Education costs; was How a Library Saved My Life.
Ted, Margaret and others, While education should be free, it's important to remember why education costs, like health care costs, are so high. To be sure, the full reasons are many, but two stand out. First, eduction that is worth anything, like good medical care, is hands on and requires personal attention. Much of it simply cannot be automated, while productivity for many kinds of goods and services keeps increasing. Thus, per unit, education and health care costs go up relative to most things. Even low-cost, un-tenured lecturers, paid working-class salaries at best, still have high piece work rates. Incidentally, among the recent causes of lowered employment, suspect the Internet plays an increasing role. Not only book, record and video stores are disappearing, but all kinds of stores that sell things more easily accessed by net. And of course printers, book binders, and other related workers in many fields are beginning to disappear as well. That's when the net doesn't simply aid the off-shroign of jobs. All that adds to the relative up-pricing of education. Second, and relatedly, while it's not quite Hollywood, or even Maj0r League Baseball, education does depend on a star system. In a true attention economy Henry Louis Gates, Gayatri Spivack or Steven Hawking and thousands of others can command very high prices. True, they're not obliged to, but then why hang out at elite institutions? Why accept much lower salaries than say the administrators at such places? Given the fact that routine work of most kinds is disappearing, in favor of attention -getting work, the only full answer would require a new kind of re-oredering of priorities, putting equality of results much higher among priorities. We need a national or international movement that does that. Best, Michael On Feb 25, 2011, at 10:30 AM, t byfield wrote: > memo...@comcast.net (Thu 02/24/11 at 04:02 PM +0100): >> Now, to repeat your question, what is being or can be done in regard >> to an unsustainable system of student loans? > > I'd be very curious to hear what faculty have to say about this, but > they seem to be awfully silent on the subject, don't they? <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Wikileaks is old hat
I judge art by its effects on me as a viewer, not on the basis of what a critic (or theorist) says, though of course I am indirectly and unavoidably affected by the latter. Despite being privileged to see much first rate art repeatedly over many years, I simply never "got" Pollock, until one day, passing for the hundredth time the single very large work of his that hung in the old permanent collection in NY MOMA, I suddenly was utterly enthralled by it. In a couple of decades since, that feeling hasn't weakened. Is it socially relevant? Yes, in the sense that it advances and enlarges feelings of human capability, perhaps in line with what Marcuse offered in "The Aesthetic Dimension." That's assuming one must have theory to back up one's direct reactions. Naturally, I doubt anyone who hasn't had an experience such as mine will be converted. Tant pis! Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Wikileaks is old hat
IMO Jackson Pollock was an extremely great painter, unequalled by any follower in over half a century, by no means just a product of hype, his work in no way the same as what a 5-year old might do. Abstract expressionism such as his is very different from abstract art of 40 years earlier (not 50), and, also, while that arguably began in Russia, it didn't stay there long. The analogy to wikileaks is at best, then, not very suggestive. I think the jury is out on what wikileaks and its offshoots might achieve on a sustained basis, if there should be one. Hype is to some extent the very point of wikileaks. It may be that it is technically similar and no more shocking than other things that have been released, say on YouTube, but its leaks have certainly garnered much more attention. If huge amounts of supposed secrets come out every week from now on, presumably the excitement will fade, and investigative reporters would have to mine the results just as much as they now do to obtain similar revelations. I suspect governments would still function pretty much as at present, since secrecy is much less important than many think. On the other hand , they will be embarrassed more often, which wouldn't hurt. In the margins, that might slightly help democracy, but not more. Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: abundance on the Internet
Years ago, I offered a definition of information as "transmissible knowledge." The Internet in principle both increases the kinds of knowledge that are transmissible and makes much more available. But still, not all knowledge is transmissible even now. Wisdom I would define as deeper and more integrative than knowledge; it may be transmissible, but only to those who can be receptive to it, that is already have some seeds of wisdom of their own. Best, Michael On Dec 5, 2010, at 4:18 PM, Roberto Verzola wrote: > >> Isn't it really an abundance of _data_, but not automatically one of >> information (in the sense of 'a difference that makes a difference' ) >> and knowledge? Data multiplies, but information? > > Hi Florian, > > I would even add: data, information, knowledge, wisdom. Which one is it > that is abundant on the Internet? # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: the fluidity of leaking
John, you assume the system needs secrets, and to some extent the system assumes so too. For individuals who have positions in the system, the desire to feel powerful and important is obviously enhanced by both stamping things secret and knowing about secrets so stamped by others.. But this does not prove that state secrets are really important for the survival of the state as such. The Soviet Union tried to keep nearly everything secret, but partly because of that, it collapsed. Maybe a state can function just as well with no secrecy, or at least much less than is now typical. Secrets are probably no more than a silly habit, based on superstition as much as anything else. So far wikileaks appears to be running mainly on one big leak, but if it proves capable of exploiting many more leaks, from more governments and more sources, it might just help governments increase control by lessening their reliance on this superstition. Best, Michael On Nov 29, 2010, at 3:15 PM, wrote: > > > > the fluidity of leaking # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Steve Coll: Leaks (The New Yorker)
I think the paradoxes of wikileaks haven't been much discussed. (My apologies if this has already been said here.) The more they dump raw ks is files at us, the more , rather than directly studying the files, we rely on the existing media to sift through them for us. Further, of course, we and wikileaks rely on government ( or large institutions of some kind) to produce these files in the first place. Then wikileaks is subject to the randomness or purposefulness of the leakers, who may well be governments themselves. Compared with good and systematic investigative reporting (which we certainly don't have enough of now) wikileaks is far from the best we should aim for. Best, Michael On Nov 14, 2010, at 5:22 AM, carl guderian wrote: > > On 13-nov-2010, at 10:12, Patrice Riemens wrote: > >> Waiting for Wikileaks to 'disclose and expose' war crimes to start >> this discussion appears to me to be singularly unhelpful, and >> that in many respects. Wikileaks simply bridges the gap between >> what we had every good reasons to believe - and has been quite >> well documented elsewhere, if not to such an (alas basically >> indigestible) extent - and what we now know for fact. I don't >> consider this a giant leap forward. > > I'd say the leaks have been a very big help, though unfortunately not > in leading to official acknowledgment, let alone dealing with, the > activities cited therein. What it has done is further document how > our (meaning US) "best and brightest" news organizations and opinion > leaders abandoned their responsibiliities before, during and after the > Iraq war. As they continue to do, in that and in other matters. > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: "Critical strategies in art and media" gets it wrong
I'd like to point out that the 1920's were also an era of "sex, drugs and rock'n"roll" or at least loosened sexual mores, illicit drugs including alcohol, and jazz, which of course also has African-American roots. But as far as I know there was no major leftish protest movement, at least until October, 1929. The '20's saw a resurgence of the Klan, in fact. Half a century later, after 1973 and the end of the draft, the opposition movement faded rapidly, though sex, drugs and even rock'n'roll didn't. Best, Michael On May 24, 2010, at 9:44 AM, Flick Harrison wrote: > I have to put in a word for Rock and Roll here in relation to May 1968. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: "Critical strategies in art and media" gets it wrong
Martha, I perhaps incorrectly left out feminism because it seemed to me it flowered after '68, more than before. But that might have been more especially in the organized "movement."( The first noted feminist march was in '70. The Stonewall riots were in '69. So both followed '68, with the happenings on many college campuses ,notably Columbia, as well as in France, Prague and Chicago.) Of course, "The 2nd Sex" came out well before. I did mention some books, but you are right about the others. Brecht was quite visible in the very early '60's. But how books are read, or even what drugs end up doing, depends on other factors, I believe. In the context of the times, Tolkien and the movie 2001 might have been as influential or more than anything you name, but Tolkien probably had a conservative intent. Reductiveness is in the eye of the beholder, it seems. Best, Michael On May 18, 2010, at 7:32 PM, martha rosler wrote: > wrong? well, it depends on what you are referring to. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
"Critical strategies in art and media" gets it wrong
In the newly published, brief conference book or booklet , “Critical strategies in art and media:Perspectives on New Cultural Practices” at one point Ted Byfield (on the panel) asks the sensible question: “I’d like to ask a question to some of my elders here.We’ve heard various references to 1968 here, but what did all those ‘68ers have in 1967?” The transcript continues, “Audience: Drugs!” Byfield then asks ”Any other suggestions about what they had before the efflorescence that apparently surprised even them?” “Jim Fleming [one of the two convenors and moderators]: Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.” Fleming then added something about the relative affluence (of students?) in the ’60’s, -- itself a highly debatable assertion. Fleming’s answer is glaringly incomplete, at best. The fact that the participants and the audience accepted it indicates why the whole enterprise of the conference was virtually meaningless, I submit. I was finishing up my Ph.D. In ’68, therefore older than many if not most of the participants in the events, in which I also had a minor role. Let me try therefore to list in no definite order some of what we had in ’67 or earlier in the ‘60‘s that helped lead to ’68: The feelings against racism and for justice and equality that emerged from reaction to the Nazis after WWII, from the civil rights movement and the anti-colonial movement, all of which were well in evidence before ’68; Un-precedented numbers of young people in the universities and colleges, as the baby-boom generation had begun to reach early adulthood; Television news showing the civil-rights and anti-colonial movements in action along with other demonstrations, offering easy-to-understand and compelling role models of resistance; John F. Kennedy’s inaugural and anti-individualist line “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”, along with the founding of the Peace Corps; The continued opposition to the activities of groups such as the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and, related to that, the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in ’64; The Port Huron Statement of ’62 that founded SDS, and called for a variety of democratic socialism; the founding (’66) of the Black Panther Party The ’62 publication of Michael Harrington’s “The Other America,” and of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”; the ’63 translation of Fanon’s (’61) “Wretched of the Earth;” Malcolm X’s ‘ 65 “Autobiography.” In the US, at least , the draft, which put all young men in jeopardy of having to go and fight the Vietnam war, which, as it dragged on, along with its repercussions (such as the self-immolation of Buddhist monks) was also seen on TV; New and relatively cheap jet travel, which enabled many semi-affluent young people to mix with their cohort in other countries, thus adding a sense of a single wide youth movement; The relatively recent Cuban Revolution and its aftermath, such as the hunting down of Che, (and the influential pamphlet by Regis Debray “Revolution in the Revolution”) and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which was understood idealistically as democratizing decision making and opposing the stultifying power of bureaucrats and experts. Even LBJ’s ‘ 64 promise of the “Great Society.” Note that neither anything which would have gone under the rubric of art nor the sort of people’s media discussed in the conference played a very strong role, although certainly sermons in the southern black churches or Mario Savio’s impromptu speech from on top of a captured police car in Berkeley in ’64 did do so. The most prominent artform in moving people to take political stances was probably not rock, but rather folk and folk-like music, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, early Dylan, etc. (In derision, Tom Lehrer wrote [in about ’65] : “We are the Folk Song Army, Everyone of us cares. We all hate poverty war and injustice, Unlike the rest of you squares.” But that just proves that those who listened to folk songs in concert or recordings or more informally heard a distinct and intended political message.) Also movies, such as “Dr. Strangelove” and If helped increase opposition to established authority, and probably novels such as “Catch 22’ (’61) and even “Lord of the Rings.” But most of the relevant factors had more to do with the confluence of demographics, new technologies, the lessons of recent history, the examples of other and on-going social movements, etc., and frankly political statements and actions.1968 was to some degree a high tide but also a turning point in all these political movements, in some ways leading directly to a conservative backlash, though also helping to institutionalize certain gains and demands. “Critical strategies” fails to take into account comparatively wide picture of the current situation, instead focusing on “art” as a source of political inspiration and action all by itself. This is of course a narrow and very peculia
Re: A scenario for World War III
On Mar 7, 2010, at 1:56 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: > Michael H Goldhaber wrote: > >> Neither China, Russia nor the US or Europe has the number of large >> families willing to surrender a substantial proportion of their >> children as cannon fodder, which was not the case a few generations >> ago. > > A look into the robotics labs of any major research university > (UCSD is a good place to start) will reveal the possible answer to > this objection, already concretized in drone warfare and soon to > be visible in the form of autonomous vehicles patrolling wartorn > streets. The awful thing about war is that it can be used as a way > to impose central economic planning, the very trick the US learned > in WWII and has applied since then via Korea, Vietnam, Star Wars > and Iraq/Afghanistan/Terrorstan. Since the 1970s the theater of > economically profitable warfare has been displaced from Asia to the > Middle East. This is the nightmare scenario for me: proxy robot war > in the Middle East. This would be the culmination and decline of an > ill-fated Information Age. At least dating back to Vietnam, the main justification for ongoing American Wars have been the necessity of "supporting our troops," and not wasting the lives that have already been lost. Doing that with robots alone seems fairly difficult, and the robots are not, as yet, cheap. By the time they are cheap, other countries will be able to afford them too, and a robot-against-robot war would be mutually destructive but otherwise unavailing. The supposed moral value of war would be lost. Kin particular, it could not be used as a tool to unify an otherwise fractious nation. > >> Cultures will compete in something more akin to a global version of >> American Idol. > > I think the above idea went out of fashion after 9/11. It was known > before then as the end of history. Btian, if you recall what I have written over the years on this site and elsewhere, and alluded to again in my post in response to Keith, how can you associate my thought with the "end of history?" In fact my thought is quite distinct, namely that wars across national boundaries were a particular instance of the working out of the capitalist nation-state, in an era which is now coming to a close, rapidly being replaced by a new kind of economy for which wars of the old kind are no longer useful, and killing is successful only as a form of attention-getting. History isn't ending at all. I will have to write some more about how things like the tea parties fit into all this, but to apply the old label of fascism to the latter seems to me convenient but quite ignoring its overwhelmingly performative and anti-strongman character. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: A scenario for World War III
Hi Keith, With all due respect, though many of your premises make good sense, and one should never underestimate the stupidity of those in power (especially not today or in the near future, with the US govt basically adrift) I don't think your WWIII scenario ( to the limited extent it even is one) holds much water. It's true that financial manipulations could be considered war by other means, but that hardly implies they would turn to actual war. Neither China, Russia nor the US orEurope has the number of large families willing to surrender a substantial proportion of their children as cannon fodder, which was not the case a few generations ago. countries are far more interdependent now, and so anything approaching full-scale war between advanced countries including the BRIC ones seems pretty self-defeeating. Of course, in away we are already in sort of World War, what with the ongoing Congo crisis, Sudan, Somailia the Iraq and Afghan wars, the still hot Islamic south of Russia, and the looming crisis over Iran. But these are wars fought substantially by proxy and in very poor places, for the most part. The dangers of either nuclear war or even full-scale conventional war between well-armed rivals are so obvious tht even the current crop of leaders are far toointellignet to risk any such adventure. After all, the whole reason for sabre rattling against Iran is that they may get nukes, but that does not mean that even India or Pakistan would be foolish enough to start a nuclear war against one another. the US has still more constraint on it, and will for sometime to come.So do Russia and China. WWII did plenty to help lift the industrialized world out of the Depression, through rampant, and not so creative destruction. The equivalent no w though is hardly thinkable, even by a Hitler, should one arise. that leaves the question of how to increase worldwide aggregate demand, and I generally agree there is no simple answer, but China and India are certainly doing their best to find such a way, through rapidly expanding their own growth. I don't happen to think that will be enough, but that is partly because I think the new post-capitalist attention economy is growing much faster, and the future will be more in that direction. This will lessen the importance of states even further, and with that lessening, war will be even more useless. Terrorism is till a fair wart y to attract attention, but not to hold it, so I don't see that mode of warfare as having much future either. Cultures will compete in something more akin to a global version of American Idol. But of course, even if that is all true, the cataclysm to fear still will be global warming,a bout which not much, it would appear will be done in time. Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Paul Krugman: Taxing the Speculators ( - aka 'Tobin Tax')
Nicholas, As I see it, the high earnings of some banks and hedge funds can be viewed as the modern (computerized) form of coin shaving, in effect stripping off other's wealth as those others attempt to profit . The sources (eventual losers) are many pension funds , public and private, mutual funds, charitable foundation endowments, average stock investors, anyone who "saves" (very much including Chinese workers as well as investors), recycled petrodollars, university endowments, insurance funds and so on. More or less, the high earnings in are "robbing Peter to pay Paul." And the high earners, at various times do include funds of all these sorts as long as they have invested in the right coin shavers of the moment. So there is in fact a partial "Public Trust" already acting in the way you suggest, at times at least funding real jobs in education, health (through hospitals and other charitable foundations who invest their endowments) and so on. The successful endowments of course compete with less successful one or publicly funded entities for star professors, doctors, etc., leading the res to to increase fees, find ways to cut corners, or hire part-timers to seem competitive. (I've discussed much of this on my Blog, in more detail http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=147 http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=149 http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=151 http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=155 ) Meanwhile, as financial firms seem to be better at profit making than say industrial ones, the latter compete by also trying to cut corners, , moving jobs abroad, automating, lowering wages and benefits, etc. the increasing inequality (domestically at least) then puts pressure on private consumption (since higher "earners" tend to "save" more). Financial firms themselves inevitably compete with each other by taking ever-greater risks. The result is the sort of money economy the US has had in the last couple of decades, with frequent bubbles —which eventually burst — and more and more froth. When a downturn occurs, public funds that have gone into supporting the portion of institutions such as schools and hospitals that have had to compete with the well endowed ones are further imperiled —since states are not allowed budget deficits, and increased taxes are made to seem unpopular — leading to greater inequality, and so on. I don't quite see how a smoother system of the sort you propose could work, since it would mean everyone stealing from each other, in effect., and to an equal extent. Krugman's suggestion of the Tobin tax, if it were effective, would lessen the profits form speedy transactions more than it would raise government revenues, I think It would help limit inequality, but would not undo the damage of the last thirty years, for which a wealth tax seems the best remedy as far as I can see. But the deeper problem is the growing scarcity of attention, and the resultant heightened competition for it. Even the Wall St. traders who rake in tens of millions or even several billion each year do not do it so much for what the wealth will buy them as for the symbolic value of looking good ot their peers, it would seem. Meanwhile competition for attention through other channels escalates. Scholars, surgeons, trial lawyers and others lust for stardom, and stardom also means high incomes. (The kinds of public services such as education and medical care that you emphasize are mostly ones that must offer attention to ordinary citizens, which helps explain why they will stay unequal.) Even those on the left who praise equality don't necessarily accept it in practice, for you can be a star leftist (in a relatively small arena, admittedly, but still an arena) . How the public good gets supported when hyper-individualism rages is the real difficulty. (There's also more about the attention economy — as I define it— all over my blog, of course. ) Best, Michael http:www.goldhaber.org mich...@goldhaber.org mgo...@well.com On Dec 10, 2009, at 7:31 AM, Nicholas Ruiz III wrote: > btw - my thought never extolled the 'virtue' of the Code, that was never > my assessment of it, I simply point to its metaphysical reality. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO
Prem et al., These issues come up over and over, but those who raise them also have the responsibility of in effect setting up a panopticon to scare others into not daring to make political acts. Current capitalism involves plenty of bamboozling, including one capitalist or firm bamboozling another. In fact, some firms, such as Lehman Bros. manage to bamboozle themselves. If a firm can get hold of anything it thinks it might be able to sell to someone else, it will advertise that as highly advantageous, whether it truly is or not. Internet firms using cookies find themselves capable of collecting all sorts of data supposedly related to users' habits and preferences . These firms claim this stuff is of value and try to sell it. That does not mean it actually is of so much value. Mostly they try to sell it to advertisers; that leads to the following sort of scenario.: You once bought, say, a pair of shoes of a certain kind. So the advertiser tries to sell you something connected with that purchase, ranging from similar shoes to laces, to vacations in the sort of country in which such shoes might come in handy. If you are sufficiently intrigued, the worst that happens is that you buy the additional items. But inevitably, given finite resources of both money and attention, you learn to filter such ads out. All that happens, most likely is a slight shift in sales from one set of companies to another. That does little to affect the overall picture of capitalism or the problems with it. Of course, both companies and governments also try to collect data of other sorts that might possibly help them decide what customers to avoid, what workers to be wary of, what citizens might harm government plans. They have done this sort of thing for centuries, and it's not entirely impossible that Internet records are of some additional use in this regard. But it's pretty obvious that current government or even corporate attempts in this regard are far from foolproof. Nor would they necessarily rely on the kinds of data likely collected by Facebook. To act as if being politically open on such sites is dangerous as, you do Prem, does discourage political action that most people otherwise would consider safe. Not only are capitalists often fools, but so are government spy agencies. It does no good to act as if they are superhuman. Why are you not trying to encourage important sorts of protests rather than setting up Facebook and sites like it as straw men? Can't you find more salient aspects of current society to criticize? There would seem to be plenty. Best, Michael On Dec 5, 2009, at 12:44 AM, Prem Chandavarkar wrote: > I agree - the question is one of transparency and not capitalism. And > this happens because in current capitalism one unwittingly leaves an > information trail even through very mundane and routine activities. So > for example if I purchase something with my credit card, I am offering > information on who I am, where I live, what I buy, when I buy, what my > shopping patterns are, and more. Somebody gathers this data, analyses > it and and then acts on it in a way that will ultimately affect me in > some way. And I do not know what is happening behind the scenes and how > actions by some pretty powerful folks are being targeted at people like > me. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO
Heiko, et al. I have only read the American version of Facebook's terms of service, but my interpretation of it does not accord with what you say below. In fact it is rather explicit that each user retains copyright, etc., except that it allows Facebook the right to use it for their own service, which is to put your words up on your "friends' " Face3book sites. This is far more ownership left to users than in the case of many companies who allow on-line comments, but take ownership in them,, or allow submission of letters to the editor, or contest entries, etc., but take exclusive ownership in them, leaving the originator with no rights at all. Further, users or consumers of many kinds of products and services perform actions that help the companies increase their sales. Whether you are wearing a warm sweater, a smart necktie, using an attractive or smoothly writing fountain pen, talking on a smart phone, offering your friends a beer of a certain brand, you are helping boost sales.of that sort of item, and maybe of that brand. I could multiply such eamples ad nauseum. My position is not that Facebook is a a particularly idealistic company, but that I don't see why it is being singled out by the left, when it does nothing terribly unusual. Christian Fuchs, who teaches at the Universtiy of Salzburg, has even gone so far as to claim that since Facebook may extract "surplus value" from our "unpaid labor" it is therefore "infintely exploitative" in Marxian terms. He has compared it to Nazi slave labor, even. This is just nonsense, at best, and nothing more. The vast majority of Facebook users presumably feel they are getting something in return for whatever they are giving up, even when told that Facebook my try to sell their info. In addition some I know of have used Facebook for progressive political organizing that they could hardly have achieved without it. Why single this co. out for such excessive critiques? I am afraid the fact speaks to a kind of poverty of thought on the left. (note: I will reply in a separate message ot some other comments) Best, Michael On Dec 6, 2009, at 12:09 AM, Heiko Recktenwald wrote: > Telephone companies would not own the content. > > You may be able to delete things, not really shure, whether this is > possible today, but you own nothing. > > They can delete you without notice. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO
In other words, because the Facebook service is free for users, we are working for the company. But if users paid for the service, as say with telephone service, we would not be working for the company? This is illogical. We are no more working for Facebook than for any other service we use. One may criticize capitalism, but still try not to be nonsensical. Best, Michael On Dec 2, 2009, at 10:07 PM, Patrice Riemens wrote: > b. > > "Facebook, which has more than 300 million users, has raised more than > $600 million from investors since it was founded more than five years > ago. Its most recent infusion came this spring from Russian Internet > investor Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million in > exchange for a 2 percent stake in the company, valuing Facebook at $10 > billion. " <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Fwd: Review on David Gugerli's book "Search Engines. The World as a Database"
This review, or is it a blurb, takes everything Gugerli says at face value. This seems unwise. The panel show "Was bin Ich" sounds as if it were modeled on a popular American TV show of the 1950's "What's My Line." This calls into question the relevance of Gugerli's remarks about Germans' uncertainties about identity post-WWII. Calling such a show a search engine seems to be a bit of a stretch as well. Is the game of charades a search engine? Or "twenty questions"? Are wanted posters and classified ads also to be regarded as search engines? What about a bloodhound? (In fact these last few seem more like search engines, suggesting that search is a very ancient activity, which of course is true. But the differences between them and say Google are also quite significant. ) Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Political Work in the Aftermath of the New Media Arts Crisis
Thanks for some beautiful and thought-provoking statements, especially Brian’s and Carlos’s. I would add that to me the real medium of all art is attention, attention the viewer or reader or listener must pay, feels consciously drawn to pay, in a deepening and all encompassing way. That attention amounts to a transformation of self — into the mind and body of the artist, as it were. The rest of the world falls away for that moment, and so does time —the moment might be a long one —and,a s Brian suggests will recur later on, in recollection and reflection. If that is art, it is always political, because it always takes the attention payer out of the “system,” whatever it might be and however much the managers of the system in fact solicited the artist or the work to begin with. The huge abstract paintings of the 1950’s cold only fit on the walls of the rich, but nonetheless, as long as they were there, they took over those walls, and made the space different from what the collector might have intended, and the same goes for Renaissance art and art of other periods. The reason different media come in is that the artist has an on-going problem as to how to capture attention as distractions and competition multiply. In some way, to be really focussed on, art must avoid being too easy to experience, for then it can become just the background, just decoration or elevator music, or something that can always be attended to “later” — I.e., usually never. This is a serious and significant problem for new media as well, including much Internet art. Expressly political art can only succeed, it seems to me, if it comes from the inner depths. For instance, I just finished reading Istvan Kertesz’s “Fatelessness;” I don’t think it is intentionally political but it certainly made me boil with anger at the human mistreatment and neglect of others. Such art brings what was already there inside us and adds to its centrality. But that doesn’t happen often. In my experience most political art is superficial and therefore bad, just as likely to turn off sympathetic feelings in the viewer as the opposite. Incidentally, I don’t know that good art necessarily causes us to think “Wow! I admire that.” But it doesn't easily let go of us. Best, Michael On May 19, 2009, at 6:44 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: > carlos katastrofsky wrote: > >> if i see some really good "political art" the first step is to admire >> it (wow, great work) and then to think about consequences. art is >> something autonomous. to me such an approach would free it from being >> a mere form of communication, a medium, or "new media art". but at >> the >> same time it can be all of that. > > What does one admire a piece of art? What is its autonomy? And what > could > be its consequences? I have asked myself these questions for years. > Like > most thinking people, I have come to a few conclusions. And since I > like > the idea that art can be "all of that" - a form of communication, a > medium, > new media art - I would like to share these conclusions with you. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: [[[ News ]]] ..::Conflicts and Transformations of the University::..
If anybody cares, the New School (University) is not NYU. Their campuses nearly overlap, but they are different institutions. Best, Michael On Apr 11, 2009, at 2:52 AM, claudia bernardi wrote: > *.::: Latest News :::. > > **Students occupy NYU- Police arrest 22 * > > About 20 police officers wearing helmets and carrying batons, > plastic shields and pepper spray entered a New School building at 65 > Fifth Avenue around 11 a.m. on Friday, arresting 19 protesters who > had occupied it as part of a determined protest aimed at the > university’s president, Bob Kerrey. [...] # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Dollar Shift: Chinese Pockets Filled as Americans Emptied
Here's a recent entry from my blog http://goldhaber.org/blog/?p=168 . I've been suggesting a somewhat different longterm view. Money?s Dream Life Gets Nightmarish ?? And Just Might Stay That Way Sunday, December 21st, 2008 A couple of years ago, I pointed out that in some ways money was losing its hold on reality. Routine activities and producing things to which can be assigned some relatively stable amount of money now occupy far less than majority of human effort ? while more and more energy goes into the new attention economy, which is only loosely connected with money or markets. At the same time, the growing financial sector takes on the possibility of treating money as a pure symbol, without any underlying or inherent meaning. Financial money can grow or shrink, and this has real effects in what is left of the market economy, but many of the shenanigans within finance do not really do anything beyond the purely symbolic. Now the future of money has become more imbued with the excesses of money?s dream life. To the extent that markets do require money, they also require mechanisms for the insertion of money where needed, and that depends on trust, which is the basis of all loans, investments, etc. Trust is now rapidly leaving the system. The mysteries of derivatives, of the vast variety of new financial instruments, and of things like hedge funds are a perfect cover for the most rudimentary sorts of scams, including the recently unveiled Ponzi scheme of one Bernard Madoff. (A Ponzi scheme requires ever-more investment into it, as current investments are used to pay earlier participants, though this is only necessary if the early investors actually take money out. Like roulette bettors who just let their money ride on a certain bet as winnings pile up, investors in a Ponzi can be fooled by entirely fictional increases in their holdings to leave all their theoretical winnings in, and they might also be likely to add more to the fund, and tout it to their friends. ) Madoff, who caught many who should have known better, as well as a considerable number who could not have been expected to see through his deviousness, was actually apparently quite limited in his methods of covering up his scheme. To whit: he claimed nearly the same yearly growth from one year to the next, which after a few years becomes statistically very unlikely. A more astute Ponzi scheme could vary the growth. This has its limits, of course. You wouldn?t want your Ponzi scheme to issue reports that are too downbeat, because then investors might leave. Still, greater sophistication in reporting incomes so as to evade questions certainly seems possible. Thus, how do you know that your next investment vehicle will not turn out to be a Ponzi scheme or something perhaps honest but hare-brained? The obvious answer might seem to be to diversify investments. But in the Madoff case, some investors thought they were investing in different funds entirely. Any company can do what it likes with any extra cash on hand, so how do you know that an apparently reliable company that makes what seems like a real and straightforward product is not investing in some other dubious scheme? Even a company which does nothing of the sort must take increasing risks in new investments as the climate of creativity heats up. You cannot rely on this year?s popularity to get a company through competition that might not even exist yet but will be quite evident in a few years. The speed at which new kinds of products and services can be put on offer renders the ?long term? increasingly short. This past year also shows that such supposedly safe and durable investments such as land and raw materials like petroleum can be highly speculative, because speculating on futures in all such areas can play havoc with the prices there too, if at a high enough level. The net result of all this is that trust has fallen to lows not seen since the Great Depression. But new means of speculation, based on the likes of the Internet and advanced computation are not likely to disappear. Thus a return to ?fundamentals? cannot be counted on ? ever again. Regulation is unlikely to be astute enough to keep track of all the new means of engaging in new kinds of investment, and nothing can stop these except a complete freeze of the monetary system. That?s where we may well be headed. Alternatives to money and the wide-open market are likely to proliferate. Best, Michael On Dec 26, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Scot Mcphee wrote: >On 26/12/2008, at 8:19 PM, Felix Stalder wrote: <...> > Yes I read that article last night (my time) too. Several things > spring to mind. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein
Re: No Future
I waded through the essay with high initial hopes. But it mostly appears to be a swamp of assertions without much to back them. (Maybe my reaction is due to an American perspective.) Corporations do play an ever-more prominent role in universities, here as elsewhere, which is mostly deplorable, but what the essay actually has to say about why this is happening , what it means, and what to do about it seems vague at best. As to the notion that strikes and other actions demonstrated the worker's reasserting their intellectual role vis a vis Fordism, that sounds hopeful but certainly does not accord with my reading of what happened, at least in this country. Nor does it bear on how universities have evolved. The prescriptions offered seem to have little to do with the critique, and seem highly implausible now, though something like them were taken up forty years ago, in '68. Best, Michael On Dec 16, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Stevphen Shukaitis wrote: > No Future > Paolo Do > > from ephemera volume 8 number 3, "university, failed" > (http://www.ephemeraweb.org ) > > The Productive Centrality of the University in the Age of Cognitive > Capitalism > > Today we often use the concept of "Cognitive Capitalism", or, indeed, > Post-Fordist production, to denote a profound breakdown that has > occurred during the last few decades. And when we speak about a > "society of knowledge" we point out that today knowledge is the new > tool of capitalist accumulation. Asserting this doesn't mean hiding > the fact that in the complexity of the contemporary world, we cannot > observe completely different productive regimes co-existing, as we do > within the metropolis. Indeed, the majority of work done in a > metropolis certainly isn't immaterial work: cleaners, janitors, > salesclerks and storekeepers do not properly perform conceptual or > symbolic manipulation. > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
Though I have long been an admirer of Saskia Sassen, I don't find this particular piece to be very well thought out. Cities by their very nature contain large numbers of people in close proximity and always have. This makes and has always made them both possible centers of insurrection and difficult to control or conquer from without. An enemy entering a city either must come close to destroying it and its population or is likely to face endless surprise, sabotage and reprisal from within. That is why, historically, enemies often besieged cities for years (Granada, Leningrad) in attempts to starve them into submission or destroyed them instead of occupying them (as did the Crusaders and Tamerlane) or in advance of occupation as the Soviets did Berlin near the end of World War II and the US did Tokyo.. Cities have also been frequent sites of insurrection, from the Boston Tea party to the Paris Commune, to the Poznan riots, to Budapest in '56, etc. , etc. . One thing newish about Iraq, which Sassen cites as an example of new forms is that with current levels of public awareness is it is no longer possible to get away with inflicting the human suffering of a siege or near total destruction of a great city. Also the US invaders paid no attention to the well-known difficulties of conquest, instead expecting to be met with flowers. In the first Gulf war, Bush p?re knew or was advised that Baghdad could not be subdued without giant and presumably unacceptable numbers of casualties. Bush fils would have none of that and plunged in. Cities today not only have crowds that assure that large numbers can be killed even by a few terrorists but have media to make sure the terrorist attack gets noticed far more widely than would a similar kind of attack in some more isolated locale. The Mumbai attack was very well suited to drawing such attention, partly because Mumbai is a media center, partly because of the Internet, including Twitter, and partly because of the dramatic unfolding of events rather than being one sudden blast. I am not convinced it has much in common with slum dwellers temporarily taking over sections of Rio. Best, Michael On Dec 3, 2008, at 6:25 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote: [Saskia Sassen wrote:] > The Mumbai attacks of 26-29 November 2008 are part of an emerging type of > urban violence. These were organised, simultaneous frontal assaults with > grenades and machine-guns on ten high-profile sites in or near the > central business and tourism district # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Obama and the dawn of the Fourth Republic
I find it curious that this interpretation is repeated so much in comments on nettime. Over and over, Obama stressed just the opposite, and , surely, many take him at his word. So why state the contrary with such conviction? Is this a left bias that needs no explanation, or is it some sort of represssed wish? Best, Michael On Nov 14, 2008, at 5:43 AM, Jonathan Lukens wrote: > People voted for the guy who sent a message that he would make it > safer to not pay attention to politics again. They got enough on their > minds as it is. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Obama and the dawn of the Fourth Republic
Hi Ted, While it seems to me far too early to form the conclusions that many on this list already have on what the Obama victory presages, I find some of the theories at least interesting. You counter a a time-based characterization with a space-based one, at least somewhat in the spirit of such earlier works as Joel Garreau's "Nine Nations of North America" (1981) and Ernest Callenbach's, 1970's "Ecotopia," among, I'm sure, a long list of predecessors. But surely, one of the important points about the 2004, 6, and 8 elections is the growing effect of Internet use in overriding regional differences, at least to a degree. According to the NY Times, the Obama campaign plans to keep active contact with the millions who signed onto his campaign to get their help and perhaps input during his Presidency. Obama has repeatedly urged that he cannot do much alone but needs real commitment from others. Does this mean that a new form of democratic involvement in decision-making is in the offing? If so, how would it work? I'm not sure that the Obama campaign really means that, or what the mechanisms in detail would be, but I think it is quite premature to assume the contrary, as, e.g. Simon Critchley does (see Nicholas's nettime post of today) based, in my view, on a very strange hearing of Obama's victory speech. A further problem with your regionalist views, while obviously based on actual differences, is that large-scale economic developments have ways of undercutting them. Certainly the effects on Silicon Valley, say, will differ from those on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or on the Detroit suburbs or the South Bronx, but the trend in all areas will be similar: down and difficult. At this point I know of no one with realistic answers that will work. In this regard, let me offer a preliminary abstract of the projected fifth part of a series on my blog http://www.goldhaber.org about the sources of the crash from the viewpoint of the end of industrialism and the rise of the Attention Economy. Whereas in all previous epochs most people could do and had to do routine tasks for most of their lives, this is no longer true or need not be. Thus we need new paths to human fulfillment, to feeling worthwhile and connected. I think it is useless to talk about jobs very much anymore. Even in China, work is highly automated, and this trend will continue as much as it is possible under whatever is left of capitalism. But capitalism continues to depend on consumption,, which cannot even continue at present levels without realignment of wealth. A reasonable movement now is for a high and increasing floor to living standards for all: housing, health care, adequate and decent food, Internet connections, access to all knowledge, new educational opportunities, access to tools for creativity, greening on a very wide scale, etc. Once that floor is achieved, individual differences are ok, but , ideally, only then. Obama's entry into the Presidential race shows him to be audacious and daring; his statements in the campaign, such as his Philadelphia speech on race show him to be capable of rising to unexpected occasions and reveal him to be unusually capable of new thought. On the other hand, he is very careful and a bit too eager to embrace old orthodoxies, and is too enwrapped in the Chicago economic school for comfort. As the money-market-industrial semi-capitalist economy continues its march over the cliff, will Obama and his administration be capable of seeking new and good solutions? I don't think we know. We ought to do more than just hope, however. Best, Michael On Nov 12, 2008, at 10:21 PM, t byfield wrote: > One problem (there are many) with this kind of periodization is that > the emphasis on a temporal scheme reduces the question of space to, > at most, an series of items in a sort of Chinese Encyclopedia entry. > In a country whose history has been so deeply shaped by expansions > and migrations, this is a huge mistake. For example: <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Zittrain's Foundational Myth of the Open Internet
Felix, While I bow to your greater knowledge of the history of cybernetics, I can't agree with what you seem to be suggesting about its effects in practice. First of all, the political focus on emotionally charged issues (such as transubstantiation, slavery, anti-semitism, prohibition) goes back much earlier than cybernetics or control theory. Second, despite the theoretical hope to "incentivize" various actions or stances, it has often not panned out in reality, often because people either find ways ot use the incentives for ends considerably in contradiction to what was intended, or because the incentives themselves become political issues. For instance, in order to induce men to work, American welfare laws excluded families with both a father and a mother present, but that just led to more children born out of wedlock. Current political efforts to incentivize the choice of fuel efficient cars by imposing a higher gasoline tax have met with very stiff resistance against any such tax. Such examples could easily be multipllied. As for abortion, it only became an issue when it was finally legalized. If I may mention anything as mundane as the New Yorker, it recently crreid an article by Ryan Lizza made the point that abortion, etc., became an issue for many working class voters only when the Democratic Party stopped worrying about them or trying to improve their lives. That is an odd sort of incentivization. Best, Michael On Oct 17, 2008, at 1:27 AM, Felix Stalder wrote: > Here lies -- if I understand Brian correctly -- the biggest > "innovation" that cybernetics brought to the theory of governance > and the reason why it turned out to be so extremely popular among > practitioners. It seemed to offer a short-cut. Instead of going > through the trouble of having to convince people of the merits of > your politics, one would simply implement a system of "incentives" > and let people "choose freely" how to react to those incentives. > There was no need to reach agreement on anything. Nobody would > be "forced" to follow any kind of party line, but the incentive > structure (a.k.a. feedback mechanisms) where constructed in a way > that made sure that the "rational" options where pretty constrained. > > That system allowed the political discourse to deteriorate completely, > because instead of having to talk about substantive policy issues > (which were outsourced into each reacting individually to seemingly > objective incentives) one could focus on emotionally charged issues > which had no real consequences for the accumulation of capital (and > other central concerns of the economic-political system). The primary > example -- of course -- is the politicization of abortion. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Zittrain's Foundational Myth of the Open Internet
Florian, Why do you link Keynes with the Chicago School, where he never taught, and which is usually considered antithetical to him? Best, Michael On Oct 17, 2008, at 6:54 AM, Florian Cramer wrote: > and, to > fuel the economical and financial discussion here, Hayek went on to > Chicago where he was involved with the well-known Chicago School of > Keynes and Milton Friedman. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Zittrain's Foundational Myth of the Open Internet
A few quick points within the quasi-open, quasi-anarchic space of nettime itself (ourselves?): 1. As I argued at the 2006 FirstMonday openness conference http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/goldhaber/index.html , open projects are star-fan systems as a rule, usually, I suspect, with one key leader who makes crucial decisions, and then maybe some sub-stars. They are then open in the sense that fanship is open, as well as in some other aspects. 2. As for democracy, since steam-engine governors were mentioned, I have thought the real value of democracy is to let off steam before clashes can boil over into civil war, although robust protection of minority rights and the like, is also of value when it exists. 3. But can we do better? For instance, instead of open communities that in some sense are closed, can there be fully "public" ones that could still attract? Likewise, any coherent thoughts on politico- social systems preferable to the best of western democracies? Best, Michael On Oct 16, 2008, at 3:11 AM, Florian Cramer wrote: >On Wednesday, October 15 2008, 18:39 (+0200), Felix Stalder wrote: >> >>Thus, I don't think a fitting critique to see these "open media" as >>continuation of the liberal projects because they aren't (I kinda >>would prefer if they were). Rather, they seem to exemplify a new >>corporatism where the group (be it a community or a corporation) is >>always right and very steep hierarchies are masked behind a shallow >>egalitarianism. > >But the same critique could be (and has been) made of Western >democracies that fulfill Popper's open society criteria. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Analysis Without Analysis. Review of Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody"
Thanks for this Brian, I've now looked through the first few pages of Powell, and it seems strikingly reminiscent of parts of Michael Piore and Charles Sabel's 1984 "The Second Industrial Divide" (Basic, NY) Best, Michael On Aug 11, 2008, at 1:49 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: > I am surprised! The notion of "commons based peer production" is > certainly new with Benkler, but networked production is not. Do > neither Benkler or Shirky devote even a footnote to one of the most > famous papers ever to be written about the organization of production, > with an explicit reference to Coase in the title? I'm talking about > Walter Powell's "Neither Market not Hierarchy: Network Forms of > Organization," published way back in 1990. > > http://www.stanford.edu/~woodyp/papers/powell_neither.pdf # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
Brian, Rather than being naive, I think I was engaging in a kind of shorthand, leaving out intermediate reasons. Of course there is military-industrial complex which tries to perpetuate itself, but it is successful only because others at times believe its clumsy arguments. Also, oil companies may indeed profit from invasions such as of Iraq, but mostly because the threat of war helps increase the price of oil, which would probably have gone up anyway. The threat of instability in Nigeria, say, without any US intervention, increases the price as well. So the military costs incurred by invading Iraq, say, are unnecessary on that score. Even if the oil interests believed otherwise, they would not have been able to invade Iraq if the public were not convinced that reasons entirely unconnected with oil were at stake. As for the argument that America's place in the world economy depends on our having bases and a round-the -world military presence, I think the examples I gave of the value to us of India and China show that view is itself naive. Finally, countries like German and the Netherlands demonstrate that having an imperial presence is quite unnecessary for economic success. It could well be argued that US military expenditures drag down the US economy, as Seymour Melman used to argue, calling the result "Pentagon Capitalism." The counter-argument to that:military Keynesianism (mK) as a necessary economic stimulant to keep capitalism going internally. As I argued against Melman in the 80's, government spending on anything other than the military tends to compete with "private enterprise, " which is why we have military expenditures rather than say single-payer health care (which would drive insurance companies out of business). We could spend the money on , say, going to Mars, but it is too clear to too many people that we don't need to do that, while "defending our way of life" is, as I noted, harder to argue against. While "national security" provides some rationale for confining military expenditures to non-out-sourced industries and so does to some degree prop up the internal economy, there is now too much "leakage," so that mK now is not particularly effective. Even at its bloated levels, it is also probably too small to be of substantial effect, certainly not what is needed when the US monetary economy turns down. The world today cannot afford the level of destruction commensurate with WWII that would do a similar economic job today. (At least I hope that is off the table.) So today, Melman would probably be right. American imperialism is an irrational (and naive) addiction that only helps the most narrowly defined interests. Still, tapering off will not be easy. Some will suffer directly, and they will shout much louder than the much larger group of those who would benefit mildly and mostly indirectly. Best, Michael On Jul 23, 2008, at 10:18 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: >Hello Michael - > >>So what does cause continued imperialism? For one thing, America's inward >>looking. Our politics is mostly localist and parochial, and yet politicians >>end up making decisions to sustain foreign involvements on the basis of >>little knowledge. It is always safer to view the outside world as menacing >>rather than benign. It is always safer to refer to the US as the greatest >>country and to assume that the world needs our armies and weapons rather >>than not.A pointless patriotism helps hold this disparate country together, >>much as India is partially held together by such means. And, as in the case >>of the British empire, what keeps ours going is mostly habit ? a bad habit, >>but hard to change ? perhaps addiction would be the better word. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
Brian, I read your whole piece with interest, but I disagree with its two of its stated or inherent premises. First, art does not have to justify itself by offering a different way to live or to coexist. To put it most simply art justifies life; it is why we are here, or it can be. Second, while a visit to South Korea or any other host to our hundreds of bases can show what empire is like and what it does to its targets, to find the sources of the outlook that backs these bases, we have to look at American political life. A simple economic justification in terms of empire would be hard to demonstrate: China and India, which never had American bases, are far more important to us economically than countries that do have them. Likewise, Vietnam, which succeeded in throwing out our bases seems to be on a trajectory not terribly different from S. Korea or China. Nor is "cultural imperialism" strongly correlated with where the bases are. "Pirated" videos and music spread our culture far more effectively than does military occupation. Indian and Chinese immigrants with degrees in medicine, science or engineering increasingly fill occupational niches that Americans do not enter in enough strength, for whatever reason. So what does cause continued imperialism? For one thing, America's inward looking. Our politics is mostly localist and parochial, and yet politicians end up making decisions to sustain foreign involvements on the basis of little knowledge. It is always safer to view the outside world as menacing rather than benign. It is always safer to refer to the US as the greatest country and to assume that the world needs our armies and weapons rather than not.A pointless patriotism helps hold this disparate country together, much as India is partially held together by such means. And, as in the case of the British empire, what keeps ours going is mostly habit ? a bad habit, but hard to change ? perhaps addiction would be the better word. If the US is so inward looking, doesn't reporting such as yours from South Korea help create balance? Very little, I suspect. The internal "patriotic" reading would only be that some Koreans are "ingrates," who "don't know what's good for them," which implies they need our protection despite themselves. While "ingratitude" might be taken as a reason to leave, in practice it only seems to reinvigorate the myth of the necessity of staying, much as the American causalities so far in Iraq become, for the right at least, a reason not to leave. The possible difference there, as it was in Vietnam, and even in the Korean war, is really the threat of future casualties, but if these can be diminished, so will the pressure to pull out. This imperialism can only be changed, I think, if it either becomes unaffordable or if a really different US self-conception can take hold, for instance of our being simply one country that ought to be striving to live cooperatively with the rest of the world. I think we should take heart that the Iraq war has proved so unpopular despite no draft and despite the US death toll being far below Vietnam levels. I think a new "Iraq syndrome" will sharply reduce the tendencies towards such active military adventures for another generation. But dismantling the existing network of bases is another story. To give up the addiction to military spending and the idea that the military offers a good career for certain young people will be less rather than more easy if the US monetary economy keeps declining. The only hope I see is the rise of an utterly new sense of who we are. That , of course, will be intensely resisted. Best, Michael On Jul 22, 2008, at 2:57 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: >50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, >Or, let's find a completely new art criticism > >For most of the twentieth century, art was judged with respect to the >previously existing state of the medium. What mattered was the kind of >rupture it made, the unexpected formal or semiotic elements that it >brought into play, the way it displaced the conventions of the genre or >the tradition. The prize at the end of the evaluative process was a >different sense of what art could be, a new realm of possibility for the >aesthetic. Let's take it as axiomatic that all that has changed, >definitively. > >The backdrop against which art stands out now is a particular state of >society. What an installation, a performance, a concept or a mediated >representation can do with its formal, affective and semiotic means is to >mark out a possible or effective shift with respect to the laws, the >customs, the measures, the mores, the technical and organizational devices >that define how we must behave and how we can relate to each other at a >given time and in a given place. What you look for in art is a different >way to live, a fresh chance at coexistence. Anything less is just the >seduction of novelty - t
Re: Now this is inflation...
This is still not impressive compared with the Hungarian hyperinflation of the late 1940's. which reached a ration of 10 to the 29th power. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation As to running out of paper, old bills can either be redefined, as happened in Serbia, or overprinted. Not that this si much consolation for average Zimbabweans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation#Examples_of_hyperinflation Best, Michael On Jul 15, 2008, at 9:05 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote: >> From The Zimbabwean, July 14, 2008 > > Banknote paper shortage spells trouble > > (pic.) > [1] A man shows a new Zimbabwean note in May. It was replaced by > 25-billion and 50-billion-dollar bills (worth a U.S. dollar). With > printing slowed, a shortage has arisen. > > see orig at: http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=895 for pic. > pics of 25bn and 50 bn Zim$ notes at: > http://www.tomgpalmer.com/archives/042582.php#comments <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum died, age 85
I slightly knew Weizenbaum in the 1980's. He was fond of saying that anything that calls itself "(something) science" as in "computer science" isn't really a science. When he retired and moved back to Berlin he aparently refused to speak English in public any more. Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Douglas Ruskoff on 9-11 conspiracy theories
While I agree with both Rushkoff and Geer that the conspiracy theory undermines anti-war activism with the presumption that Bush and company are not only mean and scheming but singularly adept, instead of being amazingly incompetent, I quail at Rushkoff's phrase, "our adversarsies' increasing strength and prowess" to explain 9-11. They are not in any clear sense "our adversaries," and rather than "strength and prowess" the actual 9-11 conspirators had only cleverness, extreme dedication, and a good deal of luck (including a clueless US adminstration and very lax airport and aircraft security) on their side. The main piece of luck was that the WTC towers were far more destructible than anyone could have reasonably foreseen, owing to a combination of their very peculiar construction and the inadequate fireproofing that, after design, replaced the suddenly dangerous asbestos that would have been used. It has now been six years since al Qaeda has been able to pull off such a massive attack, and the fact that nothing approaching it has occurred in any western country suggests that their "strength and prowess" is mostly exaggerated for the sake of perpetuating a war mode in the US. The fact that resistance to occupation continues in various (bloody) forms in both Iraq and Afghanistan is a different issue entirely. Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: language virus
Keith, In addition to my recently posted quibble about the phrase that interested you, I have a more serious quibble about the concept of a "language virus." This suggests a connection with two notions: computer "viruses" and "memes." Both in turn have their rots in a biological metaphor, and in my view have been accepted much too hastily. Consider the difference if you had simply termed the phrase that concerns you "a clumsy new usage." New usages always enter language, and with them, in general , comes a slight shift of thought. In the Watergate era, the phrase "at this point in time" was lumped in with and derided as much as much more serious Nixonian evils. But the phrase implies that time is a spacelike continuum, so that we are now situated at one point on a timeline; further, we shall be at another point later on, and things may appear different then. This conveys a quite different thought than "now." It is true that often people are lazy in their adoption of a new usage, and pay little attention to the original considerations that might first have led to it. But it seems quite plausible to me that a difference in thought continues to underlie the "point in time" usage. It is not necessarily a disease. Minds are not computers; neither are exactly like the contents of petri dishes in which biological viruses (or virii) can be grown. The primary things that pass from mind to mind are thoughts. Analogizing thoughts as either computer programs or as independent self-replicating forms of near-life (which are what biological viruses are) belittles thought and human culture. I see this as dangerous. Best, Michael # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
re: language virus
The way(s) in which you write or say something is not exactly the same as how you do it, in two ways. The first is simply one of emphasis, in which the longer locution gives greater weight to the thought. The second is that the former way focuses on process as opposed to all the other attributes implied in "how." "How is that cooked?" for instance is a different question from the admittedly clumsy "what was the way in which that was cooked?" So an effort to be precise may be involved here. But also, "with considerable stylistic improvement" is to some degree a moving target. Is it the same as "writing better?" According to what standard? Or, why? Best, Michael On Aug 23, 2007, at 10:38 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I wonder if nettimers can help me with a query that I have never until > now turned into an enquiry. I have noticed for years the growing > insertion of the phrase 'the way(s) in which' into English sentences. > In almost all cases the three-letter monosyllable 'how' can be > substituted without loss of meaning and with considerable stylistic > improvement. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: personal life, impersonal writing (was: The banality of blogging)
All right, a personal anecdote. While I was working towards my doctorate in theoretical physics, many years ago, I wrote a draft of an article on some work I had done with two colleagues. The next-most junior of them read the draft, and pointed out that in discussing something that had not worked, I had used the word "unfortunately." He said, "Don't be so emotional." I am pretty sure that still today, in the natural sciences, no paper would be published that included even a hint of personal views or experiences. The supposed reason is that for work to be considered scientific it should be reproducible by very different people, working or inspired by possibly very different feelings. According to Ockham's razor, feelings, etc., are extraneous. In academic publishing outside science, I think the attempt is to use scientific writing as a model if possible, because science has more prestige. Even in supposedly scientific fields such as psychology, that is very problematic. But we don't have to repeat it here. Best, Michael On Aug 16, 2007, at 3:59 AM, Benjamin Geer wrote: > On 15/08/07, Kimberly De Vries <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I think that the way personal matters are completely excluded here also >> precludes the development of critical ideas from personal experience on the >> list, which is our loss. > > I'd say they've been mostly though not completely excluded, and I agree that > it's our loss; I wonder if others feel the same way, too. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: The banality of blogging
Felix, It is not inherent to the technology of the printed book that each book have only one author. (The Bible certainly doesn't. ) rather this technology turned out to allow for single-author texts, and that is what the reading public turned out to find most satisfactory (for books that are read through form cover to cover, as opposed to compendia of all sorts , such as dictionaries, almanacs, anthologies, etc.). This is because it is easier to align with one mind at a time than a multitude. Also, probably Gutenberg did not need to do market research to realize that the Bible would be much in demand. Pri0r to printing, others had produced translations of the Bible into "vulgar tongues," and these were much sought after. Even if Gutenberg was ignorant of that fact, he would have known that most who could read were clerics or nobles who might well welcome their own Bible. Hand-copied bibles were in demand at the time. other printers soon were cranking out editions, and still are, in enormous numbers. It is far too soon to say what will come of blogs, whose process of production and of reading is certainly novel and may lead to an enduring new form, or quite possibly many. It would be distressing if most blogs were not banal, however, just as most books and movies, etc., are. Banality is in the eye of the beholder, but if one considered all blogs worth reading one would go mad. It's possible, though, that blogs will be mostly replaced by video logs, which would have a character of their own. Best, Michael On Aug 15, 2007, at 6:26 AM, Felix Stalder wrote: > Benjamin Geer wrote: > >> But as far as I know, nobody has suggested that texts published using >> printing presses are inherently... anything. The first books printed were >> Bibles, not because printing presses inherently lend themselves to printing >> Bibles above all else, but because that was what a lot of people wanted to >> read. > > This is wrong. Twice. There are a lot of things that are inherent to texts <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the fate of Middle East studies
Ben, I doubt both these explantions. First, they are two, not one, becuase educational institutions try to satisfy potential students these days by offering them the familiar and comforting, namely studies of their own cultures. This has little or nothing to do with helping merchanidsers find what will sell to them. On the hand, since the Middle East is rich with oil money, it offers a fertile potential market for merchandisers. It makes no sense from that standpoint to ignore cultural studies of the region, if such considerations had much to do with with the matter. Academia in the US has long emphasized European culture and languages, which nicely encompasses Latin America, at least as far as the dominant Spanish and Portuguese cultures. Arabic, Persian, Turkish and other languages spoken by large Islamic communities on the other hand are much more rarely known or studied in most universities or by most faculties. They have little ability therefore to judge the quality of scholars in such fields, and a lazy disinclination to get involved in selecting good ones. These countries have also been quite resistant to western, christian missionaries, unlike the far east in the 19th c. Missionary efforts areone of the main reasons that there is an American tradition of studying Chinese and Japanese at university levels. Best, Michael On Aug 1, 2007, at 6:09 PM, Benjamin Geer wrote: > Last year I posted the following question[1] on this list: > >> A lot of work surely went into giving the West positive associations >> with Latin America. Perhaps literature professors helped by getting >> their students to read Latin American writers Perhaps >> someone here knows more about the history of that process. > > I was asking whether that process, whatever it was, might be repeated > for regions that Westerners tend to have negative associations about, > like the Arab world. Nobody replied, but I've recently come across an <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fwd: Net Neutrality resolution
fyi Best, Michael Begin forwarded message: > From: "Brad Parker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: July 26, 2007 11:18:18 AM PDT > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [progressivecaucuscdp] Net Neutrality > Democrats, > > On July 15th, 2007 the Executive Board of the California Democratic Party > passed the following resolution in favor of Net Neutrality and affordable > high speed Internet for America. > > The adoption of this resolution was made possible by the unprecedented > cooperation of both the Labor Caucus and the Progressive Caucus of the CDP. > Working together over the months following the CDP convention in San Diego, > representatives of both caucuses, led by Jim Gordon, chair of the Labor > Caucus and Brad Parker, officer of the Progressive Caucus, were able to > craft a resolution that addressed the concerns of both groups and Americans > as a whole. Once again, after 100 years of organizing and political > activism, Progressives and Union members have found common cause. Our hope is > that this resolution will become a blueprint for legislation across the > country that preserves Internet integrity with open, equal and impartial > access and Net Neutrality. Further, that the build out of high speed > Internet be undertaken as a public utility maintained by union members > bringing affordable broadband Internet access to all Americans. > > No issue of public governance is more critical at this time in our history > than the immediate need for every level of government to pass and enforce > legislation to embody the principles of this resolution. Therefore, we call > upon every Democrat in America to send this resolution to every elected > official across the nation and to insist that Net Neutrality and affordable > high speed Internet become the law of the land. > > > Support of Affordable High Speed Internet for America and Internet > Neutrality > > WHEREAS to secure the rights of assembly, and free speech online, which are > guaranteed by the Constitution and encourage new innovative American > businesses to flourish, Americans are entitled to and require, open, equal > and impartial Internet access; we need high speed internet for our homes, > schools, hospitals and workplaces to grow jobs and our economy; enable > innovations in telemedicine, education, public safety and government > services; foster independence for people with disabilities and strengthen > democratic discourse and civic participation and; > > WHEREAS the United States - the country that invented the Internet - has > fallen from first to sixteenth in internet adoption; US consumers pay more > for slower speeds than people in other advanced nations; millions of > Americans, especially in rural and low income areas do not have access to > affordable, high speed broadband; the United States alone among the advanced > nations has no national, Internet policy; the US definition of "high speed" > at 200 kilobits per second (kbps) is too slow and has not changed in nine > years: the US and California collection of broadband data does not tell us > what we need to know about broadband deployment, adoption, speeds and prices > and consumer and worker protections must be safeguarded on high speed > networks and; > > WHEREAS the growth of a free and open Internet has provided historic > advances in the realms of democracy, free speech, communication, research and > economic development; California and US consumers are entitled to and require > open, unfettered access to the lawful Internet content of their choice > without interference by any entity, public or private; build out of > universal, high speed, high capacity networks will promote an open Internet > by eliminating bandwidth scarcity; > > THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the California Democratic Party endorses > national, state and local policies to promote affordable, high speed > broadband for all with strong protections for consumers and the workers who > build, maintain and service those networks; and a national goal for > universal access and deployment of networks capable of delivering 10 > megabits per second downstream and 1 megabit per second upstream by the year > 2010 and the California Democratic Party supports federal and state > initiatives to improve data collection on high speed broadband deployment, > adoption, speed and prices as a necessary first step; upgrading the current > definition of high speed to 2 megabits per second downstream, 1 megabit per > second upstream and policies that promote public programs to stimulate build > out of high speed networks to all homes and businesses in the nation and; > > BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the California Democratic Party in order to > promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered > access to all information on the Internet, supports policies to preserve an > open, neutral and interconnected Internet; protect against any degradation > or blocking o
