Blogpost: "Open" - "Necessary" but not "Sufficient"

[michael gurstein]

(I circulated the full text of my earlier blogpost http://wp.me/pJQl5-79 a
few days ago to Nettime. Since then the extremely interesting
discussion/comments has continued including a significant set of
interventions from Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) Board member Peter
Murray-Rust and the OKF lawyer JordonH as well as comments by a number of
leading OKF members/activists and a wide range of others (39 comments to
date on the original post and 7 on the following (below)--the OKF
interventions are particularly interesting, I think. My reply to Peter
Murray-Rust in a follow-on blogpost (in .txt format without the links) is
below. The comments on this post are also very interesting.)

"Open" - "Necessary" but not "Sufficient"

(For this blogpost with extensive links and comments http://wp.me/pJQl5-7h

My somewhat off the cuff comments/reflections on the recent OKCon(ference),
the annual event of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) seems to have caused
a bit of a stir among certain of the more senior members of the latter
group. The result has been a series of comments on my original blog post and
now a blogpost on a separate blog by Peter Murray-Rust an OKF Board Member,
taking considerable issue with my comments.

Since the discussion now has moved down to #29 or so in the breadcrumb trail
of comments and responses it's probably worthwhile to reprise and refocus
the discussion a bit and hence this new blogpost taking off from the end
point of the latter discussion thread.

So where are we. First let me state FWIW as clearly as possible my own
position-I am strongly in favour of "openness" both in the somewhat trivial
sense of an "open everything" meme where not being "open" is equated with
supporting the darkside AND in the rather more thoughtful and constructive
definition given to the term by the OKF on their website "A piece of content
or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it -
subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike."

A wee bit of biography might be relevant here.  I've spent much of the last
15 years or so working in and around what has come to be known as Community
Informatics (CI)-the use of Information and Communications Technologies
(ICTs) to enable and empower communities. There are several thousand people
world wide who would in some way consider themselves as working within that
overall discipline/strategy/approach.  There is an open access open archive
peer reviewed journal (which I edit), a wiki, several elists, conferences,
several blogs (including this one), even university courses etc.etc. I
mention this because CI to some extent grew up in the broad context of
local, technical, policy, advocacy based responses to the Digital Divide
(DD)-broadly understood as the divide between those who have access to ICTs
and those do not.

CI however, added a key component to the mix which was that while "access"
to ICTs were a "necessary" condition for over-coming the DD, access alone
was "insufficient" to make available (and operational) the range of
opportunities for economic and social advance on the broadest possible basis
of which ICTs are capable and which have so massively transformed (and
enabled, enriched and empowered) business and governments. Hence the need
for additional steps and interventions/supports to transform "access" into
the opportunity for what I call "effective use".

I see a direct parallel between the issues that I and my colleagues (and
many many other  people) have been addressing over the last 15 years or so
in the context of the DD and what I am now seeing with respect to the Open
Data and related movements.

I most certainly am not against Open Data/Open Government (OD/OG) in the
same way as I am not (and as has been the focus of my work for much of the
last 15 years) against the broadest possible distribution of access to the
Internet and all of the associated ICT tools.  However, I do see Open Data
as defined above as not being sufficient to effect the positive changes in
government, science, democracy itself as is being indicated as the overall
goal of the OD/OG movement.

In some ways the argument here is even clearer than it was concerning the
efforts to overcome the DD. Egon Willighagen commenting on Peter Murray-Rusk
response to my blogpost  writes:

"Open Data is *not* about how to present (governmental) data in a human
readable way to the general public to take advantage of (though I understand
why he got that idea), but Open Data is about making this technically and
legally *possible*. He did not get that point, unfortunately."

To respond to Egon (and Peter), I did understand that very well about "Open
Data"; and it is precisely that of which I am being critical.  I am arguing
that "Open Data" as presented in this way is sufficient only (as argued in
the original post)  to provide additional resources to the Sheriff of
Nottingham rather than to Robin Hood.

"Open Data" as articulated above by Willighage

Tracing the Ephemeral: Tactical Media and the Lure of the Archive

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Dear nettimers,

The following short text was written together with David Garcia at the
occasion of the start of the Tactical Media Files Blog, which was launched
a short while ago. The text repositions some ideas about the Tactical Media
phenomenon and the relevance of the term today, as well as its inherent
contradictions. We focus in particular on the aims of the Tactical Media
Files as a documentation resource for the practices of tactical media, and
the problems this inevitably invites.

The Blog can be found at:
http://blog.tacticalmediafiles.net

The Tactical Media Files website can be found at:
www.tacticalmediafiles.net

Enjoy the read!

bests,
Eric



Tracing the Ephemeral: Tactical Media and the Lure of the Archive

by David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg


 "Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and
 media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged
 everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political
 struggles.  This "new media" activism was based on the insight that
 the long-held distinction between the 'street' (reality) and the
 'media' (representation) could no longer be upheld.  On the contrary,
 the media had come to infuse all of society. 


 To challenge dominant (strategic) structures in society, it was
 necessary to develop new (tactical) means of producing and
 distributing media. Not a specialised task separate from the social
 movements, but a key activity around which social movements could
 coalesce." [1]

 (From "About the Tactical Media Files", October, 2008)



In 2003 media theorist McKenzie Wark wrote ?Tactical media  has been a
productive rhetoric, stimulating a lot of interesting new work.  But like
all rhetorics, eventually its coherence will blur, its energy will
dissipate. There's a job to do to make sure that it leaves something
behind, in the archive, embedded in institutions, for those who come
after.? [2] 

The Tactical Media Files, operating as a repository of ?traces? of
experience,  knowledge and tactics goes some way to answering this call for
?something to  be left behind in the archive?. But the archival must feed a
living stream of practice. And so McKenzie  Wark?s text requires some
qualification, nearly two decades after its initial  articulation the
rhetorical energy of the tactical has not entirely  ?dissipated or
blurred?. Though full of contradictions Tactical Media has remained
strangely persistent. In part because it is more than a rhetoric it is
above all a practice. In the era of WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring it is
clear that rumours of its passing have been greatly exaggerated. The fusion
of smart encryption, smart phone movies and social networks transmitting
and receiving in real-time has redefined tactical media from ?contingent
and local? to being no less contingent but now, certainly global.

The opening sentence of The ABC of Tactical Media (1997)  remains accurate
"Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap 'do it yourself' media,
made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms
of distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited by
groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider
culture". Tactical media is literally "what happens", it is factual,
indexical, pragmatic, something that can be observed, an outcome of the way
certain processes in society and culture connect to evolving technological
infrastructures.

Tactical Media activities have the greatest impact when two apparently
contradictory, imperatives are, not so much resolved, as held in dynamic
equilibrium. On the one hand there is the imperative to ?engage the
unbreakable link between representation and politics? (CAE) and on the
other hand the recognition that the politics of representation ?are badly
adapted to an understanding of the increasingly infrastructural nature of
communications in a world of digital media? (Matthew Fuller. Towards an
Evil Media Studies). [3]

As for this Tactical Media Files  - it is a documentation tool for these
ephemeral and fleeting processes - it is not an anthropological
undertaking, because it participates actively in what it documents. It is
not a science, not an institution, but much more of a tool, an
intervention, but one with more long-term aims. More practically we want to
create something of a memory, however incomplete, of the practices of
tactical media, knowing that these practices are always in a hurry to 'move
on'. .

Tactical Media has always existed in an uncomfortable space between a
fluidity of practice that by its nature resisted or outright refused to be
named, and the recognition of constantly being 'saddled with designations'
by those who are uncomfortable with the unnamed (CAE). More than a desire
this fluidity of practice has been recognised as a necessity to continue to
be able to deploy a nomadic practice that can eng

BBC E-mail: Secret agents raid webcam artist

[Molly Hankwitz]

I saw this story on the BBC News iPhone App and thought you should see it.

** Secret agents raid webcam artist **

The US Secret Service has raided the home of an artist who
collected images f= rom webcams in a New York Apple store.



Kyle McDonald is said to have installed software that photographed
people looking at laptops then uploaded the pictures to a website.

Mr McDonald said he had obtained permission from a security guard to
take photos inside the store.

Apple declined to comment. However, the Secret Service confirmed that
its electronic crime division was involved.

A spokesperson told the BBC that the investigation was taking place
under US Code Title 18 /1030 which relates to Fraud and related
activity in connection with computers.

Offences covered by the legislation carry a maximum penalty of 20
years in prison.

Writing on Twitter, Mr McDonald said: "@secretservice just stopped by
to investigate [web address removed] and took my laptop. Please assume
they're reading any e-mails you send me."

No arrests had been made in the case as of 8 July.

Staring

Kyle McDonald's images were uploaded to a page on the blogging site
Tumblr. In the description of People Staring at Computers, the project
is described as: "A photographic intervention. Custom app installed
around NYC, taking a picture every minute and uploading it if a face
is found in the image. Exhibited on site with a remotely triggered app
that displayed the photos full screen on every available computer."

The site features a video and series of photographs, apparently
showing shoppers trying-out computers. Comments on the individuals by
visitors to the site are also attached to the images. Mr McDonald,
writing on Twitter, said that he had been advised not to comment
on the case by the online freedom group the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.


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