BCP 188: Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack
Just now from our engineers: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7258.txt Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)S. Farrell Request for Comments: 7258Trinity College Dublin BCP: 188 H. Tschofenig Category: Best Current Practice ARM Ltd. ISSN: 2070-1721 May 2014 Abstract Pervasive monitoring is a technical attack that should be mitigated in the design of IETF protocols, where possible. ... # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
Hi nettimers,
I don't get as much time to read (let alone to post to) nettime as would like
but just wanted to underline the previous posts in this thread that made
remarks on google/Kurzweil.
Not only is the Kurzweil-&-other-transhumanists agenda emerging from the
private sector (for example Google) but also there is quite a bit of it hidden
in publicly funded projects. The Obama Brain Initiative in the U.S. and the
Human Brain Project (HBP) in Europe intending to "map the human brain"
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en_GB/neuromorphic-computing-platform1 have
subtle transhumanist influences. The HBP for example will spend half (!) of
its budget on developing NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTER CHIPS in partnership with IBM.
The hope is to copy the efficiency of the brain (a new type of
biopiracy/intellectual property lifting/copyright copying?) to create
'brain-like' machines.
http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=127617 While contemporary
robots reduce the number of automobile workers needed (employed) to make cars,
in the future these hypothetical brain-like machines might reduce the number of
university lecturers (is anyone on nettime in this profession?) that
it takes to build students. Another hope is that brain-like machines will be
able to do face recognition successfully in a way that current software cannot,
etc. a bit less dramatic than the imaginations of artificial intelligence (AI)
that have previously circulated but significantly more so than contemporary
robotics/ computing. The front-end justification for these research investments
in mapping the human brain is medicine, pharmaceutical cures, and psychiatric
health. Most of this medical research involves big data algorithm strategies
for which is required massive assembling of patient data. not surprisingly
this is about to set off a debate on consent/lack of consent necessary to
access patients brain data (clinical, lifestyle, demographic, neuroimaging) by
the neuroscientist/pharmaceutical company alliance that would do the research.
I see part of the influence on the public research agenda by transhumanists as
coming from the "converging technologies" discourse [for exa
mple the convergence of biology and computer science as in synthetic biology
circuit diagram type engineering of one-celled microorganism metabolic pathways
(bugs in a vat that eat waste corn stocks- shit out petroleum!), as in medical
informatics/big data, as in neuromorphic computing]. The convergence discourse
in publicly funded science started with Mike Roco & William Bainbridge who
wrote about converging technologies for human enhancement. Roco is a big
picture scientist at the National Science Foundation (of the USA) who
supervised the huge investments in any physical sciences that worked at the
molecular level and called this convergence 'nanotechnology'.
http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/ Bainbridge is publicly a transhumanist.
Roco doesn't talk about any political commitments he might have. Their latest
description of convergence suggests the brain is the paradigmatic model for all
convergences, and thus brain science will teach us the most about how to do
convergences
. http://www.wtec.org/NBIC2-Report/
Questions for nettimers :
-How will brain science affect computing? does it matter whether or not
predictions of the future are actually plausible?
-Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced research investment by
the military and by public science?
-Are there regional differences in how converging technologies are imagined
by science policy (E.U. vs USA vs elsewhere in world)?
-Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced research investment by
private corporations? Which ones?
-Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced the direction of
software development communities? Which ones?
-What is the transhumanist imagination? How do we characterise it? what
social/psychological(technical?) forces create such a strong enthusiasm for the
technological sublime? What is its history?
-Once the transhumanist influence is cleaned up for public consumption (some of
them are kind of wacky in the same way that Eric Drexler was as soon as he
started talking about nanobots and grey goo, etc. so his previous friends in
the research community threw him under the tracks to make themselves seem more
respectable, see the Richard Smalley/Eric Drexler debates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology
) what will it be that corporate, military, and governance institutions will
have gained from investing in their imaginative visions?
BTW, has anyone seen the Johnny Depp film in cinemas just now 'Transcendence'?
Perhaps we should even be asking about influence on popular culture.
I think nettime spends a lot of time talking cultural theory, subjectivities of
the web ("no one knows you're a dog on the internet" and tha
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
Indeed Brian! Geez, why couldn't the Stanford folks have just stuck with Pong? Which for me suggests the rhetorical question: What is it that we searching for? JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
On May 13, 2014, at 9:45 AM, Brian Holmes wrote, but not in this order: > Why the military robots? Why not remember Manuel De Landa's little book, War > In the Age of Intelligent Machines, which caused such a stir in its day? De > Landa predicted that computers would gain autonomous intelligence and > operational capacity through the kind of competition for processing speed and > power that has historically occurred under both cold and hot war conditions. > Of course, when we look at Google's present capacities for recording, > analyzing and synthesizing global language usage, it seems that they may find > another road to the Singularity. But like a good multidivisional corporation > with billions of research dollars to burn, they are adding a little military > insurance to their oh-so-civil program of ontological domination. I remember that book very well -- I edited it. Remember, though, that the rhetorical figure it opens with is a 'robot historian' writing a triumphal account in which man appears as little more than a bit player in the unfolding logic of the machinic phylum. I had misgivings about that at the time, because it seemed like the book could serve as a sort of anticipatory propaganda (or maybe 'premature,' as in 'premature antifascist'). It turns out I needn't have worried, because folks like the good people at WiReD came along and were happy to milk the 'out of control' cow for everything it was worth. But this is all based on a basic human-vs-machine mythology; I think the more likely results will (indeed *do*) involve conflicting models of relations between humans *and* machines. That's a useful way to think about Google and all the rest, without lapsing into business-journalism nonsense -- a constant threat when trying to understand new forms of corporate activity and power. > Anyway, the point is always well taken: knowledge is power, epistemology is > fundamental to both technical development and cultural elaboration in a > complex society. Foucault left us that understanding, at the very least. But > what Florian's post suggests, when you look at Google's acquisitions and > obsessions all together in one basket, is even beyond computational > epistemology. The Singularity is an ontological proposal. It maintains that > the steady increase in computer-processing capacity will ultimately (and even > soon) result in the emergence of a new form of Being. Like a good > multidivisional corporation with an overgrown research arm, Google is > preparing to realize and, I guess, profit from this ontological > transformation. I think it's more useful to think of it as a historical model. It may indeed be ontological, but you lose 95% of your possible audience right there. 'History' is close enough for gummint work, as they say. Cheers, T # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
if one reads, the IIC -industrial internet cons. documents and others from Cisco, GE on the IoE, one sees how openly these guys argue for 'connecting work and people on the move' the technoutopic way towards singularity which passes through the realisation of Internet of Free Labour in material field. this means construction of global and intelligent labour division which will based on 'zero marginal costs' machine, google and fb are the ones developing the infrastructure and will have structural strategic heights in the game. who will be absorbing all energy and creativity from the exploitable people, the rest can be butteries. This foreseen a new class society, so new hierarch within and without the ruling ones. The current geopolitics is imho is the manifestation of the intraclass war for the future, that's why Schmit plays a key role from the North Africa and OWS, to Korea and so on. we need a distributed and collaborative counter hegemonic formation as soon as possible. o. > On 13 mei 2014, at 15:45, Brian Holmes wrote: > >> On 05/13/2014 12:31 AM, michael gurstein wrote: >> >> Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on >> what Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our >> underlying frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring >> them in pursuit of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, >> following the direction of its friends in the US State Department--might >> be in order; and perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might >> be done about this. > > Ahem, I believe some denizens of this list have organized entire > conferences about this? Does anyone remember Deep Search? <...> # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 05/13/2014 12:17 AM, John Hopkins wrote: >> Even so, many people here, while disliking Google for some >> things, also recognize that some of the tech giants are making >> real efforts on environmental issues, and some of them are trying >> to at least consider how they affect local communities. But >> sometimes it's hard to > > Certainly any of these 'giants' that are running on (carbon!) > cloud computing have no interest in substantive environmental > 'issues' except for hypocritical nods at things that do not affect > their bottom line or their 'owners' endless egomaniacal desire to > expand their control and power ... > > A massive corporation, as it rises, is a techno-social > agglomeration that distorts existing flows and architectures of > power. However, in our current case, as the pre-existing power > flows are those of the military-industrial-academic complex, these > 'newer' flows will doubtless not deviate from those pre-existing > patterns and suddenly 'benefit' a local community. Is Silicon > Valley really any different than the Niger Delta in this respect? > > jh > Perhaps your question was rhetorical, but even if that's the case, I'd like to think the answer might in fact be yes. After all, the commodity our "new" giants are built around is information. It seems unlikely to me that an organization devoted to leveraging information wouldn't also learn as it does so. We certainly have major issues around energy all around our society(ies) that we'll be needing to solve one way or another. I'm at least slightly optimistic that enormous entities *without* the word "Oil" in their name (or their 'DNA') have the potential to improve on the past behavior of multi-national giants. But alternatively it may be that I simply need to shed my rose-colored glasses. best, ~c -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Icedove - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJTci0JAAoJELuLPXMxqTZ/PI8QAJyMH+nXL8Qsy2hwjmYoUmOI 3IXlOttSYzfmXWBohFSZQiDPqxXC3MiGNoQxFexcqHo1SBCSM8NXjtRUgchddXrg /zSn9YJ7A59gB1T5euivBjfB1mGHV0MPsS+kgNs6em2zipi146Y/D3a16RlJHPwm qxB2Kthb+GsZ1dEwxqFcKlGfiC1faiYEJDnvdQNyHn9nS4oA5q38KIPLPy+4nWdS wO4T4L68XbN11KCQAbC1lWxmXAJrx1Al9b77/4U9OuyfeGUIVrUoJvvpp8zDjV9W W/oqG50U4rsjwuIFT1QpIonFwSv8gAgBN/skC43NBUKP6Na3zMeJZ05onfW6Y1qW X1Jgd680bDsiP/QFNl1AIIUb8RgzgdZ65jpMUCEnqrykjLQBkXP8fBke9WwstuML FPE1vXO7C/cBMbN1E5SVTrPA76m88OqYqeE6qNm3VZ55yb8l0B054SnxPZWvCnuK Ov9lDf5gJjpiWg/j9BqwWjeKsRXd2GzMGVAB98i1b22yjTxpCEJMjlebsjm+1Qig 74LFOEgVRNZWIY8G9OtAaKWQ7JqoKW0lQncznNWVum3hnb3ji5elyO2od+h8JgtE zyXRG+ZQtLh9TyTqUztjBWkv8Y5PxjfBxEm/3Lqbxkdsri3S9ij/WbeMVhQQkYJa AOa6j7oFmgIytpnecAtV =M1VM -END PGP SIGNATURE- # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
On 05/13/2014 12:31 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on what Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our underlying frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring them in pursuit of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, following the direction of its friends in the US State Department--might be in order; and perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might be done about this. Ahem, I believe some denizens of this list have organized entire conferences about this? Does anyone remember Deep Search? Anyway, the point is always well taken: knowledge is power, epistemology is fundamental to both technical development and cultural elaboration in a complex society. Foucault left us that understanding, at the very least. But what Florian's post suggests, when you look at Google's acquisitions and obsessions all together in one basket, is even beyond computational epistemology. The Singularity is an ontological proposal. It maintains that the steady increase in computer-processing capacity will ultimately (and even soon) result in the emergence of a new form of Being. Like a good multidivisional corporation with an overgrown research arm, Google is preparing to realize and, I guess, profit from this ontological transformation. Why the military robots? Why not remember Manuel De Landa's little book, War In the Age of Intelligent Machines, which caused such a stir in its day? De Landa predicted that computers would gain autonomous intelligence and operational capacity through the kind of competition for processing speed and power that has historically occurred under both cold and hot war conditions. Of course, when we look at Google's present capacities for recording, analyzing and synthesizing global language usage, it seems that they may find another road to the Singularity. But like a good multidivisional corporation with billions of research dollars to burn, they are adding a little military insurance to their oh-so-civil program of ontological domination. Geez, why couldn't the Stanford folks have just stuck with Pong? best, BH # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites
I would like to recommend the work of my friend and collegue Astrid Mager here, regarding the ideological and socio-cultural implications of the Google-effect: http://oeaw.academia.edu/AstridMager There is always ideology, and with an infocapitalist economy these are of course not lessened by the sorts of economies of scale with witness with Google: "Google has been blamed for its de facto monopolistic position on the search engine market, its exploitation of user data, its privacy violations, and, most recently, for possible collaborations with the US-American National Security Agency (NSA). However, blaming Google is not enough, as Mager suggests in this article. Rather than being ready-made, Google and its ‘algorithmic ideology’ are constantly negotiated in society. Drawing on her previous work Mager shows how the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ gets inscribed in Google’s technical Gestalt by way of social practices. Furthermore, I look at alternative search engines through the lens of ideology. Focusing on search projects like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, YaCy and Wolfram|Alpha Mager exemplifies that there are multiple ideologies at work. There are search engines that carry democratic values, the green ideology, the belief in the commons, and those that subject themselves to the scientific para-digm. In daily practice, however, the capitalist ideology appears to be hegemonic since 1) most users employ Google rather than alternative search engines, 2) a number of small search projects enter strategic alliances with big, commercial players, and 3) choosing a true alternative would require not only awareness and a certain amount of technical know-how, but also effort and patience on the part of users, as Mager finally discusses. " Astrid Mager, "In Search of Ideology" https://www.academia.edu/5717495/In_search_of_ideology._Socio-cultural_dimensions_of_Google_and_alternative_search_engines I suggest further reading of Dr. Mager's work (she would love me calling her Drha ha) /James James Barrett PhD Candidate/Adjunct Department of Language Studies/HUMlab Umeå University Sweden http://about.me/James.G.Barrett From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of michael gurstein [gurst...@gmail.com] Sent: 13 May 2014 07:31 To: nettim...@kein.org Subject: Re: [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites Glad to see Google getting it's due but I'm wondering if the deeper significance and risk posed by Google isn't being a wee bit overlooked here... <...> # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: tensions within the bay area elites
Even so, many people here, while disliking Google for some things, also recognize that some of the tech giants are making real efforts on environmental issues, and some of them are trying to at least consider how they affect local communities. But sometimes it's hard to Certainly any of these 'giants' that are running on (carbon!) cloud computing have no interest in substantive environmental 'issues' except for hypocritical nods at things that do not affect their bottom line or their 'owners' endless egomaniacal desire to expand their control and power ... A massive corporation, as it rises, is a techno-social agglomeration that distorts existing flows and architectures of power. However, in our current case, as the pre-existing power flows are those of the military-industrial-academic complex, these 'newer' flows will doubtless not deviate from those pre-existing patterns and suddenly 'benefit' a local community. Is Silicon Valley really any different than the Niger Delta in this respect? jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
