Re: nettime Post-digital - Mindful Disconnection: Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside (with Howard Rheingold)
I mainly agree. The realistic take has always been and should always be: Whatever technology and/or social process that can be used to strengthen the interests of strategic power, will be used to strengthen the interests of strategic power. Is a very apt description of what is the main challenge for me. Concerning the Panopticon problem, I have seen no mention here of a position that is the best bet I know of : that of Sousveillance advocated by David Brin : http://davidbrin.blogspot.be/search?q=Sousveillance http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html Has it been discussed and rejected, or never been considered ? -- Frederic # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-digital
Felix Wrote Where the terms makes no sense, in my view (and also in Florian's), is sociologically. The most powerful forces that transform globalized societies, are all dependent on, and amplified by, digital technologies. If anything, we are in the middle of the historical run of this development rather than at the end. The idea that the digital is just one dimension of society and that we can abandon it, is ludicrous. Along with Sociology might it also be a worth including psychology in the mix. Particularly in those spaces where digital management tools such as gantt charts and other popular workflow apps along with their digital jargon have shaped influential forms of pop psychology, such as the Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) (whose very name is self incriminating) In turn these 'instruments' insinuate themselves in to the working day of most organisations becoming the default argot of neo-manegerial audit culture with its positivistic lexicon of 'solutions' . This landscape is described in rich and entertaining detail in Evil Media by Mathew Fuller and Andrew Jofey who have done us a great service of mapping and describing this domain of what they have dubbed 'grey media'. A range of connections linking computing, and digital management and business applications with NLP type psychology and management self help books. Collectively this digitally inspired constellation has metastasised into a weirdly seductive language (seductive because it suggests the possibility of controling our events) that is all the more powerful BECAUSE it is unspectacular. As the term 'grey media' suggests it fades into background becoming the social and psychological infrastructure of the grey media age. In a weird inversion of the Debord, Grey Media deploys digital culture to bring us the 'society of the unspectacular' David d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-Postism,
Patrick, Thank you for saying so elegantly what I have been thinking for the past 30 years or more. I always felt that the promise of fundamental change was illusory in the 60s and 70s. Things started really moving in the 80s. OK it was neoliberalism, but for the first time I knew that history was on the move. Of course it's impossible to understand our contemporary dilemmas without going further back than that. Yet the literati produced as their blinding insight into that transitional decade the hangover of postmodernism, deconstruction, the commonplace that the contrasts of the Cold War were leaking into each other (what Hegel called negative dialectic). Postism is decadent or at best retro. What is postcolonial theory if not nationalism with its eyes glued to the rearview mirror? Keith On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 6:45 PM, temp p...@voyd.com wrote: I think I'll just say that I have become post-postist. I hear about post-digital/New Media/Internet/Human/etc that I believe that this only succeeds at placing us in a corner of opposition or refusal and makes no suggestions. For all my distrust of it, at least New Aestheticism posited something. Surfing clubs did. Post-ing does not. Post-ism paints us in the corner of refusal without proposition and little else. It breaks the discourse into a molecular one without any potential coherence; it is Babel-ism at its height, and paints the writer into a corner. I think it is some to begin framing new discourses not as new propositions, but as new propositions, like perhaps the age of convergence or integrationist, or mixed-reality art or even going back to intermedia. I am still a pluralist; not into master narratives, but I want propositions for the present, not mere refusnikism. I want something that says something, not just that We're over that, because I'm over being over things. Patrick. -- Prof. Keith Hart www.thememorybank.co.uk 135 rue du Faubourg Poissonniere 75009 Paris, France Cell: +33684797365 # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
On 10/03/14 15:32, Armin Medosch wrote: is clearly old capital against new capital - the enemy is Google. so, old capital is a bad thing and new capital is a bad thing, or what's the moral of this? or speaking against new capital from the platform of old capital is bad? or anything bad about new capital is old bad? or my bad? # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
Writing for the FAZ myself I can assure you, that there is no such thing as the FAZ. It is a multitude of oppinions, plenty of debates and highly moble frontlines. There are some arch-conservative editors and authors who would love to wake up one day and find the internet gone (mostly in the politics and business parts of the paper). And then there are plenty of others (more often in the Feuilleton) who have distinctly different and certainly not conservative views. You should not make the mistake to associate Google with good just because they side with free culture sometimes when it fits their business interests. We are deep inside a multi-front power struggle with shifting alliances and neither the government nor the internet ogliopolies are on our side. btw: I read Enzensberger as satire. Greetings from Berlin, Frank Rieger --- On 10.03.2014, at 15:32, Armin Medosch wrote: The point I want to make is not so much about Enzensbergers text - the poet has clearly let himself down - but the publishing context. FAZ is on a campaign against Gratiskultur - the free culture of the internet. A few days earlier there was a text by Jaron Lanier which was pretty much a repetition of his older rant against Digital Maoism with a little added surveillance sauce. FAZ does not like the net, never did. So they mix cleverly two things, using widespread dissatisfaction with surveillance to fight against free culture. This is clearly old capital against new capital - the enemy is Google. What a pity that Enzensberger allowed himself to be used in that way by an arch-conservative newspaper. Lanier also allowed himself to be used but thats not such a pity because as his Digital Maoism text showed he is beyond the beyond. regards Armin # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-Postism,
It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a Luddite geezer (in the Ame rican sense) and a person of age and wisdom with an historical perspective. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-digital
Rousseau comes fleetingly to mind: The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. And a short extract from my dissertation that resonates with that question of how to proceed while propping up the wider techno-social system *less*: We most impact the power concentrations of the Regime by cultivating an understanding of where our energy comes from, at all scales, where it goes, and most importantly, where our attention is engaged: on which signals, on which flows. In the process of paying close attention to the highly mediated, amplified, signals of the Regime, directed by its protocols, we confirm our reciprocal role as its optimized energy source. By (re)turning our creative attentions to the granular sources of the Regime's energy -- to the individual Others around us -- and spending our life-energy, our life-time in less mediated Dialogue with them via our own protocols, we immediately begin draining the Regime of its primary power source. We preserve those limited life-energies for more local and immediate encounters. It is within these energized encounters, these Dialogues between the Self and the Other, where transformation, (r)evolution, and change are ultimately sited. As a media artist, it is this generation of localized protocols that is perhaps the most effective strategy to mitigate or even reverse the slide toward hierarchic centralization [and consequent surveillance!!]. It should be some solace that though we cannot escape the ultimate destiny of Life on the planet: in the mean while we may choose to go with the flow of dialogue, embracing change in the Self and in the Other, here, now. and this aside, crucially: http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199 Cheers, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-digital
This discussion, especially related to questions of mindful disconnection, recalls Sigfried Giedion's 1948 anonymous history, Mechanization Takes Command. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb01139 As he put it: Never has mankind possessed so many instruments for abolishing slavery. But the promises of a better life have not been kept. All we have to show so far is a rather disquieting inability to organize the world, or even to organize ourselves. Of course, the idea that any instruments have the potential to abolish slavery has to be read against Eric's statement: Whatever technology and/or social process that can be used to strengthen the interests of strategic power, will be used to strengthen the interests of strategic power. Nonetheless, I found it a very useful historical analysis to consider alongside these discussions. Best, ryan # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
While I'd like to chime in with Andreas' fact check of Enzensberger's ten rules: For those who aren't nerds, hackers or cryptographers and have better things to do than keep up with the pitfalls of digitalization every hour, there are ten simple rules to resist exploitation and surveillance: Unlike Andreas, I think that Enzensberger is right and that critical media activist culture delivered the proof in the pudding when it came up with the format and name of Crypto Parties. The implication is, indeed, that you need to become at least a low-skilled cryptographer who knows what PGP, SSL and TOR mean and how they are used. In Rotterdam, on a CryptoParty last Friday at WORM, we just learned again how difficult it is for contemporary Internet users to even grasp the concept of a local mail client (like Thunderbird) as opposed to Web Mail - and that does not even include complex stuff like PGP encryption and key management. But using Web Mail means, by definition, that others can read and data mine your correspondence. And let's not even go into gory details like keeping up with software vulnerabilities (like the SSL bug in Apple's operating systems or the very similar GNU-TLS bug from last week). It's fair to say that all the computer and Internet communication systems we currently use are fundamentally insecure, and that there are likely only a handful of systems in the world into which a skilled third party could not break into to intercept the data stored on or sent from them. 1 If you own a mobile phone, throw it away. From a hacker perspective, this is sound advice. Apart from a very few fringe, mostly not-yet-existing mobile phone operating systems (such as Phil Zimmerman's Black Phone), all of the existing mobile phones leak your data. Even a most simple stripped-down mobile phone constantly broadcasts your location. The technology to intercept calls and data transfers has become trivially simple (as Danja Vasiliev and Julian Oliver demonstrated on this year's transmediale festival in Berlin). Another issue is that smartphones are multi-sensor devices that broadcast megabytes of data (such as bodily movement via accelerometers) with their users being aware of it. 2 Whoever offers something for free is suspicious. One should categorically refuse anything that passes itself off as a bargain, bonus or freebie. It's always a lie. I agree with Andreas, but a problem remains that this advice can involuntarily backfire against ethical free services offered by non-profits (from free WiFi access at a public library to Open Source software). 3 Online banking is a blessing, but only for secret services and criminals. Here, Enzensberger's advice is naive, because banking in these times is online anyway. If people go to a bank counter instead of homebanking, the transaction will travel over the same networks (and most likely, the bank employee will use the same online banking web interface). It also ignores the data retention and customer tracking built into the international banking system via, for example, the SWIFT accord between the EU and the USA. 4 Governments and industries want to abolish cash. They would like to get rid of a legal tender that anyone can redeem. This is indeed an important point, and has become a reality in countries like Sweden. Contrary to common belief and letting aside all other issues of this payment system, Bitcoin is not a solution for this problem because all Bitcoin transaction records are publicly visible (as discussed here on Nettime previously - no need to open this can of worms again). So far, cash is the only truly anonymous, hard-to-trace payment method. 5 The madness of networking every object of daily use - from toothbrush to TV, from car to refrigerator - via the Internet, can only be met with total boycott. The recent news about smart TVs spying on its viewers ( https://securityledger.com/2013/11/fix-from-lg-ends-involuntary-smartt v-snooping-but-privacy-questions-remain/) indeed confirm this - and the news that smart refrigerators are now running spam botnets ( http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/is-your-refrigerator-really-pa rt-of-a-massive-spam-sending-botnet/ ). This is one example of the term post-digital making sense - that in many cases, it's better that devices are offline than online. 6 The same applies to politicians. They ignore any objection to their actions and omissions. They are submissive to the financial markets and don't dare to go against the activities of secret services. No point in arguing with that. Most likely, most of them are in the pockets of the secret services that have collected compromising information on them. 7 E-Mail is nice, fast and free. So watch out! If you have a confidential message or don't want to be surveilled, take a postcard and pencil. This advice is technologically naive. It's known that the NSA and other secret services have systematically scanned and collected postal mail
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
Andreas: can be effective in any way if performed in such privatistic ways as suggested in HME's rules.) Thats what I thought too -- and I think it is completely impossible and not even a topic worth to be discussed. The article was not even good as a shameless plug for this terrible pathetic social democratic former bookseller who wants to rule the EU. What a nonsense and what a megastrange souvereingty language for a social democrat? Such language was until now used only in the German far right (where it is the only important motivation except to have fun by provocations). Best, H. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime the post of my post is not my pre digest [x3: kuhlmann, lichty, myers]
Re: nettime Post-Postism, Florian Kuhlmann kont...@floriankuhlmann.com Patrick Lichty p...@voyd.com Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Subject: Re: nettime Post-digital From: Florian Kuhlmann kont...@floriankuhlmann.com Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:28:55 +0100 Hi, Probably you are. Indeed I have been looking on the screen for too long. Luckily I am outside now - with son. :-) Quite real! Sincerely The e-mail *** Skype florian_kuhlmann Mobile 0175 4172605 Twitter @fkuhlmann Am 10.03.2014 um 13:44 schrieb mp m...@aktivix.org: On 10/03/14 11:57, kontakt florian kuhlmann wrote: Am 10.03.2014 um 09:51 schrieb mp: and this is not a joke either: communal/collective spaces for communication can be really good. A place to meet. A digital square. ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Patrick Lichty p...@voyd.com Subject: Re: nettime Post-Postism, Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 13:12:05 -0500 I would hope the latter, as I am no opponent of change, merely fatal strategies. Patrick Lichty. Sent from my iPhone On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:34 PM, Keith Sanborn mrz...@panix.com wrote: It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a Luddite geezer (in the American sense) and a person of age and wisdom with an historical perspective. ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:45:20 -0700 From: Rob Myers r...@robmyers.org Subject: Re: nettime Post-Postism, On 10/03/14 10:45 AM, temp wrote: I think I'll just say that I have become post-postist. I hear about post-digital/New Media/Internet/Human/etc that I believe that this only succeeds at placing us in a corner of opposition or refusal and makes no suggestions. a posthuman opera needs a human to be post - Rob. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-digital- Cyberclasm of the 1960s
Browsing through the files of Amsterdam?s Institute for Social History (as you do) I found Tjebbe van Tijan?s excellent essay written in 1998. Below is a short taster. Full essay to be found: http://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/digitial-ways-forgetting.pdf Digital ways of Forgetting: Smashing Computers and new forms of cybeclasm The recent phenomena of cyberclasm started with radical student actions in North America against university and military administration facilities. One of the earliest examples was in 1969 at Sir George William University in Montreal where, during a conflict about racism on the campus, students stormed the computer center of the university, threw out thousands of punch cards from the windows and smashed the computer equipment. At that time computers were mostly stand alone machines with limited storage capacity and data was either stored in punch cards, that needed to be processed mechanically, or on reels of magnetic tape. A year before a little book with the title The Beast of Business: A Record of Computer Atrocities was published in London, containing a guerrilla warfare manual for striking back at computers that, according to its author Harvey Matusow, were on their way to grab power: from now on it is them or us Read on d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
Hi MP, it is not so difficult. There's capital, and its not homogenous. There are capitals of a different era and of a different kind - such as industrial, agro-business, and financial capital. There are different modes of production and social relations that go with it. It is not about 'for' or 'against' or naive versions of 'good' and 'bad' but if we want to understand the world we live in - and to preempt any questions, I think to some degree this is possible - then we need to engage with such concepts that great social scientists have developed regards Armin On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 5:54 PM, mp m...@aktivix.org wrote: On 10/03/14 15:32, Armin Medosch wrote: is clearly old capital against new capital - the enemy is Google. so, old capital is a bad thing and new capital is a bad thing, or what's the moral of this? ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime HME's 10 rules (yet again)
Hi there, What a great flow of emotions Herr Enzensberger has generated over these days; seems like his 10 points for survival in the overlapping realms of the analog and digital worlds (as opposed to the post-digital mash-up which probably lies somewhere gestating in psychedelic glory in a basement somewhere between Seattle and San Jose) has created quite a stir. Rather than focusing, yet again, on the nuances of the 10 points, which others have done quite well, let me cut to the chase: the final paragraph in Enzensberger's casual reminder to Germany' citizens. The sleep of reason will continue to the day when a majority of this country's citizens will experience firsthand what has been done to them. Perhaps, they will rub their eyes and ask why they let it slip in a time when resistance was still possible. Thanks Florian for the translation. One wonders if Herr Enzensberger imagined his subtle prodding would spread its wings so far and wide. allan # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime History of Computer Art, chap. VI.3 Net Art in the Web
The third part of the sixth chapter of The History of Computer Art is now online in the English translation. The missing chapters VII and VIII will follow. Chapter VI.3 on HTML Art, Browser Art and Net Activism: URL: http://iasl.uni-muenchen.de/links/GCA-VI.3e.html -- Dr. phil. Thomas Dreher Schwanthalerstrasse 158 D-80339 Muenchen B.R.D. Tel.: 0049/89/5029513 0049/89/23033-214 Mobil: 01522/8775256 URL: http://dreher.netzliteratur.net # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
