For A Change articles from June 2001

For A Change archives from June 2001

Way to a www.onderful world? The Internet is already changing lives, but the IT revolution is only just starting. Should the world be grateful or worried.
June 1, 2001... If, like me, you routinely use the Internet to exchange emails, find information on the World Wide Web and occasionally take advantage of other on-line services, then you are part of a massive wave of change that is sweeping the world....

Do you copy me? (Intellectual property).
June 1, 2001... Intellectual property is a notion that has existed since the renaissance. The idea that the inventor of an idea, an artist, author or a composer can `own' (and thereby profit from) the fruits of his or her creativity is enshrined in a variety...

Changing the culture: (are we too dependent on computers?).
June 1, 2001... Computers enable us to work faster, more efficiently and do jobs that previously we had to employ other people to do. But are we getting too dependent on them? When the server goes down on a company network it can paralyse the business for...

Combating e-fraud.
June 1, 2001... Problem. You receive an e-mail from your boss asking you to send the results of all your company's top-secret research to a certain address. How do you know that the e-mail is really from him and not a forgery? The value of a signature is...

Secret services: (Internet security and personal information).
June 1, 2001... With increasing amounts of sensitive information passing through the Internet, security becomes an important issue. People buying products or services need assurance that their credit-card details will not be intercepted. Companies and...

Into the future: (where is the Internet going?).
June 1, 2001... If the Internet looks strange now, it's nothing compared to what is coming. With computing power ever increasing the main limitation now is `bandwidth'--the speed at which information can be transmitted along telephone lines into your home....

Timeless music: (singing canonesses of the Priory of the Resurrection).
June 1, 2001... `A clock ticks, soft footsteps, whispers in procession to worship and at daybreak, the chanting of clear female voices rise in celebration... ' For them it's a daily sacred prayer, for us it's a rare moment to be at peace with oneself among all...

Job for gypsy women.
June 1, 2001... A small but resolute group in Treviso, 30 miles north of Venice, has set up a cooperative which helps gypsies--the most marginalized ethnic group in Italy. The gypsy population in Italy is quite small. They used to be welcomed in towns and...

Bournemouth visit: (performance of Adrian Plass's play The Visit arranged by Leone Beale).
June 1, 2001... Richmond Hill United Reformed Church in Bournemouth, in the south of England, was packed at the end of April when a group of local people performed The Visit. The play, by Adrian Plass, describes the shockwaves in the church of St Thomas the...

Weaving a barrier against violence: how would you respond to your daughter's murder? Peter and Linda Biehl have found new meaning in life by helping to heal the wounds of the community where she was killed.
June 1, 2001... Nothing could have prepared Peter and Linda Biehl for what they were about to hear when the telephone rang in their home in California in August 1993. It was every parent's nightmare news: their daughter Amy had been beaten and stabbed to death...

Jumpstarting young leaders: what difference would it make if people learnt to be leaders at the beginning of their careers rather than the end of their careers?
June 1, 2001... Caroline Chatterton arrived at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, in September 1998 having messed up her A-levels and feeling a failure. `I was very disillusioned and disappointed with myself,' she says. Today she is almost frighteningly...

Seizing the opportunity: Sabrina Ali, who is studying for her A-levels at Sheffield College, took part in last spring's course for post-16s.
June 1, 2001... She writes: Have you ever wondered if education, experience and qualifications alone were enough to get you ready for the big wide world? Well I came across some clearly dedicated students who didn't think so. They were afraid that...

Breaking up the boulder of unemployment: in the 1930's, the Oxford Group, which later became MRA, sparked off a spiritual revival in Scandinavia... it led to a people's movement to tackle unemployment.
June 1, 2001... Unemployment dominated everything in Denmark throughout the 1930s. It created an immense amount of human misery, sapped the Danish economy and set back social improvements. Reforms passed by the Social Democratic government in 1934 granted the...

Romania's source of strength.
June 1, 2001... In the weeks before Easter three Danish couples visited Transylvania, Romania, to speak at four universities on the values necessary to make democracy function. They were there at the invitation of members of the Romanian judiciary who had...

Dialogue in Wales: (conference seeking a uniting vision for Wales).
June 1, 2001... Jon Richmond (right) of the North Wales Tourist Board talks with the Rev John Gillibrand, Vicar of Menai Bridge, Anglesey, at the recent `Welsh Dialogue' held in Bangor, north Wales. On the theme `making space for each other', this was the...

Dealing with depression: John Lester, a medical doctor, dispels some of the myths surrounding depression - and looks at some of the issues that would-be carers need to consider.
June 1, 2001... I wanted to help a man who had major mood swings. For some months he would be depressed and unable to work. Then he would become `high', having prodigious energy but in reality not being able to perform sensibly. The difficulty was that when he...

No to taxfree backhanders: when Norwegian doctor Sturla Johnson discovered that bribery was tax deductible, he felt he had to do something.
June 1, 2001... Until 1980 corruption was not much discussed in the Scandinavian countries. There were occasional reports such as the Bofors scandal, when a Swedish arms manufacturer paid around US$200 million in bribes to get contracts in India. But most...

Clearing the picture: (Jim Sharp invents a process to enhance picture reproduction in newspapers).
June 1, 2001... Having a clear head and spending more evenings at home led Jim Sharp, a commercial artist from Liverpool, to the invention of a ground-breaking process to enhance picture reproduction in newspapers. `Liverpool is a real community and an...

No room for shyness (in journalism).
June 1, 2001... When I was in first grade I was so shy that when my family moved from one town to another I would only hang around the edges of the playground at my new school. I dared not try to invade a circle of youngsters I didn't know. Gradually I lost...

Creativity and healing.
June 1, 2001... I have just spent a week in Oxford: a city full of old colleges. In their mediaeval chapels I listen to the choristers sing motets which seem to match the architecture of the buildings. I hear the voices of the Renaissance polyphony meet and...

Land use and democracy.
June 1, 2001... My professional field of architecture and planning has given me a lively concern for land use and the environment. This inspired me to propose that this July's Caux Conference for Business and Industry at the MRA centre in Switzerland should...