Africa is a European invention. When the Romans finally defeated Carthage, they turned the place into a province and called it Africa. Originally this referred only to a small part of Tunisia and Algeria, but it later became the name of the entire continent. The same happened to Asia, another province of the Roman Empire, in what is now called the Near East. The names of the two other continents demonstrate even more obviously their European origins: America was named after an Italian traveller – and not even Columbus! – and the term Australia comes from the fact that European voyagers who had some vague idea about the existence of this continent but knew nothing about it, called it ‘The Unknown Southland’, Terra australis incognita.

The question of effectiveness is the main theme of this article, notably as this refers to the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and to the main issues at stake today. The second part of the article, explains the role played by the European Convention on Human Rights among all the universal and regional instruments for the protection of human rights. Finally there is a critical look at what might be termed a degree of ‘inflation’ of the fundamental rights.

It is clear that European unification will affect legal education in Europe. Political integration and the increasing coming together of the legal systems in Europe need a new approach from universities teaching law studies. This article examines the goals of legal education and how they can be reached. In addition, it defends the thesis that a law faculty must not teach law, but must train lawyers: they must become technicians able to solve social and human problems by the legal route and they must be agents of peaceful change. It is argued that, in addition to national law schools, top law schools in Europe should be structured on the American model with very strict selection.

A distinctive German culture no longer exists, it has become merged into Western culture. De-Nazification foundered and the old elites and the émigrés re-emerged and came together. The November revolution in the GDR was not one of either the workers or of a cultural elite but one of the grassroots, the ordinary people; however the GDR lacked any cultural modernity. When a country loses a war, cultural policy has to serve the need for revenge. France and Germany have competed on which was more revolutionary in the past and who had the greater potential for future revolutions. The current dilemma, however, over the enlargement of Europe rests more on harsh economic problems of how to reconcile the desires of the have-nots with the desire of the haves to have more, and who feel threatened by the have-nots.

Media, education and democracy are inseparably connected, as an educated citizenship is fundamental to the proper working of democracy. The mass media have a demonstrated and vital capacity to educate, especially beyond the parameters of formal education. The nature of such education is both civic and social, deliberate and unintentional. Vigilance is required to separate education from persuasion, information from propaganda. Given the centrality of media to democracy, not only do the media have an obligation to educate the citizenship, but the universities need to educate the citizenship about the media. Without such education, democracy itself is threatened.

The prospects for the spread of democracy around the world in the 21st century appear to be bright, but there are also important reasons for pessimism. One is that politicians and constitution-writers in the democracies are not aware of, or choose to ignore, compelling social science evidence concerning the superiority of parliamentary systems of government and proportional representation (in contrast to presidential government and majoritarian electoral systems). The older democracies are not in danger of failing, but they are losing much of their democratic vitality, as seen in the decline of people's interest in politics, decreasing voter participation, and the serious weakening of political parties. For these problems, too, parliamentarism and proportional representation are at least partial remedies, but stronger measures (such as compulsory voting) also deserve to be considered seriously

In the 1996 US Presidential elections, new information and communication technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet and World Wide Web (Web), began to play a visible role in US campaigns and elections, and its role has expanded to shape the political process more generally. Case studies have shown how the Web, for example, can facilitate the rapid exchange of information that is essential to coordinating political activity. By virtue of reducing the costs of communication, it has become accessible to grassroots organisations without the resources to mount more traditional media campaigns. This study looks in-depth at one campaign – Stop the Overlay – which employed the Internet and Web to effect public policy and regulatory change locally, but with implications for California and the US. Our study led us to employ the framework of an ecology of games to discuss the interplay among the separate but interdependent decisions and games that shaped the campaign. The case shows how this Web-orchestrated campaign was one element that reconfigured the ecology of games in ways that influenced policy decisions. It accomplished this not only by altering the costs of communication, but by reshaping access and thereby changing the networks of communication among political actors.

First, this paper sketches the development of labour history as a historical subdiscipline up to the 1970s and 1980s when it became a booming field, an area of great excitement and high productivity. Why this should have been the case is an interesting question to ask in hindsight. Secondly, I discuss certain trends in the last 10–15 years that are related to a decline in this field, not in terms of sophistication, but certainly with regard to the field's popularity among historians, students and the public. Dealing with this rather dramatic change might tell us something about the way my discipline – modern history with a stress on social history – works, where it gets its vitality from, its conjunctures and fashions. Thirdly, I present some personal ideas about how one could, and perhaps should, deal with the present situation, its problems and its opportunities. I am presently working on the third volume of a history of labour in 19th century Germany – a project to which I have returned after many years. Some of the general problems I have encountered in this project will also be dealt with, indirectly, in this paper.

What is the cyberworld and what is it for? Until now, most virtual worlds have shown interplanetary worlds where aliens or exotic animals live. In the future, virtual worlds will be populated by virtual actors and these actors will act in different situations. For example, in medical simulation, where they will be used as models for surgery, or where such virtual actors will play our roles in telecommunications processes or in entertainment, where we could join a virtual ballet or concert and be, as a virtual self, part of the virtual world. We will also be able, as a virtual human, to interact with virtual actors and explain all kinds of situations. The virtual actors will embody intelligent agents and give a human touch to the interaction with the computer. It will be as if we could deal with kind, affordable and smart humans who will be at our disposal at any time, with a lot of knowledge, and who will help us to understand, to learn and to experience situations that would be impossible without them. The door is then open to an enormous amount of new experience coming from the virtual world.

What is the ‘virtual’ and what types of phenomena can be so described? This article tries to establish the context within which this unclear and ideological term can be constructive. Phrases such as ‘virtual community’ are paradoxical and weak, but ‘virtual’ applied cognitively to simulated phenomena, such as virtual worlds or computer games, has validity and represents an alternative discourse mode to narratives and storytelling in conveying experience and knowledge.