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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Computational Culture issue ten. Special Issue:
Situated
Bayes (Felix Stalder)
2. How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ? According to
Wikipedia
(Heather Ford)
3. Re: CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta
Dubcov?,
Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/ (metazoa.org)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2025 19:58:05 +0200
From: Felix Stalder <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: <nettime> Computational Culture issue ten. Special
Issue:
Situated Bayes
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Hi David.
sorry for the late reply. As politics, resisting techno-fascism
is, of
course, undeniably necessary. So, I'm, of course, all in favor
of
fighting against, say, Palantir contracts in Europe or the use
of AI
models to assess social welfare recipients, or grading students
and
teachers. And contributing to showing how contemporary politics
is
embedded in and implemented through particular technologies and
procedures makes a lot of sense.
My argument was more theoretical. What is the position we put
forward,
usually implicitly, when we call for resistance to AI? Quite
often, it
is that of the enlightened, sovereign individual: the authentic
writer,
the competent coder, the singular illustrator, and so on. Often,
it's
expressed more mundanely, as in "human-written email vs AI
slop", but
the underlying notion is the same.
This reminds me of the discussion about online privacy and the
control
over personal data. Pragmatically, I favor privacy protection;
it's one
of the few tools we have to push for social values in tech. At
the same
time, the underlying idea of the sovereign individual who owns
his or
her data and has therefor a right to determine how it's being
used (like
with other items of property) is deeply problematic. Both for
historical
reasons (who counts as an individual capable of holding
property?) and
also for pragmatic reasons. Most data is a) transactional, i.e.,
not
easily assigned to an individual owner, and b) necessary for the
infrastructure to function, i.e., withholding it means
non-participation, a very unappealing concept of sovereignty.
So, protecting privacy, or, resisting AI, feels like using a
knife in a
gunfight. I prefer knife to no-knife, but it's not a winning
approach
under the condition of widespread use of guns.
So, how can we avoid the problem of tactics (protecting privacy,
resisting fascist AI) impeding strategy (liberating society
under
contemporary conditions)?
In the Bayesian approach, there might be a different
subjectivity
embedded, one that provides not one authoritative answer but a
range of
possibilities based on contingent assumptions and positions.
Furthermore, it's actually better than conventional statistics
at
dealing with incomplete information and changing circumstances,
which is
much of the contemporary world characterized by complexity and
instability. But also, and this is the contention in this
special issue
and my reaction to it, it might provide for an epistemology that
is more
appropriate for a more-than-human world that is not based on
sovereignty
but on relationality.
Will using ChatGPT help us get there? Probably not. Will appeals
to
original authorship help us? Probably even less.
Felix
On 7/29/25 21:28, D. Schmudde via nettime-l wrote:
Felix,
I wrestled with your opening paragraph quite a bit:
The use of Bayesian statistics might create an opening towards
very
different political ends than those which is is currently used
for and
that exploring this opening might be a more productive than
simply
"resisting (AI)".
Maybe it's because I've been writing on *resisting AI*
(https://
schmud.de/posts/2025-07-15-engineering-end-of-work.html) - but
I'm not
quite seeing the connection between the political outcomes of
resistance
and embracing the tool with a Bayesian mindset.
I think it has something to do with the production of
knowledge, but the
foundation of this knowledge is still "conservative" in the
sense that
Joseph Weizenbaum described
(https://web.archive.org/web/20211002104454/
http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html).
Can you help me understand your optimism of this approach?
/David
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Situated
????? Bayes (Felix Stalder)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2025 14:53:02 +0200
From: Felix Stalder <[email protected]>
To: Matthew Fuller via nettime-l <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Computational Culture issue
ten. Special Issue:
????Situated Bayes
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Hi Matthew,
Congratulations! A great issue, a really timely and urgent
extension of
the line of thinking that I encountered first in Joque's
book. The use
of Bayesian statistics might create an opening towards very
different
political ends than those which is is currently used for and
that
exploring this opening might be a more productive than simply
"resisting
(AI)". We talked a bit about that over dinner recently.
In much of the philosophy/epistemology concerning Bayesian
statistics
the issue of the "prior" is absolutely central, and your
intention to
turn of it from a problem for objectivity into the foundation
for
situatedness is absolutely correct.
What is usually less discussed, perhaps because the issue not
unique to
Bayesianism, is the question of the threshold. When is the
likelihood of
an hypothesis being true strong enough to act as if it were
true?
In ML, they try, as you write, minimize the situatedness by
using
"noninformative priors" despite the extra compute this
requires, but
they can at least to be non-subjective. In many ways, the
prior is
subjective only in a context where computation is scare. In a
context
where computation is treated as abundant, it's meaningless, a
random
starting point in a very long line of iterations. It's not
subjective,
but brute force ;)
But the situatedness creeps back in through the
threshold. What degree
of error is acceptable, which? is always also a question of
who has to
cover the costs of these errors. In this way, Bayesianism
create a new
type of externality.
I think this question of threshold, while not unique, is
particularly
urgent in Bayesian systems because they are less about
generating
knowledge (in a conventional scientific way, there the
threshold is a
stable p-value) than about enabling agency, on the spot, under
a
subjective risk/rewards ratio. In certain systems, say
placement of
advertisement, a 20% likelihood might be sufficient, in
others, say,
systems in HR departments, one would hope of a much higher
threshold.
The point being, the threshold is entirely subjective.
The consideration of the subjective/situated/political nature
of
threshold might open up less towards the issues you are
concerned here,
but more towards social justice question (how to distribute
risks/rewards), but as a source of subjectivity it's a bit
underrated.
Anyway, great issue!
all the best. Felix
On 7/25/25 09:28, Matthew Fuller via nettime-l wrote:
Computational Culture, a journal of software studies
Issue Ten, July 2025
Special Issue: Situated Bayes
Edited by Juni Schindler, Goda Klumbyt? and Matthew Fuller
Special Issue Introduction
Juni Schindler, Goda Klumbyt?, Matthew Fuller, [Situated
Bayes ?
Feminist and pluriversal perspectives on Bayesian
knowledge](http://
computationalculture.net/situated-bayes/)
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 15:03:15 +1000
From: Heather Ford <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: <nettime> How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ?
According to
Wikipedia
Message-ID:
<CAKsSBnotHGRajDKEF=jM1RyNf2=o6hdPrn=o=Z=5ofvkkvo...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hi folks,
I'm new to this list but Geert suggested I post about
Wikimedia's draft
guidelines for researchers studying Wikipedia's
neutrality. Below and at
https://networkcultures.org/blog/2025/08/01/how-to-study-wikipedias-neutrality-according-to-wikipedia/.
It's a difficult time for the Wikimedia Foundation right now but
I still
think that this does no favours to the organisation or the
community it
represents.
best
heather.
https://hblog.org/
Professor, University of Technology Sydney
On Gadigal Land
How to Study Wikipedia?s Neutrality ? According to Wikipedia
By Heather Ford
<https://networkcultures.org/blog/author/heatherford/>, August
1, 2025 at 10:42 am.
A platform is telling researchers how to study its neutrality
and defining
what and where researchers should look to evaluate it. If it was
Google or
Facebook we might be shocked. But it?s from Wikipedia, and so
this move
will undoubtedly go unnoticed by most. On Thursday this week,
the Wikimedia
Foundation?s research team sent a note to the Wikimedia research
mailing
list asking for feedback on their ?Guidance for NPOV Research on
Wikipedia?
[1]. The Wikimedia Foundation is the US-based non-profit
organisation that
hosts Wikipedia and its sister projects in the Wikimedia stable
of
websites. The move follows increased threats against the public
perception
of Wikipedia?s neutrality e.g. by Elon Musk who has accused it
of bias and
a ?leftward drift?, sometimes referring to it as ?Wokepedia?
[2]. And
threats to its core operating principles (e.g. that may require
the WMF to
collect ages or real names of editors) as governments around the
world move
to regulate online platforms [3].
The draft guidelines advise us on how we should study
Wikipedia?s
neutrality, including where we should look. The authors write
that
?Wikipedia?s definition of neutrality and its importance are not
well
understood within the research community.? In response, they
tell us
Neutral Point of View on Wikipedia doesn?t necessarily mean
?neutral
content? but rather ?neutral editing?. They also argue that
editing for
NPOV on Wikipedia ?does not aim to resolve controversy but to
reflect it?.
There is only one way to reflect a controversy, apparently, and
that is the
neutral way. In this, they seem to be arguing that researchers
should
evaluate Wikipedia?s neutrality according to its own definition
of
neutrality ? a definition that absolves the site, its
contributors and the
organisation that hosts it from any responsibility for the (very
powerful)
representations it produces.
The guidelines tell researchers what are the ?most important?
variables
that shape neutrality on Wikipedia (and there we were thinking
that which
were the most important was an open research question). What is
missing
from this list is interesting? particularly the omission of the
Wikimedia
Foundation itself. In a separate section titled ?The Role of the
Wikimedia
Foundation?, we are told that the Wikimedia Foundation ?does not
exercise
day-to-day editorial control? of the project. The WMF is merely
?a steward
of Wikipedia, hosting technical infrastructure and supporting
community
self-governance.? As any researcher of social organisation will
tell you,
organisations that support knowledge production *always* shape
what is
represented ? even when they aren?t doing the writing
themselves.
From my own perspective as someone who has studied Wikipedia for
15 years
and supported Wikipedia as an activist in the years prior to
this, I?ve
seen the myriad ways in which the Foundation influences what is
represented
on Wikipedia. To give just a few examples: the WMF determines
how money
flows to its chapters and to research, deciding which gaps are
filled
through grants and which are exposed through research. It is the
only real
body that can do demographic research on Wikipedia editors ?
something it
hasn?t done for years (probably because it is worried that the
overwhelming
dominance of white men from North America and Western Europe
would not have
changed). Understanding who actually edits Wikipedia could
trigger changes
that prioritise a greater diversity of editors. The WMF decides
what
actions (if any) it will take against the Big Tech companies
that use its
data contrary to license obligations. It decides when it will
lobby
governments to encourage or oppose legislation. Recognising that
the WMF
employees don?t edit Wikipedia articles doesn?t preclude an
understanding
that it plays a role in deciding how subjects are represented
and how those
representations circulate in the wider information ecosystem.
Finally, the guidelines are also prescriptive in defining what
researchers?
responsibilities are. Not surprisingly, our responsibilities are
to the
Wikipedia and Wikimedia community who ?must? have research
shared with them
in order for research about Wikipedia?s neutrality to have
impact. We are
told to ?Always share back with the Wikimedia research
community? and are
provided with a list of places, events and forums where we
should tell
editors about our research. In conclusion, we?re told that we
must always
?communicate in ways that strengthen Wikipedia?.
?As a rule of thumb, we recommend that when communicating about
your
research you ask yourself the question ?Will this communication
make
Wikipedia weaker or stronger?? Critiques are valued but ideally
are paired
with constructive recommendations, are replicable, leave space
for feedback
from Wikimedians, and do not overstate conclusions.?
There is no room for those who think perhaps that Wikipedia is
too
dominant, that it is too close to Big Tech and American
interests to play
such an important role in stewarding public knowledge for all
the world.
Nor for those whose research aims to serve the public rather
than Wikipedia
editors, those of us who choose rather to educate the public
when, how and
why Wikipedia fails to live up to its promise of neutrality and
the
neutrality we have mistakenly come to expect from it. I know
that this
request for feedback from the WMF will not raise an eyebrow in
public
discourse about the project and that will be the sign that we
have put too
much expectation in Wikipedia?s perfection, perhaps because if
Wikipedia is
found wanting, if the ?last best place on the internet? [4] has
failed,
then the whole project has failed. But for me, it is not a
failure that
Wikipedia is not neutral. The failure is in the dominance of an
institution
that is so emboldened by its supposed moral superiority that it
can tell us
? those who are tasked with holding this supposedly public
resource ? to
account what the limits of that accounting should be.
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Guidance_for_NPOV_Research_on_Wikipedia
[2]
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/elon-musk-also-has-a-problem-with-wikipedia
[3]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedia-test/
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedia-test/>
[4]
https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-online-encyclopedia-best-place-internet/
(legacy-tribute-revival posting of INC?s 2010 Critical Point of
View
<https://networkcultures.org/cpov/> network)
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 10:31:03 +0200
From: "metazoa.org" <[email protected]>
To: "<nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the
nets"
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: <nettime> CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?,
Vojta
Dubcov?, Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Dear podinski,
First of all, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on
this! We strongly respect your position.
With this year's screensaver series, 'Informatics of Domination'
(see here:
https://screensaver.gallery/archive/informatics-of-domination),
we aim to provoke the kind of questions you raised! And we are
asking by this series as well. The 40th anniversary is precisely
the time for being questioned.
After 40 years of warnings ? proper warnings ? it's almost
unbelievable that we are here, having to invent new words such
as 'tech-fascism', or update words that should be consigned to
history, such as 'genocide' (and the horrors behind those
words!). How did it happen? Or, perhaps more accurately, how is
it happening? How could we (the forty-somethings) just watch our
lives being stolen and do nothing? How can we just watch our
children's lives being stolen and do nothing? Are we like slow
boiling frogs? Unable to see our boiling ? yet motionless ?
comrades?
Would be nice to share yours ?numerous [?] anecdotes in this
vein?. It would help to ?boil? together and not alone ;)
Tomas
Save Your Screen!
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<https://sleep.screensaver.gallery/feed/>, Newsletter
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? Sponsor https://opencollective.com/screensavergallery
On 29. 7. 2025, at 13:57, XLterrestrials via nettime-l
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Nettimers + Screensaver artists,
Hadn't realized that it's the 40th anniversary of Haraway's
text...
And of course it makes sense to commemorate and/or revisit that
with an exhibition.
We are curious to see what the exhibition entails, especially
now , given the rapid manifestation of all the patriarchal +
authoritarian + industrial-global-scale + and
technologically-manufactured monstrosities.
One might now consider, it's time for a deeper critical
analysis that question whether Haraway's 'warnings' ( and
gambits ) were and/or remain very inadequate theoretical
positions that provided way too little real resistance or even
a proper lens to fully grasp the corporate-krapitalist tsunami
of the very commodified and widely-distributed fetishization of
... becoming "Cyborgs" ...
The Nature / Culture thing that she and Latour pushed seems -
in hindsight - like a very flimsy kulisse now, which allows a
very ecocidal ( and primarily white ) culture to wildly expand
the Guineapigdom Inc. + a wide-variety of techno-fascist
trajectories w/ zero guard rails , zero global consensus and
fewer and fewer alternative routes, much less emergency exits.
It is readily obvious to any environmental thinker worth their
salt that our hyoer-industrialized cultures are and were ( in
the 80s ) way out of balance ! And we continue to act like our
technospheres are some supreme and/or more cvilized
intelligence. It's obvious barbarity currently reigns like a
heaping portion of agent orange turds !
During the rise of the "Haraway school", there were other
fascinating and productive resistances that got far less
traction and limelight in academic circles and art-scene
festivals. And are still extremely marginalized by the culture
industries and installed academic hierarchies !
One example that always comes to our mind when thinking about
Haraway's controversial and softer ( non-activist? ) tact, is
the story of Ignacio Chapela, the prof at UC Berkeley, who was
a serious whistleblower who decried the toxic corporate
influences like Novartis + Monsanto ( predatory biotech ) in
University structures, essentially contaminating all
higher-education on the very subjects essential for steering
societies towards any kind of autonomy and sustainability and
independence from the industrial-powers, and their
profit-feeding frenzies.
We have numerous other anecdotes in this vein, and it would be
a good time to start to look at at the academic + state-funded
art scenes that are still clinging to Haraway's muddy - and
possibly contaminated - approach to environmental orientations
and/or the arts + tech resistances.
Perhaps we'd do better with our feet more firmly on all the
contested territories !
the XLterrestrial 2 cents,
podinski
On 29/07/2025 12:00 CEST [email protected]
wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?, Vojta Dubcov?,
Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/ (metazoa.org)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:49:53 +0200
From: "metazoa.org" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: <nettime> CURRENT SCREENSAVER: Tereza Vinkl?rkov?,
Vojta
Dubcov?, Michal Durda /Monster Manifesto/
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
In her influential text A Cyborg Manifesto (1985), Donna
Haraway proposes a radical transgression of binary oppositions
such as nature and technology, male and female, organic and
synthetic. The cyborg thus becomes a metaphor of resistance
against essentialist notions of identity and rigid power
structures. In academic and artistic circles?especially within
queer, posthumanist, and transfeminist studies?the cyborg is a
symbol of a liberating alternative for those who transcend
normative frameworks of body, gender, nature, and culture.
For many who experience exclusion, identification with the
non-human (monstrous, synthetic, animalistic) can be a form of
relief: robots, monsters, dolls, or mythical creatures also do
not belong to the ?normal? human world?yet they are more
stably grasped within it, unlike tabooed
bodies. Identification with these Others can serve as both a
survival strategy and an act of defiance. The problem is that
society often views those who identify with the non-human
(monstrous, synthetic, cybernetic, or animalistic) as bizarre,
cool, or frightening rather than listening to what they have
to say. Haraway herself warns against embracing the cyborg as
a fetish. The aestheticization of monstrosity may represent a
comforting way for society to cope with the discomfort of
encountering what truly exceeds norms. Therefore,
identification with the non-human is not automatically
liberating; it can become emancipatory only when it is
recognized not merely as an aesthetic but also as a
testimony?wit
h
a
right to political and existential dimensions
More at
https://screensaver.gallery/tereza-vinklarkova-vojta-dubcova-michal-durda-monster-manifesto
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