Costituzionale Europeo. L'Italia ha avuto un ruolo attivo di stimolo e suggestione a partire dalla seconda sessione del Summit dell'ONU sulla Società dell'Informazione-WSIS a Tunisi con la proposta di una Carta dei Diritti della Rete e con il partecipato incontro internazionale sui diritti e la rete tenutosi a Roma prima dell'IGF di Rio, dove firmo' una specifica dichiarazione congiunta con il Governo Brasiliano. Il Brasile ha poi avviato il percorso di modifica costituzionale mentre il nostro governo metteva fine all'azione internazionale della commissione presieduta da Stefano Rodota' e ignorava la sua proposta di integrazione dell'art.21 della Costituzione "Tutti hanno eguale diritto di accedere alla Rete Internet, in condizione di parità, con modalità tecnologicamente adeguate e che rimuovano ogni ostacolo di ordine economico e sociale". Nel crepuscolo di Berlusconi la necessita' di politiche capaci di coniugare innovazione e lavoro affidano all'appuntamento trentino una responsabilità significativa affinché regole-welfare-infrastrutture-partecipazione-credito per la società e l'economia della conoscenza si impongano come costitutive di un rilancio competitivo dell'Italia. Di fronte all'ignoranza digitale di un Governo che ha tolto i soldi stanziati per la Banda Larga e ha reiteratamente cercato di mettere sotto controllo la condivisione disintermediata di conoscenza e informazioni, attraverso proposte di legge per limitare le intercettazioni, ha preso corpo una consapevolezza diffusa. Agenda Digitale, Stati Generali dell'Innovazione, Wikitalia, sono le denominazioni/affermazioni di azioni propositive che vogliono contribuire a colmare l'assenza di una politica pubblica della conoscenza e della partecipazione al piu' ampio spazio pubblico mai avuto a disposizione dall'umanità. Se non si supera l'ignoranza digitale della classe politica non e' possibile superare l'analfabetismo digitale da cui sono affetti gli italiani.  I giovani attivisti nordafricani e mediorientali hanno dimostrato le potenzialità della rete per una democrazia partecipata, così come ha fatto Obama alle scorse primarie, e' altresì evidente l'uso repressivo della profilazione dei naviganti consentita dalla tracciabilita' dei loro punti di vista e delle loro azioni grazie alla pervasività digitale. La definizione di regole e garanzie per la Rete, neutralità-accessibilità-condivisione-apertura e libertà per i suoi alfabeti e le sue grammatiche di algoritmi, diventa una questione politica che riguarda tutti, perché riguarda la natura delle relazioni nelle nostre società. Per questo e' oggetto di contesa, per questo e' necessaria l'azione consapevole di un blocco sociale dell'innovazione qualitativa, composto e partecipato da tutti gli stakeholders in gioco. Per una societa' piu' responsabile e sostenibile. L'IGF di Trento, i suoi temi e i suoi partecipanti possono dare un contributo importante alla sua costituzione.

http://www.unita.it/tecnologia/fiorello-cortiana-ora-conviene-diventare-digitali-1.349756

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7XR_sYvOc

International Herald Tribune "Italy may be' the NeXT Greece, and if it is, United Europe may not have a future. Chiaro? Se finiamo come la Grecia non solo noi ma anche l'Europa Unita non avrebbe un futuro. Non si tratterebbe di una magra consolazione nazionalista ma di un disastro non solo economico e finanziario dentro la globalizzazione cinese.

Published online 25 October 2011 | Nature 478, 435-436 (2011) | doi:10.1038/478435a

News

Global data on Fukushima challenge Japanese estimates.

Geoff Brumfiel

The Fukushima accident led to mass evacuations from nearby towns such as Minamisoma.AP Photo/S. Ponomarev

The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study¹ that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant.

The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Kjeller, who led the research, believes that the analysis is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand how much radiation was released from Fukushima Daiichi. "It's a very valuable contribution," says Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric modeller with the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who was not involved with the study.

The reconstruction relies on data from dozens of radiation monitoring stations in Japan and around the world. Many are part of a global network to watch for tests of nuclear weapons that is run by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. The scientists added data from independent stations in Canada, Japan and Europe, and then combined those with large European and American caches of global meteorological data.

Stohl cautions that the resulting model is far from perfect. Measurements were scarce in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima accident, and some monitoring posts were too contaminated by radioactivity to provide reliable data. More importantly, exactly what happened inside the reactors — a crucial part of understanding what they emitted — remains a mystery that may never be solved. "If you look at the estimates for Chernobyl, you still have a large uncertainty 25 years later," says Stohl.

Nevertheless, the study provides a sweeping view of the accident. "They really took a global view and used all the data available," says De Geer.

Challenging numbers

Japanese investigators had already developed a detailed timeline of events following the 11 March earthquake that precipitated the disaster. Hours after the quake rocked the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, the tsunami arrived, knocking out crucial diesel back-up generators designed to cool the reactors in an emergency. Within days, the three reactors operating at the time of the accident overheated and released hydrogen gas, leading to massive explosions. Radioactive fuel recently removed from a fourth reactor was being held in a storage pool at the time of the quake, and on 14 March the pool overheated, possibly sparking fires in the building over the next few days.

Click for larger image

But accounting for the radiation that came from the plants has proved much harder than reconstructing this chain of events. The latest report from the Japanese government, published in June, says that the plant released 1.5 × 10¹⁶ bequerels of caesium-137, an isotope with a 30-year half-life that is responsible for most of the long-term contamination from the plant2. A far larger amount of xenon-133, 1.1 × 10¹⁹ Bq, was released, according to official government estimates.

The new study challenges those numbers. On the basis of its reconstructions, the team claims that the accident released around 1.7 × 10¹⁹ Bq of xenon-133, greater than the estimated total radioactive release of 1.4 × 10¹⁹ Bq from Chernobyl. The fact that three reactors exploded in the Fukushima accident accounts for the huge xenon tally, says De Geer.

Xenon-133 does not pose serious health risks because it is not absorbed by the body or the environment. Caesium-137 fallout, however, is a much greater concern because it will linger in the environment for decades. The new model shows that Fukushima released 3.5 × 10¹⁶ Bq caesium-137, roughly twice the official government figure, and half the release from Chernobyl. The higher number is obviously worrying, says De Geer, although ongoing ground surveys are the only way to truly establish the public-health risk.

Stohl believes that the discrepancy between the team's results and those of the Japanese government can be partly explained by the larger data set used. Japanese estimates rely primarily on data from monitoring posts inside Japan³, which never recorded the large quantities of radioactivity that blew out over the Pacific Ocean, and eventually reached North America and Europe. "Taking account of the radiation that has drifted out to the Pacific is essential for getting a real picture of the size and character of the accident," says Tomoya Yamauchi, a radiation physicist at Kobe University who has been measuring radioisotope contamination in soil around Fukushima.

Click for full image

Stohl adds that he is sympathetic to the Japanese teams responsible for the official estimate. "They wanted to get something out quickly," he says. The differences between the two studies may seem large, notes Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University who has also modelled the accident, but uncertainties in the models mean that the estimates are actually quite similar.

The new analysis also claims that the spent fuel being stored in the unit 4 pool emitted copious quantities of caesium-137. Japanese officials have maintained that virtually no radioactivity leaked from the pool. Yet Stohl's model clearly shows that dousing the pool with water caused the plant's caesium-137 emissions to drop markedly (see 'Radiation crisis'). The finding implies that much of the fallout could have been prevented by flooding the pool earlier.

The Japanese authorities continue to maintain that the spent fuel was not a significant source of contamination, because the pool itself did not seem to suffer major damage. "I think the release from unit 4 is not important," says Masamichi Chino, a scientist with the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority in Ibaraki, who helped to develop the Japanese official estimate. But De Geer says the new analysis implicating the fuel pool "looks convincing".

The latest analysis also presents evidence that xenon-133 began to vent from Fukushima Daiichi immediately after the quake, and before the tsunami swamped the area. This implies that even without the devastating flood, the earthquake alone was sufficient to cause damage at the plant.

The Japanese government's report has already acknowledged that the shaking at Fukushima Daiichi exceeded the plant's design specifications. Anti-nuclear activists have long been concerned that the government has failed to adequately address geological hazards when licensing nuclear plants (see Nature448, 392–393; 2007), and the whiff of xenon could prompt a major rethink of reactor safety assessments, says Yamauchi.

The model also shows that the accident could easily have had a much more devastating impact on the people of Tokyo. In the first days after the accident the wind was blowing out to sea, but on the afternoon of 14 March it turned back towards shore, bringing clouds of radioactive caesium-137 over a huge swathe of the country (see'Radioisotope reconstruction'). Where precipitation fell, along the country's central mountain ranges and to the northwest of the plant, higher levels of radioactivity were later recorded in the soil; thankfully, the capital and other densely populated areas had dry weather. "There was a period when quite a high concentration went over Tokyo, but it didn't rain," says Stohl. "It could have been much worse." 

IGF Italia, Trento Sabato 12 Novembre, dalle 13,00 alle 14,00 incontro per l’"Iniziativa dei Cittadini per le libertà digitali”

Ho esposto questa intenzione/idea in diversi contesti nazionali trovando ovunque conferme e disponibilità. Per questo all’IGF di Trento si terrà un incontro aperto per raccogliere le disponibilità e i suggerimenti per la definizione della proposta. L’Italia può così riconfermare un protagonismo positivo sul piano internazionale sulle questioni digitali, come già accaduto in sede WSIS e IGF per i diritti digitali con la proposta di un “Internet Bill of Rights”  che ha dato vita ad una Dynamic Coalition nell’IGF internazionale e importanti iniziative costituzionali in singoli paesi.

Questa la traccia dei temi e delle questioni su cui confrontarsi all’IGF di Trento che ho steso insieme a Marco Ciurcina.

"Iniziativa dei Cittadini per le libertà digitali”

Il Regolamento (UE) N. 211/2011 del Parlamento Europeo e del Consiglio del 16 febbraio 2011 riguardante l’iniziativa dei cittadini prevede che, dal 1° aprile 2012, 1 milione di cittadini appartenenti ad almeno un quarto degli stati membri dell'Unione potrà chiedere alla Commissione di presentare una proposta su temi per i quali si ritiene necessario un atto legislativo dell’Unione ai fini dell’attuazione dei trattati.

Ai sensi dell'art. 6 del Regolamento le adesioni potranno essere raccolte anche online utilizzando il software libero che verrà messo a disposizione dalla Commissione dal 1° gennaio 2012.

Sono previsti dei minimi di aderenti per stato (in Italia 54.000).

Il Regolamento 211/2011 prevede che la proposta si presenta indicando, tra

l'altro:

- titolo (max 100 battute)

- oggetto (max 200 battute)

- obiettivi (max 500 battute)

- norme dei trattati pertinenti con l'azione proposta (informazioni più dettagliate, inclusa una bozza di atto normativo, possono essere allegate).

L’adozione e lo sviluppo del software libero costituisce un elemento fondamentale del pluralismo informatico per costruire una società della conoscenza libera, ma per un’ecosistema digitale differenziato e sostenibile occorre coordinare questa iniziativa tematica con quelle per la neutralità di internet, il file sharing libero per usi privati e non commerciali, il no ai DRM, l’open data, privacy e gestione delle identità, Open Government e partecipazione informata  ecc..

È molto importante che ciascuna proposta sia supportata da gruppi organizzati in diversi paesi già impegnati sulle diverse tematiche.

La proposta è quella di predisporre un "pacchetto coordinato" di iniziative coerenti da proporre come Iniziative Europee dei Cittadini (IEC). A questo fine occorre costituire un gruppo di servizio per i gruppi più attivi sui diversi temi per supportarli nell'elaborazione delle loro proposte d'iniziativa e nell'espletamento delle procedure previste dal Regolamento UE.

AsSoLi sta lavorando per predisporre una proposta per promuovere lo sviluppo e l'uso del software libero in Europa partendo dal lavoro fatto con la campagna "free software pact" del 2009 insieme ad altre associazioni europee (april, hispalinux, ecc.) http://www.freesoftwarepact.eu .

E’ vitale e fecondo connettere e fare convergere le diverse esperienze e campagne europee, condividendo una metodologia di confronto, così come una strategia di comunicazione capace di efficacia perché unita in una visione comune.

THE EUROPEAN CITIZENS' INITIATIVE

The Lisbon Treaty introduces a new form of public participation in European Union policy shaping, the European citizens’ initiative (ECI). As required by the Treaty, on a proposal from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a Regulation which defines the rules and procedure governing this new instrument (Regulation (EU) No. 211/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council 16 February 2011 on the citizens' initiative).

The ECI will allow 1 million citizens from at least one quarter of the EU Member States to invite the European Commission to bring forward proposals for legal acts in areas where the Commission has the power to do so. The organisers of a citizens' initiative, a citizens' committee composed of at least 7 EU citizens who are resident in at least 7 different Member States, will have 1 year to collect the necessary statements of support. The number of statements of support has to be certified by the competent authorities in the Member States. The Commission will then have 3 months to examine the initiative and decide how to act on it.

In accordance with the Regulation, it will only be possible to launch the first European Citizens' Initiatives from 1 April 2012.

Non è l'accordo fatto dalla sua giunta con Microsoft a rendere imbarazzante la scomunica di Vendola al manifesto romano di SEL in omaggio a Jobs. Stanno per approvare una legge per il software libero quindi promuovono il pluralismo informatico. Vendola critica l'uso del simbolo dell'azienda di Jobs come icona della sinistra perché si tratta di una multinazionale. E allora? Dovrebbe criticarne la logica "Walled Garden", ma è la stessa di Facebook su cui pubblica la sua critica, piuttosto che le condizioni di lavoro senza diritti dei cinesi che producono per Apple, ma non è diverso per le altre multinazionali con le quali la sua giunta, comprensibilmente, opera. La verità è che sia il manifesto che la critica ad esso sono un goffo tentativo di cavalcare la generazione digitale, che invece, astutamente, usa, attraversa e aggira i vari giardini murati, i DRM ecc.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Steve Jobs

12 giugno 2005

I still have my first PC, a Mac Classic. A grateful greetings to Steve Jobs who have seized various opportunities in the sky of digital, teaching us to look upwards and forwards.