Russian-Estonian Relations After 2007: Current Status and Development Prospects

The article highlights the major points that have influenced relations between Russia and Estonia after 2007. These relations were rather poor during the post-Soviet period. The number of Russian people who lived in Estonia after gaining independence in 1991 exceeded 30%, which resulted in the very keen interest of Russia in Estonian politics. April 2007 created a new reality for relations between the countries. The decision to move the statues of Second World War Soviet soldiers from main squares to cemeteries provoked negative reactions from Russians living in Estonia, but also infuriated leaders of the Russian government. As a consequence there were harsh verbal attacks from Moscow, the Estonian ambassador to Moscow was harassed, cyberspace attacks took place and traffic over the bridge in Narva, which is a key highway from Russia, was blocked. The Estonian authorities know there is no point in maintaining conflict with Russia. The President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has stressed that Estonia's relationship with its biggest neighbour, Russia, can only get better. Russia plays an incredibly important role in the Estonian economy and tourist industry, according to Andrus Ansip, the Prime Minister of Estonia

Testing the spirit of the information age

Every age has a 'spirit," The Information Age seems to be a more extreme case than most eras, with the constant barrage of messages promising social and individual salvation. Information and information technology are heralded as\ud great, new possibilities not just for reform but perfection, with some even predicting the end of physical death (using information technology. by the end of the next century. The intensity of our current period's fascination with technology is partly due to the technology itself-ideas or sales pitches get out to more people more quickly than ever before in history, and, as a result it\ud is easy to be blinded by all the promises and hype. It is no accident that ideas like "ecommerce" and "knowledge management' are unifying concepts for many in this era, but although there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them, there is something amiss with how they are discussed. This essay comments on the latter issue, the hyperbole of the Information Age, from three perspectives: 1) as a consumer of information technology; 2) as an educator in a field (archives and records management) utilizing information technology; and 3) as an individual convinced about the relevancy of basic Judaic-Christian beliefs as one means to shift critically the many conflicting and confusing messages promulgated by the so-called modern Information\ud Age

Under Construction (Identities, Communities and Visual Overkill)

Most of modern identities emerge from mediated interactions in public and virtual spaces. There are no acknowledged authorities to watch over organizational identities and grant them legitimacy. These identities are renegotiated in real and virtual communities, often carry a permanent label 'under construction' and can be violently contested in public space. Garrulous behaviour stimulated by interactive media and by the forthcoming Evernet allows for a gradual build-up of individual and social response to the visual overkill in media-regulated societies. Voicing the images over, we mobilize for action, dismantle institutional structures and generally speaking mix gate-keeping with data-dating, thus contributing to the overall change of world's cultural climate - one of bricks, clicks and flicks. Benetton's Toscani campaign and Napster's ordeal are cases in point.corporate identity;cultural climate;flicks;virtual community;visual overkill

Book Review: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2020) by Nicole Perlroth

In the book, Perlroth traces the development and use of cyber capabilities, focusing on the U.S. government’s unintended role in creating a market for these cyber goods. Her purpose is a straightforward one: to illuminate. Perlroth explains that her goal is to “help shine even a glimmer of light on the highly secretive and largely invisible cyberweapons industry so that we, a society on the cusp of this digital tsunami called the Internet of Things, may have some of the necessary conversations now, before it is too late.”7 She seeks to accomplish this purpose by offering a treatise-like treatment of the subject, defining terms, tracking the historical development of governmental cyber capabilities and the parallel growth of a vulnerability broker industry, identifying key players and entities in the market, and profiling a slew of cyber operations and events. Despite the length and breadth of the book, her thesis is precise and blunt: the U.S. government’s practice of purchasing vulnerabilities for use in law enforcement, intelligence collection, and military operations led to a black market for these tools and an arms race between governments and an array of questionably-motivated private actors. She argues that the U.S. government’s myopic focus on the offensive use of these cyber tools, and its corresponding failure to anticipate or consider the consequences of that offensive focus, led to unexpected and negative results for the United States and the world

The “return” of performance art from a glocal perspective

Various authors have characterized the contemporary world through the notion of "structural hybridization" (Pieterse 2001; Canclini 2001, among others). This notion refers to the mixing of different times and spaces that gives rise to "spatiotemporal" hybrid configurations. One of the factors of this process is usually translated by the term "hybrid cycles" (Stross 1999), through which a new cycle recovers historical and social characteristics of previous cycles, sometimes distant in time. Through this theoretical framework, which combines concepts such as hybridity, cyclicality, mimesis, reflexivity and performativity, this paper intends to problematize issues such as the so-called "social turn" (Bishop 2006)or "return to the real" (Foster 2001) in art or, more generally, the "performative turn" (Alexander 2006), with the aim of analyzing the cyclical dynamic of performance (social) art (an art that relies on notions of participation and even performative intervention in a public space) from a global perspective – from Portugal to the world and vice versa

Learning by Wandering: Using Technology to Nourish the Spirit

My purpose in this dissertation is to explore aspects of the nature of learning and to address the question of how to use technology in education to nourish the human spirit. To do this, I use a combination of critical and historical analysis. I reconnect first of all with my native ancient Irish culture. From this perspective, I gain an understanding of learning as a spiritual quest for transcendence effected through learning by wandering, and an insight into technology’s noble role in nourishing this hunger of the human spirit. I find that this vision is given historical expression in the wanderings across medieval Europe of the Irish scholar-saints and vagantes, and in the inner wanderings of confessional writers from St. Augustine in the fourth century to the Internet bloggers of the new millennium. I contrast this perspective with the radically different and still dominant 19th century utilitarian factory school paradigm that sees transfer learning as the norm and technology’s role as limited to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the traditional learning experience. I discern intimations, however, of the urge to nourish the hunger of the human spirit in the prophetic voices that, since the turn of the 20th century, have been urging us to rethink our vision of learning. I identify an emerging awareness of the importance of harnessing the new technologies to the service of this vision of education and to a collaborative upbuilding of the human spirit, through the connectedness of global learning communities. I find further intimations in the writings of modern visionaries who see the convergence of minds in cyberspace as part of the process of human and planetary becoming. Finally, I seek to reconfigure the ancient Irish perspective in order to offer a vitality restoring vision of learning that may encourage 21st century educators to reclaim the primacy of the spirit in our education philosophy, and to foster a new relationship with technology that honors its transformative potential to help us become other than we have been, and to have a new perspective of ourselves, our world, and our place and purpose in it