Re: How do we govern ourselves? (was: Mechanical Turkish)
Aloha, On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 07:32:33AM -0600, Blake Stimson wrote: > > > The core question of a democratic society is not "how do I become free?" > > Rather it is "how do we govern ourselves?" Crucially that means: with which > > institutions, under which rules, backed by which constraints [and, I would > > add, which power]? If you do not answer these questions - as the entire > > anarcho-libertarian spectrum including myself did not, throughout the > > neoliberal period - well, then it turns out that others, like the Koch > > brothers or Cambridge Analytica, will attempt to answer it for you. > I read a nice statement in a recent Guardian op-ed attacking a Brexit supporter and funder who bought himself a Maltese (EU) passport (available very officially for £800K) just to be on the safe side. "Freedom is easy to be had, but it's just not for free". Gives a nice twist to RMS's "as in freedom, not as in free beer". Greeetz from AZERTYstan (Bruksel), p+2D! PS I seem to remember reading that Bruno Latour once started a lecture (in the UK) with the pronouncement that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest sociologist of all - he was joking oeuf corse # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: your nettime posts
Thank you Felix, and apologies--it appears that I was subscribed via an old (but still functional) email address but sending posts from a current address. I have updated my subscription so hopefully now everything will be in alignment. Best wishes, Blake On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 3:55 AM, Felix Stalder wrote: > Hi Blake, > > perhaps you noticed, your nettime posts have appeared on the list with > quite some delay. The reason is simple. You are not a subscriber to the > list and while subscribers are not moderated, hence their posts appear > immediately, non-subscriber's post are held in a queue to be approved > manually. Hence the delay. > > So, we invite you to subscribe to the list. Information on how to do it > is here. > > http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > > All the best. Felix > > > -- > > | http://felix.openflows.com > |OPEN PGP: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x0C9FF2AC > > > # 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 > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
your nettime posts
Hi Blake, perhaps you noticed, your nettime posts have appeared on the list with quite some delay. The reason is simple. You are not a subscriber to the list and while subscribers are not moderated, hence their posts appear immediately, non-subscriber's post are held in a queue to be approved manually. Hence the delay. So, we invite you to subscribe to the list. Information on how to do it is here. http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l All the best. Felix -- | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x0C9FF2AC signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour
Sure, a blockchain without a cryptocurrency could work that way, but that would not accomplish the goals of the bitcoin creators. You might be interested in Taler: https://taler.net/en/ Anyway, thanks for the feedback, if you're on twitter, would be awesome if you'd share it! Where are you based these days? Cheers. On 2018-02-03 16:24, Douglas Rushkoff wrote: > This is a fine analysis, Dymitri. > Of course, where the blockchain could work would be to authenticate > value exchange against some other unit of measurement. The whole thing > becomes a ledger for Time dollars or some other metric. <> # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour
This is a fine analysis, Dymitri. Of course, where the blockchain could work would be to authenticate value exchange against some other unit of measurement. The whole thing becomes a ledger for Time dollars or some other metric. Without that, cryptocurrency is just retrieving the scarce currency dynamics of the gold florin, rather than the high velocity dynamics of the market moneys of the late Middle Ages. The latter led to the emergence of a middle class and great prosperity - as well as subsequent repression through both monopoly central currency and chartered monopolies. It's right to want to retrieve a currency system from before fiat central currencies, but this one is solving for the wrong thing. On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 8:10 AM, Dmytri Kleiner wrote: > https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/face-value-bitcoin-proof-work > -labour-theory-value/2018/02/01 > > # The Face Value of Bitcoin: Proof of Work and the Labour Theory of Value > > Dmytri Kleiner # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: I farted
Cavalry charges against tanks. Is this a legend or real? Anyway, one of the most iconic and defeating acts of bravery is the sinking of the interned imperial fleet at Scapa Flow. The first ship that sunk was SMS Friedrich der Große, named after another ruler (whose brother build memorials for disgraced generals and neither became King of Wallachia nor King/President of the United States) with an ability to turn military disasters into alleged glory. The methodology of sinking ships was later perfected by Hans Langsdorff who flooded the ship under his command, the Graf Spee, and committed suicide. An act his crew was quite thankful for because as a result they were among the few navy crews that survived WWII. Concerning the Golden Toilet stunt, let me raise the point that salty humor can't become an exclusive domain of strongmen to demonstrate their power. Old school conservatism always had the nice mix of puritanism and dirty jokes. What observers failed to recognize is how - say - his very breaches of conduct made Berlusconi popular and humanized him. Same for Trump. It's like Commedia Dell'arte. Isn't it funny that Trump is the first US President who tried to bark back vs. North Korea in their own style of sabber-rattling. I think this was psychologically the appropriate method superior to conventional diplomacy. Does the Guggenheim need to become slackless? Why not! The difference is consciousness. In the case of North Korean propaganda, when they criticize Trump as a maniac, that implies that they have to become more reasonable in their self-conception. In the case of the Guggenheim they are not vulnerable as the art snobs anymore when they make these cheap shots. It is also never wrong to be playful. Your assumption is that the Guggenheims need to be the reasonable professionals and that certain conduct would harm an art institution and the art scene at large. Here we are with all the preconceptions and the paradox to have a President that defeated conventional wisdom and an art community that wants to restore conventions. Pointless actions matter. -- A On 01.02.2018 11:53, Felix Stalder wrote: > This analogy is wrong. > > The better one might be the Polish cavalry charging against German tanks > in September 1939. Impeccable in style, even scoring a micro-victory, > but no match to the forces just unleashed. > > Felix # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: How do we govern ourselves? (was: Mechanical Turkish)
Thanks for the generous response Brian, and very glad that we now agree that we agree on the parts listed. Let me try to attend to the part still in dispute. In the end I think we do largely agree even about this---that is, we are both focused on what you call “binding norms”---and only differ in the balance of culture and politics needed to get there. One pastiche that has resonated with my 20yo working class students’ critique of woke politics (and grey beards) is the SNL bit “Thank You, Scott” [https://youtu.be/QDydKwmrHFo]. (I don’t know if the Louis CK #MeToo revelations have redirected or just augmented their feelings.) Generally, they have the same feeling about most versions of political art and intuitively understand (and have contempt for) virtue signalling. Of course, this does not mean that they or any of the rest of us don’t express and seek confirmation of outrage and other feelings or that we all don’t seek to understand the machinations of power. But they do seem to generally understand that power lies in power and not in attitude or understanding. This means that they intuitively understand that power lies in either money or the capacity for violence and not in culture. They intuitively understand that culture is what people get in lieu of power. What they are generally confused about is how to acquire power. Indeed, in their self-reflexive understanding or intuition of that confusion they sometimes think that all they will ever have access to is culture. A running theme in a class last term was the expression “I’m trash,” a phenomenon that the group of 40 students all identified with and wanted to discuss. As they presented it, the phrase performs a variety of functions but overall is a generational marker associated with two characteristics: more and more varied cultural consumption than other generations and less access to power than other generations. Like any such generational marker, its realism for them is a badge of honor and a measure of strength and accomplishment. I take Bruno Latour’s account of the “Lovelockian object” or the thing in his “parliament of things” or the actor in his actor-network theory to be a useful enough account of the experience of my students. As you will know Brian, Latour describes his actor/thing/object’s experience of world this way: there is nothing specific to social order; that there is no social > dimension of any sort, no ‘social context’, no distinct domain of reality > to which the label ‘social’ or ‘society’ could be attributed. … [Indeed, > it] could use as its slogan what Mrs Thatcher famously exclaimed (but for > very different reasons!): ‘There is no such a thing as a society.’ The sloganeering pride in this passage (both Thatcher’s and Latour’s) is like that of my students’ expression “I’m trash.” That is, it is full of a sense that the old guarantees that were once the promise of society (“liberté, égalité, fraternité,” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” retirement and unemployment insurance, etc) no longer hold leaving one to navigate the networked flows of material life on your own, and increasingly outside of all law except that which protects property. My students are proud that they are effective actors in the networked flows of culture but they also realize that in so being they are reduced to mere things, mere trash. They also realize that increasingly the only way to have power in our evermore Thatcherite/Latourian world is to amass wealth so that you have more power than (and thus don’t get crushed by) the next actor/object/thing. Like I said above, clearly we both seek binding norms that will lessen suffering, produce more freedom and provide a long plan for the environment and everything else. The question is how to get there. We agree that “art is the domain of experience in which people beset by hopelessness can regain the conviction that effective political action is possible.” You argue that having the right “affective presence,” “conceptual framing,” “cultural imaginary,” “recogni[tion of] the value of people's labor,” “dynamics of cultural change,” etc makes meaningful political change. My argument is that culture doesn’t matter except insofar as it sucks us out of institutions that actually have power in the world (leaving them to the Kochs and their ilk) or draws us back in. The reason I responded so favorably to your grey beard mea culpa was not because I wanted to “tell people why they were wrong in the past.” We are all those people; we all got sucked down the rabbit hole with the cultural turn. The reason I responded so favorably, you will recall Brian, was because I thought you were right when you said this: The core question of a democratic society is not "how do I become free?" > Rather it is "how do we govern ourselves?" Crucially that means: with which > institutions, under which rules, backed by which constraints [and, I would > add, which power]? If you do not answer these questions - as
