FW: my design me
-Original Message- From: wade tillett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 9:46 AM To: Nettime Subject: my design me http://www.surgery.com/topics/body.html A computer generated golden metallic female body with unbelievable proportions is shown over the faded background of a keyboard. Clickable cyan boxes are shown over specific areas of the body with the following text: *Pick the area you would like to improve * Head (face, neck, and hair) * Arms (sagging skin, excess fat flab, etc.) * Breast (sagging, too big, too small, uneven, etc.) * Abdomen (excess fat, excess skin hanging down, etc.) * Buttocks (too fat, saggy, etc.) * Thighs (excess fat, cellulite, etc.) *Calves (too small, too fat, etc.) The examples in parentheses suggest what could be wrong with your body - that is, what varies from the perfected computer generated model. We can no longer be compared to the ideal naturally occurring body, but rather to a computer generated model - a utopic persona based on a conglomeration of the best. We can no longer be compared to the naturally occurring body because we are no longer reliant on natural means for obtaining (maintaining) this body. Now this increased power and ability to change our body makes the body we live in a design of our own - choosing not to modify our body is just as much a design as modifying our body. Abstention is as much design as creation, if we have the ability to design. And we have always had the ability to design. We constantly design our selves - by eating (or not eating, also what we eat), by walking (or not walking), by reproducing (or not reproducing), by our actions (or non-actions). "Where nothing is in its place, lies disorder. Where in the desired place there is nothing, lies order." (Brecht qtd. in Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 155) * Thigh Liposculpture * What would you like to do? * See Before and After Pictures * Find out about usual Costs * Read about this operation * Find a doctor near you that would be glad to explain your options What has changed is the transferability of our actions. We can now sit at a computer instead of walking; the money we make while sitting at the computer can be transferred into a liposuction (or 'liposculpture' as this web site calls it). The action attempts to correct its own non-actions through a design transference. * Pick the area you would like to improve *Hair (for baldness, thinning hair, etc.) *Upper Eyes (tired looking eyes, sad, small etc.) *Lower Eyes (tired looking eyes, bags, extra skin, etc.) *Ears (excess fat, excess skin hanging down, etc.) *Nose (too big, too small, too wide, too narrow, etc.) *Mouth (enhance the lips, improve wrinkles, etc.) *Neck (fix sagging skin, take away excess fat, etc.) *Face *Facelift *Skin Resurfacing (Laser) *Skin Resurfacing (Chemical Peel) We have also increased the limits of our designs, the possibilities of our design. There are a lot more choices here than on the barbie my design site. This is beyond mass production. There are a lot more choices now than were previously possible through actions as design, deterministic choice. We didn't used to be able to design noses. Now with surgery, prosthetics, eugenics, genetic engineering, we can modify the design of life itself. We have modified deterministic choice, natural selection, evolution. We are now our own gods - products of our own design. >"Are we adapting our bodies to the dress, or the other way around?" (Thanks to Tjebbe van Tijen for the quote) We still operate within the limits of our design, within the program, although we are constantly expanding these limits. What limits our designs the most is our social program of utopia. This is the definition of utopia: the exclusion of possibilities. (No possibilities of adding a third arm. The body is limited to our utopic idea of it. Detachable prosthetics such as the internet or airplanes are used to extend our bodies' possibilities without modifying our utopic definition of self.) "But let there be no misunderstanding; it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body." (Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 30) # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text
FW: Effective Demand
-Original Message- From: William B. Ryan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, November 12, 1999 2:37 PM To: DEBT Discussion List Subject: Effective Demand FIRST INTERIM REPORT Submitted to His Majesty's Premier and Legislative Council of Alberta, at Edmonton, Alberta, May 23, 1935. ...Effective demand originated in the barter system, that is to say, individuals parted with a surplus of real wealth in their possession to obtain in exchange real wealth of a different variety for which they had a need...In the modern world, however, the preponderating feature in effective demand which is universally employed to carry on the world's business is what is technically called a "credit instrument," of which there are several forms. For the purposes of this preamble it is only necessary to consider the cheque... While it is clear that under a barter system there is always sufficient effective demand although it may be inequitably distributed, under a money or cheque system both inequitable and ineffective demand are certain unless production and demand are consciously and systematically related. Cheques are drawn upon deposits, and it is admitted by all responsible authorities that deposits are created, to a major extent, by purely book-keeping transactions on the part of banking institutions. It is therefore correct to say that banking institutions are in a position to create, claim as their property, and to lend upon their own terms, effective demand which is the only method by which real wealth produced by the general public can be transferred from the producer of it to the user...At the moment it is sufficient to emphasise that the whole economic environment of the individual, his level of education, and to a large extent the conditions of his physical, mental and moral development, are controlled by the provision or withholding of this effective demand which is in essence merely a book-keeping process... Without going too far into this aspect of the matter, it may be said that the financial system in its orthodox form has worked fairly successfully during an age of expansion in which preponderatingly large quantities of capital goods, not intended to be used directly by individuals, have been produced, and the purchasing power or effective demand which has been distributed to individuals as an inducement to produce other capital goods has been available to them as effective demand for a sufficient quantity of consumable goods. Since this process of expansion is beyond question proceeding at a much slower rate, while the debts which have been contracted in regard to previous expansion are becoming increasingly onerous, sufficient purchasing power for the use of the general population does not become available through orthodox methods, and if it did, by excessive concentration upon capital production or Public Works, the breakdown of the system owing to intolerable debt charges would only be accentuated. In regard to the Province of Alberta, therefore, it appears to me to be evident that little which is effective can be done to relieve the economic difficulties which exist unless a departure is made from methods which were moderately effective in the past but are no longer suitable to conditions which have changed fundamentally. Any attempt to deal with the situation, which does not recognize its fundamental cause, must discredit the Administration and eventually result either in an abolition of organized forms of government in favour of a pure financial hegemony, or in a continuous disintegration of social morale, possibly ending in something approaching anarchy... It is clear, and all experience confirms this view, that if credit instruments can be issued under the sanction of the constituted legal authority, in this case the Province, no difficulty arises in obtaining their universal acceptance within the range of the jurisdiction of the governing body. This has been successfully demonstrated beyond question in many instances and under the most unfavourable conditions, during the past twenty years. In Great Britain, in 1914, the whole population was accustomed to handling actual gold coins, and in fact, strongly disliked the only existing paper money, the Bank of England note. Within a week of the outbreak of War a complete change from gold metallic currency to a paper currency was instituted without visible shock, in spite of the well- known existence of enemy agents-provocateurs, using all possible efforts to destroy confidence in the new money. Under conditions which could never be paralleled in this country, and after calculated inflation never before known in history, one series of paper Marks after another has been accepted and has functioned in Germany with no tangible backing other than the mere declaration that it was legal tender. No difficulty might be expected, therefore, if certain cheques were made legal tender. A difficulty does arise, however, where a considerable porti
Micro$oft Democracy -- no joke this time!
M$ excludes non-customers from voting...
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/99-14.html
>
> Posted 11/11/99 2:34pm by Graham Lea
>
> MSNBC blunders over poll position
>
> Polls conducted on the Internet are prone to being invaded by
> afficionados who wish their view to prevail. There are, of course, other
> ways to give an incorrect picture of sentiment, such as miscounting the
> voting, or -- as has just happened -- having a bug that does not allow
> certain categories of voters to express a view.
>
> As pointed out by Joeri Sebrechts ("How about that MSNBC?" in The
> Register Bulletin Board), an MSNBC poll after Judge Jackson's findings
> strangely did not allow Netscape Navigator users to vote. Nobody
> expects MSNBC to be particularly anti-Microsoft, but the service was
> badly caught out when it asked whether readers agreed that Microsoft had
> monopoly power and that consumers have been harmed, and what should
> happen. As is so often the case, the form of the questions was
> technically flawed, but that was not the major problem (only one remedy
> could be suggested, for example).
>
> Netscape users found they could not vote because the voting buttons,
> which appeared fleetingly, did not render properly. Debate centred
> around whether this was deliberate, since denying voting to Netscape
> users would most likely bias the result towards Microsoft, or whether it
> was just incompetent. It was soon flushed out that the problem was with
> Netscape's buggy way of dealing with cascading style sheets. The Opera
> browser (which is as near standard as you can get in a browser) did
> render the questionnaire correctly, as did Mozilla M10 but not KDF. This
> begs the question as to whether MSNBC knew that Netscape had a problem
> in this area, which was exploited, or again, was just technically
> incompetent. It was noteworthy that the site proclaims that it is
> "optimised for IE and Windows Media Player" and is maintained by MSNBC
> Interactive News, One Microsoft Way, Fort Redmond. The problem was
> reported to MSNBC, and suddenly the applet was fixed for Netscape with
> Windows.
> ^^^
[...]
COMPUTER WARFARE
In the San Francisco Chronicle, November 8, 1999 COMPUTER WARFARE By Bradley Graham of the Washington Post WASHINGTON - During last spring's conflict with Yugoslavia, the Pentagon considered hacking into Serbian computer networks to disrupt military operations and basic civilian services. But it refrained from doing so, according to senior defense officials, because of uncertainties and limitations surrounding the emerging field of cyber warfare. "We went through the drill of figuring out how we would do some of these cyber things if we were to do them," said a senior military officer. "But we never went ahead with any. As computers revolutionize many aspects of life, military officials have stepped up development of cyber weapons and spoken ominously of their potential to change the nature of war. Instead of risking planes to bomb power grids, telephone exchanges or rail lines, for example, Pentagon planners envision soldiers at computer terminals silently invading foreign networks to shut down electrical facilities, interrupt phone service, crash trains and disrupt financial systems. But such attacks, officials say, pose nettlesome legal, ethical and practical problems. Midway through the war with Yugoslavia, the Defense Department's top legal office issued guidelines warning that misuse of computer network attacks could subject U.S. authorities to war crimes charges. It advised commanders to apply the same "law of war" principles to computer attack that they do to the use of bombs and missiles. These call for hitting targets that are of military necessity only, minimizing collateral damage and avoiding indiscriminate attacks. Military officials said concern about legalities was only one of the reasons U.S. authorities resisted the temptation to, say, raid the bank accounts of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Other reasons included the untested or embryonic state of the U.S. cyber arsenal and the rudimentary or decentralized nature of some Yugoslav systems, which officials said did not lend themselves to computer assault. U.S. forces did attack some computers that controlled the Yugoslav air defense system, the officials said. But the attacks were launched from electronic jamming aircraft rather than over computer networks. No plan for an electronic attack on Yugoslav computer networks ever reached the stage of a formal legal assessment, according to several defense officials familiar with the planning. And the 50 pages of guidelines, prepared by the Pentagon general counsel's office, were not drafted with the Yugoslav operation specifically in mind. But officials said the document, which has received little publicity, reflected the collective thinking of Defense Department lawyers about cyber warfare and marked the U.S. government's first formal attempt to set legal boundaries for the military's involvement in computer attack operations. It told commanders to remain wary of targeting institutions that are essentially civilian, such as banking systems, stock exchanges and universities, even though cyber weapons might provide the ability to do so. In wartime, the document advised, computer attacks and other forms of what the military calls "information operations" should be conducted only by members of the armed forces, not civilian agents. It also stated that before launching any assaults, commanders must carefully gauge potential damage beyond the intended target, much as the Pentagon now estimates the number of likely casualties from bombings. While computer attacks may appear to be a cleaner means of destroying targets - with less prospect for physical destruction or loss of life than bombs - Pentagon officials say such views are deceiving. By penetrating computer systems that control communications, transportation, energy and other basic services in a foreign country, cyber weapons can have serious cascading effects, disrupting not only military operations but civilian life, officials say. The full extent of the U.S. computer arsenal is among the most tightly held national security secrets. But reports point to a broad range of weapons under development, including use of computer viruses, or "logic bombs," to disrupt enemy networks; the feeding of false information to sow confusion and the morphing of video images onto foreign television stations to deceive. Last month, the Pentagon announced it was consolidating plans for offensive as well as defensive computerized operations under a four-star general who heads the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo. In their guidelines document, titled "An Assessment of International Legal Issues in Information Operations," the Pentagon's lawyers warned of such unintended effects of computer attacks as opening the floodgates of a dam, causing an oil refinery in a populated area to explode or triggering the release of radioactivity. They mentioned the possibility of computer attacks spilling over into neutral or friendly nations and
About SASE
>Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 09:19:27 -0500 > >I am writing on behalf of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics >(SASE), an organization to which I belong. SASE is an international >multi-disciplinary organizations with members in over 50 countries. The >purpose of SASE is to advance the understanding of economic behavior across a >broad range of >academic disciplines. We are interested in developing closer contacts with >individuals and organizations with similar interests. > >The 12th annual meeting on Socio-Economics will be held at the London School >of Economics from July 7-10, 2000. The theme of the meeting is "Citizenship >and Exclusion." A copy of the Call for Papers and other information on SASE >is posted on the SASE web site at: www.sase.org. > >Please contact the SASE office (e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) if you have any >questions about the meeting or the organization. >
