What Caused Nettime??
Ted: Geoff, if you and/or anyone else is committed to nettime as a project, however you see it, then you might consider starting a new list (or whatever) dedicated to that project and recruiting people to contribute. Speaking as someone who was there from the "beginning" (and as one of those who talked you into re-engaging), I think you're right. Without a "cause" that seriously needs people's engagement, there is no reason for this list. But, what was the cause to begin with? Nettime was an opportunity to meet in person. Particularly for those from the "West" and the "East." Artists who wanted to do "art" together. Those who energized this list attended MetaForum (in Budapest.) There is reason why the final "convo" for nettime was called "Beauty and the East." There is a reason why those meetings were abandoned under "threat" from the Soros-people, since they seemed to control the funding (causing the final meeting to take place at their offices in Llubljana, with the two of us taking the train from Vienna, along with Dave Bennahum.) There is a reason why those people found other ways to get things done and (mostly) left nettime. It's been running on fumes since then. No meetings, no nettime. Rebels without a cause. Kill it or find a new cause . . . !! Mark Stahlman (Jersey City Heights) P.S. While "gender" might be your concern, it sure wasn't when we got together. Diana McCarty got me involved. With a phone-call in the middle of the night (and a plane ticket.) More recently, she wanted to pull together another meeting. Didn't happen. The result was, as expected (by her, with my agreement), a circle-jerk. P.P.S. My concern is the lack of any discussion about China (or Chinese on the list.) Or Artificial Intelligence (or computer scientists on the list.) Getting East/West artists together was accomplished long ago. What needs to happen now is a coming-together of those trying to deal with events in Hong Kong and beyond. And the billions being spent on an AGI "arms race." Not the collapse of the Berlin Wall. New "causes" means new forms of organization. Welcome to the future; now get out of the past.# 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: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest
Ted &al: > A better line of questions might involve what's changed since he > first >entered the embassy. A better line of questions involves what's changed in the last few weeks . . . !! What is now in motion is the investigate-the-investigators phase of the "soft coup" against Trump. At the center of that coup was "Five Eyes" -- which is to say, the same people who arrested Assange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes Indeed, Trump's "relationship" with Russia -- particularly including one-on-one meetings with Putin -- has his opposition to "Five Eyes" written all over it. Who knows more about British Intelligence than the Russians (and once the Soviets)? It is "Five Eyes" who are now trying to crack down on the Internet -- as reflected in the communiques coming from their last meeting in Australia. "Regulation" of Facebook &al is also likely to be based on their plans -- as reflected in recent sweeping "take-down" notices to the Internet Archive and others for hosting "terrorist" materials. Now Assange is in "Five Eyes" custody. It would seem that is the "game afoot" which is both quite fresh and in need of some careful analysis. Mark StahlmanJersey City Heights# 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: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement
Brian: > However, emergence on its own appears useless as a principle of hope. Good point. Allow me to amplify . . . "Emergence"was a DoD project. Or, more properly a DoE one. The US Department of Energy (spun-off from DoD to "control" nuclear weapons), established the Mecca of "emergence" at the Santa Fe Institute (across the road from Los Alamos and staffed with bomb designers), to take the techniques of "star design" and apply them to society. The DoE still funds $10M/year to the Institute (about 1/2 its budget.) And while we're on the subject, the recently established "Cultural Evolution Society" -- devoted to "nudging" whatever emerges -- was initiated at an iARPA workshop at the UofMaryland where they explicitly said that DoD funding would block many participants so they would need Templeton and others to "sheep-dip" the process . . . !! https://culturalevolutionsociety.org/ "Complexity theory" is a poor substitute for *causality* -- adopted from astro-physics, in which "probability" has replaced any understanding of "why" -- and actually has had *zero* success in the social domain. If you want to deal with "strategy" (which is the business of my Center), then you will have to retrieve causality (and forget "emergence"). Otherwise, there is indeed no "principle of hope." Judea Pearl, famous for his contributions to AI research (as well as the death of his journalist son), has written an important book titled "The Book of Why?" In it he recounts how we lost "causality" and why we need to get it back -- alas, without answering his own urgent questions (or really understanding *why* all this happened in the first place.) https://www.amazon.com/Book-Why-Science-Cause-Effect/dp/046509760X Happy New Year!! MarkJersey City Heights# 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: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Progressive Politics in Europe
Geert (old friend): How could this possibly succeed? Yes, there *is* something rotten in Denmark (and elsewhere) . . . !! Trying to use technology to "construct" the world as you'd like it to be is always confronted by the reality that technology is, instead, busy "constructing" you. Taking the "social constructivist" path is what got us into this mess. Much better would be to flip this around and take the "technological constructivist" approach. Yes, that is a term first suggested to me by McKensie Wark --- who I met through nettime. Unless, of course, you'd like to keep on failing (for which the funding may have just run out) . . . Mark Jersey City Heights -Original Message- From: Geert Lovink To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism Sent: Tue, Dec 4, 2018 5:02 am Subject: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Progressive Politics in Europe Dear Nettimers, we’ve written the discussion text below as a proposal, a strategic contribution and are curious what you make of the ideas and questions we raise. For sure that there more topics and angles that could be added. Do you see any possibility for funding such an effort to come together? Should this be a festival, a translocal network, a support campaign for various movements? Let us know what you think and if you want to get involved. Geert Lovink (ge...@xs4all.nl, Amsterdam) and Donatella Della Ratta (d...@mediaoriente.com, Rome) There are anumber of topics that overlap and point at a widening of agendas beyondpolitics and the use of internet technologies in society. We feel that we canno longer keep these spaces separated, or leave them surrounded by ambiguitiesand grey areas, or appropriated by alt-right groups, populism or regressivepolitics. We think it‘s time to brigde this gap, create new forms, and restorealliances between tech and progressive politics. We feelthere is a growing tension between the global, immaterial level of social mediaand the concrete sphere of local grass-roots level and related politicalaction. Funny enough, digital technologies are becoming smaller, more invisibleand even further integrated into our messy, always-connected everyday life. Butthis is not bringing neither tech policies, nor the use of tech bypolitical parties and movements, down to earth: with the only exception of thefew who make use of tech as propaganda to prove their group's horizontal,partecipative, open-to-all-credentials. Overall,while the managerial cosmopolitan classes have a similar, exchangeable andshared lifestyle, wherever they operate, the gap between them and thelocal middle-lower classes is dramatically increasing. It istherefore that we feel an unease to organize yet another new media festivalevent, or sign up for this or that NGO campaign. We notice that it is becomingharder and harder for techies and activists to talk to their localcounterparts. They seem to have taken refuge in the way more familiar andcomfortable zone of global, cosmopolitan, like-minded crowds. Think, justas an example, of the Tahrir activists who, once having liberated thecountry, were kicked out of the square and of their own movement, becomingcompletely alienated from local politics and then replaced by a grass-rootsparty, which has been now suffocated in its turn by a more repressive mix oflocal authoritarianism and global interests. The tensionbetween the fascination for the global language of the immaterial sphere with its ‘planetary computation', and theparticularities of the local and its idiosyncratic culture, manifests itself asa growing gap not only in the domain of finance and economics, but also incircles of technology experts and media activists who are increasingly becomingcosmopolitan and detached from local communities and struggles. In the past,there was an alternative to broadcast media: it was to switch themoff. This was easily accomplished by those who wished to silence the noise, anddid not result in social isolation or disconnection. But networked media do notoffer this ancient privilege, as signing off from social networking platformstranslates into social suicide. Todaytelevision, and broadcast media in general, do no longer have the strength togenerate new political formations as they used to do in the past. They ratherjust remediate content from social networking platforms. The social spectacularat the time of Web 2.0 is peer-produced and generated by individuals who are at thesame time victims and perpetrators of their own (networked) frustration andanger. This logic is reproduced in every domain, including that of politics,where people have to be co-producers and no longer can just absorb messages andcontent dictated by the mass spectacular. Political participation in the socialspectacular is understood as a process of continuous remediation of inputs andmessages that is undertaken by each of us, weather willing or not. Because weare our own re-m
Re: Was cultural Marxism the leading force behind the new world order
Nettimers: "Cultural Marxism" is, of course, a canard -- primarily because it never really had any impact. Adorno did manage to write "The Authoritarian Personality" (a favorite of Breivik) but he was tossed out of the Rockefeller Radio Research Project and few (at that level) ever paid much attention to him. The "Frankfurt School" (and Marcuse in particular) were considered "passe" by the New Left, typically viewed as "CIA types," leaving it to Paul Piccione and his TELOS to try to get some attention for them (without much success.) "Globalism" is closer to the real story and, indeed, it is now dead. However, the impetus for such institutions as the UN, World Bank/IMF, WTO &c -- all of which have largely been rendered irrelevant by China (and the BRICs more widely) -- didn't come from "cultural marxism" at all. Margaret Mead and Larry K. Frank, yes. "Critical" anything, no. In "power" terms -- taken using Michael Mann's "Sources of Social Power" framework -- globalism had ideological, economic, political and military sources that all aligned post-WW II around the theme of preventing WW III (while substituting psychological warfare for "kinetics") and generating a "new world order" that would force "nation states" to join in a common effort. This is the framework that has now collapsed and will never be revived. Humpty Dumpty has actually fallen off the wall . . . Henry Kissinger was at the center of all this, so tracing his career tells much of the story. From his unpublished 380+ page undergraduate Harvard thesis, "The Meaning of History," to his crucial role in the very important Special Studies Project, Henry was a Rockefeller protege -- in particular of Nelson, who was slated to become President in 1964. Instead, his girlfriend "Happy" got pregnant, refused an abortion, forcing "Rocky" to divorce and Goldwater became the candidate. By the 1970s much of this was already unraveling and now we are finally noticing it. Henry's the last chapter of his last book, "World Order," and his subsequent interviews all reflect the same conclusion: digital technology has irrevocably ended the old "new world order." And, as a result, Henry no longer knows what to do. Given that his advisers include those like Eric Schmidt, this intellectual cul-de-sac should come as no surprise. In fact, no one from Henry's (or Eric's) world know's what to do. We are heading into a political-economy completely unimagined by "cultural marxism" or any other ideological construct from the 20th (or previous) century. "Libertarian Marxism" is just a reflection of how confused we have become. My attendance at the "2nd World Congress on Marxism" in Beijing (last May) points to a vibrant effort on the part of the Chinese to sort all this -- to the utter confusion of the Western "Marxists" invited to speak. Yes, China is way ahead of the West in thinking all this through (and few in the West understand this.) Toto, I don't believe we are in Kansas anymore . . . -- Dorothy (1939, speaking about the *radio* world, then being studied by the Rockefellers) Mark (Jersey City Heights) -Original Message- From: I M To: orsan1234 Cc: nettime-l Sent: Fri, Nov 16, 2018 7:43 am Subject: Re: Was cultural Marxism the leading force behind the new world order Dear Orsan (and all) We recently, published this article on Cultural Marxism, it can probably help: why-has-cultural-marxism-become-enemy kind regards Op vr 16 nov. 2018 om 13:38 schreef Örsan Şenalp : Dear list members, I really wonder what would you make of this article by Antony Meuller of Mises Institute? Is he implying the role really played by, at least, the certain liberal post-Marxist Left in building up Neoliberlism, or is it just a reaction against the growing power of the left? https://fee.org/articles/cultural-marxism-is-the-main-source-of-modern-confusion-and-its-spreading/?utm_content=79412082&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0PonQZ5UQP4iGvZfSFJE3p8jecBefhyHwupA4ZTa-__n01010J9X305Q8 best, Orsan # 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: -- Ico Maly Tilburg University Editor-in-chief diggit magazine diggitmagazine.com facebook.com/diggitmagazine/ twitter.com/diggitmagazine Nieuw Maly, I. (2018). De Hedendaagse antiverlichting (Berchem, Epo) Maly, I. (2018). Algorithmic populism and algorithmic activism. Diggit Magazine. Maly, I. (2018). Populism as a mediatized communicative relation: The birth of algorithmic populism. TPCS working paper 213 Maly, I. (2018). Welkom in het tijdperk van het globale nationalisme. Sampol. Maly, I. (2018). N
Re: "THERE IS NO PEACE WITHOUT DIGITAL PEACE" (Micosoft)
Geert: The 1998 Microsoft antitrust case effectively "wedded" the company to the Pentagon -- it was not run out of DoJ but rather the "intelligence community" (with me playing a minor role) -- so it is no surprise to find Microsoft speaking on behalf of that contingent today. There is a widespread effort to develop "norms" by these folks -- driven by the recognition that China, Russia &al have other plans -- most emphatically coming out of the recent "Five Eyes" (i.e. the actual "Deep State") meeting in Australia. Alas the communique, which initially appeared at www.homeaffairs.gov.au has now been taken down, but can be found by Googling "countering illicit use of online spaces" and then reading Google's cache for the page. Mark -Original Message- From: Geert Lovink To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism Sent: Mon, Nov 12, 2018 2:03 pm Subject: "THERE IS NO PEACE WITHOUT DIGITAL PEACE" (Micosoft) https://digitalpeace.microsoft.com/ "We are digital citizens—members of a thriving online global society. We trust technology to help us do our jobs, create communities and connect us. As digital citizens, we also share responsibility to protect our interconnected space. We are more at risk than ever before from cyberwarfare. Governments are using technology as a weapon, which can devastate people, organizations, and entire countries. These attacks may start in the digital space but can quickly spread to the physical world. We must come together as digital citizens and call upon our world leaders to create rules of the road that protect our digital society. We must demand Digital Peace Now." -- Dear nettimers, any comments on this? I find this pretty stunning. OK, 100 years after World War I, that’s pretty significant. "Make love, not war." Today there's conference in Paris. I am an anti-militarist, I am not on the side of the corporate-governmental (cyber)warfare promotors. But in general I am not against non-violent conflict. Should we demand digital conflict? Or digital ‘struggle'? And what to make of the comments by US internet governance scholar Milton Mueller? https://www.internetgovernance.org/2018/11/09/the-paris-igf-convergence-on-norms-or-grand-illusion/ "The theory of international regimes identifies norm development as the second step in a process of institutionalization. The first step involves agreement on principles; that is, foundational facts about the sector or domain to be governed. It is unfortunate, but true, to say that all of the international calls for cyber norms have skipped agreement on principles and are trying to promulgate norms despite a huge, gaping chasm in the way states understand their role in cyberspace. There will be no effective operationalization of norms until there is agreement on the status of cyberspace as a global commons, a non-sovereign space." Your messenger of peace, Geert # 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:
Re: Nein, danke [was Re: Inhabit: Instructions for Autonomy]
Charles, Brian &al:
There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear . . . --
Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth,1967)
The inhabit.global website begins with the words, "The End of the World: It's
over. Bow your head and phone scroll through the apocalypse. Watch as Silicon
Valley replaces everything with robots . . . "
This isn't "right" or "left" in any sense understood by nettime ("alt" or
otherwise) -- no matter how detailed Ted's "aesthetic" analysis of the graphics
might suggest. Indeed, as described by Emaline, "20-something Americans" (some
of whom I know quite well), simply don't think in those terms anymore. No
wonder Ted is upset. Recruitment, indeed.
The 60s "counter-culture" (which I'm old enough to have lived through)
generated the same effects -- leading to charges that the CIA was spreading LSD
(using the Grateful Dead &al, according to FAIR's Marty Lee) to undermine the
"anti-war movement" (which, in fact, was being "managed" by the CIA, through
their 4th International agents-in-place at the SWP and elsewhere.) At the same
time, in fact, the KGB was supplying the LSD for May '68 in Paris. What a long
strange trip that was . . . !!
Today, we are once again in the middle of a "counter-culture" -- also driven by
new technologies, just like the ones c. 1789, 1848, 1917 &c -- none of which
can be understood by those committed to "social constructivism" (appropriately
described by AB as following Rousseau, the inventor of "civil religion," today
celebrated as "globalism" at the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile), given, as they
are, to denouncing "technological determinism." I can just hear the
sociological knees "jerk" now. Where's Leo Marx (now 99) when we need him?
What relevance nettime has in all this is fascinating. How will this group,
born as the child of East-West cyber-dialogue, deal with the "robot problem"
(which it has ignored until now)? Alas, my friends in Russia probably aren't
paying much attention to this list anymore. As an early member of the Zentral
Kommittee -- inducted by Diana at MetaForum III in Budapest in 1996 -- I'm
looking forward to the deliberations of the "politburo" . . .
Mark (Jersey City Heights)
P.S. As it turns out, "fascist alt-right troll" spells out FART. Yes, I do
find that funny. Does that make "antifa" Anti-FART (with all that implies,
including self-combustion)?
-Original Message-
From: Justin Charles
To: bhcontinentaldrift
Cc: nettime
Sent: Sat, Nov 10, 2018 10:07 pm
Subject: Re: Nein, danke [was Re: Inhabit: Instructions for Autonomy]
I agree with Brian. These folks aren’t alt-right. I can’t pin down the politics
precisely but Brian gets the Invisible Committee thing right. They’re probably
somewhere around leftcom/anarcho-communist/communization. I’m pretty sure
they’re somehow connected to the Woodbine collective in Ridgewood, Queens. I
picked up a copy of the pamphlet when I was at a workshop there.
On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 7:26 PM Brian Holmes
wrote:
This pamphlet reads like an American redux of The Invisible Committee. Its
concepts and general outlook go back to a text like "Civil War" in Tiqqun #2.
Its production values are within reach of anyone who can afford a laptop, an
Amazon bucket and a domain name. Its imagery is of a piece with the rest; and
by looking around on the web you can see that it was originally published as an
orange-tinted book, so maybe the pseudo-print aesthetic has a simple
explanation.
The idea that it's a psychologist's honey-pot crafted to catch the naive is
far-fetched. This is anarchy. The positions codified by Tiqqun and popularized
by the Invisible Committee have become widespread through the experiences of
Exarchia, the ZAD, Standing Rock and many others, with the Palestinian
resistance and the Kurdish war of independence blazing in the background. The
elemental question to be asked is, do I make common cause with these authors? A
corollary line of questioning would be: Is civil war inevitable in the
capitalist democracies? Could it have positive effects?
I say no on all three counts. The serious threat of civil war comes from the
extreme right, they have both the numbers and the guns. Throw gasoline on that
fire and it will explode in your face. Punching a Nazi has become legitimate,
yes, and it's a good thing. The legitimacy, I mean. That makes it possible to
gather large numbers for anti-fascist demos and to seek criminal prosecution
against the extremists, while city governments topple the statues of racists
and carry out investigations of police abuse, etc. The rule of law is
definitely not all it's cracked up to be, but its absence would be worse. The
potential of life degrades exactly to the extent that societies are not able to
keep violence of all kinds in check. In militarized countries like the US it
has degraded a lot, and the point is to reverse the process, not accelerate it.
Th
**The Technology as a Cause** (by Raymond Williams, 1974)
[Raymond Williams, *Television: Technology and cultural form*, Chapter 3, "The Forms of Television," p. 129-132] C. The Technology as a Cause Sociological and psychological studies of the effects of television, which in their limited terms have usually been serious and careful, were significantly overtaken, during the 1960s, by a fully developed theory of the technology -- the medium -- as determining . . . The work of McLuhan was a particular culmination of an aesthetic theory which became, negatively, a social theory: a development and elaboration of formalism [by which he probably means a "search" for a long-abandoned "formal causality"] which can be seen in many fields, from literary criticism and linguistics to psychology and anthropology, but which acquired it most significant popular influence in an isolating theory of "the media." Here, characteristically -- and as explicit ratification of particular uses [mistakenly imagining that McLuhan "endorsed" anything he wrote about] -- there is an apparent sophistication in just the critical area of cause and effect which we have been discussing. It is an apparently sophisticated technological determinism which has the significant effect of indicating a social and cultural determinism: a determinism, that is to say, which ratifies the society and culture we have now [completely missing the fact that McLuhan's popularity was a result of a "counter-culture" that adopted him as its "guru"]. For if the medium -- whether print or television -- is the cause, all other causes, all that men ordinarily see as history, are at once reduced to effects. Similarly, what are elsewhere seen as effects [here implying "efficient causality"] and as such subject to social, cultural, psychological and moral questioning, are excluded as irrelevant by comparison with the direct physiological and therefore "psychic" effects of the media as such. The initial formulation -- "the medium is the message" [title of Chapter 1 in "Understanding Media" (1964)] -- was a simple formulation. The subsequent formulation -- "the medium is the massage" [title of the 1967 book, not actually written by McLuhan and from which his estate collects no royalites] -- is a direct and functioning ideology . . . If specific media are essentially psychic adjustments, coming not from relations between ourselves but between a generalized human organism and its general physical environment [aka, a "proto-psychology"], then of course intention, in any general or particular case, is irrelevant, and with intention goes content, whether apparent or real. All media operations are in effect desocialized; they are simply physical events in an abstracted sensorium, and are distinguishable only by their variable sense-ratios. But it is then interesting that from this wholly unhistorical and asocial base McLuhan projects certain images of society: "retribalization" by the "electronic age"; the "global village." As descriptions of any observable social state or tendency, in the period in which electronic media have been dominant, these are so ludicrous as to raise a further question. The physical fact of instant transmission [beginning in the 19th century, with telegraph], as a technical possibility, has been uncritically raised to a social fact, without any pause to notice that virtually all such transmission is at once selected and controlled by existing social authorities. McLuhan, of course, would apparently do away with all such controls; the only controls he envisages are a kind of allocation and rationing of particular media for particular psychic effects, which he believes would dissolve or control any social problem that arises [never something McLuhan ever seriously proposed] . . . The effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself . . . The particular rhetoric of McLuhan's theory of communications is unlikely to last long. But it is significant mainly as an example of an ideological representation of technology as a cause, and in this sense it will have successors . . . What is to be seen, by contrast, is the radically different position in which technology, including communication technology, and specifically television, is at once an intention and an effect of a particular social order. [Raymond Williams (1921-88) was a Welsh Marxist theorist and academic, who was an influential figure in the New Left (i.e. the version of the "left" developed in the 1960s, under the influence of television, as opposed to the "Old Left" which developed under earlier radio conditions.) He is often credited with "laying the foundations of 'cultural studies'", as reflected in his 1958 "Culture and Society." In the late-1930s, he attended Trinity Hall college, Cambridge, whe
**Vice and "Sense Perception"** (by Joe Sachs)
[Joe Sachs, Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 2002, Introduction, Part II, "The Mean," pp. xi, xx-xxi, also St. John's Review, "Three Little Words," 1997] Three words that anyone who has tried to understand the *Nicomachean Ethics* has had to wrestle with are HABIT, the MEAN, and NOBLE [originally underlined]. They might be said, very loosely, to refer to the efficient, formal and final causes of moral virtue . . . But there is such a thing as bad character, and this is what Aristotle means by vice, as distinct from bad habits or weakness. It is possible for someone with full responsibility and the free use of intellect to choose always to yield to bodily pleasure, or to greed, or to ambition. Virtue is a mean, first because it can only emerge out of the stand-off between pairs of opposite habits, but second because it chooses to take its stand in principle; Aristototle makes clear that vice is a principled choice that following some extreme path toward [as described by Mandeville in his 1717 "Fable of the Bees," upon which "capitalism" was founded] or away [as described by "Puritans," including those who founded the USA and drove its Civil War &c] pleasure is right. (1146b, 22-3) [Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 1] Principles are wonderful things, but there are too many of them, and exclusive adherence to any one of them is always a vice. In our earlier example [re: eating a slice of cake], the true glutton [one of the "Seven Deadly Vices"] would be someone who does not just have a bad habit of always indulging in the desire for food, but someone who has chosen on principle that one ought always to yield to it. In Plato's *Gorgias*, Callicles argues just that, about food, drink, and sex. He is serious, even though he is young and still open to argument. But the only principled alternative he can conceive is the denial of the body, and the choice of a life fit for only stones or corpses. (429E) This is the way most attempts to be serious about right action go astray. What, for example, is the virtue of a seminar leader? Is it to ask appropriate questions but never state an opinion? Or is it to offer everything one has learned on the subject of discussion? What principle should rule -- that all learning must come from the learners, or that without prior instruction no useful learning can take place? Is there a hybrid principle? Or should one try to find the point mid-way between the opposite principles? Or is the virtue some third thing altogether? Just as habits of indulgence [i.e. those generated today by *electric* media, designed to maximize economic consumption and thus "growth," which is what most people today call "capitalism"] always stand opposed to habits of abstinence, so too does every principle of action have its opposite principle. If good habituation ensures that we are not swept away by our strongest impulses, and the exercise of intelligence ensures that we will see two worthy sides to every question about action, what governs the choice of the mean? Aristotle gives this answer: "such things are among particulars, and the judgement is in the act of sense-perception." (1109b 23-4) [Ethics, Book II, Chapter 8] But this is the calmly energetic, thought-laden perception to which we referred to earlier [or what Aquinas called "cogitative" or "particular" reason, the culmination of the "interior senses," Summa Theologica, Book I, Question 78, Article 4]. The origin of virtuous action is neither intellect nor appetite [e.g. "emotions"], but is variously described as intellect infused through-and-through with appetite, or appetite wholly infused with thinking, or appetite and reason joined for the sake of something; this unitary source is called by Aristotle simply *anthropos. (1139a, 34, b, 5-7) [Ethics, Bool Vi, Chapter 1] But our thinking must contribute right reason (*ho orthos logos*) and our appetites must contribute *right* desire (*he orthe orexis*) if the action is to moral stature. (1114b, 29, 1139a, 24-6, 31-2) [Ethics, Book III, Chapter, Book VI, Chapter 1] What makes them right can only be something for the sake of which they unite, and this is what is said to be accessible only to sense-perception [i.e. the "interior" not the "exterior senses"] . . . [This distinction between the "interior" and "exterior senses" (sometimes referred to as "inner wits" in English) is *not* something that Sachs seems to make clear, as, indeed, few others have either. In particular, Marshall McLuhan appears to make the same mistake, in this regard, as did his mentors -- by avoiding this discussion and instead being satisfied with a hoped for *balance* of the "exterior" senses, as reflected in his focus on the "sensus communis" and "synesthesia" &c.] [McLuhan seems to have been so concerned about an imbalance in favor of sight (i.e. caused by the Printing Press and, thus, Protestantism) that he was "blinded" by the follow-on correspond
Re: They Say We Can’t Meme: Politics of Idea Compression/Geert Lovink & Marc Tuters
Geert: The *medium* (or what we now call psycho-technological environments) that generated “memes” is, of course, the same one that dominated people’s lives when they were “discovered” in the 1970s – TELEVISION. Are you sure that’s how you’d like anyone to behave today? That medium is no longer “in control” and, as the name “nettime” signifies, we now live in a very different *time* -- in which DIGITAL technology has become the “ground of our experience.” However, following this archeology through with McLuhan (and his interest in Gestalt), what happens when the *ground* changes is that the previous “ground” (i.e. the one that generated memes) becomes a *figure* and, as a result, becomes “obsolete” – which is to say it becomes everywhere-in-your-face but no longer has the previous fundamental psychological impact (as discussed in the 1988 “Laws of Media”). To presume that recent “populist” developments are the result of *memes* -- as opposed to this fundamental shift in underlying environments – is to succomb to the same “television” way of looking at things. Are you sure that’s how you’d like anyone to think about such things today? On May Day 2017 (illustrated with my favorite IWW graphic), some of us published an essay on this – yes, on the site called “Medium” – titled “The End of Memes or McLuhan 101” which might be of some interest hereabouts . . . https://medium.com/rally-point-perspectives/the-end-of-memes-or-mcluhan-101-2095ae3cad02 Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights Sent from Mail for Windows 10 From: Geert Lovink Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2018 8:15 AM To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism Subject: They Say We Can’t Meme: Politics of Idea Compression/Geert Lovink & Marc Tuters They Say We Can’t Meme: Politics of Idea Compression By Geert Lovink & Marc Tuters Originally published here: https://non.copyriot.com/they-say-we-cant-meme-politics-of-idea-compression/ “I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.” Friedrich Nietzsche In his torturous 2017 book Futurability Franco Berardi states that “we should go beyond the critique of the techno-media corporate system and start a project of enquiry and self-organization for the cognitive workers who daily produce the global semio-economy. We should focus less on the system and more on the subjectivity that underlies the global semio-cycle.” (1) In this spirit, let’s consider memes as one of many ways to understand the fast and dark world of the mindset of today’s online subject. We see memes as densely compressed, open contradictions, designed to circulate in our real-time networks that work with repeating elements. As the far-right have discovered, memes express tensions that can’t be spoken in the political correct vocabulary of the mainstream media. To what extent can these empty formats symbolize the lived experience of global capitalism? Is it true that the left can’t meme? These are the strategic questions faced by activists and social media campaigners today . . . # 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:
FW: John Barlow, Debbie and Me (plus Nettime)
Sent from Mail for Windows 10 Nettime: On the eve of my 70th birthday, John Perry Barlow, who was 4 months older and sometimes described as my "nemesis," passed away. RIP, cyber-comrade. In the interest of living memories, here's a JPB story (or two). In mid-1994, the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF) -- which was a spin-off from Newt Gingrich's GOPAC political action committee -- published its "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," just ahead of Newt's sweeping election victory in November, making him Speaker of the House. It was written by Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George "Jay" Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler (whose protege Newt had once been in his West Georgia Esalen days) and it began with "The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter . . . " In mid-1995, PFF threw its coming-out party with what became an annual "Aspen Summit" at the St. Regis. According to PFF, "Wired News has compared the Aspen Summit to the annual Davos event in Switzerland and the Renaissance Weekend at Hilton Head." Both John and I were among the 20+ invited speakers in 1995, sitting at the main tables, surrounded by an audience of 200-or-so. By that time, John and I had known each other from from events like Esther's "PC Forum," where I had made a nuisance of myself by questioning the basis for John and Mitch Kapor's Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, formed in 1990). Sometime between my invitation and the PFF Summit, it had been decided that I was a "trouble-maker," so the conference chair, Jeff Eisenach had pre-arranged with John (who later told me he brought my troubling behavior to Jeff's attention) to block my ability to speak. Everyone was supposed to raise their hand and Jeff would make a list -- however, whenever I raised my hand so did John and when Eisenach went through the list he skipped me and called on John and not me. My response was to cross my arms and pull my hat down over my eyes, in silent protest. CSPAN cameras were rolling and, little did I know, Debbie Newman, with whom I'd had one "date" was watching. We had met at a "Cybersuds" party for NYNMA, where perhaps 3,000+ (including John and his entourage) danced the night away at the Roxy and Debbie wanted to meet whoever "started this party." Apparently my "bad boy" demonstration caught her eye so when I invited her to join me on Nantucket -- where I went after Aspen to write an "expose" on Toffler/Grigrich's "Anticipatory Democracy" movement (later circulated privately on the Hill and contributing to Newt's ouster) -- she agreed. As I recall, we played some Grateful Dead on the beach. Twenty-three years later, we're still together. Thanks John (I couldn't have done it myself) . . . !! Mark P.S. In mid-1996, I got an out-of-the-blue phonecall from Budapest. It was Diana McCarthy on the line and she said "How would you like to come to Budapest to speak at our MetaForum III conference? We've got a plane ticket ready for you!" (paid for by a local Internet entrepreneur interested in my Wall Street insights). I had never heard of nettime but agreed to show up and "keynote" -- around which festivities Debbie and I then planned to tour the capitals of the Holy Roman Empire: Vienna, Prague and Budapest (where we stayed in a suite at the Gellert and enjoyed their Art Noveau baths). Once again, I have John Barlow to thank. Earlier that year, while at Davos, John had penned his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" (following through on the "Magna Carta" theme) -- which began by saying "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind . . . " This got John an invitation to MetaForum II and, according to reports, he drove there from Davos in a convertible with "two blonds." Apparently John didn't make a very good impression -- so I was invited to the next event as the anti-Barlow. The only blond I brought along was Debbie. Diana kindly invited me to join the nettime "Zentral Kommittee," where I learned that the local Soros group had told nettime they couldn't do this anymore unless they folded into the OSF efforts (leading to the 1997 "Beauty and the East" at Soros' offices in Llubljana). In Budapest, I also met Richard Barbrook (leading to my 1996 "Wired Magazine and the English Ideology" reply to his "Californian Ideology") and Manuel Delanda (leading to our jointly organized 1998-2000 "Non-Linear Circle" salon, from which he quickly dropped out). Erik Davis was also there (talking up his "Techgnosis") and Debbie, Manuel, Erik and I stuffed into a cab to drive out to the Stalinist-era "Statue Park." Perhaps because I video-taped some of the conference (tourist that I was), many involved decided that I must have been working for the CIA -- which Diana asked me about when we happened into each other again in Budapest in 2004. "No," I told
Re: Managerial capitalism?
Brian &al: > Try the vision thing. Nobody has it, everybody needs it, it's the rarest thing > on earth. I don't think that the post-2008 crisis will ever be resolved > until some socio-political agency comes up with a vision of the future > that is inspiring, workable and translatable into mathematical-statistical > terms. And what if we never get one? In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king -- Erasmus (from the Latin *_in regione caecorum rex est luscus_ (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=in_regione_caecorum_rex_est_luscus&action=edit&redlink=1) *) In 1946, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell), still a stanch Socialist, wrote an essay called "Second Thoughts on James Burnham," published in the journal Polemic (and reprinted in the "Orwell Reader" &c). Then he sat down and wrote "Nineteen Eighty-Four," which few have recognized as his continued polemic against the now evident *end* of "class warfare" (much as Aldous Huxley had written "A Brave New World" against H.G. Wells' "The Open Conspiracy"). Orwell refused to understand what had already happened. Burnham, in turn, like many other Socialists (but certainly not all) of those times -- including Daniel "Post-Industrial" Bell &c -- recognized that MASS MEDIA had ended the usefulness of "class" analysis, since the population had shifted under *radio* conditions (as understood by Marx &al) away from that sort of consciousness. "Mass" had replaced "class" in how people thought. As a result -- which Blair/Orwell fiercely resisted -- a completely *new* sort of "capitalism" had developed and, therefore, a *new* sort of opposition was required. This recognition (which some then-and-now refused to recognize) was a result of the Rockefeller Foundation's 1935-1940 "Radio Research Project" (RRP) -- which was the first time that anyone had organized a sweeping effort to try to understand the *effects* of new technology on the population. Without that understanding, "vision" is simply not possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Research_Project For those who are paying attention, T. Adorno was hired by the RRP to explain the effects of music in a radio environment. He never completed that assignment and his "exit memo" to Paul Lazarsfeld has never been published. The only public copy resides on microfilm at Columbia University Rare Books and I have a PDF of the photos I took off the reader, if anyone is interested. In 1953, the Ford Foundation (where its Program Area Five: Individual Behavior and Human Relations had replaced the earlier Rockefeller funding) granted $43,500 to Marshall McLuhan (an English professor) and Edmund "Ted" Carpenter (an anthropologist, likely working with the CIA in "Area Studies") for a project titled "Changing Patterns of Behavior and Language in the New Media of Communications." This grant (roughly $500.000 in today's money) produced a seminar and a journal. That journal, EXPLORATIONS: Studies in Culture and Communications, has recently been republished and is *required* reading for anyone today who is looking for "vision." http://wipfandstock.com/explorations-1-8.html McLuhan attempted to get the Ford Foundation, as well as Robert Hutchins (first at Univ of Chicago and later at his Ford-backed Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara), to fund his organizing of a research center to address these issues. When they declined, he eventually got the Univ of Toronto, IBM and others to back his Centre for Culture and Technology -- which, alas, never produced any useful research, since McLuhan largely abandoned the effort after clashing with psychologists about his "sensory balance" tests and, instead, opted to become a "media guru." Along the way, McLuhan and Bell were invited to the 1969 Bilderberg Conference, to explain May '68 in Paris. Apparently neither of them understood that a new "technology" was involved -- LSD. Later, Marshall became the "Patron Saint" of WIRED magazine -- which, in turn, was founded by Stewart Brand, the "patron saint" of LSD. Yes, Thomas Wolfe, who "discovered" McLuhan (ending his career as a researcher), was also responsible for documenting the *drug-based* origins of the "Californian Ideology." https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Kool-Aid-Acid-Test/dp/031242759X While the original Rockefeller project studied *radio*, McLuhan devoted his life to studying the *effects* of TELEVISION -- thus "changing patterns of behavior and language" in the *new* media of communications in the 1950s. But that is no longer the world in which we live. We are now DIGITAL. This means we don't *perceive* the world in same way anymore. As a result, the earlier details no longer matter -- at the same time that the "method" involved is more valuable than ever. The "steering function" collapse that you describe is simply the result of what ha
Re: choose-your-own adventure: a brief history of nettime
Dear Nettimers: "McLuhanite technological determinism" . . . !! As maybe the only person from the Wall Street "wing" of the technology industry (with at least one confirmed *weird* "assignment" from the CIA) to ever participate in nettime -- starting with that late-night phone-call from Diana asking me to "keynote" MetaForum III (in Oct 1996), guessing that I was the "anti-Barlow" -- I resemble that remark. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1265585,00.asp Perhaps some of my friends on the list would be interested to hear that I've started a strategic research Center, partnering with a retired Naval intelligence officer and many others, to consider how *digital* technology changes civilizations -- starting with China (which I first visited shortly after going to Budapest). _www.digitallife.center_ (http://www.digitallife.center/) Thanks for *all* of your help along the way, I really couldn't have done it without you . . . Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights # 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: nottime: the end of nettime [2x]
- Forwarded message from newme...@aol.com - From: newme...@aol.com Subject: Re: nottime: the end of nettime Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 08:21:35 -0400 To: nett...@kein.org Folks: The MEDIUM is *still* the MESSAGE . . . !! Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights In a message dated 4/1/2015 4:11:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, nett...@kein.org writes: Dear Nettimers, present and past -- - End forwarded message - - Forwarded message from newme...@aol.com - From: newme...@aol.com Subject: Re: net.critique in autumn Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2015 15:05:06 -0400 To: bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com, nettim...@kein.org Brian: > I think we have a lot of capacity to explore the new > directions that cybernetic society is going to take > in the autumn of the Internet boom. One word: China (which is where I headed in 1997, after meeting up with the crew in Budapest ) . . . Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights - End forwarded message - # 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: More Crisis in the Information Society
Eric: But society *cannot* be "designed" -- not by you or anyone else. Indeed, this is why so many people are "naive" to imagine that there is a "Deep-State" (which doesn't exist and about which the Snowden disclosures tell us nothing) or that there is anyone to whom you could give a "Big Brother Award." All this is amusing fantasy which is now confronted with harsh reality . . . !! > The conclusion to draw from all of this is that the political > system as it is composed and functions right now is defunct Correct, but not for the reasons you imagine . . . > not the internet is broken, but democratic politics is broken. Correct, and (perhaps without knowing it) you have put your finger on the *cause* of the current "broken" situation -- the "Internet" is incompatible with "democracy" (and "globalism" and "consumerism" and a whole lot more.) > The response should not be to give up on all our democratic > values and aspirations, but instead to re-emphasise them, > more forcefully than ever. Wrong. Those "values" are not the ones we are going to move forward with. They were given to you by an environment that no longer has any power over you. So, along with that environment (i.e. television), those values are now also *obsolete* -- KAPUT . . . !! Those values are the product of the "psychological war" that you (and the rest of us) have been bombarded with all of our lives. They are the "Democratic Surround" that Fred Turner writes about and they were born in WW II, hatched by "psy-warriors" Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, as he amply documents. http://www.amazon.com/The-Democratic-Surround-Multimedia-Psychedelic/dp/0226 817466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406130582&sr=8-1&keywords=democratic+surround &dpPl=1 They are the product of "social engineering" and the *response* to the FAILURE of their efforts (i.e.which was the "defunct" system you mention) is NOT to double-down on trying to engineer its replacement. > And beyond analysis and critique, indeed how ever important, > I believe we need to engage in the design and re-design of > democratic politics - at the micro and the macro level. That won't work (which, given all the failures you list in your email, should be pretty obvious) . . . !! Instead of trying to "do something to society," we all need to try to UNDERSTAND what our technological environment is *doing* to us -- just as it gave us our "democratic values and aspirations," it is now giving us their replacements. LISTEN to the technology and hear what it is telling you (and think about what it means to be living in NETTIME) . . . Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights # 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
Automation: Learning a Living (Marshall McLuhan, 1964)
[Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan, 1964, pp. 357-59, final chapter, the last four paragraphs] Automation: Learning a Living Such is also the harsh logic of industrial automation. All that we had previously achieved mechanically by great exertion and coordination can now be done electrically without effort. Hence the specter of joblessness and propertylessness in the electric age. Wealth and work become information factors, and totally new structures are needed to run a business or relate it to social needs and markets. With the electric technology, the new kinds of instant interdependence and interprocess that take over production also enter into market and social organizations. For this reason, markets and education designed to cope with the products of servile toil and mechanical production are no longer adequate. Our education has long ago acquired the fragmentary and piece-meal character of mechanism. It is now under increasing pressure to acquire the depth and interrelation that are indispensable in the all-at-once world of electric organization. Paradoxically, automation makes liberal education mandatory. The electric age of servomechanisms suddenly releases men from the mechanical and specialist servitude of the preceding machine age. As the machine and the motorcar released the horse and projected it onto the plane of entertainment, do does automation with men. We are suddenly threatened with a liberation that taxes our inner resources of self-employment and imaginative participation in society. It has the effect of making most people realize how much they have come to depend on the fragmentalized and repetitive routines of the mechanical era. Thousands of years ago man, the nomadic food-gatherer, had taken up positional, or relatively sedentary, tasks. He began to specialize. The development of writing and printing were major steps of that process. They were supremely specialist in separating the roles of knowledge from the roles of action, even though at times it could appear that the "pen is mightier than the sword." But with electricity and automation, the technology of fragmented processes suddenly fused with the human dialogue and the need for over-all consideration of human unity. Men are suddenly nomadic gatherers of knowledge, nomadic as never before; since with electricity we extend our central nervous system as never before -- but also involved in the total social process as never before; since with electricity we extend our central nervous system globally, instantly interrelating every human experience. Long accustomed to such a state in stock-market news or front-page sensations, we can grasp the meaning of this new dimension more readily when it is pointed out that it is possible to "fly" unbuilt airplanes on computers. The specifications of a plane can be programmed and the plane tested under a variety of conditions before it has left the drafting board. So with new products and new organizations of many kinds. We can now, by computer, deal with complex social needs with the same architectural certainty that we previously attempted in private housing. Industry as a whole has become the unit of reckoning, and so with society, politics, and education as wholes. Electric means of storing and moving information with speed and precision make the largest units quite as manageable as small ones. Thus the automation of a plant or an entire industry offers a small model of the changes that must occur in society from the same electric technology. Total interdependence is the starting fact. Nevertheless, the range of choice in design, stress, and goal within that total field of electromagnetic interprocess is very much greater than it ever could have been under mechanization. Since electric energy is independent of the place or kind of work-operation, it creates patterns of decentralization and diversity in the work to be done. This is a logic that appears plainly enough in the difference between firelight and electric light, for example. Persons grouped around a fire or a candle for warmth or light are less able to pursue independent thoughts, or even tasks, than people supplied with electric light. In the same way, the social and educational patterns latent in automation are those of self-employment and artistic autonomy. Panic about automation as a threat to uniformity on a world scale is the projection into the future of mechanical standardization and specialism, which are now past. # 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: More Crisis in the Information Society
Felix:
> Perhaps, our productive systems are becoming too efficient for
> capitalism. If anyone who has some base talent and invests enough time
> in watching online how-to videos can become a half-decent photographer,
> then there ceases to be a market for half-decent photography. Now, if
> this happens only to the "creative class", then this is brutal for the
> "creatives", but what if this happens everywhere? Then things get weird.
> And for this to happen, we need to the internet.
Yes, indeed, things are already getting WEIRD -- particularly from the
standpoint of those who imagine that what they are dealing with is
"capitalism" (which we are not) and that Marx can help them understand
what is going on (which he cannot.)
No, we aren't in KANSAS anymore, Toto (or "Freddie," take your pick) .
.
. !!
Marx is notoriously "silent" on what we are now going through (and
Engels, for whom Marx was working "on assignment," doesn't help us
either) -- which, among other things, puts the Chinese, who have
spent the last 7+ years doing a "complete re-analysis" of Marx (at
the highest level of their academics, in a place that was headed by
Xi Jinping throughout this analysis, the current Chinese President)
in a *very* disadvantaged position vis-a-vis the "Internet." They are
up-a-creek without a "materialist" paddle.
What they seem to have missed is that the MACHINES would themselves
get the "upper hand."
"Deep State"? How about the likely fact that there are no *human
beings* who can stop the NSA data collection? No one. "Politics"? Not
quite (if only the humans can "vote.")
While I'm no "fan" of Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (and only
in part because it stems from his LSD "epiphany," which he terms
"Irreductions"), we *do* need to seriously consider the AGENCY of all
those things which are *not* human.
When Latour got up in front of the American Anthropologial Association
meeting this past November to deliver his "Distinguished Lecture" and
entreated the SRO audience to consider the "agency" of a glass of
water, he was being theatrical (and at some level "scandalous") but,
as best I can tell, few were paying attention.
If he had held up his MacBook, I wonder if people would have listened
more carefully . . . ??
While strategies to "reduce" one's own vulnerability to "surveillance"
might be interesting, particularly for those (like many on nettime)
with an "anarchist" attitude, that doesn't really change anything, as
you know.
We are in a situation which Stephen Hawking described as an "invasion
by a vastly superior alien race" and the *elites* of the world
("capitalist" or otherwise) seem completely unable to grasp what has
already happened.
It is one of the tasks of the Center for the Study of Digital Life to
try to help us understand just how *weird* things have already become
. . .
Mark Stahlman
Jersey City Heights
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# 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
Manipulation of the Unconscious
"Of course, the cultural industry and mass media are not the only places where the manipulation of the unconscious may actively be contemplated. The formidable challenge that confronts the cultural critic is the scenario where the battlefront of ideology has shifted predominantly from the control of political consciousness to the technological manipulation of the ineffable unconscious, the latter by no means being limited to the use and abuse of mind-altering drugs manufactured by big biochemical companies, which critics have amply documented and analyzed. In this regard, the insights of the Frankfurt School critics prove instructive in helping us rethink the conditions of critical imperative, and they are instructive precisely by virtue of their rigorous critique of technocracy and instrumental reason and their failure to engage with information theory and cybernetics in their time. This failure can be crippling because, if the unconscious rather than the consciousness has turned into the primary field of ideological manipulation by the dominant class, what is the future of reason and reasoned critiques?" [Lydia H. Liu, "The Freudian Robot: Digital Media and the Future of the Unconscious," Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010, p.35] Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights # 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
Star Wars and Silicon Valley
Folks: As can be seen on any Google Maps, in the 200 block of University Avenue, there is VANS shop with a giant Star Wars display in the window. On my way to a meeting at the Institute for the Future, I walk in and declare, "I'd like some Yoda shoes." Without a blink, the clerk says, "Like everyone else, you'll have to wait for June 1st." So, I try on some of the same cut-of-shoe. I'm a 10 1/2 -- so now I can order them online. Star Wars really means something around here. This is where the SDI flubber hit the road. This is where Jay "The Leaker" Keyworth did his magic tricks. Way up in space (without ever getting off the ground.) This is where the "evil empire" was finally defeated. You see -- the USSR has no Silicon Valley (still). The VANS generation has no idea about any of that. They are busy designing hover-boards so they can flash their Yoda shoes. The Cold War is dead; long live the Cold War. "The Singularity gets no respect where I come from," I am told by a Whole Earth stalwart. "When we started making microprocessors, there was no need to make moral decisions but now whatever you do is filled with moral implications," a veteran of Moore's Law tells me. "The problem with Silicon Valley," an original Silicon Valley journalist says,"is that it's filled with really smart people without any brains." The courtyard at the Rosewood, on Thursday's "Cougar Night." has three black Ferrari 458s poised by the door ready to whisk the lucky MILFs off to more secluded rendezvouses. The owner/founder of Bucks walks by the table and my breakfast companion introduces us. Jamis, whose account of the recent TED 2014 decorates the front of his "steal this menu," seems a little confused when complimented on the Abby Hoffman reference. "Oh yeah, that," he concedes,"You know, they're going to start filming a television series here soon. Startups pitching their deals to the VCs who eat here all the time." Anil Kumar walks by and I'm introduced. Anil was once the head of the McKinsey & Company offices in Silicon Valley. Until he became the "star witness" in the trial of Raj Rajaratnum and his Galleon "gang of four." It seems that his son has just graduated from Harvard Business School, where 100 of the 500 graduates got a job at McKinsey (and the other 400 wanted one.) The junior Kumar was not picked. "Remember the earliest settlers up north were the Russians," I'm reminded. And, in the words of someone who recently met with him for an hour, "Sergey is just a stoner," which gets me thinking about Dmitri Istkov and the one place on earth where the Singularity *is* being taken seriously. Moscow. It appears that the HBO comedy, "Silicon Valley," has had its intended effect. All is not well in Mudville. The Empire has struck back. Yes, you can see Siberia from here. Mark Stahlman Cardinal Hotel Palo Alto # 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: Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
Felix: > Some people are using the concept of "ban-opticon" to express this. Correct. The principles involved have been in force for the past 100+ years -- long before *digital* systems. In the original 19th-century Benthamite Panopticon, the key idea was that the "inmates" had no idea if anyone was watching, so they "policed" themselves. DIGITAL systems finally make these principles fully operative. We have long been our own "jailers," making the notion of a 1930s-style Gestapo/Stasi *completely* obsolete. Those "agencies" operated under radio-conditions, with a population that was still getting used to *controlling* themselves. Both the 1932 "Brave New World" and the 1948 "1984" were written with the radio *environment* in mind and did *not* fully anticipate what was already being planned. Television "programmed" the population to the next level of "self-policing" in the 1960s/70s. This is why McLuhan separated HOT media (i.e. radio, where you were told what to do) from COOL media (i.e. television, where you were expected to "fill in the blanks" and *control* your own behaviors.) Furthermore, the collection of data by companies -- particularly credit and health records, which, under Obamacare, now *most* be digitized -- are MUCH *worse* than anything the "government" is doing. While people fantasize that the "thought-police" are going to knock on their door, in reality (which most people have little contact with), these "enforcers" don't even exist. It's FAR too expensive (and politically dangerous) to even imagine building such a group. Instead we have taken on the cost of "policing" ourselves. In cybernetics, this is what is called "second order" and is built around the notion that people "construct" their own reality, based on the work of people like Gregory Bateson and Heinz Von Foerster -- which many people *falsely* think means maximizing human freedom. It does NOTHING of the kind and is actually the opposite (in fact, it's an extension of WW II "psychological warfare" and what Bateson called "rigging the maze.") -- which is why Norbert Wiener *refused* to collaborate with Bateson/Mead/Lewin. This piece is written for the engineers who design "surveillance" systems, asking them to "police" themselves. While it's understandable that the IEEE thinks this has to be said (since they are the professional organization of these engineers), it will make ZERO difference and fundamentally misunderstands what is actually going on. What is needed is DEEP analysis of the impact of *digital* technologies on society -- which, as far as I can tell, is *not* currently being done anywhere in the world. The uproar over the Snowden NSA "scandal" is *NOT* really about the NSA at all. It is about the dawning realization that we all now live inside a "virtual" system that compels us to *control* ourselves, since all the details of our lives are being "remembered," in a way that no *human* civilization has EVER even imagined it could do! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
Felix: > Some people are using the concept of "ban-opticon" to express this. Correct. The principles involved have been in force for the past 100+ years -- long before *digital* systems. In the original 19th-century Benthamite Panopticon, the key idea was that the "inmates" had no idea if anyone was watching, so they "policed" themselves. DIGITAL systems finally make these principles fully operative. We have long been our own "jailers," making the notion of a 1930s-style Gestapo/Stasi *completely* obsolete. Those "agencies" operated under radio-conditions, with a population that was still getting used to *controlling* themselves. Both the 1932 "Brave New World" and the 1948 "1984" were written with the radio *environment* in mind and did *not* fully anticipate what was already being planned. Television "programmed" the population to the next level of "self-policing" in the 1960s/70s. This is why McLuhan separated HOT media (i.e. radio, where you were told what to do) from COOL media (i.e. television, where you were expected to "fill in the blanks" and *control* your own behaviors.) Furthermore, the collection of data by companies -- particularly credit and health records, which, under Obamacare, now *most* be digitized -- are MUCH *worse* than anything the "government" is doing. While people fantasize that the "thought-police" are going to knock on their door, in reality (which most people have little contact with), these "enforcers" don't even exist. It's FAR too expensive (and politically dangerous) to even imagine building such a group. Instead we have taken on the cost of "policing" ourselves. In cybernetics, this is what is called "second order" and is built around the notion that people "construct" their own reality, based on the work of people like Gregory Bateson and Heinz Von Foerster -- which many people *falsely* think means maximizing human freedom. It does NOTHING of the kind and is actually the opposite (in fact, it's an extension of WW II "psychological warfare" and what Bateson called "rigging the maze.") -- which is why Norbert Wiener *refused* to collaborate with Bateson/Mead/Lewin. This piece is written for the engineers who design "surveillance" systems, asking them to "police" themselves. While it's understandable that the IEEE thinks this has to be said (since they are the professional organization of these engineers), it will make ZERO difference and fundamentally misunderstands what is actually going on. What is needed is DEEP analysis of the impact of *digital* technologies on society -- which, as far as I can tell, is *not* currently being done anywhere in the world. The uproar over the Snowden NSA "scandal" is *NOT* really about the NSA at all. It is about the dawning realization that we all now live inside a "virtual" system that compels us to *control* ourselves, since all the details of our lives are being "remembered," in a way that no *human* civilization has EVER even imagined it could do! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
This is Your Mind on Drugs (OAC Seminar: Hart, Drummond, Stahlman, McCreery etc)
Folks: Keith Hart (who I met on this list) was generous enough to let me participate in the now-almost 3-week-long Open Anthropology Cooperative seminar, which was begun around a discussion of Lee Drummond's essay "Lance Armstrong: The Reality Show (A Cultural Analysis.)" Lee is a "renegade" anthropologist who runs his Center for Peripheral Studies from Palm Springs CA. As Keith would no doubt agree (so don't hold my recommendation against him), Lee is a very smart fellow with a lot to say about topics relevant to this list, so take a look. http://www.peripheralstudies.org/ Below is my most recent post to the seminar, addressing questions and statements that you will not fully understand unless you go and read the thread yourself. Yes, that's asking a lot, since there are 100+ posts (but you can always skip to the end) . . . _http://openanthcoop.ning.com/forum/topics/new-online-seminar-9-21-september -lee-drummond-lance-armstrong-th?x=1&id=3404290%3ATopic%3A198569&page=10#com ments_ (http://openanthcoop.ning.com/forum/topics/new-online-seminar-9 -21-september-lee-drummond-lance-armstrong-th?x=1&id=3404290:Topic:198569&page=10# comments) I'm posting it because I try to get to the core of the issue of why "whole systems" cybernetics "branding" (ala Gregory Bateson and Stewart Brand et al) *replaced* stimulus/response-style advertising in the 1950s, when cool-media-television-choice replaced hot-media-radio-propaganda as our cultural/technological environment. This is an account of the birth of cybernetics-based "social engineering" (and the associated interest in "memes" as well as the modern notion of "democracy") which has recently been a topic-of-interest for this list (and conferences, like the one in Berlin). Nowadays, we're all on some *very* different drugs (which some might even refer to as "nettime" and which are why the US government is currently shut down, why the Italian elites are terrified about another election and why both the Vatican and Beijing are aggressively tackling "corruption") . . . Keith, Lee et al: "This is your mind on drugs!" Sizzle, sizzle. (Who knew that Nancy Reagan was a McLuhanite? ) This is your mind on manuscripts. This is your mind on books. This is your mind on radio. This is your mind on television. This is your mind on Facebook. Sizzle, sizzle. What Keith is doing with Kant is the same as what Lee is doing with Nietzsche. They are *both* deliberately putting their MINDS on something other than today's media "drugs." This is their anti-environment, affording them perspective so that they can think. How "alien" the Enlightenment and pre-Socratic Anatolia must seem to those watching "Breaking Bad" (and then tweeting about it). This is why Lee can "criticize" television/movies (i.e. Lance and Oprah etc) as well as the millennarian "rapturizers" (who, btw, were also a crucial part of the Enlightenment, as that term implies). It is also why Keith can consider a "human economy." Okay, and it's *why* this seminar happened the way that it did. Regarding Bateson's "woodsman," isn't it interesting that he didn't simply recount the story of Kybernetes, the helmsman? Norbert Wiener is my "godfather" because my father was one of a handful passing around a jug of Chianti late one night in Cambridge MA (circa 1946) when they ran through "mythology" to come up with a name for the "science of feedback." As a result, we have CYBER in our vocabulary, reflecting the necessary "unity" between the waves, the rocks, the wind, the sail, the keel, the tiller and the helmsman. This is your brain on *feedback* (with a drop of Florentine liquid-renaissance added) -- glug, glug. But Wiener and Bateson didn't completely see eye-to-eye (or, since the *environment* had by then become thoroughly "electric," ear-to-ear). In fact, Wiener goes out of his way to note that he refused to work with Bateson (and his then-wife Mead) on the application of cybernetics to the "pressing problems of society" in the preface to his 1948 "Cybernetics." So far, I've pointed this out to numerous scholars of the period, none of whom had noticed it. Am I the only one who takes "introductions" (which are typically written last) seriously? The next thing Wiener wrote was his 1950 "The Human Use of Human Beings." Might he have had Bateson/Mead/Lewin (and "general systems" plus Social Psychology) in mind? It seems that Bateson (and many others from the Rockefeller world, including those sponsoring the Macy Conferences, like Larry Frank, in whose Japan-themed home Margaret left her young daughter, Mary Catherine, when she was off to Washington, who then chronicled her absentee father's later life) was very interested in using "feedback" to CONTROL human behaviors. Wiener was not interested in contributing to this project. He was an insider. He knew where
Re: The secret financial market only robots can see
Felix: > OK. It's the machines. You convinced me. Now, what? HA!! Now you (and the rest of us) will have to *understand* the impact on *us* of our own inventions -- particularly the communications technologies that make up our social environment. This environment is man-made. Our behaviors and attitudes are shaped (not "determined," which is a different sort of causality) by our social environment, which, in turn, is based on how we communicate with each other. Yes, the "machines" have a kind of "agency," which results in an imperative and a collection of prerogatives and claims on us. We all live in a "wind tunnel" that bends and shapes our thoughts and actions and that we cannot avoid unless we deliberately dropout of human society. Few wish for that sort of "autonomy." None of this is beyond "human comprehension" but, obviously, sorting it out isn't easy. As previously discussed on nettime, Castels tried to make this point among sociologists (in the late 90s) but he failed. Fifteen years later, we need to do better, much better . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: The secret financial market only robots can see
Felix: > What has happened through financialization is not the rise of > machines, or some creation of intelligent forms of agency beyond > human comprehension. Who said any of this is "beyond" comprehension? If you choose to not even try to understand something, for your own reasons of *dogma* (such as SCOT), the initial reasons for which have long been forgotten, then what does that tell us about "forms of agency"? It is the "machines" that are *spying* on us -- not humans. It is the "machines" that are taking our jobs -- not humans (now that wage arbitrage is declining). As George Dyson illustrates in his "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe," something *qualitatively* different has been invented. Why is that so difficult to grasp? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Phil Agre: Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Soc...
MP: > What part of the technological environment > prompted you to apologise twice in this email? The part that replaced the "mass" with the *individual* . . . !! While the MEMETIC notions of "democracy" and "revolution" were promoted by mass-media (therefore, to "no body"), digital technology has *flipped* memes into something much more personal. Phil Agre (who I knew) and Kalle Lasn (who I don't know) strike me as people who have tried to "personalize" these memes, so it occurred to me that they deserved an apology for their efforts. It's not their fault that it didn't turn out as they had hoped . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Phil Agre: Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Soc...
Nettime: > Citizens would grow up accustomed to having a public voice, to > receiving intellectual responses from others, and to articipating in > a global intellectual culture. The cultural conditions of democratic > intellectual life will have been achieved. Sorry (to Phil Agre) but this is nonsense. There is no "public." There is no "global intellectual culture." There are no "citizens (of the world)." There is no "democracy." There are no "morals." All we have is a *technological* environment -- which is in MASSIVE transition from one based on television (i.e. the one that invented all these 20th century *memes*) to one based on *digital* technology. Television has *satellites* that BEAM the same "propaganda" to everyone. The Internet does not. As a result, MEMES don't work any more! (Sorry, Kalle, you can't "advertise" your way to a revolution anymore.) Yes, people were still talking that way back in 2001 when this essay was published. Now we (should) know better . . . !! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 9/20/2013 11:17:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, nett...@kein.org writes: < http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/intellectual.html > Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Society <...> # 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: The Whole Earth Conference + Turner interview
Karen: Reboot.fm has all the speeches/panels here -- https://soundcloud.com/rebootfm/sets/the-whole-earth-in-the-ether What Fred was talking about with his *two* "countercultures" is a matter of RELIGION -- although he doesn't put it in those terms (probably because his audience thinks that they are "secularists" and would be offended if he did). Some people would rather *protest* -- so, if you will, let's call them the PROTESTANTS. There are lots of those in Europe and, like the "originals," many of them are agitating for Armageddon and hoping for the resulting "heaven on earth." These were the people who once called themselves PURITANS (i.e. followers of John Calvin et al). For many of them, today's equivalent of the Catholic Church is "capitalism" (which, of course, has many names, including "globalism/imperialism" and "neo-liberalism"). Many think of themselves as Marxists and tend to orient towards 19th century (i.e. pre-electric) thought-patterns and the resulting patterns of "struggle" against the Ancient Regime These are the people who Bruce Sterling once called "goofy leftists." Some others would rather be more *psychological* and prefer a more "positive" approach -- so, if you will, let's call them the NEW AGERS. These types tend to be derived from the WW II psychological warriors -- like Bateson (who is the subject of Fred's next book) and his protege Stewart Brand (who was the subject of his last book) -- and they are the ones who think in terms of LSD, Carl Jung, Korzybski (General Semantics), Ben Whorf (Theosophy) etc. They are also looking for "heaven on earth" (i.e. "purity") but tend think more in terms of 20th century (i.e. post-electric) approaches and could be viewed as bringing back older forms of "personal alchemy." They are also opposed to the earlier kinds of (religious) "authority" but, in part because they come out of the military, they often enthusiastically embrace technology and, in their extreme versions, even hope that humans are replaced by machines (i.e. the Singularity etc). Richard Barbrook's "Californian Ideology" is about this NEW AGE group (from the standpoint of a "protester")and my "English Ideology and WIRED Magazine" is about how this group has its origins in the Royal Society of London (from the standpoint of someone who knows both but doesn't "affiliate" with either groups). Two different "countercultures." Two different *sectarian* approaches to changing (i.e. "purifying") the world. Naturally, you would expect them to clash. Nettime, being largely a European phenomenon, favored the PROTEST over the NEW AGE. The W.E.L.L., being largely a California phenomenon, had these priorities reversed. All this, without this religious/historic context, was the topic of Fred's speech in Berlin. But they are two sides of the *same* PURIFYING coin! Naturally, neither one of them likes it if this is pointed out. Yes, it's lonely being me . . . Wiener was never a "military man," and, crucially, he had nothing to do with *psychological* warfare, unlike the anthropologist/psychologist Gregory Bateson. As Steve Heims details in his 1980 double-biography of Wiener and Von Neumann, Wiener was much more of a "protester" by inclination -- repeatedly resigning from MIT over its military contracting and ultimately getting an FBI knock-on-the-door. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: The Whole Earth -- Conference (Berlin, HKW 21/22 June
John: > Anyway, Mark, get the catalog and listen > to the podcasts that Nina gave the > addresses of... it's well worth your time. Thanks, I did. Unfortunately, it's all in German (including the translation of Fred's speech), except for his interview -- which I recommend. Maybe Diana/Pit have the English original of the speech? I helped Fred with "Counterculture" and have staying in touch. I did not help him with the new "Democratic Surround" book (due out in Nov.) but I've discussed it with him and, correctly, he focuses on Gregory Bateson and *not* Wiener in terms of the cybernetics aspect of all this. As it turns out, Wiener *refused* to work with Bateson (and his then-wife Margaret Mead and Social Psychologist Kurt Lewin), which he specifically mentions in the Introduction to his 1948 "Cybernetics" -- for the reasons that he lays out in his 1950 "The Human Use of Human Beings" (where he doesn't mention Bateson or Mead). Wiener wanted *NOTHING* to do with the "controlling humans" aspect of cybernetics -- quite deliberately. That was BATESON and others from the Cybernetics Group and the later Society for General Systems Research! The HKW fellow who interviews Fred doesn't seem to know about any of this, perhaps in part because Richard Barbrook has been ducking my attempts to *correct* what he has written and what seems to be taken-for-granted in the Cybersalon circles in London. Like the drunk who looks for his car keys under the streetlamp, they have been looking in the *wrong* place because "that's where the light is." At the heart of the relationship between LSD and cybernetics -- both of which were/are used as technologies to PURIFY a "corrupt" humanity -- is Stewart Brand. He was both a protege of Bateson, as well as his "publicist" (partly through John Brockman in New York) as well as the publicist for LSD (particularly at the "Trips Festivals"). It was Brand who "famously" said (something like), "If you really want to change humanity, then electronics will be much more powerful than LSD." He's the one who took the hippies and got them online. Not much of a "leap" there on Fred's part (with some help, of course). If you do watch the interview, notice how the interviewer never brings up LSD and how Fred "reluctantly" mentions it in his answer about where the idea of "Whole Earth" came from. Did the exhibit deal with LSD at all . . . ?? > I'm thinking that the next step to this > exhibition would be a wide creative > exploration of (open/living/general) systems > theory from Bertalanffy to Church, Miller, > Odum, Simms, etc etc and all those who > were outside the cybernetics/cold > war systems context. Great idea! However, like LSD, you really can't remove any of this from that dominant Cold War context. Unless they were threatened with prosecution, as was Wiener, forcing him into "retirement," then ALL of these characters were involved in the same matrix of funding, motivation and outcomes. Thanks for the pointer to Leslie's book. As you might recall, I've brought up Christopher Simpson's "Science of Coercion," as well a number of more recent works on the role of the CIA and, those who were really setting the crucial social-science research agenda in the 1950s/60s, the FOUNDATIONS, on the list. Mark # 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
The Whole Earth -- Conference (Berlin, HKW 21/22 June 2013)
Folks: If this was mentioned on nettime (considering that it was once the primary topic of this list), I missed it -- did anyone from this "collective" attend and do they wish to offer a report? http://hkw.de/en/programm/2013/the_whole_earth/veranstaltungen_83124/veranst altungsdetail_90739.php >From eco-psychedelia to Internet neoliberalism: The CONFERENCE will revolve around questions of the legacy of the California counterculture. How did some of its concepts become global principles of new capitalistic ???frontiers??? ? Roundtable discussions will explore the historical sources of, and connections between, discursive and political issues such as the ecological movement, cybernetics, anti-conformist cultures, new artistic practices that dissolve boundaries, and the transformations in these areas right up to the globalist network capitalism of the 1990s. Thus, the conference investigates the background conditions of the discourses that today, in the framework of the Anthropocene, are being negotiated, updated, or ??? in some cases ??? forgotten. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. The event appears to keynoted by Fred Turner, whose upcoming book "The Democratic Surround" I have mentioned in numerous nettime posts. # 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: a liberal revolution in 21st century Africa?
Keith: > PS Mark S. Things digital do make an > appearance in the book, but not in the > essay. Thanks for the shout out . . . !! There are revolutions and there are renaissances. My guess is that the latter would be a much more beneficial prospect for Africa. Revolutions -- particularly the "liberal" ones in the West of the 17th/18th/19th centuries -- all took place within the Christian cultural frame, with particular emphasis on the final "chapter" of the book most favored by the technology of the printing press. By looking for "heaven on earth," these were all deeply concerned (whether they acknowledged it or not) with accelerating Armageddon and the Millennium. My hope is that Africa isn't caught in the same "devil's bargain" as was the West. Fortunately for Africa, China will be more important than the West for its future. China has no "Revelations." China, in fact, is all about *renaissances* (with a cycle of roughly 700 years) and, since it has no interest in the 2nd Coming, it is not about *revolutions* (as reflected in their complete retooling of Marx now underway in Beijing.) Digital technologies "overturn" the environment of *electricity* (which, in turn, overturned the environment of the printing press and its enforced slavery to the Bible) so, for Africa, as for China and every other culture that draws its strengths elsewhere, perhaps "digital" will assist in a long needed renaissance of learning and prosperity. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: In an Internetworked World No One Is "Foreign"
Eugen: > It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started, claiming > that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant > to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET . . . Correct! However, based on my recent conversations with Bob Taylor, you are leaving out the most important part of the story! The reason that was uppermost in his mind for the ARPANET proposal (and for its subsequent approval) wasn't access to "supercomputers" but rather to *interconnect* those far-flung researchers. This came about because the routine practice of getting everyone together for "brainstorming" in the 1940s/50s had atrophied as they scattered and got their own labs. Restaging an updated version of the Macy Foundation sponsored "Cybernetics Group," which met from 1946-53 and involved, Norbert Wiener, Gregory Bateson, Warren McCulloch, Julian Bigelow, Lawrence Frank, Heinrich Kluver, Paul Lazarsfeld, Kurt Lewin, Warren McCulloch, Margaret Mead, John von Neumann, Walter Pitts et al was among those cited as a crucial ARPANET goal. Thus the early emphasis on email and eventually usegroups and so on . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: dark days
Felix: > One is against authoritarian regimes . . . > Another one is against the subversion > of the democratic processes . . . And, > one is against the increasing subversion > of civil liberties . . . Fascinating how you "frame" all this. Authoritarian! Democratic! Liberty! Subversion! As you recall, the juxtapositioning of "democratic" with "authoritarian" comes from the psychological warfare community during WW II. Initially this formulation was aimed at "fascism" and then it became the basis of the Cold War against "communism." Now, when it isn't being aimed at "neo-liberalism," it is being focused on China, via the US State Dept and the panoply of related NGOs, NYTimes etc. Among the early leaders in this effort were Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, who are the "heroes" of Fred Turner's forthcoming "The Democratic Surround," which is positioned as the prequel to his 2006 "From Counterculture to Cyberculture," where Californian ideologist Stewart Brand was the "hero." This psy-war sensibility was also at the core of the 1950 "Authoritarian Personality" by the Frankfurt School's Adorno and the "CIA's" Nevitt Sanford. For those who haven't read them, I'd suggest that Gregory Bateson's "Conscious Purpose vs. Nature" speech at the 1967 "Dialectics of Liberation" conference in London -- sponsored by the Tavistock Institute and published as "To Free a Generation" -- might be useful, along with Mary Catherine Bateson's account of her father's conference on the topic of "terra-forming" humanity in the 1977 "Our Own Metaphor: A Personal Account of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation." As Bateson later revealed, after his years of LSD trips and adventures in self-brainwashing (i.e. NLP etc), the basis of his work was Carl Jung's *gnostic* religious speculations in his 1916 "Seven Sermons to the Dead," as subsequently elaborated in Jung's recently published "Red Book" private notebook. Yes, there is a "religion" behind what you are describing and "subversion" is its cardinal sin. To the extent that the "struggles" are as you describe them, they are at the heart of the "Rockefeller" effort to "social engineer" the world through "control by choice" for more than 60 years. And, the "civil liberties" you describe are the result of "rigging the maze" to provide the "illusion of free-will." In this world, the only liberty involved is the liberty to consume. without questioning the architecture of the maze itself. You are correct that these efforts have not been successful so far and, based on where digital technology is taking us, aren't likely to be successful in the future! If your goal is to "free a generation," then these are indeed very dark days . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: dark days
Felix: > There are dark days, these days. We, the humans, are in serious trouble. What we are up against isn't HUMAN at all; it's a "system" and that means MACHINES. The Google slogan is "Don't BE Evil." That is a statement made by the machines about themselves. As anyone with a smattering of Western cultural education knows, it is *impossible* for humans to not "be evil," since it is in our essential nature. We can try to avoid "doing" evil but no human could live up to the Google slogan. What Snowden, having given up on Obama et al, has just done by sacrificing himself is to try to stop the machines. But, since the humans *refuse* to understand the machines -- which is our only hope -- we cannot possibly fight back. What is decried as "neo-liberal" is just a label for those who are most assiduously working for the machines. They are the BORG -- for whom "Resistance is Futile." For the humans, in the WEST (but not the whole world, particularly in China, where the cultural dynamics are fundamentally different), these are indeed dark days . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Driverless cars, pilotless planes -- will there be jobs left fo...
Brian: > You claim that fundamental issues are > avoided, but most of the people who have written > back in this thread say the current unemployment > problem is not produced by any technological destiny. > It is produced by the way technology is developed > in an abusive capitalist society. That's a fundamental > issue, it's called technopolitics. Huh? I think I know what ???techgnosis??? is but what the hell is ??? technopolitics Sorry, but if people are saying what you think they are (which, of course, isn't really saying anything), then they are speaking out of blinding ignorance and the scandalous failure to examine these issues. Of course we all live in "capitalist society" -- DUH!! Someone please send an Adam Smith an email . . . !! But the nature of that society has undergone massive changes in the past 20+ years -- shifts that the LEFT understood and anticipated in the 1960s -- which, unfortunately you wouldn't know by attending the upcoming LEFTFORUM in NYC. It turns out that the *theme* of the event is ECOLOGICAL mobilization (33 years after the first Earth Day) . . . !! There are hundreds of panels plus the various keynotes and it turns out that ZERO of them include the term "digital" or even "technology" in the title. http://www.leftforum.org/panels/approved The closest that anyone will come to the steady march towards 50% unemployment across the entire developed (i.e. not-yet industrialized) economies will be one panel called "Labor Goes Online: Technological Transformations in the Forms of Labor, Value, and 'Life Itself'". http://www.leftforum.org/content/labor-goes-online-technological-transformat ions-forms-labor-value-and-life-itself This panel is being chaired by CUNY's Tom Buechele, who is affiliated with the sociology department's (which puts on the conference) Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work -- which, as best I can tell, was a brain-child of CUNY prof. Stanley Aronowitz and, for a time, received some (mostly union?) funding. Now it seems to be defunct. The website for the Center speaks only of "previous" studies, has links to journals that don't exist anymore and highlights the 2008 Leftforum -- 5 years ago . . . !! http://web.gc.cuny.edu/csctw/ Aronowitz knows all about this *failure* by the LEFT to deal with what is going on here. He was there when the left produced the 1964 TRIPLE REVOLUTION *manifesto* which put CYBERNATION at the front of the fundamental changes sweeping *capitalist* society. http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Revolution He even wrote (at least) one book about it -- "Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation" http://www.amazon.com/Post-Work-Wages-Cybernation-Stanley-Aronowitz/dp/04159 17832/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369918025&sr=1-1&keywords=aronowitz+po st+work So what is the *left* doing about all this NOW? Complaining about how capitalist society is "abusive" and pointing to ???technopolitics??? . . . ?? You have given away the "secret" in your reply. As far as you (and most others on the left, apparently) are concerned, discussion of the impact of technology on the economy and society becomes a matter of talking about DESTINY. Which is, of course, *religious* language -- akin to "pre-destination" (of Protestant ethic fame) or even FATE (of "eastern" religious fame) -- which is anathema to most, even though many agree we are now "post-secular.??? The origin of your usage, presumably, is the *fateful* decision in the 1970's -- particularly in sociology, which is why the *leftforum* is so clueless (and why Aronowitz is treated like a doddering relic) -- is that thinking about technology automatically becomes the *thought-crime* of "technological determinism." BULL-DADA . . . !! The only ???criminals??? are those who refuse to think through the implications of DIGITAL technology -- because there are *billions* of lives at stake and they are fiddling as the proverbial Rome burns, while blaming it all, like Nero, on someone else. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Driverless cars, pilotless planes -- will there be jobs left fo...
Brian: > Neither will admit that the maintenance of a > social order requires a very large number of > professional educators, ideologists artists > and thinkers. Sorry if I missed this in your earlier writing! What you are promoting is *not* the "working class" (production) or the "managerial class" (neoliberals) but rather the "intellectual class" -- your CLASS . . . !! Why do you think that this "class" or, if you will, those who fancy themselves to be the "post-modern priests" (as reflected by much of the conversation on this list over the past 15+ years) could possibly help provide "social order"? Aren't they also deeply confused? Don't they largely find themselves absorbed in repetitious discussions where the fundamental issues of culture and civilization are deliberately avoided? Aren't they generally unable to comprehend the impact of our inventions on ourselves? Don't they avoid honest analysis of the origins of the West, while failing to grapple with the basic differences in the East? Perhaps Summers and Hutton have met some of these new "priests"? Maybe they know how "dis-ordered" they really are? Current technology trends are pointing towards 50% unemployment in the developed economies. Meanwhile, you seem to be worried about your own "job." Somehow, while understandable, that doesn't seem like a very useful approach to the crisis faced by a *billion* other people -- most of whom have no interest in being "educated" by "ideological artists"! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Jaron lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
Felix: Thanks -- I was hoping (okay, anticipating) that you would reply! 1) Castels: "Manuel Castells immediately springs to mind" -- of course he does and I've read your excellent review/analysis of his work. How has he been received among his peers? I've talked with a few of them and they all said that his "tour" of various sociology departments in the late 90s was a flop. Has he picked up any traction? It is interesting that Berkeley has been involved in multiple attempts to deal with the "ignoring" of technology by social scientists, including the effort to "endogenize" tech in economics. 2) Concreteness: "But even technological development always takes place in concrete historical settings." Indeed. As someone who once followed 20 companies on Wall Street, I'm convinced that the *very* peculiar details of every situation must be known to have any intelligent ideas about outcomes. However, for-better-and-worse, nowadays that sort of behavior can send you to jail. Btw, McLuhan's "business" consulting was always someone else's idea and fly-by-night at best. Perhaps my record of giving such advice would be a more "organized: example -- including my "price target" of $2000 for Google. 3) McLuhan: "The trouble with McLuhan-style analysis is that in order to avoid these complexities, one has to resort to extreme abstraction." Not really. Frameworks like McLuhan's -- which was only published posthumously in the 1988 "Laws of Media," and which few have read and fewer have tried to use -- only make sense when applied over-and-over to the specifics at hand. Derrick de Kerckhove, who seems to be the primary path-to-McLuhan for Europeans recently noted that he *never* uses the Tetrad (i.e. the heuristic presented in LoM) -- so, based on the score-or-so Continentals with any interest in McLuhan who I've met, I'd suggest that there is very little "McLuhan-style analysis" going on. 4) Soviet Union: "Castells bases his analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union on its inability to move out of an industrial and into a networked mode." Yes, that's an important insight. Or, alternately, to use a McLuhan phrase, they failed to shift from "hardware communism" to "software communism." To this day, there is no viable Silicon Valley equivalent in Russia. The final "straw" in the Cold War, "Star Wars," was a joint DoD/DARPA/Valley project and that same military-information complex is now responsible for yesterday's Google I/O keynote. 5) China: "Yes, life was different in the 'East' and in the 'West'" -- especially if you keep on trucking down the Silk Road. In particular, given the historic importance of "Needham's Dilemma" (i.e. how could the Chinese "invent" everything but not allow any of it to shape their society?), the deliberate efforts now to build a "ubiquitous society" based on networked technology, combined with a detailed "roadmap" for scientific research for the next 40-years, taking us into quite different technological realms, has no historic precedent and no counterpart in the West. 6) Scale: "So, if you shrink the scale, things become more difficult." Absolutely. However, micro-without-macro only compounds those difficulties. If you don't have any "theory" to work with and are simply, or let's say robotically, collecting data until some handy "pattern" emerges -- ala today's Big Data efforts -- you will rarely get much insight. As Kurt Lewin said, "There's nothing as practical as a good theory." Without a theory about how technology shapes society -- which certainly need not be the *only* way you try to understand and anticipate events -- you are operating without the benefit your own critical facilities and, in the process, resembling the very technologies that you set out to comprehend (just as McLuhan predicted you would ). Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Jaron lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
Jon: > As i said it appears to me that people have been struggling > with this since the 90s and i see no sign of it stopping. Thanks! You are certainly correct that the various "professions" have circled their own wagons and not stepped up to the challenge of understanding the effects of digital media. So, most of what has been said is in the popular press etc (i.e. Lanier, Johnson, Carr, Morozov etc). Since I've been a part of those discussions -- which is how nettime found me and invited me to "keynote" Metaforum III in Budapest -- and I probably personally know most of the people who have been writing about these issues for the public, my observation is that -- 1) While there are lots of opinions there has been little careful "thought," very little "science" and even less attention to the underlying "history." 2) As a result, most of what has been said becomes "special-pleading" with almost no "legitimacy" (outside of the author's fan-base) and is just more background noise in a world beset by "information overload." 3) To the extent that there are "policy-makers" who count, this lack of any coherence (or even peer review) just encourages them to ignore the problems caused by fundamental technological changes. > I'd just guess life did not stop with Mcluhan Exactly! And, therein lies the problem . . . McLuhan lived in the television era and his most-remembered comments (i.e. those which were turned into "ad-copy") are best for understanding the ONCE new effects of television (i.e. in the 1950s/60s) -- specifically when compared to radio (i.e. HOT and COOL) and books (i.e. Global Village etc) but, since he died in 1980 (and was largely ignored after the early 70s), he did NOT have much-of-anything to say about "computers" or "networks" or the effects of *digital* technology. The McLuhan "revival" beginning in the 90s at WIRED etc wasn't McLuhan at all but the version of him that passed through the intestines of the Whole Earth gang. Their interest was in "co-evolution" of humans and machines, as reflected in Kevin Kelly's books about "What Technology Wants," which has nothing to do with McLuhan (except perhaps in reverse.) Grasping the *differences* between the effects of DIGITAL technology -- social, psychological and economic -- and the corresponding effects of television etc (i.e. what McLuhan actually wrote about) would require a) first understanding what television did *to* us and b) some method/technique of comparing those effects to the ones *caused* by newer technologies. Is there any body of research that does this -- with or without McLuhan? There have been a couple books published in the past few years that purport to deal with this on McLuhan's terms but, alas, they really don't (and, I'll guess that you never heard of them) -- an unfortunate result of being published as "text-books" hoping to capitalize on high-priced "media studies" college courses. The Schmidt/Cohen "metaphor" of living in two *civilizations* echoes the work of Sherry Turkle (and others?) and, IMHO, is valuable precisely because it requires an analysis that is based on *differences* and not treating the Internet as if it's just another version of ad-supported mass media. If you know of any "serious" work along these lines, please tell us . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Jaron lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
Brian: > Let's get to work on this. Great idea! But, before you roll up your sleeves, if you want to have any useful ideas on the structure of labor (and leisure and consumption) then you must begin with a CRASH effort to understand the impact of *digital* technology on the economy. Are you prepared to do that? You and what ARMY? Economists -- including the "heterodox" ones -- uniformly treat technology as an "externality." That means there is no place in their models or narratives for fundamental technological change. When I asked the editor of Real World Economics Review last year if he had *ever* (in 10+ years) had any articles submitted to him about these basic relationships his answer was "No, why don't you submit one?" When I asked a fellow I know who sees most of the grant requests for new economic research if he has seen *any* applications to study this his answer was, "Not one -- all we're seeing now are people who are interested in studying complexity." Sociologists convinced themselves 40 years ago that it would be better to be "constuctivist" instead of "operational" and have steadfastly clung to the CONDEMNATION of anyone who proposes a primary role for technology as being a "determinist" -- including on this list. Recently a group (mostly in the UK) have launched a sub-field called "Digital Anthropology" with a book of that name. From what I can tell, their work is interesting but its still doing anthropology *about* activities that occur when using digital stuff (therefore attracting companies who make that stuff) -- not FLIPPING the inquiry to ask how digital technology should drive a reexamination of anthropology itself. Before the rise of "post-modern" social science in the 1970s, there was a very lively discussion about what technology was doing to the economy and society. Post-Vietnam that discussion *stopped* and has not been revived since. What was once called post-industrial -- which is in fact what is going on not "over-devlopment," making it *unexplored* territory for those who try to understand industrial economics -- then became "late-stage capitalism" or "neo-liberalism," which *deliberately* obscures what is happening and recasts the discussion in terms of a "political" framework that ensures nobody has a clue about what is really happening. Addressing the fundamental issues got "re-framed" out of consideration by *euphemisms* . . . !! Jaron (who I know pretty well) is a very clever guy who has the benefit of NOT being any of these things. Yes, he's a musician but, more importantly, what he says he just "makes up" (i.e. rarely footnotes and mostly has no collaborators) and he doesn't care what some *profession* has insisted is the proper "method." Good for him. So, is he going to be taken "seriously"? No. He is mostly being treated as an oddity who, because he comes from the Sili-Valley tech industry (a point he highlights repeatedly in his book) gets attention for being "anti-technology." And, he's not alone in the category of what many are calling (inaccurately) "neo-luddites." MAN bites DOG (i.e. Internet destroyed the middle class) . . . reads the headline! If you want to "get to work" on the problem of a disappearing middle-class (which, as an *industrial* artifact should be *expected* to "disappear" when the economy shifts to post-industrial) then you'd better explore the factors that are driving the tectonic shifts in the economy. Are you (or anyone else) ready to do that? Or, would you prefer to talk about 3D printing and a revival of (industrial) manufacturing . . . ?? Recently, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen published their "The New Digital Age," in which they argue that we now live in two *civilizations* -- one "physical" and the other "virtual." So what are the economic, social and psychological implications of living in two very DIFFERENT worlds? Any takers? I've written a review (unpublished) of the book that focuses on this question but I've watched/read a dozen interviews/reviews and NONE of them have dealt with this at all. It seems to go right "over" their heads. The name of this list is NETTIME. The implication is that there is something *different* about living in NET time, as opposed to other sorts of "time" -- but what are they? Who has the *courage* to tackle these questions? Without doing this, all the calls to "get to work" will be just more impassioned chatter and breast-pounding . . . !! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Digital Politics <--> Digital Economics
Flick: > I hate to sound like a cold warrior myself . . . Thanks for this illuminating RANT -- yes, you *do* seem to be trapped in the COLD WAR (so, can I help you to escape) . . . ?? My first trip to China was in 1997 and I have gone back many times since. No "minders" and no limit on my ability to talk to the "man on the street." On my first trip, I was commonly approached by people as I rode a bike through the Beijing hutongs, especially kids, so that they could practice their English. But, at that time, getting accurate information about where things -- like an art exhibit or even the National Library -- were located was a challenge and many topics seemed off-limits. On my more recent trips, it has been impossible to not be approached wherever I go by people (of all ages) who wanted to discuss everything -- politics, economics, history etc. -- yes, once again to practice their English, which can cost them $100's for lessons. Walking down the street, standing in line, going to a flea-market -- everyone wanted to talk! In addition to the general economic development, my guess is the Internet has made a lot of difference both is in what people know and what they're interested in talking about (which tends to map onto topics you know something about, so you won't be embarassed.) Words like "democracy" are propaganda terms. Of course the word existed much earlier but it was *fundamentally* re-purposed in the 1950s in order to "fight" the COMMUNISTS. We were "democratic" and they were "authoritarian." Or, as shown in an interview with the CIA's Ray Cline about the Eisenhower era, back then *everything* was re-cast in propaganda terms -- "almost black and white" as he termed it -- including the view that NOT helping the uprising in Budapest would become a propaganda victory for the US by showing how brutal the Soviets were acting. Continuing to use that terminology *against* the Chinese today, even in terms of Tibet, is foolish for the simple reason that anyone with any knowledge of the actual situation will immediately see that it doesn't fit. Ten's of millions of Chinese travel abroad (and then come home), just as 100,000s study in Western colleges (and then go home), including those who nearly every academic I talk to refer to as their *best* PhD students (who then go home). Imagining that what happens on Weibo etc is somehow like an "Iron Curtain" is just stupid, although common. Perhaps you're familiar with the work of Francois Jullien on the Chinese term "shi" (which, in part, refers to cultural notions about "authority in social action") -- http://www.amazon.com/Propensity-Things -Toward-History-Efficacy/dp/B0085SI3S0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368286523&sr=1-1&keywords =propensity+things Last November, I helped to organize a conference at the UN focused on a "Dialogue of World Civilizations," so, as it turns out, I know a little about the place and, indeed, its long-term civilization -- which is quite different from the West and would be a good place to begin for a more thoughtful discussion. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. When I first got involved with nettime, it was around the time of my first trip to China. Back then, the "big-deal" was the BEAST (i.e. aka "Beauty" or those responsible for anti-Soviet propaganda) finally meeting the EAST (i.e. those who were the targets). As best I can recall, there has been little discussion of China, or its parallels with the Soviet Union, in the past 15+ years on this list. Perhaps that should change -- if there are enough people hereabouts who know enough to have an intelligent conversation? # 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
Digital Politics <--> Digital Economics
Folks: Digital Politics: What happens to "democracy" in a world where we all live in TWO *civilizations* (as presented by Eric Schmidt in his "The New Digital Age")? Democracy is *very* loaded term -- in part because it is the primary "negative" being directed at China -- and its Cold War *origins* (i.e. this was also what was throw up against the Soviet Union) are CERTAIN to come under very close scrutiny as a "meme" with some nasty origins. Someone recently sent me this very interesting link -- http://truth-out.org/news/item/15784-the-propaganda-system-that-has-helped-create-a-permanent-ove rclass-is-over-a-century-in-the-making It is fairly detailed account of the historic "control" elements involved with the Rockefeller funding of the Radio Research Project and its mass-media "manipulation" of the population after WW II. This is a subject that I first started to research nearly 40 years ago, when I too was a young "leftie" trying to understand the machinations of the "ruling-class." Okay -- as far as it goes. But there is so MUCH more . . . !! The most important new "discipline" coming out of WW II was Social Psychology -- blending sociology and psychology and based on the techniques that were developed during the war which are generally known as "psychological warfare" (including everything from studies on "morale" to the fire-bombing of Dresden and nuking of Japan.) The *heart* of Social Psychology -- which, incidentally, my "godfather" Norbert Wiener announced in the introduction to his 1948 book "Cybernetics" he would NOT cooperative with (by naming Kurt Lewin, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson as people who had asked for his help to apply cybernetics to "social problems," which he refused to give) -- was the *sharp* distinction between the AUTHORITARIAN and the DEMOCRATIC personality. Yes, these are the terms that they used (first against the Germans and then against the Russians and Chinese) . . . !! So, if we want to figure out what most people mean by "democracy," then posts/essays like the one above -- plus all the back-and-forth that comes with "blog" comments -- will provide us with some approaches if not some answers. The result is NOT going to be pretty. What does "democratic choice" (as opposed to "evil" one-party rule) actually mean? What do we really think about China? Gregory Bateson (who is a folk-hero to many in today's "media studies") describes what was being planned as "rigging the maze" so that "anthropomorphic rats" could get the "illusion of free-will." Btw, he meant this a POSITIVE, since people were being "guided" (through the design of the "maze") to make "healthy" and "democratic" choices. What happens when people take CHOICE seriously and refuse to "vote" for the options that are pre-built into the maze? Could it be something like Italy's 5 Star Movement . . . ?? Digital Economics: What happens when -- as a result of living in TWO *civilizations* (where the "virtual" one is constantly pointing out via person-to-person feedback how STUPIDLY we have been behaving in the "physical" one) -- people stop simply choosing between different brands of toothpaste? However, what those, like the essayist above (and myself in my early days of studying all this), miss is that CONTROL-THROUGH-CHOICE is not a permanent condition! It relies on "subliminal" influence and requires constant reinforcement. That is what *television* (and the culture that revolves around mass-media) does for-and-to us -- constantly reminding us that we are "inadequate" and that we *must* choose products to "improve" our lives. Over-and-over . . . It turns out that the basis of *both* the "democratic personality" and the "consumer economy" are the same -- Social Psychology (aka "psychological warfare") delivered day-in-and-day-out through MASS-MEDIA. So, it is no surprise that the PROGRAMMA of the Italian 5 Star Movement is mostly about basic *economic* issues -- starting with a "citizens wage" and continuing through to Internet access-for-all. And, it should also be no surprise that some prominent members of the MoVementi (where the "V" refers to both the "V-day" that began the movement, roughly translating into f*ck-you-day, as well as the movie "V for Vendetta") were recently kicked out for appearing on . . . TELEVISION!! It turns out that one of the primary points of the 5SM is that they will *not* use mass-media to talk to their audience -- partly because they know they can't "compete" with Berlusconi (who owns the biggest media company) but also because they know that mass-media strives to make everything into a "false" choice (i.e. where there are no choices offered to get out of the "maze" of the typical party-choices). What happens to "economic choice" when NOT buying anything is an equally valid option? Not just because you have less money but b
Re: No Soap! Radio?
Ryan: > I'm wondering if you can elaborate on something > here, as I find what you're saying to be important, > of course. in applying language, like McLuhan's > "environment" to technologies or media, how do you > disentangle "our" understanding of them from the > "environment" itself? Carefully? Painfully? By somehow getting "outside" that environment . . . ?? Or, as McLuhan said, "I don't know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish." After spending his life working on this problem, McLuhan came to use the FIGURE and GROUND relationships explored by Gestalt Psychology to discuss this difficulty. In this approach, the ground-of-our-experience is psychologically "hidden" (as a defense mechanism?) and tends to be exposed when the figures-that-attract-our-attention change but remains elusive even then. For McLuhan, whose day-job was English professor, the dramatic changes in 20th century literature were a powerful touchstone for him to illustrate how this works. In particular, James Joyce was a prime example of someone trying to expose a changing ground (in his case, to an "electric media environment") that required his poetic gymnastics to become manifest. I've been asking people I run into two questions for a few years now -- 1) do you think that the Internet has already changed everything? and 2) what the most important changes in your attitudes caused by the Internet? The first is a *figure* question and 95%+ of those I ask say YES. Figures are easy. The second is a *ground* question and very few can say anything other than, "Now I have an iPhone, etc." -- which, of course, is a *figure* answer. Ground is difficult. In Gestalt terms (as used by McLuhan), what we think we understand is typically figure, while the "environment" is ground and is rarely directly apprehended. Even though it is clear to most people that the figures of our daily lives have changed, trying to understand *why* this has occurred (i.e. examining the changing ground) is uncomfortable, if it's even tried at all. My presumption is that McLuhan was pretty good at working on this because he came from "nowhere" (e.g. Edmonton, Alberta) but still had a strong sense of identity (i.e. he converted to Catholicism in his mid-20's). It also helped that he was an historian of RENAISSANCES (plural) -- so he wasn't limited by the need to force-fit everything into a single "linear" narrative, which requires you to deal mostly with figures and ignore the counter-trends that dominate actual history -- and that he had quite a lot of support (until he didn't and it all fell apart). Clearly our need for IDENTITY is at work here, driving us to express what is easy for those around us to "agree" with -- which then tend to be figures, even (or maybe especially) among those who consider themselves to be "radicals." McLuhan managed to gather a group of people who *expected* him to say things that were puzzling, so he seems to have gotten away without too much "psychic" damage (although the fact that his brain "exploded" at one point might indicate that the stress was a very real one.) Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: No Soap! Radio?
Ryan: > I'm wondering if you can elaborate on something here, as I find what > you're saying to be important, of course. in applying language, > like McLuhan's "environment" to technologies or media, how do you > disentangle "our" understanding of them from the "environment" > itself? Carefully? Painfully? By somehow getting "outside" that environment . . . ?? Or, as McLuhan said, "I don't know who discovered water but it wasn't a fish." After spending his life working on this problem, McLuhan came to use the FIGURE and GROUND relationships explored by Gestalt Psychology to discuss this difficulty. In this approach, the ground-of-our-experience is psychologically "hidden" (as a defense mechanism?) and tends to be exposed when the figures-that-attract-our-attention change but remains elusive even then. For McLuhan, whose day-job was English professor, the dramatic changes in 20th century literature were a powerful touchstone for him to illustrate how this works. In particular, James Joyce was a prime example of someone trying to expose a changing ground (in his case, to an "electric media environment") that required his poetic gymnastics to become manifest. I've been asking people I run into two questions for a few years now -- 1) do you think that the Internet has already changed everything? and 2) what the most important changes in your attitudes caused by the Internet? The first is a *figure* question and 95%+ of those I ask say YES. Figures are easy. The second is a *ground* question and very few can say anything other than, "Now I have an iPhone, etc." -- which, of course, is a *figure* answer. Ground is difficult. In Gestalt terms (as used by McLuhan), what we think we understand is typically figure, while the "environment" is ground and is rarely directly apprehended. Even though it is clear to most people that the figures of our daily lives have changed, trying to understand *why* this has occurred (i.e. examining the changing ground) is uncomfortable, if it's even tried at all. My presumption is that McLuhan was pretty good at working on this because he came from "nowhere" (e.g. Edmonton, Alberta) but still had a strong sense of identity (i.e. he converted to Catholicism in his mid-20's). It also helped that he was an historian of RENAISSANCES (plural) -- so he wasn't limited by the need to force-fit everything into a single "linear" narrative, which requires you to deal mostly with figures and ignore the counter-trends that dominate actual history -- and that he had quite a lot of support (until he didn't and it all fell apart). Clearly our need for IDENTITY is at work here, driving us to express what is easy for those around us to "agree" with -- which then tend to be figures, even (or maybe especially) among those who consider themselves to be "radicals." McLuhan managed to gather a group of people who *expected* him to say things that were puzzling, so he seems to have gotten away without too much "psychic" damage (although the fact that his brain "exploded" at one point might indicate that the stress was a very real one.) Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
No Soap! Radio?
Folks: One of the least understood *distinctions* drawn by Marshall McLuhan was the one he made between HOT and COOL media. In simplest terms, this refers to the broad differences between behaviors and attitudes in an environment saturated with radio (HOT) and with one saturated by television (COOL). A handy way of considering this in terms of "politics" would be to consider the sort of environment that *shaped* the rise of a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao or a Kim Il Sung -- all radio-based (HOT) -- and the sort of an environment that gave us an Obama or an Angela Merkle or a Gorbachev or a Tony Blair -- all television-based (COOL). Much of the frustration felt by today's *activists* about how whatever they try to do it just seems to be "commodified" and absorbed by "late-stage capitalism" is the result of trying to apply radio-era tactics in an age dominated by television sensibility. If you don't *understand* media, then you are doomed to make the same mistake over-and-over! The last time there was a *concerted* effort to understand the impact of "media environments," the focus was RADIO (i.e. in the 1930s/40s) -- which involved some of the most "respected" social scientists at the time (organized out of Columbia and Princeton, including Lazarfield, Cantril and Adorno) and which produced today's "opinion research" industry as well as fields like Social Psychology and Communications Research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Project There were some fascinating studies done about the relative "propaganda" deficiency of TELEVISION (compared with radio) -- resulting in the complaints of FCC head Newton Minow about a "vast wasteland" and Fred Friendly's efforts to start "public television" -- which produced at least one PhD about how TV could *not* be used to "teach" anything (by Tavistock-related Marilyn Emery) and, indeed, the 1953 Ford Foundation funding that launched McLuhan's own career studying "Changing Patterns of Language and Behavior in the New Media of Communication" (i.e. television.) And, if you don't understand the differences between RADIO and TELEVISION as *environments*, then you will really be confused about the Internet -- which is fundamentally different from either of these. First, despite all the efforts by Facebook, Google et al to harness the INTERNET as the successor to *television* advertising (e.g. the design of their business models and the "demographic" data collection their systems are organized to try to sell to advertisers), these businesses cannot succeed! Second, consider the widespread *hair-on-fire* reaction of those committed to television-era mass-media "rationality" -- particularly to the "values" of democracy/tolerance/non-discrimination/equality/globalism -- to what the INTERNET has done to their cherished ability to "curate the news." Today, the NYTimes foreign affairs columnist, Tom Friedman, takes aim at the Internet-based "radicalization" of the Boston Marathon bombers. He reminds his readers, "That's why, when the Internet first emerged and you had to connect with a modem, I used to urge that modems sold in America come with a warning label from the surgeon general like cigarettes. It would read: 'Attention: Judgement not included.'" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/opinion/sunday/friedman-judgment-not-inclu ded.html?ref=thomaslfriedman&_r=0 The NYTimes is a part of the dying *television* environment (having previously been a part of the *radio* environment), so it cannot comprehend what has happened -- as the ENVIRONMENT has once again shifted to something quite different. This past week, Eric Schmidt's publisher printed 150,000 copies of his "The New Digital Age" -- an attempt to bring the Council on Foreign Relations (among others) into the INTERNET era. The first words of the book are "The Internet is among the few things humans have built that they truly don't understand." The heuristic he uses to drive home this distinction is the notion that we now live in two worlds -- one physical and another that is "virtual." Let's see how well the television-saturated "policy" audience he's aiming at deals with his claims. So far the term used to describe the book, which many presumed to be another expression of Californian "libertarian" tech-utopianism, seems to be "sobering"! Not HOT (like radio, although with many similar qualities) and not COOL (like television, against which it is most directly opposed), the INTERNET brings with it a new set of behaviors and attitudes. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. For those unfamiliar with the history of the phrase "No soap, radio," the Internet provides some guidance -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_soap_radio P.P.S. There are many commonplace distinctions that can help you to distinguish between the RADIO and TELEVISION expressions of the same urges -- such as the distin
Re: Essay-Grading Software
Patrice: > Made me think of this very issue, where 'Hubos' > (Human robots) would presumably make 'automated > grading' even more efficient, and acceptable. Yes but this is based on another MISTAKE -- that "robots" are at all anything like *humans* (typical mistake #3). The "meme" that lingers after 50 years of *failure* by the Artificial Intelligence crowd (now represented by Ray Kurzweil and his clueless epigone at Google etc) is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about humans (typical mistake #1). As historian of technology George Dyson correctly insists, these machines are part of a *diffferent* UNIVERSE from both the humans and our other "non-digital" inventions (including society/culture). As he says in the preface to his 1997 "Darwin Among the Machines," "In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature and machines." He then updates this three-part distinction in his 2012 "Turings Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe," by distinguishing computers from other machines. If we can't adequately understand these distinctions, then we will have little chance of sorting any of this out! Machines will *never* become "conscious" or "emotional" or "spiritual" because none of that is "programmed" into them. They weren't "designed" to do any of this -- indeed, we couldn't include any of this precisely because these qualities cannot be reduced to something we can design (i.e. a result of typical mistake #1). Imagining that "robots" will become like humans, as the Swedes have in "Real Humans," is a typical device for science fiction that is designed to amuse humans . . . and of no "interest" to the machines themselves -- no matter how much processing power they might have. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Essay-Grading Software
John: > At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive > to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from > life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all > energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited > by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, > nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. Are you sure that you adequately understand either humans or their technological environments? Humans are *not* monkeys 2.0 (typical mistake #1) and the effects of our man-made environment on the humans are neither fixed *nor* impossible to understand (typical mistake #2) -- so, you might consider that you have begun your "analysis" with the *wrong* premises. The "pessimism" you reflect is likely based on these *mistakes* and, like many others, you will find that you have no choice but to re-examine some of your fundamental beliefs. It's time to start asking some *very* basic questions about both humans and the environments they make! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: the leopard 2.0 - nothing changes in italy and the mummy wins (...
Alex: > So the electoral quake was all a fake. Really? What is being reported over here (barely) is that this was a maneuver to avoid another election -- with the presumption that as frustration rises *more* people would vote for Grillo et al. Yes, there are more twists-and-turns to come -- including changes in the elections rules -- but what indications are there that the 5 Star Movement (with its *citizens wage* political plank) will be permanently pushed aside? I guess the regional elections this weekend might be important . . . ?? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Technological Construction of Society
Brian: > Mark, the simple answer to your question > is that causality is bunk. Every human event > is the singular outcome of a confluence of multiple > substances, forces and possibilities. Thanks! Now we are getting somewhere -- but where? I presume that when you say that "causality is bunk" you mean that the typical cause-and-effect "logic" we have all been taught is seriously inadequate, if not "simply" wrong. I couldn't *agree* more! So, a "confluence of multiple substances, forces and possibilities" should replace the "reduced" appraoch to causality in your view. I couldn't *agree* more! And now we have to decide if this "multiplicity" can be *understood* in some sense, right? (Or, maybe not?) Aristotle thought that it could. He famously categorized *causes* as being FOUR-FOLD -- material, final, efficient and formal. _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes) For something like 2000+ years, this approach to *multiple* causes -- with various interpretations -- was dominant in Western philosophy. But, as best I can tell, sometime in the "Enlightenment" our notions of causality started to be restricted and ultimately only the *efficient* sort of causality remained (at least for public consumption, which is important, since this shift was accompanied by the development of the "exoteric/esoteric" spilt). This restricted approach -- sometimes called "reductionist" or "positivist" -- has, of course, also been under attack by a series of efforts, of which Spinoza is a popular example. As you know, a common critique of Spinoza is that he was a "pan-theist," or, in the context of this conversation, perhaps a "pan-causalist." His approach is, among other things, popular with some *psychedelic* "post-moderns" -- including one who I first met at a nettime event! It appears that causality is experienced differently when in an "altered-state." The most common expression of this "pan-causalist" sensibility today is probably associated with "complexity" and in particular with the notion of "emergence." Emergence has become a popular enough notion that it supports an entire curriculum known as BIG HISTORY (funded by Bill Gates etc), which purports to teach high-schoolers that there is a common "explanation" for everything from the "Big Bang" to riots in Tahrir Square. In Aristotelean terms, *emergence* is understood as a property of matter itself, sometimes described as a "loophole" in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, by which the constituents of the universe "self-organize." This is, if you will, a re-appearance of MATERIAL cause. The fact that you began your list with "substances" would imply that you are also interested in *material* causality -- if not actually in "emergence," as it is commonly used. Your "forces" comment tends to imply EFFICIENT cause and "possibilities" might imply FINAL or even FORMAL cause. Bravo! You have (perhaps without knowing it) opened up the conversation about the multiple sources of causality! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. The sort of "technological" causality that I favor is what is sometimes called "ecological" or "environmental" cause. It is an attempt to take into account "structures" and derives from a renewed attention to FORMAL cause. My sense is the folks who began promoting SCOT in the 1970s were thumping for their own particular notion of structure (i.e. "society") against other notions of structure "(i.e. "technological environment") and that all this belongs in an account of the developments in *structuralism/post-structuralism* and the peculiarities of academia in that time period. My guess is that most people have forgotten how/why this happened (such as the impact of the Vietnam War on social science) and that it is now time to reconsider our "religion" on the topic of *multiplicity* of causality. P.P.S. The only sort of Aristotelean cause that *requires* HUMANS is *formal* (or "structural/environmental") cause. You seem to have been careful to qualify your statement with "human events," which implies that you are distinguishing between the Big Bang and the economy. Perhaps you are also distinguishing between "hard" and "social" science. Because (don't you love that word? Be-Cause! ) of the multiplicity of causes, that would be a smart thing to do. Physics and anthropology don't deal with the same "confluence" of causes. Perhaps there are some "dialectical materialists" who have read Marx's PhD thesis who would like to comment on that "matter." # 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
Technological Construction of Society
Folks: Based on the categories that have become widespread over the past 40 years, I guess that I am a "technological determinist" -- perhaps the worst sort of "thought criminal" possible in social science. So, as you might (not) be surprised to hear, I have been frustrated trying to figure out what that means and, indeed, what "crime" I have committed. I've spoken with quite a few social scientists who have used the term in their work -- typically declaring that *they* (and everyone they admire) must definitely can't imagine committing this crime themselves -- but not one of them was able to identify someone (or some specific work) that clearly exemplifies what they are opposed to. Why all the fuss? Some have told me that it was an artifact of the "culture wars" in social science in the 1970s. Some have told me that it was all a major "ideological" mistake that seriously weakened their ability to understand social developments. Some have just told me that they are embarrassed to have ever brought it up. No one "defended" it with any confidence. Yet, the *crime* is still on the books. What seems to typically be "at risk" with the word *determinism* is the notion of "human agency." But, as best I can tell, there hasn't been a careful investigation of what this *agency* means by those making the claims. There are apparently some underlying assumptions being held here about human behaviors and attitudes that don't get discussed. What notion of social and psychological *causality* is implied? Feuerbach said " Der Mensch ist, was er isst," so what does this mean about our relationship to our man-made environment? What makes us who we are? Our chromosomes? Our childhood traumas? Our "class" status? Our breakfast? I've heard that the rise of unquestioning belief in SCOT (the Social Construction Of Technology), starting in the 1970s when this phrase was first used, was more a matter of "turf-wars" in academia than it was a "serious" intellectual endeavor. Grants are, I suppose, a reflection of somebody's "agency." Can anyone shed some light on this situation? How did it happen? Does it make any sense today? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Means of production: The factory-floor knowledge economy (le m...
Patrice: Ah yes -- how could I forget the TRAINS . . . !! As I recall Filippo Martinetti once wrote an influential *manifesto* on that topic. And, a friend of his even made them run on time (until he was hung). My "lineage" (in art history terms) tends more to the VORTICIST (and, thus, anti-futurist) direction. There's something about being denounced as the CRIMINAL who represents all that is wrong about *art* by C.P. Snow that seems to appeal to my instincts. The Enemy Brooklyn NY In a message dated 3/18/2013 10:24:51 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, patr...@xs4all.nl writes: I am curious who's going to build locomotives then. But could be bots of course. Cheers from p+4D! (love trains, that's why, but they ain't any longer what they were. It's Newmedia's fault! ;-) # 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: Means of production: The factory-floor knowledge economy (le mo...
Folks: Once again this article shows a profound failure to deal with the effects of technology -- pointing, among other places, to the underlying flaws in the MIT "history of technology" effort. With the advent of MASS media, industrial economics shifted from *production* to *consumption*and since there is no "consumption function" in today's economic models, we still have little idea has happened to us and continue to look at the wrong places to understand the current situation. Once the rest of the world completes its own industrial development, the notion that there is any future for *industrial* production workers is silly and increasingly *reactionary* . . . !! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Geopolitics and internet
Duda: Fascinating (one more time around the block with IW) while *completely* missing any discussion of the social impact of TECHNOLOGY . . . !! Not a single mention of the INTERNET (so, your title is misleadingly wishful) or even of the change from an industrial organization to a post-industrial one. No recognition that television and the Net generate completely different behaviors and attitudes. It doesn't seem this guy has been paying much attention. Wallerstein has indeed been writing about this for 40 years but so were MANY others -- starting in the 1950s (when the "social-scientification" he mentions began -- funded by "Rockefeller" et al), through the 1960s (when the pent-up tensions broke out, leading to the 1969 Bilderberg meeting on "social change," w/ Daniel Bell and Marshall McLuhan invited to "explain" what was going on), into the 1970s (w/ the explosion of "futurist" manifestos, including Toffler et al). We forget this history at our own peril and saying the same thing over-and-over -- while missing the underlying drive of these changes -- is just STUPID. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: > Well, in the US from about 1980 onward, the information > age offered a very high return on private finance and a steady > stream of purchasers for govt bonds. Of course it did! Finance is, after all, just "pushing paper" around (i.e. decidedly "post-industrial") and selling those bonds was the necessary corollary to Wal-Mart becoming the FRIENDSHIP store for Chinese industrialization -- given that the US economy had shifted from production to consumption by this time. Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher had very little to do with any of this -- but, if you must "overlay" reality with *ideological* triggers like this, go right ahead! I have no interest in "dis-entangling" the technology from the political-science but I do have an interest in avoiding CONSPIRACY theories that put decisions in the hands of people who didn't make them and attributing "plans" to people who didn't have them. Alas, the only way to avoid that sort of thinking, other than an over-abundance of caution, seems to be actually know (some of) the people involved. And my 20+ year career on Wall Street gave me the opportunity to meet many of them. For better-and-worse, I don't have to imagine how Bill Gates or George Soros thinks. > In addition to the technological innovation school of > Freeman, Louca, Perez, etc I would suggest you look into > the "Social Structures of Accumulation" theorists who > provide exactly what Perez calls for but does not produce, > namely an understanding of the institutional frameworks in > which the long waves of technological development unfold. >From what I can tell, the SSA folks have little to say about what happened *institutionally* after the 1973 inflection -- which, as you know, was roughly the beginning of the CURRENT *digital* techno-economic paradigm. The founding work seems to have been published in 1978 (i.e. too early) and it doesn't seem to comprehend how things like the Trilateral Commission were an expression of elite power *weakness* not strength. While Victor Lippitt tries to wrestle with some of this in his 2006 "Social Structure of Accumulation Theory," he seems to trip over these problems and end up with an "over-determined" and "anti-essentialist" conclusion. >From what I can tell, he's right -- even if he (and the others?) mistakenly put the beginning of the "current" SSA around 1995 (an error that seems to inflict many who try to piggyback on the Kondratiev Wave people, who, in turn, have little to do with Kondratiev) -- that this theory doesn't work very well when there really aren't any NEW institutions involved. _http://economics.ucr.edu/seminars/fall06/ped/VictorLippit10-20-06.pdf_ (http://economics.ucr.edu/seminars/fall06/ped/VictorLippit10-20-06.pdf) So, the "post-war" SSA "collapsed" in the 1970s but there were no *new* institutions? HUH? Same old "globalist" WTO and same old Federal Reserve? This strikes me as an example of what I was talking about -- putting IDEOLOGY ahead of *understanding* which leads to theories that don't make much sense. Please show me that I'm wrong (really)!! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: > But when you follow the technology, Mark, it leads to the > questions of social reproduction and of government. Exactly! It's really a pleasure to discuss this with someone who does their homework! > According to Perez, it's only after the successful resolution > of the institutional questions - concerning wages and livelihood, > money and credit, government regulation and intervention, > international trade regimes, etc - that a "techno-economic > paradigm" can reach its mature phase and deploy all its > potentials. Precisely! So, what does Perez say about the "potentials" for the current TEP and the progress by the "institutions" to deal with the changes driven by the technology? What sort of economic growth does "informationalism" (or what many have long called "The Information Age" and what was originally called "Post-industrialism") offer for those economies that no longer have industrialization (i.e. the earlier 4x "surges" described in her work) to drive living standards -- like North America, Europe and Japan? Silence? I have been discussing this with her for nearly 10 years and have helped with some of her papers on the topic. You will notice that there are NO numbers in her work! (And, as we've discussed, providing those numbers is likely to become my job.) The fact is that the "institutions" in the *developed* economies have failed to deal with these problems for 50+ years (i.e. since it became clear in the early 60s where this was all heading) and show no indication of picking up the ball today. The EU's "Internet of Things" (i.e. sensors everywhere or what IBM calls "Smarter Planet") is the closest they've come and, once again, it has no numbers attached and no growth forecasts are implied. It simply won't help reverse the larger trends. Meanwhile, we in a "race against the machines." As detailed in their book with the same title, the group at MIT's Center for Digital Business simply *cannot* find the new jobs that have long been expected. Nothing will be spared. Robots will flip burgers, fight wars, take care of the elderly, conduct science experiments and paint pictures. What are the POTENTIALS with all of this? The Singularity? Labeling all this "neo-liberal" is a cop-out and completely misses what has gone on! The technology doesn't care who is elected President or Prime Minister or who controls the legislature (or what we say on nettime). The typical left vs. right bickering is the modern version of fiddling (and dancing) while Rome burns. Complete ignorance -- on both "sides" -- about the fundamental changes that have *already* happened as a result of technology dominates the *ideological* debates! If Carlota could find a "socialist" to pay attention to her work, she'd be very happy. ANY "leftist" with institutional clout at all would be great. NONE have stepped forward -- not even in Estonia where she teaches classes for the EU! Paul Krugman's "Keynesianism" only works if his "stimulus" kickstarts the economy and it rebounds decisively. But under "informationalism" that cannot happen (as Krugman suspects but is afraid to admit)! At the same time, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has published their *strategic* roadmap for science and technology (in English), complete with projections of what this will mean for "ubiquitous" Chinese society -- unlike anything ever done in the West. Is this something they accomplished because of their "Marxist" ideology or is it really the reflection of a much more deliberate and responsible collections of "institutions," which are able to operate *without* concerns about "ideological" distractions (i.e. the *lack* of ideological "struggle")? LEFT vs. RIGHT is a hoax. As shown over the past 50+ years of back-and-forth in US politics, it doesn't matter which "side" wins -- because, of course, they aren't really different at all on what really matters. They are just two sides of the same TECHNOLOGICALLY *ignorant* coin. Taking responsibility for POST-INDUSTRIAL economic development will require abandoning the typically superficial arguments based on "ideology" -- which only gets in the way of our ability to understand what has happened and where we are heading. Throw it all out! You can run your "ideology" up the flag-pole everyday and hope that someone will salute it (no doubt getting some personal satisfaction at the audiences attending your lectures) and hope that someone will incorporate your ideas into their "institution" but that has already been tried and FAILED. >From 1964-66 a US Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress met almost daily to discuss these issues. It had top labor leaders (Reuther etc), social scientists (Bell, Sokow etc) and industrialists (Watson, Land etc) and it produced a complete set of recommendations along with 6-volumes of backup materials/testimony. (I'll be glad to send a PDF copy to anyone i
Re: living systems theory [2x]
John: >In general, living systems process more information >than non-living systems, with the possible exception >of computers which have greater information processing >capabilities. Really? On what basis would *anyone* think that machines can be compared in this way with humans or, for that matter, other living organisms? The only one I can think of is the desire to "replace" the one with the other (e.g. "immanentize the Eschaton") -- as in Ray Kurzweil and his "pill-popping" cheat-death sideshow, the Singularity. Kurzweil -- who is now designing a "brain" at Google (good luck!), after it became clear that he wasn't being appreciated at Google-backed Singularity University (which has now become a New Age MBA program) -- got his first big popularity boost by George Gilder, who wrote a chapter on him (titled "The Age of Intelligent Machines," the same as Ray's 1990 book) in his best-selling 1989 "Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology." George, who is a radical "millenialist," sold Ray to the world. And the acknowledgements for Microcosm has a curious sentence, "At the end, Mark Stahlman of Sanford C. Bernstein gave me the benefit of his sophisticated insights on information technology and his broader sense of the philosophical issues of the microcosm." What did I do for George? I edited all his remarks about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics out of the book. I was trained as a Molecular Geneticist and my "godfather" was Norbert Wiener, so I have had a chance to think a bit about the topic of the living vs. cybernetic -- without the *religious* and *ideological* confusions that Gilder, the "economist," overlays on all this. George has another book coming out this spring. What's it on? The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics! (Sometimes they never learn. ) Machines are FUNDAMENTALLY different from humans and other living creatures. Thinking otherwise is just confused or, as Wiener put it, "bamboozled" and the result of "intellectual laziness"! Machines will *never* become CONSCIOUS because that's an "organic" development, which has a completely different etiology and, crucially, teleology. Why would a machine have any "interest" in any of that? But why some humans might be interested is very different story. Some people *really* want to "change the world"! As I stressed in my review of George Dyson's 2012 "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe," he is correct that software isn't "life" but is in fact something quite new and different -- which deserves to be investigated with its own "biologists" etc. _http://m.strategy-business.com/article/120301?gko=396e7_ (http://m.strategy-business.com/article/120301?gko=396e7) Enough about the past. What happens when people recognize that "living systems theory" doesn't MAKE ANY SENSE? What will they come up with to replace it? And, with Wiener's predictions about robots replacing human workers coming true (the latest machines can replace lab-bench experimenting post-docs), will people pay any attention to what he said in his 1950 "The Human Use of Human Beings" (a topic of some interest at the 1997 "Beauty and the East" nettime meeting in Ljublana)? Maybe, after 15+ years, it's time for another of these "squad meetings" . . . ?? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: > And the question is: Does this represent the > longed-for foundation of a new expansionist wave? > Or (more likely in my view) just the agitated death > throes of neoliberal informationalism? There you go again! You really can't put an "ideology" on these developments, since they are not being driven by the *ideas* so much as by the technology. Don't let your "morals" get in the way of your analysis. Follow the technology! The rise of the US "neoliberals" was much more the result of a breakdown in coherence of the alternatives (labor had sold out for their pension plans and the "intelligentsia" had abandoned "nationalistic" thinking) -- all of which took place in the drive for "globalization" which is, in turn, occasioned by the "Global Theater" that is produced by geo-stationary/LEO satellites (delivering both television and surveillance.) Technology was in charge. So, the "ideology" question today is what happens to GLOBALISM now that the dominant medium is *not* television but rather the Interweb -- which is *not* a "globalizing" technology but rather a *localizing* one, driven by feedback (i.e. what really happens on Facebook, not selling soap)! Is DAVOS kaput? Does the failure of Schmidt/Page/Brin to showup this year do more to put a nail in its coffin then "anti-globalization" riots (which just makes these people feel important) ever could? Have people finally figured out why China *never* sent anyone of any rank to the World Economic Forum? On growth, your view is correct. Growth is over in the already-industrial economies, at the same time it will continue for decades elsewhere. The US has been "post-industrial" (notice, not an "ideological" term) since median wages leveled off in the 1970s. Europe since the 1980s(?) Japan since the 1990s. Without the steady upward push of industrialization, there is no place for the economy to go other than "services," in particular finance. Calling this "neoliberal" misses the whole point and mistakes an epiphenomenon for the underlying causes. Party over. Industrialization has run its course for 1 billion people. The other 6 billion don't really need Goldman Sachs and, yes, sea levels are going to rise as massive amounts of carbon is burned to industrialize the rest of the planet. Forget about Kyoto -- which was just another *globalist* scheme. And, forget about the EU (ditto -- globalist scheme that has crashed.) Bravo that you are actually reading Schumpeter's "Business Cycles" and going over the SPRU materials! Carlota Perez is a friend and we have discussed the *qualitative* differences between the current "Moore's Law" Techno-Economic Paradigm and the previous FOUR "surges" that made up the Industrial Revolution. So, the *economic* question is what technologies are coming next? And, since the "silicon" TEP is in its final phases, what will the impact of the NEXT one (roughly 2020-to-2080) be on societies around the world? As long as the economists (and anthropologists and sociologists etc) *ignore* these developments they will have little to contribute. Btw, based on my conversations with Ning Wang, Ronald Coase's partner, he agrees. He's familiar with the Chinese Academy of Sciences "Strategic Roadmap to 2050" -- a uniquely organized effort to address these issues. Available on Amazon. Read his book on China w/ Coates. These guys are *not* confused, like so many others. Yes "neoliberalism" is compatible with "complex systems theory" and, most of all, the illusive notion of "emergence" -- because all of this is based on a total lack of COHERENCE. All this talk about the 2nd LAW is the result of *disorder* not clear thinking. No ideas, no plans, no analysis, no strategy -- don't worry *emergence* will save us! No surprise that Kevin Kelly, Clay Christensen and George Gilder are all religious "millenialists" hoping for the end-of-the-world. "Out of Control" is their ticket to the spaceship that will take them to the PROMISED land! But none of this is capable of motivating any activity other than "gaming the system" to line your own pockets -- which is what happens when a "worldview" is in disarray and decline, not when it is ascendant. The problem with "conspiracy" theories -- which includes the one that puts the "neoliberals" are in charge of anything -- is that they give far too much credibility and too much power to the "enemy." Because they are really "stories" cooked up to explain one's own powerlessness, they have to construct a BOOGYMAN. All of this us vs. them is a distraction -- if understanding the world is really your goal. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
John: > The submersion (perversion!) of much general systems > thinking into the cybernetic/military-industrial was an > unfortunate result of crossovers between all these people > (and others) at the time. As I emphasized to Brian, when you look at any of this with "perversion" and "unfortunate" in mind, you will have a MUCH more difficult time sorting out what was useful and what was BULLDADA in this material. You need to check your "morals" at the door, if you want to understand what was going on. The context for all this was the COLD WAR -- as you know from your family history. Very few could resist the *temptation* of getting involved and even fewer had a "principled" stance they could maintain in the face of what was a very effective and all-encompassing "propaganda" onslaught. It seemed that there were two "rival" global SYSTEMS fighting for the future of humanity and the "systems" people were deeply committed to winning. Telling yourself that you were the "good guys" and that the Soviets were the "bad guys" was exactly what happens when you insist on "moralizing" the situation . . . and when you insist on viewing everything as a "complex system" in which "progress" (i.e. the good vs. the bad) is easy to choose. Those who could resist -- which includes Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan and (to some degree) Kenneth Boulding -- seem to have been able to do this because they had *religious* reference that superceded the apparently earth-shattering conflicts of the day. Wiener was a "Tolstoyian," McLuhan a Catholic and Boulding a Quaker. Take this away from them and you wind up with people who have no "image" of man -- which was Boulding's primary concern. > But certainly some of the ideas are extremely powerful > (as illustrated by the fact that our social system as it is > rests largely on a technocracy constructed from that > worldview!). This is exactly what we need to sort out -- NOW. Were these ideas really powerful? Did they "succeed"? Is there an important "technocracy" that somehow emerged with this world view? Indeed, is there even something that can be meaningfully be called a "social system"? I have my doubts. My guess is that these ideas "failed" -- which makes them even more important to understand today, because, as far as I can tell, the "systems approach" is the ONLY "new" way of thinking about society that developed in the past 50+ years. The reason for this failure is the same one that pointed Coase/Wang to issue their "Man and the Economy" challenge -- humans are NOT systems! As historian of science George Dyson puts it in the Preface to his 1997 "Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence," "In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature and machines." Trying to apply "machine" or "nature" thinking to the HUMANS might work as an "approximation" for a limited time and for a limited purpose but it cannot sustain itself -- or so I suspect. It's time that we figured it out! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
John: > Although I am haven't the time to promote and explore the > application a wholistic approach like 'living systems theory' > or 'general system theory' to such issues . . . Thanks for bringing this up! However, in this case, the key individual is probably Kenneth Boulding. Central to his work is the entire literature on the "Image" -- which he called "Eiconics" and which (sorta) later became "mimetics." He organized the Ford Foundation funding for the Society for General Systems Research, from a plan that was hatched at the Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences (also Ford funded.) He also *did* read McLuhan (and Carpenter, along with their predecessor Harold Innis, who had been involved in Rockefeller social science funding in Canada) and tried to incorporate what he learned into his own work on economics. When Boulding left Univ. of Michigan (where he was associated with the Group Dynamics center that had moved there from MIT after Lewin's death) in the early 70s, he (and his wife Elise) went to UofColorado at Boulder, where they published 5 volumes of his "collected papers." Little read nowadays, they are a trove of details about the "issues" being worked on in the 1950s/60s. Boulding also contributed to the McLuhan/Carpenter "Explorations" journal in the 50s and wrote a fascinating review of McLuhan's two early 60s books in 1965 (reprinted in Vol 4 "Toward a General Social Science"). _http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Papers-Kenneth-Boulding-E/dp/0870810537/ref =sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358865800&sr=1-5&keywords=boulding+collected+pa pers_ (http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Papers-Kenneth-Boulding-E/dp/0870810537/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358865800&sr=1-5&keywords=boulding+collec ted+papers) Elise was also very active in movements for "change" and how those efforts relate to history, as shown in her comments appended to the infamous 1974 SRI/Center for the Study of Social Policy "Changing Images of Man" -- _http://ce399.typepad.com/files/changing_images.pdf_ (http://ce399.typepad.com/files/changing_images.pdf) A "retrospective" review of this *manifesto* would be a good idea for an early issue of "Man and the Economy" -- if Coates/Wang ever succeed in getting their journal off the ground. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: > Mark, I am always fascinated by your ideas and the things you refer to. So, Brian loves Mark (in public) . . . ?? I find that if you want to "go" someplace, it is very helpful to know where you are already. And, if you wish to know where you stand today, it is indispensable to understand how you got there. People who don't care about any of this are generally not "serious" about going anyplace. But, far more interesting are those who seem to be engaged with history and, in constructing their "narratives," make some things up and leave other things out. History is tricky that way. So are people. For instance, Richard Barbrook has "made up" a story about Marshall McLuhan (which forms an important part of his lecture series) -- derived, I suspect, from his general distaste for the French and their once-upon-a-time fascination with "Le McLuhanisme." From what I can tell, the French never really read McLuhan. (Or, for that matter, since he incorrectly calls him a "determinist," has Barbrook.) You mentioned Joseph Schumpter as a favorite of the neo-liberals. Perhaps. But, if by that you mean the promotion of the "creative destruction" meme in the 1990s, that is the work of George Gilder in Forbes and, as best I can tell, he never read Schumpeter -- who was already expunged from the curriculum when Gilder studied economics at Harvard. Schumpeter's 1938 "Business Cycles," which is at the center of his work on econometrics, is long OOP, other than a very expensive re-print -- _http://www.amazon.com/Business-Cycles-Theoretical-Historical-Statistical/dp /1578985560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861572&sr=1-1&keywords=schump eter+business+cycles_ (http://www.amazon.com/Business-Cycles-Theoretical-Historical-Statistical/dp/1578985560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861572&; sr=1-1&keywords=schumpeter+business+cycles) If you don't understand these cycles (and, importantly, the subsequent work on the topic), can you really say that you have read Schumpter? George Gilder, today's popularizer of Schumpeter, insisted that the Dot Com bust was the result of excessive "regulation." Wrong! If he had read and understood "Business Cycles," he could not (honestly) make that claim. You also mentioned Kondratiev and his supposed "waves." That is also a fabrication. The whole movement in finance to try to chart out these waves appears to have been constructed without the benefit of reading Kondratiev -- who wrote in Russian and the translation of whose work into English didn't happen until the 1990s. _http://www.amazon.com/Works-Nikolai-Kondratiev-Pickering-Masters/dp/1851962 603/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861757&sr=1-2&keywords=kondratiev_ (http://www.amazon.com/Works-Nikolai-Kondratiev-Pickering-Masters/dp/185196260 3/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358861757&sr=1-2&keywords=kondratiev) Yes, Schumpeter read him in German, so maybe some others did as well but what is attached to his name today has little to do with what he actually said -- which is true for Schumpeter as well as Kondratiev and McLuhan. Sloppy scholarship? Sure. Laziness? Of course. But there is also a the drive to "invent" yourself and one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to take a "popular" figure and put them on as a *cloak* to make yourself look erudite and, by association, worthy. Apart from ones own career, none of this is helpful -- if understanding the origins of the present-day context is the goal. Gregory Bateson is a fine case-in-point. To the extent that anyone knows the name, he is typically treated as a HERO and even a SAINT. But was he? I once had the head of the Communications Dept. a the New School storm out of a lunch, knocking the table over in her hurry, because she was so offended that I would question Bateson's legacy, on which she had written her PhD. There is plenty to question. Yes, Bateson and Mead and Lewin were all involved in aspects of what became the CIA, after being deeply involved in its predecessors during WW II. But, once again, the urge to fictionalize takes over the "story," since few seem to have bothered to sort out what the CIA was really up to in the 1950s. Here, the whole MKULTRA narrative and LSD-as-a-weapon story walks onto the stage. But, when you look more closely, this turns out to actually be a "cover-story" designed to fit in with the Church Committee purge of the agency in the 1970s. Spy vs. Spy?? For example, Timothy Leary was a CIA "asset" from his days as a graduate student studying personality -- where "personality testing" had been a specialty of the OSS. Then there was Allen Ginsburg. The counter-culture had significant CIA roots. As did the 60s anti-war movement (much of which was organized by Trotskyists, who were a CIA "specialty"). But none of that shows up in the popular narrative -- such as Marty Lee's "Acid
Re: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: > Now, both Sugihara and Arrighi are clearly idealizing the > Industrious Revolution, and I am not so sure (at all) that you > would find these good things happening in the factories and > supply-chains of Sony or the Toyota Motor Company! Does either Sugihara or Arrighi ever mention Tavistock or "social psychology"? Were they part of the "humans relations" movement (i.e. the title of the SOCPSY journal, starting in 1947)? And, what does all this have to do with "human economy"? How about the "fact" that post-WW II Japan was an *artificial* society, largely created and controlled by the same *occupying* "social scientists" who gave us Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Getting people to "cooperate" in groups is the direct result of the work on "morale" that underpinned the STRATEGIC BOMBING of WW II -- including the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo. It is "psychological warfare" applied to *civilian* populations (so, ideal for a Cold War). The "leader" of much of this was Kurt Lewin at MIT -- the first named by Norbert Wiener in his Introduction to the 1948 "Cybernetics" as someone he would *not* work with. Then Wiener named Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead -- two other stalwarts of the "morale" work who he would NOT work with. Eventually, finishing off the "family feud," their daughter got a *false* biography of Wiener published in 2007. In the early 50s, Wiener made friends with Walter Reuther. Together they made the point that the robots were going to replace the auto-workers, so "labor" needed to have a vigorous response. Then Wiener was told to stop or there would be a HUAC investigation of him and his friends (so he "retired" and stopped making trouble). And Reuther got Congress to fund the 1964-66 "Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress," based largely on Wiener's work. Then it was ignored -- in favor of "human relations" and the TAVISTOCK "grin" -- as Fred Emery et al did their "workgroup" magic at Toyota and the UAW hierarchy retired on their "protected" pensions. China, on the other hand, is a *very* different story . . . have you read Prof. Wang's book about it? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Ed/Brian/Keith: > Thank you for this wonderful essay . . . Hurray for the nettime lovefest! Ed loves Keith. Keith loves Brian. Brian loves (depends if you mean in public or in private) . . . ?? Here's the discussion about Keith's *manifesto* on Facebook -- _Mark Stahlman_ (http://www.facebook.com/markstahlman) As I've been discussing with Prof. Wang, Prof. "Post-Autistic" Fullbrock and others, you can't talk about the *humans* without also talking about the technologies which we invent, turn into environments and then allow ourselves to be shaped by our own innovations. So far, this understanding seems to be missing from the "real-world" economics movement. _Keith Hart_ (http://www.facebook.com/johnkeithhart) You can't have read the paper yet, Mark, so why comment on it? _Mark Stahlman_ (http://www.facebook.com/markstahlman) Of course I read your "Object" essay, why would you say that I "can't have"? There is nothing in it on the topic of how technological environments shape the *humans* -- is there? Prof. Fullbrock, who edits "real-world economic review" invited me to write a paper on this precisely because, in his estimation, no one is taking about it. Please help me by pointing to those who *are* . . . !! _Keith Hart_ (http://www.facebook.com/johnkeithhart) I don't write about how technology shapes humans because it is an outline of an economic approach. But I do say "The social and technical conditions of our era ??? urbanization, fast transport and universal media ??? should underpin any inquiry into how the principles of human economy might be realised." And I underline the role of the digital revolution in undermining the dominant economic form of the 20th century. I have also written a book on money in the digital revolution. I haven't reached your particular line, but I don't consider it engaging with a text when you say what it isn't 5 minutes after it was posted. _Mark Stahlman_ (http://www.facebook.com/markstahlman) Sorry if I can read fast (and if I've been talking with you for many months about these subjects)! Economics is in *trouble* (like the rest of social science) because it leaves out basic realities and these "simplifications" -- whether in the service of "modeling assumptions" or whatever -- have now become too important to ignore. By emphasizing the HUMANS, you have correctly noted *one* of the parts left out. However, the humans are highly "plastic" and largely shaped by their environment -- which, in turn, is mostly defined by technology. Do you discuss this *environmental* effect on humans in your book? Is anyone else talking about it? In 1953 the Ford Foundation awarded Marshall McLuhan a $43,000 grant to study these effects. His partner was Edmund "Ted" Carpenter, an anthropologist. Together, they published the important journal "Explorations" in the 1950s. How does Carpenter et al's anthropology of "media" relate (or not) to what you are trying to do? _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Snow_Carpenter_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Snow_Carpenter) (So far, no reply . . . ) Keith is an anthropologist, who is interested in economics. Excellent! But he leaves out the effects of technology from his paper on "methodology," even though other anthropologists have already done ground-breaking work on the topic. Not so excellent. Industrialization is all about technology and its effects on the humans. So was agriculture. So is our present "post-industrial" condition. To try to do "anthropology" today without Ted Carpenter is like trying to do economics without Joseph Schumpeter. Ignoring the effects of technology on the humans will not produce a valid analysis of the "human economy." Africa will be the last place on earth to leave behind agriculture and industrialize. But it will happen.under conditions quite different from the European or North American or Japanese industrialization. Like the Chinese and Indian drive to industrialize, African industrialization will happen under the influence of digital technology. Furthermore, African industrialization will occur under the influence of the bio/nano-technology that will underpin the next techno-economic "surge." So far, the African National Congress has not shown themselves up to the task of thinking this through. Unlike the Chinese, who discarded "central planning" and, crucially, "single-use" military technology (which they inherited from the Soviets) in the 1980s, the ANC does not seem to have grasped these lessons. Instead, South Africa today appears to be a patch-work of personality-based "rivalries" between fiefdoms staking out their ground. Perhaps it will take a generation after the death of Mandela (like after the death of Mao), to begin to sort this out. Best of luck to Keith and his "robber-baron" pot-o'-gold! Understanding h
Re: Facebook's perfec spam laboratory.
Keith: > Facebook has replaced that and now a brainwashed > mass celebrates its gullibility and ignorance in ways > that must repel all sensitive souls, if they were ever > to risk contamination by joining in. Diana McCarthy invited me to keynote the last MetaForum 15 years ago (because I had dared to challenge John Perry Barlow' s "Cyberspace" declaration) -- so where is she now? Facebook. When I got to Budapest, one of the most interesting people I met was Richard Barbrook. I wrote "English Ideology and WIRED Magazine" in reply to his "Californian Ideology" (and his propensity to go off on Hungarians and everyone else for their "national" characteristics) -- so where is he now? Facebook. The last nettime F2F event took place at the (Soros) offices of Vuk Cosic in Ljubljana -- so where is he now? Facebook (in Slovenian). When I brought up the lack of serious discussion about the impact of technology on our behaviors and attitudes on nettime many months ago, what was the reaction? Nothing. The best one-liner on the topic came from Diana -- WMD = Weapons of Mass Distraction. The best back-and-forth discussion came from Richard -- what did McLuhan actually know in the 1960s about the coming of the "network"? (Answer: Nothing and Richard misuses the term "McLuhanism" as a stand-in for whatever replaced "Fordism.") Where did these discussions happen? Facebook. When I tried to initiate a conversation on nettime regarding Vuc's plans to stage a conversation at a gallery about "where do ideas come from?" the moderators decided not to post my reply to his announcement. Twice. So, what happened in Ljubljana? Patrice showed up but no report on nettime. And, then we get this from Felix, "Yes, I totally agree, media determinism is self-defeating and my post, written sloppily, might have suggested that." Huh? What the hell does "media determinism" mean? "Self-defeating"? More "sloppiness" by referring in an *apology* to a MEME that has no meaning? I've recently been tracking down sociologists to try to figure out why they denounce "media determinism" and invented what they call "Social Construction of Technology" (SCOT), since I couldn't find an explanation in the published material. I've had conversations with two who have published books on the topic and they admitted that it was a "defensive" move meant to "protect" sociology from *outsiders* -- sound familiar (i.e. nettime protecting itself from Facebook)? Aaron Swartz was wrong (in addition to being clinically depressed and suicidal) -- INFORMATION is *not* power. As Francis Bacon made clear KNOWLEDGE is power. They are decidedly *not* the same thing. Instead of a discussion on nettime, what we get is "information wants to be free" hagiography . . . #FAIL. > I contend that this is a variant of the socialist inversion > of > Spencer's bourgeois myth. Mythology indeed! (And, btw, since "bourgeois" simply means people who live in cities, what is "wrong" with that -- would you rather be a "pagan"?) The primary *effect* of DIGITAL technology is to encourage feedback. This is what nettime did once. Now this is what Facebook does. (And, if you don't like what I say, you can just "unfriend" me -- which, presumably because Keith doesn't "like" my comments, is exactly what he did. ) This is quite different from the *effect* of mass-media, which is to encourage consumption. To the extent that nettime encourages "consumption" of the same *mythology* without any FEEDBACK (which is likely what happens to any moderated list), it has remained in the earlier "analog" media modality in which "fumes" are recycled and nothing "upsetting" happens. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. What Coates and Wang are doing is very important for economics, which is why I'm in touch with them (and why Keith just posted a link to their HBR "manifesto" on FB but not on nettime). Obviously, there won't be a discussion about "real-world" economics on nettime. But will there be one on Facebook? # 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
Romantic Nationalism or Digital Politics?
Folks: I presume that some on this list read the material from STRATFOR, an Austin TX based "private" intelligence network (mostly derived from foreign journalist inputs, according to the Wikileaks internal emails released last year) run by George Friedman. George sees everything through the lens of "geo-politics" -- which is to say that *geography* (literally natural resources, coastlines, mountains, rivers etc.) takes priority over everything else in his analysis. His latest essay caught my eye for its heroic efforts to ignore what is really going on in the recent spate of "succession" efforts -- including Catalonia and Palestine (but apparently not Texas ). _http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaza-catalonia-and-romantic-nationalism?utm_ source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20121127&utm_term=gweekly&ut m_content=readmore&elq=c8990ae3b2734f54b5d8000cdf4fed40_ (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gaza-catalonia-and-romantic-nationalism?utm_source=freelist-f&u tm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20121127&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore& elq=c8990ae3b2734f54b5d8000cdf4fed40) What George calls "romantic nationalism" is what might be called DIGITAL politics, if you give priority to technology and the various ways that we adapt to new technological environments (as I discussed in my UN speech two weeks ago). The Westphalian nation-state was, as we would analyze things, *not* the result simply of geography but rather a major effect of the PRINTING PRESS and its ability to tie-together the various "nations" through their printed language starting in the 16th century. While there have long been attempts to rearrange (or to engineer) these borders, what is happening today takes on a new context because we are now in a very different *digital* technological environment. As a result of focusing on the "wrong" theme (and, no doubt, their own limited resources), STRATFOR has completely missed China -- which they view as geographically in terrible shape (exposed coast, surrounded by enemies, burdened by need to feed peasant population) and instead champion Japan as the most important Asian power. Moreover, as the above Friedman essay illustrates, by ignoring the impact of technology, they are consistently mistaken about major current events. The NATION STATE has *long* been dust-binned (as has been the printing press as the dominant medium, since the mid-1800's). It was replaced by a sequence of "empires" (driven by a sequence of new technologies) and, over the past 50 years, by an attempt to build a GLOBAL elite -- centered in the ambitions of the group that "won" WW II, which can be short-handed as the "Rockefellers" (this time in an environment dominated by Arthur C. Clarke's geostationary satellite television broadcasts, which incidentally should have been a clue for George Friedman that borders don't matter any more!) The mechanism used by this group certainly involved the US (and other governments) but it was largely promoted by an explosion of NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS -- starting with the UN, World Bank and IMF but now with thousands of NGOs. A recently published book "Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations of American Power" details how the "Big 3" were a crucial part of this strategy to build a global network of like-minded elites -- _http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/ 0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354026765&sr=8-2&keywords=foundation+of+a merican+century_ (http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-American-Century-Carnegie-Rockefeller/dp/0231146280/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354026765&sr=8-2&keyword s=foundation+of+american+century) As the author was scolded (in the Q&A) last year when he presented the book at the Hudson Institute, the "networks" that have always been the focus of these foundations are really not properly called "American," so Prof. Parmar's "neo-Gramscian" approach (i.e. he gives priority to a peculiar "Marxist" class-style of "hegemony" analysis) missed the *global* forest while cataloging all the "national" trees -- _http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/5-31%20Parmar%20transcript.pdf_ (http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/5-31%20Parmar%20transcript.pdf) In the current US situation, however we might have felt about Obama vs. Romney, there is little doubt that the Dems waged a very sophisticated *cable-television* styled "niche-marketing" campaign, while the Repubs were still fighting with an earlier *radio/network-tv* style campaign. As we know, the newer technology won that contest. And as we have already seen, the "relief" that the relentlessly advertised/hyped election was over (along with the overall low turnout) -- resulting in a "status quo" outcome that points to something *very* different in the future. Is it any surprise that more-and-more peop
Re: Poorly hidden self promotion by Vuk
Vuk: Sounds fascinating -- hope you have a great time and looking forward to the fruits of your ART! By "Technology Cycle" do you mean Freeman/Perez's (Schumpeter/Kondratiev) "Techno-economic Paradigms" or McLuhan's book --> radio --> television --> Internet or "something else" or "you don't know" or "it doesn't matter" . . . ?? As you will not be surprised to hear, I have the only two living representatives of these "traditions" on my advisory board, Eric McLuhan and Carlota Perez. Since you are dealing with "causes," if you don't stumble across FORMAL CAUSE, then you will need to spend more time in the room. Most of our confusion about the effects of technology is due to our "forgetfulness" about *causality* -- we have crippled ourselves by eliminating all but "efficient cause," so we are always missing the forest while we are busy chopping down the trees. Recently, I went around asking the MEME people "Daddy, where do memes come from?" The most interesting answer I got (in the midst of mostly, "Gee I never thought about that") was a reference to Alan Westoby's unpublished 1994 "The Ecology of Intentions: How to make Memes and Influence People: Culturology." _http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/ecointen.htm_ (http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/ecointen.htm) That should take you a day or two! It's interesting that he was a frustrated Trotskyist (is there any other kind?) and his published work deals mostly with the "evolution" of communism. Btw, Chris Freeman is also reported to have been a "Ernest Mandelian" Trot -- which should point you back towards the "Non-Communist Left" and their employers in the Cultural Cold War. While we're on that topic, do you know Kenneth Boulding? His 1956 "The Image" is very important (i.e. the "first" version of memes, which he called EICONOLY), as is the (originally Dutch) Fred Polak 1953 "The Image of the Future," from which Boulding got many of his ideas -- particularly his emphasis on the need to find a replacement for Christianity. He was one of the CCW employers (for what he termed "The Invisible College," to which he recruited Alvin Toffler, among others) and you might want to check out the CASBS. If Zizek enters into this project, then you will surely have noticed that he (and many others) have slid from "post-modern" to "post-secular" over the past few years. His work with Radical Orthodoxy's John Milbank is particularly instructive, as is the whole RO phenomenon. RADIO (Modern/Hot/Movement) --> TELEVISION (Post-Modern/Cool/Shopping) --> INTERNET (Post-Secular/D.I.Y./Renaissance) is an interesting technology "cycle" to consider. I'm now working with the Chinese on a "Dialogue on World Civilizations," which, of course, ultimately involves the issues of LONG CYCLES. It turns out that many in today's Chinese leadership think that they are operating on a 720 year cycle (i.e. 12 x 60) and that they are now "retrieving" the build-up to the Tang Dynasty. Good luck! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: P2P Foundation: A Synthetic Overview of the Collaborative Econo...
Keith: > I want to believe too, but it will take more than an > economist article on car-sharing to persuade me > that the new order is (once again) just round the corner. It's the technology (stupid )!! The economy under the *environmental* conditions of the BOOK was one thing -- "Wealth of Nations" and "Fable of the Bees" and "Communist Manifesto." The economy under the *environmental* conditions of ELECTRICITY (i.e. mass-media) was another thing -- "Mechanical Bride" and "Human Use of Human Beings" and "Mass Psychology of Fascism" and "The Century of the Self." The economy under the *environmental* conditions of DIGITAL technology (i.e. *hands-on" D.I.Y., needs-over-wants) is yet another thing -- "The Intention Economy" and "Future, Perfect" and "Digital Labor" and "A Synthetic Overview" and . . . If you don't think this through and continue to look at all this through the eyes of those who lived their lives in the UTOPIAN world of British Library "capitalism vs. socialism," then you will never figure it out. Technology changes EVERYTHING. Really. In addition to these *fundamental* changes in the technological environment -- which have massive impact on our behaviors and attitudes, which then form the basis of our radically changing economies -- the progress of science and technology has so basically altered the fabric of society (i.e. industrialization, health-care, management, warfare, etc.) that relying on centuries old thinking is worse than irresponsible . . . it's stupid. Then add to this that the fact the "values" associated with European *alphabetic* literate (i.e. book-based technology) culture are NOT shared by the rest of the world (sorry Tony Blair etal, you are completely *wrong*) -- not in Delhi, not in Shanghai, not in Rio, not in Pretoria, not in Cairo -- and trying to overlay these Western "historic" schemas on what is NOW happening in these places is *certain* to fail. What does the INTERNET *do* to US? And, how are these *effects* essentially different from BOOKS and ELECTRICITY? If you don't think this through (which requires over-riding your "wants" and "beliefs"), you will miss everything that is happening . . . NOW. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
Vice, Freedom and Capitalist Market Expansion
Folks: This is a post I made on the "_Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society_ (http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/) " blog -- Hello: Vice "regulation" is, of course, an *economic* topic which is at the heart of capitalism -- as it has been at least since early 18th century and the publishing (at first anonymously) of Bernard de Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees: Private Vice and Publick Benefit." The consumption of vice is, after all, the basis of the FREE MARKET. Here, you could refer to the defense of the British Opium Wars in front of Parliament by Riccardo as *required* by the free market -- using Adam Smith as his "authority." The vigorous defense of the "Fable" by free-marketeer F. von Hayek and the publishing of the two-volume "ur-text" of the "Fable" by Liberty Books firmly makes that connection -- as does, perhaps, the copious funding support for drug legalization by free-marketeer George Soros. Capitalism really makes no sense without vice and, indeed, those who have been responsible for expanding its range have consistently argued for more vice. Vice makes the market work. And, arguably, those attempts to curtail the expansion of vice, like the "prohibition" of alcohol occurred at just those moments when new technologies were expanding the market further -- as radio/newspapers/movies were opening the era of mass-media advertising in the early 20th century. My question is a simple one. If the world (or even parts of it) have become or, as many wish, will become *post-capitalist* and, therefore, *post-market* economies, does that mean that the expansion of VICE=MARKET will move in the other direction? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY This was in response to a post on "Regulating Vice," by Jim Leitzel, who teaches a course with that title at University of Chicago and recently gave a TEDxChicago talk on the topic. _http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/teaching-points-jim-leitzel- comments-on-regulation-of-vice/#comment-3228_ (http://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/teaching-points-jim-leitzel-comments-on-regulation-of-vice /#comment-3228) _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Px4nYbJoQ_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_Px4nYbJoQ) More broadly, the whole topic of *freedom*, including freedom of speech, assembly and the whole range of freedoms associated with "democracy," need to be discussed in relationship to capitalist market expansion. And, does our understanding of "human rights" make any sense outside of the need to expand these capitalist markets? If one is "opposed" to capitalism and the market economy, then were do you stand on vice? Mark Stahlman # 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: subjective math.
Brian: Your ruminations about the problems with the "book" are very important. Most of human history has been conducted through discussions and conflicts that cannot be put into books. A culture that is locked into "books" is a very ODD one indeed. This is the topic of McLuhan's !962 Gutenberg Galaxy, which you skipped but might now enjoy. The West, under the environmental dominance of books, has been a very strange place indeed. McLuhan's interest in ELECTRIC technology -- telegraph, telephone, radio, motion pictures, etc. -- was precisely because this new technological environment *undermined* the effects of the BOOK. The *book* that has, of course, had the greatest effect (as a book) on our culture is the last book of the Bible, the Revelations of St. John (otherwise known as the "Apocalypse.") Speculations about the END OF THE WORLD (and the underlying conviction that the world we have *must* come to an end because it is so terrible and so evil) are the basis of much of the modern Western world for the past 400 years. And, it is the basis of most political "radicalism," as expressed on nettime and elsewhere. None of this end-of-the-world thinking would be possible with the book. "Communism" is, afterall, just another version of the Millennium (after the Armageddon of "class warfare") as promised by John. And, it's the same BOOK-based utopian thinking that gave us modern Capitalism. Two sides of the same coin. Like the TWO PARTY political system. LEFT and RIGHT. Often things that appear to be "opposites" are really the same because they are built on the same premises. Even though they may be vehemently "opposed" and prepared to fight with great passion, they are really just the YIN and the YANG of the same underlying and agreed upon beliefs. You can think of this as the universe "balancing" things out. In Gestalt psychological terms, these are two major "figures" that share a common "ground." Two sides of the same coin -- hard to "see" them both at once and yet you know that "heads" and "tails" couldn't exist one without the other. If you haven't read it, then Western civilization over the past 400 years won't make much sense without "Revelations." And, maybe even if you have, it still doesn't. When the NYTimes ran its lead story on the Royal Society of London in last week's Science Times, "A Redoubt of Learning Holds Firm: The Royal Society, crucible of the scientific revolution that formed the modern world, strives to stay relevant," they went out of their way to note that: "Newton, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle and many more came together in a spirit of revolutionary if at times eccentric inquiry. Magic and alchemy greatly fascinated the society's founders . . . During that intoxicating century, nearly everything holy, from royal rank to economics to science to the immortality of the soul, was challenged . . . Though rationalists, these scientists viewed God as central to their universe and their work. As Edward Dolnick, author of 'The Clockwork Universe' [the image picked by the Times to fill the page above the story is of clockwork-like telescope gearing] , an entertaining history of the early society [if you'd like to read an even more entertaining history, go to Neal Stephenson's 'The System of the World,' the final piece of his three-part Baroque Cycle], noted, the founders viewed the laws of nature and of God as inseparable. They were mapping this universe . . . And there was that question of magic. Society members lived in a time shadowed by apocalyptic dread, from plague to fire to war. They were fascinated by alchemy, unicorns' horns and magic salves, and they often experimented on themselves." _http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/science/royal-society-holds-firm-amid-pol itical-challenges-to-science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/science/royal-society-holds-firm-amid-political-challenges-to- science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all) Our own times (driven as it is by today's Tea Party "libertarians" who are the flipside of the same "individualist" coin as the Occupy Wall Streeters), are likewise "shadowed" by the "revolutionary" upheavals of the 1960s. How different is this from the 1660s? We are still "experimenting on ourselves." LSD is (personal) alchemy and a "magic salve." Global warming is the plague and the fire. Vietnam was the war. But, now we have CYBERTERRORISM (driven the new "yellow peril" who can't be creative so they must steal our intellectual property)!! History is funny that way. Even if you *do* understand it, you are likely doomed to repeat it. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 9/9/2012 5:58:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, nulltang...@gmail.com writes: Hello Mark, Thanks for your suggestions. I read the last chapter of Boole's Laws of Thought, Constitution of
Re: crowd-funding on nettime
Folks: No *moderated* list (like nettime) that I know of allows fund-raising, for the simple reason that there is no way for the MODERATORS to judge what is being done with the money. My favorite "crowd-sourcing" story was once told by Jaron Lanier. It seems that his father was a reviewer of science fiction books and played poker with a group of sci-fi authors in NYC in the 1950s. They took up a dare to see who could come up with the best "appeal" as a SCAM. The first took out an ad at the bottom of the NYTimes that simply said "Sent $5 to this P.O. Box" with nothing promised in return. Thousands rolled in. The second set out to "bronze" your baby's first "loaded diaper" (as many at the time were having baby shoes encased in metal), with one address for the money and another for the diaper. The second address was the CPUSA headquarters. The third pledged to beat all of these schemes on a GRAND scale and start a "mail-order" religion. His name was L. Ron Hubbard. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised!!
Folks: I'm curious about why there is so little discussion, let alone *righteous* anger, about television on this list? Could it be that many of those who post actually want their thoughts and actions to be noticed -- by television? "Activist" often connotes those who participate in *demonstrations* -- so what is being "demonstrated" to whom and how? And what is the relationship between *demonstrating* and the evening news? "Terrorism" also makes no sense without television. TERROR has to communicated to a *mass* audience and that's where television comes in. In crucial terms, if it isn't on television then it didn't happen. OCCUPY began with a call from the glossy magazine ADBUSTERS. That always struck me as an odd approach. Fight advertising by coming up with ads against ads -- WTF? Do you *fight* brainwashing with more brainwashing? Do you combat psychological warfare with a "better" version of the same thing? In Gestalt psychological terms, this is phenomenon is well known and is often described in terms such as Figure & Ground. We obsess over the *figures* (i.e. the capitalists, 1%ers, police, church, state, etc.), while we ignore the *ground* of our experiences (i.e. television, mass-media, advertising, etc.) I've been hanging out with this crowd for 15 years now and it seems that the RADICAL roots of what is actually going on are relentlessly "off limits." What am I missing? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Naomi Wolf: This global financial fraud and its gatekeepers (Gu...
Marc: Very interesting! Those who keep insisting that the "army" who are coming after us will use "guns" are, of course, WAY out-of-date. Warfare became (overwhelmingly) PSYCHOLOGICAL over 70+ years ago and the "weapons" being used against us -- for all of our lives -- have been (by-and-large) ADVERTS! The important thing about advertising as a WEAPON is that you actually can *ignore* it or, better yet, you can get *angry* at being assaulted and fight back. Just don't *buy* the stuff. This is exactly what is now happening. The overall impact of advertising is now *permanently* on the decline, so the TIDE OF WAR has shifted. Thus the *escalation* in the apparent "warfare" against us and thus the impossibility of "recovery" in the post-industrial economies. As far as I can tell, no one has thought through the implications of this EPIC change -- with the "capitalists" and the "communists" still hoping that they can continue with the "struggle" they have been having for 200 years. They can't. It's over. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Eric X. Li: Democracy Is Not the Answer.
Carl: > This is exactly the kind of sleazy, power-worshipping bullshit > (h/t the late Hunter S. Thompson) that plays well at the Aspen > Institute, a hangout of Li and other pet philosphers of global > capitalism. No doubt. However, there are TWO glaring problems with your analysis -- 1) "Democracy" is the scheme that is responsible for global capitalism. All of the issues that you (and so many others raise) about the world today are overwhelmingly the direct result of "democracy." 2) "Democracy" is also the primary ideological weapon that is used *against* those who stand outside the power structures of global capitalism. It was at the heart of the 1950s/60s COLD WAR against the Soviets and it is, once again, at the heart of today's COLD WAR against China. When you pick up the cudgels of "democracy" against China (or Russia), you are inevitably joining U.S. State Department, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. You are putting yourself in league with those you appear to oppose. Quite a dilemma! The more subtle issue, of course, is how "democracy" is actually run. Under conditions of multi-party elections and mass-media propaganda shaping "public opinion," you might well claim that this is in fact not "democracy." You would be right but then the rest of your argument would lack any basis. Otherwise, you might want to take it easy on your "Confucius says . . ." In his days, BULLSHIT had a much more practical application than jousting on mailing lists. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Eric X. Li: Democracy Is Not the Answer..
John: > Propaganda for official, state, religious, commercial > and their UNIFIED agenda has ALWAYS been the > primary source of funding for intellectual labor. Always is a long time. Indeed, it usually isn't a very good description of *these* times in which we live (whenever those times might be.) And rarely have the POLITICAL (i.e. official), MILITARY (i.e. state), IDEOLOGICAL (i.e. religious) and ECONOMIC (i.e. commercial) elites had a *unified* agenda. That's what makes history interesting. And that's why UCLA sociologist Michael Mann proposed (and extensively documented) his IEMP "model" of *social power* in history . . . in most societies there are *conflicts* among these groups, if, indeed, they can even be called cohesive groups with any agenda at all. In this year, the centenary of Jacques Ellul's birth, we might benefit by trying to understand what made his times the AGE of PROPAGANDA during which he thought he saw the "perfection" of PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE. We might also benefit from the intellectual labor of trying to understand why our own times are different and why we, sometimes, try to pretend that they are not. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Eric X. Li: Democracy Is Not the Answer.
Folks: Indeed. So, what is the question? > Li: What is the "end" of political governance? That sounds pretty abstract. Means and ends? What is really being discussed here? Throughout the interview, the constant underpinning is "industrialization" and :"economic development." So, is the question "What is the best form of politics to achieve industrial growth in China?" But is that even possible in a "post-industrial" world? And, does anyone who brings up the issue of "democracy in China" actually want to *promote* the economic development of China at all? Or, is the question "What is the best way to attack China for refusing to knuckle under to globalism?" Since many of those who repeat the "anti-democracy" accusation against China are themselves *globalists* (i.e. the US State Department, the New York Times, etc.), that might be closer to the real question. Does the "The Commies are ANTI-FREEDOM!!" tune being played by this marching-band ring any bells? Why does this all sound like a *replay* of the 1950s/60s attack on the Stalinist Soviet Union? Because it is? Welcome to the CULTURAL COLD WAR (all over again) -- only this time, since it's a repeat performance, you can actually read the "reviews" of the original. You might want to start with -- Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (1999) Frances Stonor Saunders The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) Hugh Wilford More are on the way . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse
IOCOSE: > we don't necessarily believe there are no 'real' conspiracies any more Conspiracies, of course, are normal human behavior and are everywhere in our lives. They become "theories" when a few take their obsessions about social power (which they typically don't either have or understand) and weave "explanations" that seem to fit the "facts." They become a "crowdsourced" art-project when the need for recognizing *patterns* is so widespread that it can't be restrained. Technology has much to do with these developments. Since "social power" is at the heart of the matter, what underlies all this are two related topics -- history of the power elites and actual elite history. History of the power elites is what sociologists do. C Wright Mills 1956 "The Power Elite" is where many begin. UCLA's Michael Mann's 1986/1993 "The Sources of Social Power is the most complete account to date but it ends its narrative in 1914. William Domhoff's "Who Rules America?", in its 6th edition in 2009, with another coming in 2013, is an application of Mann's IEMP "model" to the American situation. The *actual* elite history (i.e. what things look like to an insider to the key events) is rarely written. What is written is often one-sided and deliberately misleading. Carroll Quigley's (Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown, as highlighted in his first inaugural speech) 1981 "The Anglo-American Establishment" remained unpublished during his life and, even then, ends with WW II -- when the biggest "rotation" of elites in modern history occurred, replacing Quigley's WASPs with the "evangelical" Baptist Rockefellers. Some of the best "elite history" is written as biographies. Kai Bird's 1992 "The Chairman: John J. McCloy The Making of the American Establishment" is one of the best accounts of the post WW II elites but it ends with the Vietnam War. Today's expanding research into the "Cultural Cold War" is uncovering important details about the 1950s/60s but it *fails* to comprehend what happened when the CIA *purged* itself and turned to a "world peace" agenda following the 1975 Church Committee. What has actually happened over the past 35+ years has been largely undisclosed, partly because the Anglo-American power elites have been decline (i.e. no one "replaced" McCloy and the Trilateral Commission was the last "hurrah" for the Rockefellers), so few want to "brag" about their failures. The unraveling of the Euro-zone is just the latest example of how "conspiracies" hatched in the 1950s are finally meeting their long-deserved destiny (i.e. the scheme for a United States of Europe, as a stepping-stone to "world government"), although most who are involved don't yet know what is happening or why. The real *action* for power elites has shifted far away from the "Atlantic Alliance" and moved to the BRICS and beyond. China is the best example of a place where an actual elite -- although not the individuals who appear on the podium at public events -- is "conspiring" every day, with little recognition even at the "highest" levels of Western governments, since the cultural gap (which was still fairly narrow with Russia) is beyond the ability of most outside China to comprehend. > we have failed to acknowledge that crowdsourcing is now > something quite different from what we hoped and imagined This is a crucial point. What these technological environments have done *TO US* is a significant challenge for many to understand. As a result, "Black Swans" has become a big business, particularly for those who still embrace the "English Ideology." Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: IOCOSE (2012) - A Crowded Apocalypse
IOCOSE: > Hope you'll find this interesting. Fascinating! This is a prime example of what happens when the environment changes and what was once the "ground" becomes a "figure." What was once hardly noticeable now becomes an "art project." Since there are no "real" conspiracies anymore and since all of us have become "insiders," then why not get everyone to let loose and "spill the beans"? All of which, still begs the question of what *changed* to make this possible . . . and what are the other effects of these environmental changes? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nightmare or Opening?
Keith: In your chapter on money, you say -- > In the second half of the twentieth century, humanity > formed a world society – a single interactive social > network – for the first time. Really? Does China want to a part of this "world society"? Or Brazil? Or Russia or India or Mexico or Indonesia or Italy or Egypt? Or Cleveland or Miami or San Diego? No they don't and why would they? And, what is an "interactive social network"? A social-graph that can be monetized through advertising? That's the Facebook business plan and simply doesn't work. Indeed, as Douglas Rushkoff recently remarkd, "It is anti-social." Digital economics cuts the opposite direction -- as was already widely evident in 1992 when I brought AOL public. > This was symbolized when the 60s space race allowed > us to see the earth from the outside or when the internet > went public in the 90s, announcing the convergence of > telephones, television and computers in a digital revolution > of communications . . . Huh? Why would the positioning of satellites in geo-stationary orbits in order to rain the same consumptionist propaganda down on everyone's heads reflect the same "symbolic" results as the Internet where people talk back? These are two fundamentally different actions -- as today's economy shows. C'mon, look around. Has it worked out the way you describe? Music sales are down sharply. Movies and magazines and newspapers also. Nowhere has digital media even equally what it replaced. And, no one believes that it will. Convergence never made any sense! The only people who thought that television and computers would "converge" were those who wanted to use the Internet to get people to buy things they don't need. And, now that we have seen what they can do over the past 20+ years and you add it all up . . . they have failed. > Emergent world society is the new human universal – not > an idea, but the fact of our shared occupation of the planet > crying out for new principles of association. The task of > building a global civil society for the twenty-first century, > perhaps even a federal world government, is an urgent one. World government was the task of the 1950s (or really the 1920s of H.G. Wells' "Open Conspiracy.") This was the task of the United Nations, the IMF/World Bank, the World Federalists, the Trilateral Commission. It was the task for Rockefeller and Soros and the other "masters of the universe." It is *not* the task today. Why are you re-asserting their claims and re-arguing their case? Furthermore, emergence is a myth -- literally, "mythic thinking." It is accounted for, if at all, as the "loophole" in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is a presumed "ineffable" quality of matter itself, representing the neo-pantheism of our times. There is nothing *human* at all about emergence! > Money, instead of being denigrated for its exploitive power, > should be recognized for its redemptive qualities, particularly > as a mediator between persons and society. Money — and > the markets it sustains – is itself a human universal, with the > potential to be emancipated from the social engines of > inequality that it currently serves (Hart 2000). This "universal" you describe isn't *human* at all -- it is MAGICAL thinking. Economic growth is, as many have noted, driven by the "magical" circulation of money. Everyone pays others and gets paid for doing what no one really needs at all. Round-and-round it goes. Prosperity for everyone! It's OUROBOROS! For better-and-worse, the HUMANS have already figured this out and more-and-more are jumping off the merry-go-round. Now that's a *crisis* alright . . . of global economic proportions! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Nightmare or Opening?
Brian: The digital economy is ANTI-GLOBAL, so the shift from an "analog" media environment (in which *both* Rockefeller and Soros operate as they try to dominate the now long obsolete "global village") to the already-20-years-in-our-faces DIGITIAL media environment is . . . likely to get even more *painful*! Recast the EUROZONE "crisis" (i.e. the realization that there will never be a United States of Europe) in the terms of the DIGITAL economy and you have the beginning of a *strategy* to deal with the situation. If you keep insisting that the "financiers" did this, then you will completely miss what is going on. We are at the "brink" because people have withdrawn from the "Ouroborus" that was "consumerism" and now live in a DIY world where people have refused to prop-up "late-capitalism" any more. Arguments over who is going to PAY and who is going to SUFFER are stupid. NO ONE is going to pay for the old system (i.e. C(APITAL|OMMUN)ISM) and everyone is going to suffer because the "party" is over. If you don't get this right then you are left with the "ecstatic" imperatives of the "street" which only feed the SWAT team budgets. Baurillard was *very* ANALOG (aka "mass-media") when he said "Let us be Stoics: if the world is fatal, let us be more fatal than it." Human scale is anything but "fatal" . . . it is digital (i.e. using our "digits," as in "fingers and toes.") Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: C(APITAL|OMMUN)ISM (i|ha)s (ARRIV|FINISH)ED
Jon: Thanks for trying to wrestle with all this. While the analysis being discussed has been available for 50+ years, it has only rarely been considered as applicable to current events. The developments of the past 10+ years and, in particular, the current economic "crisis" compels us to at least try to apply this approach to see if it yields fruitful understanding of our predicament. The points that I have been making could be summarized as -- 1) The nature of the *economy* is shaped by the behaviors and attitudes of the people who live in that economy. We all make the world what it is. 2) These behaviors and attitudes are, in turn, "formed" by technological environment in which these people live. The world makes all of us what we are. 3) We are now in the midst of a *radical* shift in this technological environment -- from a mass-media (i.e. broadcast/one-way) "analog" economy to a *digital* (i.e. talk-back/two-way) economy. 4) Accordingly, we should expect to see changes in behavior and attitudes -- not completely or overnight but widely evident -- that are reflected in changes in the corresponding economy. 5) Economic analysis that isn't robust enough to account for these changes will likely fail to produce much insight and is more likely to reinforce earlier "biases" and add to our confusion. What has long been called "consumerism" (and is sometimes called "late-stage capitalism" or "software communism") is a description of the *effects* of mass-media as a technological environment. This phenomenon, where advertising is used to induce a "commidification of desires" in the population, has been particularly acute since the advent of television in the 1950s. The term "eyeballs" is often used to describe the "target" in this form of economy. People are said to be "programmed" to behave in particular ways in this economic regime. What has been called "new media" (i.e. a term that I "coined" circa 1989) operates in a radically different fashion from mass-media. It encourages "interactivity" and could be said to be composed of "eyeballs that talk back." Many have noticed these functional/technological differences but elaborating the expected differences in behaviors and attitudes and the anticipated impact on the economy has not yet been widely discussed. An example of the literature about these changed behaviors and attitudes is the 1999 "Cluetrain Manifesto." Much as aspects of older technological environments persisted as television became dominant, including books, radio, movies, newspapers etc -- albeit substantially altered to "participate" in the television era -- all of these previous behaviors and attitudes also linger, sometimes nostalgically and with strong commitments, making any contemporary economy decidedly "mixed." Accordingly, today the situation is a "compound" of various technological environments. In particular, while many people have a sense that the Internet "changed everything," they are still hard-pressed to identify or verbalize what has changed in their own behaviors and attitudes. Clearly differences in personal circumstances and cultural/national milieus further complicate the matter. Nonetheless, analysis of the (political-)economy that ignore these changes in behaviors and attitudes will likely miss much of what is going on. While applying frameworks that were proposed 100 (say Weber) or 200 (say Marx) or 300 (say Mandeville) years ago can be interesting and even gratifying, unless they were explicit about the economic effects of technological environments, they will themselves need to be examined in the light of what we have subsequently learned. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Wolff: The Facebook Fallacy
Nettime: Michael Wolff, who I met 15 years ago when negotiating to buy a business from him, is a very smart guy -- particularly about advertising. Listen to what he says. There is no there there. We are now in a DIGITAL economy and Facebook was "sold" (by its own management) as if we were not! Here is the "exchange" that has occurred over the past few days on the *public* Facebook page of David Kirkpatrick, ex-Fortune writer and author of "The Facebook Effect" -- * _David Kirkpatrick_ (http://www.facebook.com/DavidKirkpatrick) * Two salient points in this NYT article. A portfolio mgr's quote: "It's a huge disappointment. Investors were expecting easy money on this one." Which means Wall Streeters presumed immediate gains should be theirs, not FB's. Illogical. And the fact Amazon similarly dropped post-IPO. Back then only true believers recognized Amazon's long term potential. Perhaps the same is true here. Which leaves the question for now, re FB stock--how many true believers will there be? _Mark Stahlman_ (http://www.facebook.com/markstahlman) Few. This deal was sold on false pretenses. They DON'T have 900M "users" -- it's really 6M "groups" of 150 people each and behaves completely different from a TELEVISION network. The whole "eyeballs" notion is *wrong* when the eyeballs can talk back! * _Bob Sutton_ (http://www.facebook.com/sutton.bob) * I'm surprised that the GM ad budget is being given so much credence in Facebook's post-IPO valuation. GM concentrated a $3B advertising account in fewer hands last quarter, with the media spending managed by a shop that doesn't currently bu...y FB yet. Costs to retool the agency for one client (or subcontract GM's FB spend) would exceed the nominal $10M value and complicate a ginormous consolidation, so they simply dropped the contextual ads line item. For now. (It's not as though GM abandoned social media. Search for them on FB and you'll find a dozen or more brand pages, developed at a reported cost of $30M, all still working.) Why is that so confusing? Supply-chain issues constrain purchasing decisions in lots of markets. I suppose Facebook couldn't comment on the GM announcement outside the Road Show presentations which were already done by the time the WS Journal broke the GM story, so it's been allowed to fester. I'm not a shareholder, but I do believe that a goldmine awaits the winner in hyper-local, socially-aware online advertising and that Facebook is the emerging gorilla in that space. I'd love some shares at $23 or so and failing that, some future price once FB starts to demonstrate its cash machine. * _David Kirkpatrick_ (http://www.facebook.com/DavidKirkpatrick) * Note my reporting in here about Ford: _http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/20/david-kirkpatrick-facebook-frenzy.html_ (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/20/david-kirkpatrick-facebook-frenzy.html) * _Mark Stahlman_ (http://www.facebook.com/markstahlman) The market has no way to "price" Facebook-like advertising. Amazon succeeds because people buy *things* and Google succeeds because businesses buy *search-words* and so on. I was the banker on the 1992 AOL deal at Alex Brown and, at that ...time, no one knew how to price online subscribers, so we became a "magazine" comparable. When your audience *talks back* and often tells people why NOT to buy something, you are in completely new territory. The mistake was FB management acting as if they have a mass-media when they don't. * _Bob Sutton_ (http://www.facebook.com/sutton.bob) I'll defer to your expertise as an underwriter with the caveat that AOL was an ISP with monthly per-subscriber revenues plus sticky, compelling content and online communities. It may have been hard to price those intangibles because nobody... had offered that combo before on scale and magazine rate-base models provided a convenient analog for the non-ISP component: advertiser premium for value-added, minus subscriber acquisition costs times number of new subscribers. But unless you've run ads on both Google's search-oriented platform and Facebook's social platform, I'm confused at your objection. Facebook has many Google-like properties that the market ought to be able to value. Ads are self-sold, configured and scheduled. Algorithms decide who sees them. The difference seems to me that Facebook can serve ads or content features to me based upon their relevance in my dynamic social graph -- something no other media in history has provided -- whereas with Google AdSense or AdWords, I have to ask the question first and you, as advertiser, have to anticipate my questions. And I could be completely wrong here, but isn't it a truism of selling stuff that the very best situation is a one-on-one encounter with a buyer? "Mass media" is an artifact of radio, television, and
Re: Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!
Jon: > AS i wrote earlier, i'm doubtful about this - especially > given the marketing succes of Apple, and the way that > people seem to throw away old phones and tablets in > a rush to get the newest Apple thing, which often does > not seem to be a necessary improvement. As the folks at Apple will tell you, their advertising spend to "attract" customers (who Steve Jobs famously referred to as "bozos") -- such as the iconic "Think Different" campaign and even the original MAC Superbowl ad -- have largely occurred in MASS-MEDIA, where Apple can "control the message." Many people also *refuse* to buy APPLE products. Since I followed the company for 20+ years on Wall Street, they are quite happy to be a *minority* market-share holder. Apple is a *especially* good example of a company that doesn't let people "talk back" (i.e. the hallmark of mass-media, not the web.) Perhaps those who refuse are the "non-bozos" who are being (relatively) more rational? My comments about advertising are largely reports from people INSIDE that industry -- not my own "opinions." My guess is that you would benefit from talking to some advertising veterans to see what they have learned over the past 20+ years. I see from your resume and publications history at UTS that your "job" in the Social and Political Change Group is to investigate how "the ways that software can produce disorder and disruption" and that you are also interested in "the psycho-social history of Western science and the occult." Good! These are certainly very interesting topics! Its great to see that someone has an "aim to finding solutions for these ongoing problems." _http://datasearch2.uts.edu.au/fass/academic/group/change/details.cfm?StaffI d=1970_ (http://datasearch2.uts.edu.au/fass/academic/group/change/details.cfm?StaffId=1970) However, you might be mistaken about how the "old mcluhanites all argued that the web makes the world appear more magical." To be sure, there are some "occultists" who have attached their names to McLuhan, who you might be confusing with those who have tried to pay attention to what McLuhan actually said. Since I was recently on the organizing committee for the largest gathering of McLuhan scholars ever -- MM100 in Toronto in November 2011, where 200+ papers were presented -- I can assure you that no one is making the "magic" argument about the WEB nowadays (well maybe Powe but not Kroker) . . . at least not where people can talk back. (That said, the RETREVAL quadrant in the *tetrad* for television in "Laws of Media" is "The Occult" p. 158!) My entire point in his conversation has been that TELEVISION and the WEB have fundamentally different *effects* on us, which show up in consumption patterns. Perhaps, as indicated by your Apple comments, you are conflating the two? # 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: Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!
Marc: > We now, in the West, are a society of individuals > in search of society. Very well said! And, therein lies the "problem" *and* the "solution." As in an "every man/woman for themselves" situation, there is no chance for *coherence* and coming up with a common STRATEGY is totally out of the question. I know many of the people you interviewed and watched the trailer. Good job! Manuel Delanda summed it up well. Now everyone is "hacking" society for their own amusement. Believe me, I know where *he* is coming from. But this cannot last. Because, in fact, it means there is *no* society under these conditions. This CHAOS has been long anticipated. The original title for Marshall McLuhan's first book (circa 1947) was "A Guide to Chaos." Indeed, this is why "neo-liberalism" doesn't work (and why the 1% is a statistical and not social category.) By taking the "individualism" you ascribe to the Enlightenment to its "logical" extreme (an attitude that was born with the printing press), you create two situations: Revolution (i.e. the "revolt" against this isolation) and Renaissance (i.e. the search for the basis of earlier "common sense.") Both of these are now very much underway (i.e. McLuhan's "reversal" and "retrieval" quadrants.) Hopefully you will also capture these dynamics in your documentary. The key to what you've said is "in the West." What you are describing is emphatically *not* what is happening elsewhere. This is why the famous phrase from James Joyce has now been reversed. NOW -- "The East Shall Shake the West Awake"! The parts of the world that have undergone this radical "individualism" are now stagnant. There will be no economic growth for a decade or more. The "indigenous" population is already in decline. There has already been a widely recognized "failure" in terms of new ideas (i.e. the notion of "emergence" is just rehashed Neo-Platonism.) The party is over. GLOBALISM was a lie. DIGITAL technology has cut it off at the knees. The EMPIRE has collapsed. And, hopefully you will also capture these dynamics in your documentary. Good *luck*! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
Technology DRIVES Social and Personal Change (was Capitalism is FINISHED . . .)
Keith: > How could any economy be one thing, especially the digital economy? Fine question! Because technology defines the *environment* in which we live -- so regardless of what "we" bring to the situation, the *ground* of our experience is the SAME! ECONOMY means (etymologically) "how we manage our household" and whether its Pretoria or Mumbai or Jakarta or Berlin, in crucial respects we have all been living in the "same" house for quite awhile now. This of course is the theme of GLOBALIZATION -- which was already in place in the 1950s, pre-saged with the Arthur C. Clarke's initial article on geo-stationary satellites intended to "beam" the same television shows to everyone on earth. That is, of course, exactly what happened. Furthermore, following WW II, one group of elites "managed" the world economy -- since they were the "winners." They set up the UN, the IMF/World Back, the CIA and directly ran the "re-invention" of the German and Japanese economies. They defined the Cold War down to the level of "hiring" virtually every intellectual and social scientist, as well as the basis of "engagement" on both "sides." While there had been many EMPIRES before this, finally it had become one Big Blue Marble -- as symbolized by the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog (and the subsequent practices of its expansion into the Global Business Network and its spinoff WIRED magazine -- which, btw, under the name "Californian Ideology" was a key basis for the formation of nettime!) Your question also reflects the enormous difficulties social science has had dealing with the effects of new technologies -- particularly in economics but also in anthropology and sociology. Economics has become largely a field of "modeling," in which the requirement for "quantification" has forced the abstraction away from real humans, also reflected in the "micro" demands of CIA-funded "area studies" in which the BIG PICTURE has been largely sacrificed as the people in these fields became the "specialists" who never put together an overview. I work with the people in the area of "evolutionary economics." Never heard of it? Well, that's because it is decidedly NOT mainstream for the reason that it a) doesn't produce models and b) deals with technology -- which most economists consider an "externality" (even though there is general consensus that technology is the primary source of economic growth and change) and c) tries to understand how the MACRO features of the economy *evolve* under the impact of changing technology. In particular, Carlota Perez is on my company's advisory board and her 2002 Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (which continues the work of her recently deceased husband Chris Freeman and the group at SPRU) is where we all need to *start* in this MACRO economic analysis. _http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Capital-Dynamics/ dp/1843763311/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337258077&sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Capital-Dynamics/dp/184376331 1/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337258077&sr=1-1) _http://www.carlotaperez.org/_ (http://www.carlotaperez.org/) In addition, I work with the tools supplied by Marshall McLuhan -- who as perhaps the most important "renaissance(S)" scholar of the 20th century, dealt with the social and psychological effects of new technologies from a deeply researched understanding of Western history, as reflected early in his 1943 PhD thesis The Classical Trivium. _http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358 /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337259099&sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UT F8&qid=1337259099&sr=1-1) As one nettime stalwart "shyly" put it to me in a private email yesterday, "Nice one! I disagree with your McLuhanist reasoning but agree with your conclusions..." If you don't approach these problems from the standpoint of how TECHNOLOGY changes *us* by CAUSING changes in our behaviors and attitudes (since it is the "medium" in which we live, like yeast in a vat ) -- which, in turn, *drives* the changes in our economies and societies -- then it seems to me that you will have few CLUES about what is going on. Here, McLuhan's (posthumous) 1988 The Laws of Media: The New Science is a *foundational* text for understanding our present situation(s). _http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153/ref =sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337259136&sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153/ref=sr_1_ 1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337259136&sr=1-1) The FUTURE has already arrived and we all live in it. Understanding the *present* is always a very difficult task. Many opinions are expressed on this list but rarely do they seem to take the opportunit
Re: Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet!
Jon: > Still don't know why digital tech is driving this process Excellent question! How much do you know about advertising and how "analog" mass-media works as a business? My comments on this are the result of spending lots of time with people in that industry over the past 20 years, which was made easier by a) living in Manhattan (i.e. Madison Avenue is close-by) and b) "coining" the term "New Media," so some in the ad-world thought they might learn a bit from me (I got this email address on the AOL from Steve Case on the 1992 AOL road-show, where I was the investment banker) and c) writing about this subject since the late 90s (particularly when I "predicted" the timing of the 2000 Internet Bubble collapse, based on the failure of the online "banner-ads" of the time) and d) working with dozens of startups who were trying to figure out ad-based business models. Advertising on a mass-scale was a *new* phenomenon in the early 20th century. It was based on various psychological theories -- some behaviorist, some Freudian etc. All of it, however, was premised on finding out how to make people do things that they previously considered to be "wrong" or "stupid" or "unnecessary" in order to drive consumption and therefore economic growth. The 2002 BBC Four documentary by Adam Curtis, "The Century of Self" might be a good place to start, even though it focuses on the rise of Public Relations, an adjacent field and Edward Bernal -- _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self) Another place you might find useful would be to study the career of John B. Watson -- _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson) In it's most "extreme" form, all this lead to the fascination with "subliminal" advertising, which actually resulted in some legislation in the 1950s -- _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli) Or, if your prefer, you could look to the literature on "commodification of desire," such as -- _http://books.google.com/books/about/The_commodification_of_desire_in_Wester n.html?id=wHERHQAACAAJ_ (http://books.google.com/books/about/The_commodification_of_desire_in_Western.html?id=wHERHQAACAAJ) The question that is *universal* among the advertisers I've discussed all this with is the ability to a) "artificially" stimulate "wants" which then b) are converted into apparent "needs." Accomplishing this is what they consider to be their special "talent." The techniques used to accomplish this are both varied and quite sophisticated, as befits a TRILLION dollar industry. In short, they WORK. However, these techniques do depend more-or-less on a) the attention of the "target" and b) their suspension of "rationality" and c) continued "environmental" reinforcement. Thus the effectiveness of television. Eyeballs. Dramatic fanatasies. One-way passive repetition of messages. The WEB directly undermines *ALL* of these requirements. It cannot force the "viewer" to watch the ad, since the screen also has other "more important" material. It generally requires some level of "rational" engagement. It is inherently *active* and involves TWO-WAY communications, which often involve "talking back" to the seller. So, to varying degrees with different people, the WEB (i.e. "digital media") *breaks* the SPELL that is needed for mass-media (i.e. mostly television) to work its consumption-driving MAGIC. This destabilizing *effect* of "interactivity" on the impact of advertising is now pretty well understood by advertisers! Furthermore, the notion that arose in the 90s that you could TARGET people by using the "click" information that you collect about them has now largely been DISCOUNTED as a plausible substitute for mass-media psychological games. It has largely become a stop-loss strategy (i.e. it only works on a subset of the audience) and not an expansion/growth one. This is why General Motors has just announced that they are *dropping* ads on Facebook -- right in the FACE of the company's IPO. _http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/business/media/gm-to-quit-facebook-ad-cam paign-worth-10-million-a-year.html_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/business/media/gm-to-quit-facebook-ad-campaign-worth-10-million-a-year.html) This is also why the NYTimes has been reporting about the *renewed* interest in the TELEVISION "Up Fronts" -- which just a few years ago were largely suspended in favor of "digital media" bundling. The ultimate reason why this is all happening is that MOST people aren't really as *stupid* (or "behaviorist" or "Freudian") as had been presumed. At some point, when offered the opportunity to NOT PAY ATTENTION to the ads and to be RATIONAL about their own lives and to INTERACT with others about wh
Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! (was Another insult . . )
Jon: >>The *effect* of digital media is to directly undermine "conspicuous >>consumption" which REQUIRED mass-media to prop it up. It's OVER!! > Interesting point, but any evidence for it? Sure -- the inability of any of the "developed" economies to grow. For some "unexplained" reason -- which is not simply because people are "poor" or have no "disposable income" or "are worried about the future" -- *demand* just isn't there to re-energize the "treadmill" required to grow the GDP. Furthermore, the widely understood "mechanism" used to generate demand in excess of *needs* -- in particular, the psychological impact of mass-market advertising -- has dramatically faded in its effectiveness and the presumed "replacement" of *targeted* advertising has failed to live up to expectations (as widely understood by those in this business.) In addition, those who have been "polling" US consumers about their attitudes over the past 20+ years, such as DYG Inc., have noticed a change that has grown over the past decade -- across all "demographics" and "cohorts" -- that shows a significant shift away from "quantity" to "quality" of life. LESS-is-MORE began to be a very popular theme in these polls started around 2002 and increasing annually since then. The fact that many groups still consume beyond their baseline needs is obvious but the overall trend is unmistakable from the data I have seen. > so what are the Chinese doing? buying more coal? > displacing poorer people for dams, buying palaces > for their rich in China and overseas? Exactly! Which is precisely what you *should* want them to do as they go through a very rapid industrialization! At the same time, they are on track to dominate the "clean" energy alternatives to coal and, when/if fusion energy becomes a reality, they will likely dominate that business as well. Roughly 300 MILLION Chinese will be added to the middle class over the next 10+ years -- which is only a part of the BILLION+ who will go through this transition globally. This is a *remarkable* achievement! What the Chinese have "figured out" is that the DEVELOPED economies have already stopped growing our "needless" consumption and that they have adjusted their own goals and strategies accordingly. Furthermore, some understand that digital technologies are driving this process. Meanwhile, *we* seem to pretend that nothing fundamental has happened. Any ideas about why we are so *stupid* about our own society and its culture? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Another insult of the 1 percent: everybody does it!
JH: > At any rate, much of the concept of capital investment > and such abstractions lose any reason to exist without > a passively operating consuming class which dominates > the developed world. Excellent observation but . . . that is EXACTLY what has *already* happened! The *effect* of digital media is to directly undermine "conspicuous consumption" which REQUIRED mass-media to prop it up. It's OVER!! We have been living in a DIGITAL ECONOMY for 20+ years now, which is why there will be *no* recovery of "capitalist" consumption-driven growth . . . *EVER* What is called the "Eurozone Crisis" and even things like Brzezinski's lamentation about a *failure* of "Strategic Vision" are the direct playing out of this already fundamentally changed reality. (Btw, the Chinese appear to have already figured this out but apparently none of the Western elites -- or their necessary counterparts, the "protesters" -- seem to have grasped what has already occured.) Welcome to the FUTURE! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 5/11/2012 11:57:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, jhopk...@neoscenes.net writes: Hi Brian: > In this way you can see that the current attack on the universities is > not just a caste issue for academics, it's a societal issue. The > structure of society based on distinct professional fields defined and > guarded by credentials is useless for the business entrepreneurs. The > real question, imo, is not how to defend professional status but rather > how to transform it into something that can have a positive social > function for everyone. So instead of getting a degree to carve out a > protected niche in the economy, you would get both a degree and a > profession in order to contribute to a greater good. My experience is exactly so, though, in my engineering education -- I learned how to extract things from the earth that were/are in high (social) demand benefiting many, so, not sure what you mean here. What I learned was <...> # 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: Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12 (Lascaux)
Self-conscious-artists-everywhere: > By now, Lascaux has grown principally into a > massive conservation/preservation industry mobilizing > vast resources and hundreds of experts, many more > than those actually concerned with its artistic content. Lascaux was NOT meant to be "art"! These are paleolithic, proto-religious paintings made by pre-historic humans who were not YET "self-conscious." Human mentality has undergone *multiple* fundamental changes since then and the mental life that produces *art* today would be completely unfathomable to those who made these cave paintings. In fact, ancient Egypt also had no "art." Those objects and hieroglyphics that amaze us are overwhelmingly religious and were not meant to be publicly displayed or enjoyed by an "audience" at all -- which is why they largely come to us from sealed burial chambers. They were meant for the "gods" who were presumed to be walking among us. Rarely are museums "honest" about these matters. I once went to an exhibit in Israel where the curators went out of their way to make this point in the catalog and display tags but this seems to be very uncommon. Merlin Donald's 1993 "Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition" would be a good place to start to better understand these changes. _http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Modern-Mind-Evolution-Cognition/dp/0674644840 /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336651426&sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Modern-Mind-Evolution-Cognition/dp/0674644840/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UT F8&qid=1336651426&sr=1-1) Our confusion about such things is a reflection of how deeply we have forgotten the origins of our own culture, under the "propaganda" effects of mass-media, and why the digital renaissance now underway will come as a surprise to so many people. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12
Dmytri: > Eliminating privilege is a political struggle, not a technical one. Ahah -- therein lies the conundrum. Are you sure that you can defend this, apparently controversial, "priority" scheme? Where does one's "politics" come from? In particular, what might *cause* an "anti-privilege" sort of politics (not to be confused with either the politics of "fairness" or "anti-corruption")? Are you claiming that this sort of politics could be the result of some "natural law" or has some other "inate" origins? Probably not. Or, does it arise from our "material" circumstances? And, since I presume we are talking here about human psychology, what do we know about the relationship between that psychology and the material environment in which we live? Then, how is this psychological environment shaped by the technologies we use and their relationship to various sorts of "scarcity" (which are themselves produced by technologies)? So, which has priority? Technology? Economics? Culture? Politics? Seems you might have over-simplified things and drawn distinctions that are too sharp -- perhaps the result of grinding an axe? As has already been pointed out, much of our lives already has little to do with "profit." As McLuhan declared a very long time ago, we already live in an age of "software communism." Since I'm an ex-Wall Street banker, I happen to know some of the people who funded Facebook. Do they want profits? Sure, but do they also know that what they are doing is skating on very thin ice? Absolutely. Do they intend to "hold" the stock -- not any longer than legally necessary! Do they know that you really can't "control" anyone on Facebook and that the *primary* "sales" activity that happens is NEGATIVE (i.e. people telling each other what *not* to buy) -- you betcha. Does anyone on Madison Avenue *really* believe that you can "target" people and get more money out of them than they did with television ads? No -- the smart ones have learned over the past 15 years that it really doesn't work that way. They are just hoping to minimize how much LESS they get out of them! People aren't fools and since antiquity human cultures have valorized VIRTUE over VICE. Greed is a vice. Endless accumulation isn't a virtue -- temperance is, along with prudence. How do you know that Bernard de Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees" wasn't a "limited time offer" that has now EXPIRED? Capitalism was invented for a "purpose" by more-or-less by the same people who gave us the 18th century (first) Industrial Revolution. While corporations and usury had been around for a while, that purpose was (roughly speaking) "industrialization." Today the Chinese call their system "state-capitalism," which given that they are still industrializing makes a lot of sense. Industrialization raises living standards, increases population density, improves health, lengthens life expectancy and generally "helps" EVERYONE -- right? Just look at Angus Madisson's charts and graphs. So, does "capitalism" still have a broad social *purpose* once a significant level of industrialization has already been achieved? Might the same "anti-privilege" politics that you champion be a result of having already achieved "post-industrial" status -- personally and culturally? For what it's worth, the *original* Internet (okay, ARPANET) was quite "centralized" and, in fact, had "surveillance" (albeit of a very small group of researchers who had grown reluctant to travel to "brain-storm") as (one of) its primary goals. By the time I brought AOL public in 1992, its entire profits were the result of HOT CHAT, which was superceded by AOL becoming the primary site for accessing PORN sites, since they had the largest server-farm and, therefore, the most room to cache "pictures." So, there's "surveillance" (like the don't pass go, directly to jail type -- for instance) and the "I've got all your clicks but don't know what to do with them" type -- which is exactly where Google and Facebook are today and will likely be 10 years from now. Be careful not to believe what the "capitalists" tell you . . . they often aren't telling the truth! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY P.S. The first person I heard use the term "venture communist" was John Perry Barlow, speaking at a Forbes conference. As a guy who has come with a few catchy phrases, you might want to trademark the term! # 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: The insult of the 1 percent: "Art-history majors"
Armin: > I find that phrase 'let's be honest' highly problematic > and just like 'complex' it serves a certain purpose of > cutting discussions short. Not my intent at all. In fact, if you look at my "let's be honest" comment in context (i.e. the paragraph you took it from), you will see that it was attached to the work of UCLA sociologist Michael Mann and the need to actually understand the "sources of social power." That topic is rarely discussed on this list, so perhaps a good way to start our "honesty" would be to admit how little we know and how much we all need to "organize our ignorance." My suggestion is that if we do this -- work hard to understand society (ours, others, in history, through poetry) -- we will find that "elites" have always been an integral part of the story. So, we need *more* discussion about society, not less! > Even in the USA, Mr. Stahlman, there were powerful > mass movements of workers and intellectuals who > faced down the elites and forced them to make serious > concessions. When I was a graduate student at UW-Madison in 1970, I spent many months in the Wisconsin State Historical Society library, which likely has the most extensive collection of "radical" literature from such movements in the USA (due to LaFollette and the Progressive Party.) I still have my stack 5x7 notecards. Then I became a supporter of Rosa Luxemburg. I can assure you, however, wherever there were "concessions" there were also elites. While it's an admittedly crude and anecdotal analysis, you should be aware that one of the primary motivations behind many Democrat's "social welfare" policy initiatives is to ensure that the "poor" won't burn things down -- or so those *elites* tell me. The Republicans also worry but they have other policy recommendations, albeit with a similar "no riots" objective. That has been the "elite consensus" since many cities were (partially) burned down in the 1970s -- which, btw, I see everyday since I live in one of those neighborhoods, where 50% of the buildings on Broadway (two blocks away) were torched back then. At the same time, one of the most enduring effects of Emma Goldman et al were the Palmer Raids, which then became institutionalized as the NYPD "Red Squad" and is now known as the "Intelligence Division," which is actually the US version of MI-5 -- who I first met circa 1973 when their "chief" physically lifted me off the ground and removed me from a protest I was staging in Cooper Union's Great Hall. > So 'let's be honest' there has been maybe always > a tendency of the elites trying to rule completely > unchallenged, yet lets work to not allow them to get > there, because actually they are quaking in their boots ;-) Actually, the "problem" today is that there ISN'T an *elite* to even do that! This isn't the WASP-dominated 1930s anymore! Today, all there is are is the POLICE and their outstanding request for more *surveillance* -- which now means domestic drones and total net-tapping and extensive efforts at "infiltration" -- but be clear that they work for themselves. There isn't anything like a "statistical" 1% with any semblance of "class-solidarity" because, like the rest of us, they have no *coherence* in their lives. You think you are "fighting" the 1%? Guess again! So, "let's be honest" and notice that "mass movements" are themselves a *feature* of the society in which they arise. Elites and movements have always been intertwined. Understand how *any* society operates and you will understand its mass movements. My suggestion is that we are now in a DIFFERENT society than in the past times, so accounts of movements from the 1930s need to be put into their own context and then related to our own times, Technology changes everything in SOCIETY, so mass-movements that arose under the conditions of *radio* (or television) will be different from movements that arise under the environmental conditions of the Internet. So, also will the nature of the *elites* thoroughly change. They are two-sides of the same technology-defined *environmental* coin. Understand society and understand how media/technology changes society and you will be at least able to "honestly" have a discussion about the world we live in -- in which more honest discussion needs to *begin* than to be "cut short." Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Why I say the things I say
Brian:
> If my dear friend Mark Stahlman were right, that is, if life in
> democratic societies were always and ever simply the rule of
> the powerful minority over the powerless majority, then another
> consequence must necessarily ensue.
Thanks for the shout-out but, as you know, I never said that.
Indeed, ever since the "invention" of *democracy* it has been a "tool" used
by one group of elites against other groups of elites (specifically the
"oligarchs" in Athens or in the Aegean islands were "democracy" was imposed
on threat of mass-death.)
Dictators, emperors and men-who-would-rule-the-world all have to be
"popular" or they won't be "on top" for very long. "Buying votes" is a very
old
story as is "freeing slaves" and "forgiving debts." That's how Mithradates
used Greece to fight against Rome 2000+ years ago. Same as what happens
in Venezuela now.
Social power *requires* broad "buy-in" -- whether is comes in Ideological,
Economic, Military or Political form, as detailed by UCLA sociologist
Michael Mann. If we're going to discuss "power" then we need some basis for
our
analysis and if you've got a better one than Mann, we'd like to hear about
it.
The last time we lived in such a situation was the Cold War. There was a
"unifying" ideology as well as economic "growth" and military "patriotism"
as well as political "reform/compromise" -- all of which required broad
agreement by the population, punctuated by "counter-cultures" that actually
strengthened the "consensus." And *ALL* of this was "regulated" by
mass-media. Now it's all gone.
> We must all, to the extent that we are in the powerless
> majority, become either hopelessly naive ("Well,
> every capitalist Armageddon has it's cultural silver lining")
> or we must become hopelessly paranoid ("It's all a trap,
> a Matrix, foisted on the majority of zombies by the
> minority of all-powerful rulers").
Not quite. We must understand society (i.e. our relationships with
each other) -- which neither of these "options" offer. Naive or
paranoid? Talk about a rhetorical "strawman"!
Your audience is neither stupid nor crazy. However, they (mostly) live in
post-industrial economies that have fundamentally lost their *coherence*
-- so they are understandably confused!
We have no common "ideology" (largely because we were taught that we are
"citizens of the world," which makes all present-day *culture* is our
enemy.) We have no economic growth (and we never told that this is exactly
what
to expect as a result of digital economics.) We have no "enemies" around
whom we can rally our military (China in the 00s just doesn't substitute
well for the Soviet Union of the 50s.) And, we have no shared politics (since
the two "big tent" political parties have collapsed and elections have
largely become "throw the bum out.")
We are, proverbially, up a creek (that we don't understand) without a
paddle (because we keep trying things that we know won't work.)
> I admit it, I sometimes freak out: I think I'm hearing
> the ventriloquized voice of the enemy. Friend, enemy,
> dualism, linear, bad. Therefore anyone who has a better
> solution to this whole problem, go ahead, speak up.
> Let's go forward with all this.
Now you're talking! Everyone has to be *freaking* out! Everywhere!
I'll tell you what people *around* the world are doing -- looking for their
own LIVING cultures and then exploring their deep roots, so that they have
something to "rely" on in such uncertain times. The Egyptians are doing
it. So are the Indonesians. And, the Japanese and Brazilians and
Russians. You can be sure that the Chinese are also doing it -- big time.
Yes,
globalism is finished -- thanks to the Internet!
Isn't the question of "culture" what prompted your reply? Are we to find
our "culture" in the *museums* that Koch et al fund? No, I suspect not.
"Commodified" and detached-from-history "displays" of this sort are much
more likely to *hide* than to *reveal* anything useful about our *living*
culture for the simple reason that those who actually construct these exhibits
have "no culture" themselves. It's the staff of the Met who are
responsible for what they show, not the "benefactors." When I go there I'm
always
trying to explain what isn't on display and why.
Bill Gates is backing Big History. This is typically a first-year college
course that teaches "complex systems," starting with the Big Bang and
ending with Global Warming.
_http://www.bighistoryproject.com/_ (http://www.bighistoryproject.com/)
While he may have picked the wrong "culture" (i.e. "emergence" is arguably
a re-tread of the neo-Platonic notion of "emanations"), he's probably
pointed in the right direction -- in the sense that what we are now struggling
to compose is a new *cosmology* that is appropriate to living in our
Re: The insult of the 1 percent: "Art-history majors"
Brian:
> It isn't fair. And there is no honor in formerly democratic
> societies that are now ruled by the ultra-rich.
No, it's not "fair" but, sorry, that's also naive and no one with any
"intellectual" grounding in the sociology of power could let you get past this
mistake. This society -- indeed Western society (and every other society)
-- has *always* been "ruled by the ultra-rich" (along with their "friends.")
"Formerly democratic" -- huh? When did women get the vote (and what did
they vote for)? And, when did African-Americans get the vote (and what did
they vote for)? And, what exactly does a "vote" mean in a world dominated
by mass-media "programming" anyway? Voting for what television tells you
to vote for?
What happened to all that discussion about Marcusean "one-dimensionality"
and the Baudrillardian/Deborgian "spectacle"? Formerly democratic? What
planet was that on?
What happened to C. Wright Mills ("The Power Elite" 1956)? Or, Pareto
("The Rise and Fall of the Elites" 1901/1968)? Or, Bill Domhoff's 2010 6th
Edition "Who Rules America?" (which is based on Michael Mann's "The Sources of
Social Power" 1986/93)?
Mann is widely considered the best sociologist of power today. His
Ideology, Economics, Military and Political (IEMP) model of social power has
been
the topic of books filled with pro-con essays and conferences and clips on
YouTube. C'mon -- I know this began as an "anarchist" mailing list but
let's be honest about power and its sources, okay?
I'll tell you what happened to the artists/intellectuals and what it has to
do with nettime. The Western European "elites" stopped paying them.
Why? The Cold War was over.
The massive institutionalized "state" payments to artists in Germany and
France and UK were simply a *feature* of the Cultural Cold War. Read
Francis Stonor Saunders' book (or any of the others.)
The Western elites paid the trade unions, they paid the artists, they paid
the social scientists, they paid the journalists, they paid the
intellectuals. It was an *integral* part of the fight by FREEDOM against the
*Evil
Empire* . . . and then the *empire* went away. No more payments . . . and
no more elite-funded cultural "coherence."
When I was invited to keynote Metaforum III in Budapest and first met
nettime (and was invited to join its Zentral Kommittee), I met a group of
unhappy artists. The WALL had come down and now they could all visit the
Stassi
museum in East Berlin but many of their lives had also become very
"precarious."
And who was nettime's "nemesis" at the time? George Soros -- who had set
up his own East-meets-West network and told the ZK that it either had to
merge with his (i.e. go on his payroll) or shutdown. That's why the *last*
nettime "party" was held at Soros' offices in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Democratic? Ultra-rich? Way too close to home? Guess what -- Soros won
and nettime shut down. No one wants to be on *his* SH*TLIST!
What has happened to ALL OF US is that we've lived through TWO "rotations
of the elites."
The first was 60+ years ago with the rise to global dominance of the
"Rockefellers" -- who won WW II, established the IMF/WB, UN, CIA and Ford
Foundation etc. based on a Cold War -- and the second was the 20+ year-old
collapse of that "consensus" and the falling of the WALL (which was caused by
Silicon Valley) and the rise of the BRICS.
In the USA (and EU etc.) this second *rotation* left NO ONE in "charge" --
since they had put all their eggs in the Trilaterial basket, the bottom of
which fell out in the Carter Presidency -- and resulting in a situation
where the *elites* could no longer control themselves, leading to ridiculous
un-self-policed "wealth" creation. The result was a run-away Wall Street,
driven by the ROBOTS (i.e. "slaves") who actually do all the "work."
> Climate change will destroy the planet and Koch
> will have saved the Met's dinosaurs!
Terror! What you call "climate change" -- from the standpoint of any
artist/intellectual who is used to being "supported" by their own elite
*patrons* in a post-industrial economy -- is what BILLIONS of people simply
call
*development* since they live in the still-industrializing economies.
There is only ONE way that "green-house gases" will stop spewing into the
atmosphere -- the collective *power elites* of the world will stop them.
And the only way that will happen is when the Chinese and Indian and
Brazilian and Mexican and all the other "poor people" of the world are no
longer
POOR, so their own elites will be able to slide their societies into
post-scarcity "green" mode, like us.
Do artists/intellectuals have to stop being *neutral* (which really means
getting paid to keep your mouth shut, as they *all* were until recently)?
YES!!
Does that mean that they are putting their artistic/intellectual talents to
good
Re: The insult of the 1 percent: "Art-history majors"
Ed: > what I see in the words and actions of a Connard > is desperation and an identity crisis. Yes, I think you are right . . . well beyond Connard, the "ruling class" is in seriously bad shape! The *problem* with "neo-liberalism" is that GIMME MORE is not a "class" cohesive or even satisfactorily motivating "prime-directive." In an every-man-for-himself world, how does *society* organize itself and not just degenerate into hand-to-hand combat -- among the elites themselves? This lack of coherent cultural "purpose" has been a hallmark of the West since at least WW II, when it went through its last "rotation of the elites." If the goal is to eliminate the "authoritarian personality" (i.e. code for those who adhere to "traditions") and to generate a series of synthetic "images" for people to rally around -- as first detailed by Dutch futurist in his 1953 "The Image of the Future" -- then what are you left with? Chimeras? Memes? Video-games? If the "empires of the future will be empires of the mind" and psycholog ical warfare against "peacetime" populations became the primary operating mode of the newly dominant elite, then eventually the lack of anything enduring must catch up with you. That *eventually* is now. For a while, the "artificial" *global* conflict between FREEDOM (i.e. the CIA's 1950s/60s cultural Cold War) and WORLD PEACE (i.e. the Soviet response, which after the mid-70s "purge" also became the CIA's mantra, as institutionalized by the 1984 launching of US Institute for Peace) could "hold" things together. But all this has been off the table for 20+ years now! What can replace it? Global War on Terror? Not very successful as a popular meme in an age of machinic (and mercenary) warfare. China is stealing our secrets? Replaying the "precious bodily fluids" argument of Dr. Strangelove and occupying the front pages of the NYTimes daily, this is likely to be heavily featured in the 2012 Presidential election and appropriately tagged as the global version of "blame the other guy." Save the polar bears? In a world where the BRICS will add a *billion* people the middle-class (i.e. driving a car and not a motorbike) over the next 10+ years and where the ideology of "globalism" has collapsed, everyone knows that Kyoto isn't going to work. Now Stewart Brand has become an "eco-pragmatist." The recognition that the US has no *strategy* and cannot rise above legislative deadlock is, after all, obviously the *fault* of those who are supposed to be "in charge" is now almost universal. So, like Trilat-honcho Zbigniew Brzezinski and the lead US correspondent for The Financial Times, the various "mouthpieces" all write their hand-wringing books . . . which no one bothers to read. And this deep cultural incoherence is substantially amplified by the Net, since we are all living in nettime . . . Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: The insult of the 1 percent: "Art-history majors"
Brian: > Imagine a world from which art has been surgically removed. > Replace it with entertainment and compete 'till you're blue. As you know, artists have "always" depended on patrons -- as reflected in the $120M bid for Munch's SCREAM yesterday (and the way that Munch became a cultural "hero" in Norway). This relationship between the "elite" and the "artists" certainly changed in the 20th but that's more a function of the changes in the elites than in the artists. In particular, there are no longer any culturally *coherent* elites in the WEST . . . while there are still plenty of artists looking for patrons!! It is this lack of cultural COHERENCE that presents those of us in the West with our greatest challenge. This is, in fact, exactly the province, indeed obligation, of ARTISTS. Exactly what is our culture? Whether it began with "Soviet Realism" or the Nazi denunciation of "decadent" art and whether it was institutionalized by the CIA Cold War championing of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, 20th century art largely reflected the *disintegration* of any cultural coherence. Nelson Rockefeller referred to the Museum of Modern Art as "mommies museum" and, as I often suggest to those who are trying to make sense of statements about the "humans disappearing," there are few recognizable representations of humans hanging on its walls. > Is it maybe time to give up being neutral? Indeed. But "neutral" about what? How about being "neutral" about (or even hostile to) WESTERN culture? You want to deal with the 1% who want to eliminate the "art history majors" (when, in fact, that's what many of them took as college degrees) -- then give them some actual *culture* to have to face up to. Otherwise, it's just more play-acting . . . that only feeds the budgets of the SWAT teams (i.e. the "patrons" of today's "street-art")! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 5/3/2012 3:58:13 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com writes: Edward Conard works for Mitt Romney's firm, Bain Capital. He is part of the .01% and he is true to his class. A New York Times reporter interviewed him on the occasion of his soon-to-be-released book (which you should probably steal if you want to read it) called "Unintended Consequences." As usual, it declares that the superrich do us all a world of good, even though all they want is more for them. In Connard's case, he already has enough to crush us like flies. Check out his world view, as reported by Adam Davidson: <...> # 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
Technology, Language and Empires of the Mind
Folks: In his 6 Sept. 1943 speech at Harvard (where he got an honorary degree), Churchill delivered his famous "empires of the future will be empires of the mind" phrase. What this turned out to mean is that the techniques of psychological warfare that had already become dominant in WW II were about to become universal, in the name of "justice" and "law," as Churchill saw it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-P_sOZDwg http://www.winstonchurchill.org/component/content/article/3-speech es/420-the-price-of-greatness-is-responsibility The resulting Cold War, also highlighted by Churchill's more-famous "Iron Curtain" phrase, was aggressively fought as a CULTURAL war, in which one side promoted "freedom" and the other promoted "peace," as the psychological "flags" around which they attempted to build their *mental* empires. Important aspects of this psychological war for the "hearts and minds" of populations have been detailed in books like (with more coming) -- http://www.amazon.com/Science-Coercion-Communication-Psychological-1945-1960 /dp/0195102924/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335099433&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Cold-Enemy-Military-Intellectual/dp/0691114 552/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335099433&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.com/The-Cultural-Cold-War-Letters/dp/1565846648/ref=sr_1_1 ?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335099594&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/The-Mighty-Wurlitzer-Played-America/dp/067403256X/ref= sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335099624&sr=1-1 All of this took place in the context of the radio/television world that Churchill (and everyone else) lived in -- forcing the "belief structures" of this *imperial* battle to conform to the beliefs and attitudes that were appropriate to what McLuhan called the "electric media environment." Indeed, it was these "media" that were most aggressively used to promote these "empires." Among the ideas that arose from this very well funded effort to mobilize social science on behalf of "empires of the mind" were "complex systems" (following the effort to construct "general systems") as the best way to "model" society. Complex systems research grew out of a fascination with Chaos, which, in turn had been a recurring theme in the "modern" artistic expressions of the times. The "anarchist" movement belongs to this period of environmental chaos and, indeed, McLuhan originally titled his first book "Guide to Chaos." Again, to use McLuhan's terms, the pre-electric media environment, which McLuhan had termed the "Gutenberg Galaxy," had promoted "concepts" that tended to be linear and bureaucratic, leading to the rise of nation states and to the spread of "science" and with it technologically driven political-economy, including both capitalism and its various "successors" like the "communism" envisaged by Karl Marx and others. But these 19th century (and earlier) sympathies were to be replaced by very different behaviors and attitudes. Gregory Bateson's 1972 Steps to an Ecology of Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to Man's Understanding of Himself is an important compilation from a senior WW II psychological warrior. As was his 1967 speech "Conscious Purpose Versus Nature" at the Dialectics of Liberation conference in London, sponsored by the Tavistock Institute, a "psychiatric" think-tank which had itself been at the center of Britain's WW II psywar efforts. Many of Bateson's essays had first been delivered as keynotes at meetings of the Institute of General Semantics. General Semantics was a movement that had been started by Polish Count Alfred Korzybski, who had developed an elaborate system of "therapeutic" language use which was critical because "the task ahead is gigantic if we are to avoid more personal, national, and even international tragedies based on unpredictability, insecurity, fears, anxieties etc., which are steadily disorganizing the functioning of the human nervous system" (from Preface to the 3rd edition of his Science and Sanity.) Korzybski's General Semantics, later promoted by S. I. Hayakawa and Neil Postman (among others), had its origins in the early 20th century fascination with the interaction between language and society, particularly (according to Korzybski's own accounts) in the 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and the Science of Symbolism, by C.K Ogden and I. A. Richards (who, incidentally, had been an instructor to McLuhan at Cambridge.) Ogden and Richards later teamed up on the BASIC ENGLISH project, which re ceived considerable support from the Rockefeller Foundation and Harvard University, as well as being promoted by Churchill himself. This recent book details some of the links between this linguistic project and post-WW II imperialism -- http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Mind-Richards-English-1929-1979/dp/0804748225/ ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335103270&
Re: Galloway: 10 Theses on the Digital
Hello: > What is the digital exactly? At last, someone is asking the right question . . . !! > The digital means the one dividing into two. Actually, that would be BINARY -- named after binary arithmetic, with only two values. The widely used term "bit" is actually a contraction of "binary digit." Yes, in the early days of computing, those involved somewhat arbitrarily decided to contrast "analog" with "digital" computing but, if they had cared much about the words they were using, *digital* would probably not have been their choice. What they were getting at was closer to "discrete" as opposed to "continuous." If you look up the original meaning of the word "digit," what you will find is FINGER (or toe)! > Its heart lies in metaphysics, and adjacent philosophical > systems, most importantly dialectics. Not really. There is plenty to discuss in the metaphysics of continuousness vs. discreteness that has little to do with any common meaning of "dialectics." It feels like this whole investigation is heading off in an odd direction. > By comparison, the analogue means the two coming > together as one. Huh? Analog simply means continuous (i.e. not discrete) and has no implication of "two" or of "coming together." This is getting pretty strange now. > It is found in theories of immanence: either the immanence of the > total plane of being, or the immanence of the individual person > or object. Either immanence in its infinity, or immanence in its > finitude. Okay, I get it. This isn't about "digital" at all -- is it? So, I wonder what his "10 Theses" are all about? Blackness? Superfolds? No demands? One would hope that a little Leibniz sneaks its way into this discussion, if that's not asking for too much. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive
Allan: The TOTALITARIANISM of "capitalism" is simply that *everything* has a PRICE. Therefore, many people are "naturally" obsessed with *prices* and, often enough, those who tend to spend their lives focused on "justice" also fall into conversation about how Facebook can "justify" its own price (which of course it can't) -- which then becomes the question of whether such an obvious "injustice" will impinge on the "survival of capitalism." As nearly everyone knows -- particularly in the technology and financial worlds where I have worked most of my life -- Facebook is NOT "worth" $100B and, accordingly, over time, its share price will decline to reflect this "fact." What has also been weaving its way through the discussion is the notion that a) capitalism has already stopped :"surviving" and b) what actually happens on Facebook (i.e. the lack of any actual "market economy" despite the desperate drive to generate "likes") -- which is *why* the IPO price is ridiculous (other than in the usual supply/demand for "hot" stock sense) -- might point to *why* capitalism isn't "working" anymore. So, the Facebook IPO situation is being used as an elaborate metaphor for all the other subjects that people actually want to talk about. Make sense? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 3/10/2012 9:49:43 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, al...@allansiegel.info writes: hello, well I've been trying to get at the core of this discussion which frankly I find bloated with excess verbiage and driven by a subtext that seems to fetishize Facebook as if this were one of the most pressing questions we are now facing. Really folks, one has to simply watch The Social Network and extrapolate from the personalities and economic milieu (Harvard Univ Facebook ground zero) at Facebook's inception into present social/political climate to see how value increases (and why); is the paradigm that different for Youtube, Yahoo, Google etc...? <...> # 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: The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive 'value ab...
Jon (Michael): > Let me ask a slightly different question, whether > capitalism can survive its necessary generation > of abundance? Two questions (implied by yours) -- what do you mean by "capitalism" and why do you presume that whatever-that-is has "survived"? Many have referred to the 1917-1989 Soviet economy (and now the Russian economy) as "state capitalism" -- not "Communism." Ditto for China's before-and-after economies. While this may make "communists" feel better about their favorite "utopia," it clearly raises questions about our terminology (as well as, why "grammar" matters, why "equations" don't work and why language is inherently *equivocal*!) If you don't mind, could you consider the possibility that INDUSTRIALISM is really what happened in the "developed" economies -- both those we call "Capitalist" and those we call "Communist" -- and, indeed, is what is still happening in the BRICS + TEN? In other words, can *industrialism* survive abundance? I don't think so. In fact, is has already "expired." Yes, the ideology of the US/EUROPE/JAPAN (aka the "Trilaterals") was that what they were doing involved "free-markets" and so on -- just as the ideology of the Cold War "opposition" was that they were "Communists" (or Stalinists or Maoists) -- but, stepping back from this elaborate ideological "cover-story," wasn't what *all* of these economic systems were really about was *industrial* development, For the TRILATERALS, this development *stopped* 20+ years ago. We are all comfortable saying that Russia is no longer "Communist" and that China is a "mixed" economy, so why do we persist in calling what we are living with as plain-old "Capitalism"? So that we can be righteously (and, therefore, ineffectively) *against* the current state-of-affairs? Or, so that we can ignore what has already happened? Is the stagnation of middle-class incomes and the rise of the 1% over the past decades *really* the result of "neo-liberalism" or "late-stage capitalism" . . . or something else -- like POST-INDUSTRIALISM or the DIGITAL/INFORMATION economy (which, incidentally, we have *very* little to say about)? > This issue may or may not be affected by the information society. Sorry -- but that's the key question we have to answer! Whether you are a *sociologist* (and therefore give "society" priority over economics) or a "technologist" (like myself) or even an old-fashioned "political-economist" in your sympathies, it should jump out from this thread (along with the parallel comments in the "desire" thread) that we are *not* living in KANSAS anymore. And that we really don't know what to say about it. M. Goldhaber (along with others) calls what we are now experiencing an ATTENTION economy. Really? He also asserts that "For the most part, within capitalism, advertising merely redistributes how consumption spending will occur; it adds little to the totals spent." Really? If MASS-MEDIA (driven by advertising) -- a phrase that, according to the OED is the origin of our current usage of the term "media," which originally named a kingdom "in-between" Persia and Assyria -- did NOT "take-over" Western society in the late 19th century, then what would have happened to the massive scaling of production/consumption that we today categorize as "Fordism" etc? Would it have been possible? Since Bernard de Mandeville specified that political-economy depended on the exploitation of PRIVATE VICE (i.e. *desire*) for PUBLICK BENEFIT (i.e. industrial-scale expansion) in the early 1700s, does the history of "capitalist" economics show any *breakthrough* in the required "consumption" (i.e. expression of that *desire*) that can be separated from ADVERTISING? And, what happens in "Kansas" when more-and-more people (like most on this list) ignore those ADS? What if people tend towards only buying what they need and not what they (have been told by psychology-primed advertising that they) want? What if GREED and the other VICES -- like Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Envy, Rage and Pride -- go out of "fashion"? What if PSY-WAR on the "civilian" population doesn't really "work" anymore? Consumption slows (or even declines) and we enter what many economists have called the "nightmare scenario" . . . in which Mandeville's 300 year-old inspiration *stops* driving GDP growth. Maybe TUMULT also declines? Might that be exactly what has already happened? Perhaps "capitalism" has already stopped "surviving"? Your question about "abundance" is one way of asking "what happens to people when they have enough"? My questions about VIRTUE and VICE are, in fact, the way that (your) question was originally posed 300 years ago. Look around. We have indeed "met the enemy and it is us (i.e. our own "manufactured" *desires*)" . . . so what are we going to do about it? Stop "conspicuously" consumin
Re: Political-Economy and Desire
Keith: Thanks for your thoughtful and generous reply. My fascination with the Germans is certainly driven in part by my inability to read the language (plus some potential ancestral linkage) and, alas, my French isn't proficient enough to read Dumont in the original but I'll gladly look to him in translation. Mandeville and Marx sound like fascinating bookends for an understanding of "classical" political-economy. The history of "ideas" is certainly inadequate, for the simple reason that much of the history of industrialism(capitalism) was never expressed publicly but rather persisted in "secret" protocols. Georg Simmel's 1906 "The Sociology of Secrecy and Secret Societies" is a welcome (albeit quite incomplete) companion to Weber's "Protestant Ethic," describing aspects of these developments that Weber likely didn't have the "courage" to discuss. _http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Simmel/Simmel_1906.html_ (http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Simmel/Simmel_1906.html) As best I can tell, the "robber barons" got their *occultism* from the Germans (rather than the English/Scots) and given the apotheosis of German "masonry" in the intertwined 20th-century expansion of the SS and the invention of LSD (by the rival Anthroposophists), I find myself asking what exactly Hegel and his roommate Schelling were "taking" in those heady late 18th-century days of "idealism." By the time we get to Nietzsche, there can be no doubt that powerful psychotropics were involved -- likely starting in his early student days in Leipzig and culminating on the streets of Turin. Given what we now know about the hallucinogenic origins of the Athenian DEMOS, you do have to wonder if the Illuminati (yes, a critical, if fleeting, group of German "Freemasons") were also interested in replicating the Mysteries, as their code-naming of their headquarters in Ingolstadt as Eleusis might indicate. I was hoping that my mention of MAGIC would have stimulated some recollections and Binswanger is certainly a fruitful place to start. Yes, money is magic. And, the "secular" is often a disguise for the "gnostic truth." At least two books appeared in the effort to better understand the "origins" of Nazi "ideology" which focus on 18th-century German "masonry" -- Ronald Gray's fascinating 1952 Goethe The Alchemist: A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's Literary and Scientific Works (Cambridge) and Heinrich Schneider's 1947 Quest for Mysteries: The Masonic Background For Literature in the 18th Century (Cornell). As a fan of Hegel (and Marx) you might also benefit from John Milbank's 1990/2006 Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (particularly Chapters 6 and 7, respectively for-and-against each of these two Germans), which is, alas, one of the few recent treatments I could find that tries to critically examine the assumptions of political-economy, as well as sociology. Yes, by initiating this thread, I was trying to find a few more. And, hopefully, this acquits me of some measure of error for not telling people something they don't already know. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Political-Economy and Desire
Brian: > Mark, this one is truly fascinating. Send updates as you go. Thanks. Here's some more . . . The key question, I believe, is what happened to VIRTUE in these socio-economic transitions. As you know, the *four* "cardinal" virtues and, thus, the foundation of Western culture -- from Plato to Aquinas (i.e. 2000 years) -- are fortitude, temperance, justice and prudence. Industrialism(Capitalism) gets rid of THREE of these, since humans are not expected to be just, prudent or temperate -- if their economic lives are "ruled" by desire. The *only* virtue that remains "consistent" with political-economy is FORTITUDE (i.e. power) -- so, very early, we wind up with the necessity for LEVIATHAN. Thus, "social" violence becomes mandatory for industrial economics. Accordingly, this becomes the basis of "sociology" and, if you will, the invention of "society" as the *regulator* by Comte/Durkheim and Weber/Simmel et al, building on Kant et al. Btw, this "narrowing" of the "moral options" is paralleled in "philosophy" with the discarding of formal, material and final causality -- also foundational from Aristotle to Aquinas -- to the exclusive benefit of *efficient* causality, which is the "moral" equivalent to FORCE. And, rarely discussed, this is also the reason for the strong attraction to MAGIC among key economic "personalities" (i.e. why those like John D. Rockefeller J. Pierpont Morgan were *occultists*, as was Nietzsche!) -- since summoning the "devil" is the ultimate expression of POWER. > Maybe the cybernetics guys, with their interest in rationality, > were also interested in power over entire populations: predictive > power, the power to control. Yes, that's correct. I'm particularly familiar with the "cybernetics" people, since my father was in the room when that term was coined (as a protege of Norbert Wiener.) What "systems science" is all about (including today's "complexity" approach, as at Santa Fe Institute, Kevin Kelly et al) is power over people -- even when it is titled "Out of Control." Btw, ironically, that is also why we know about Noam Chomsky. He was selected, funded and made "famous" by the systems/cybernetics guys at MIT because they hoped that his ur-grammar could be used to "program" people. It isn't -- as Chomsky himself "revealed" in some very important debates (after he got tenure). Yes, I believe that *digital* technology is stimulating a *moral* RENAISSANCE globally -- which is the reason for my re-reading the early political-economists. What the US is going through today is a "re-discovery" of the multiplicity of *virtue* as expressed in BOTH the Tea Party and OWS (i.e. where the "virtue" being emphasized for each is consistent with the ideologies of each of their "wings" -- "justice" for OWS and "prudence/temperance" for the Tea Party). However, as the ancients understood, there is no VIRTUE in separating these qualities and excessive emphasis on any of them leads in the direction of VICE. Furthermore, none of this makes any sense without "grace," which, in turn, informs "natural law." This DIGITAL *renaissance* of virtue also implies a revival of concerns about *vice* -- which is what is happening with the "flesh hunt" for corruption on the Chinese Internet, for instance. As it turns out, this is also why the Chinese Premier cited both Marcus Aurelius and Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" to Fared Zarcaria on his TV show last year -- as these are key documents in the "capitalist" assertion/rationalization of the "solitary" virtue of *fortitude*! The reason for my post was to take advantage of the wide-scope of reading by those on the nettime list to see if there are contemporary political-economists who are questioning the "calculus of desire" under *digital* economic conditions. Has anyone started to question the assumptions behind "politcal-economy"? Guess not, based on your own research? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive 'value ab...
Jon: > I'm just attempting to put the other side and the paradox > and ambiguity back in the equation. Alas, the *equation* does NOT allow paradox! When Larry Kraus (well known popularizer of quantum/particle/string physics) opines that "mathematics is the only language of nature," he is just continuing the very old tradition that got us into this mess. Needless to say, he's wrong. We are using language right now. And, it's not "mathematics." It is equivocal and not univocal and rich with paradox. Whether this urge to "know the answers" began with the primordial *desire* to definitively know GOOD from EVIL, or Pythagoras and his "beans" or Plato's denunciation of the "sophists" or, for our own Western "culture," with Ockham's RAZOR (with its own roots in Catharism), the "choice" has been between trying to set up equations (i.e. "gnosticism") and/or trying to live with the necessity of paradox. This is what McLuhan called the "Ancient Quarrel." I would recommend his 1943 Cambridge PhD thesis, "The Classical Trivium" (not published until 2006) for those interested in the highlights of its history. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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: Political-Economy and Desire
Mr. Ghost-of-Wells: As your email address indicates, you are apparently a "fan" of H.G. Wells. Of course, the Morlocks and Eloi (plural, one "l") are the dramatis persona in Well's 1895 "Time Machine." "By the year 802,701 AD, _humanity_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_race) has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the _Morlocks_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlock) . The Eloi are the child-like, frail group, living a _banal_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banal) life of ease on the surface of the earth, while the Morlocks live underground, tending machinery and providing food, clothing and infrastructure for the Eloi. Each class evolved and degenerated from _humans_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human) . The novel suggests that the separation of species may have been the result of a widening split between different social classes, a theme that reflects Wells' sociopolitical opinions." (Wikipedia entry for ELOI.) Wells was a Fabian "socialist" and, as some nettimers know, someone who is far too little appreciated today -- especially in the Anglophonic world. In particular, Wells was featured in discussions of his 1928 "The Open Conspiracy" at the nettime Beauty-and-the-East confab in Ljubljana and who I also "memorialized" in my "English Ideology and WIRED Magazine." _http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/21/the-english-ideology-and-wired-m agazine/_ (http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/21/the-english-ideology-and-wired-magazine/) Some of this helped to stimulate the infamous "goofy-leftists-against-Wired" thread on the WELL, hosted by sci-fi satirist Bruce Sterling, who claims he was deeply influenced by Wells. Fortunately, he's much funnier. The implications of Wells' construction of human nature is perhaps best summarized in Michael Vlahos' 1995 essay "Byte City" published by the think-tank that brought us Newt Gingrich (and some interesting early debates about the impact of the Internet), the now-defunct Progress and Freedom Foundation. In this essay, Vlahos (who now "supports" radical Islam and works at the US Naval War College), proposes a segmentation between the 5% "Brain Lords" (i.e. your crew with the "laser pointers" and Wells' "New Samurai"), the 20% "Upper Servers" who work as their support staff, the 50% of "service workers" and then the 25% who are permanently "Lost." Radical? Honest? Hardly -- this is just what you would expect if you play out the implications of Hobbes, Bentham et al . . . just as H.G. Wells did (with an added dose of Santa Fe "complex systems" thrown in). What I'm looking for are those contemporary political-economists who have figured out that the 1950s shift to service economics, followed by the 1990s shift to information economics, has *fundamentally* changed this very old "story." It has gotten very TIRED. Btw, sociologist Daniel Bell, who is often given credit for coining "post-industrial," spends most of his 1973 "The Coming Post-Industrial Society" discussing why he (and his friends) are actually the "Brain Lords" and should therefore be put in charge -- as usual, sociology comes down to power. We "flipped" into something quite different when we went "post-industrial" (which Bell appears to not understand) -- so how do today's best thinkers describe this *new* situation? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 3/2/2012 10:03:22 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, morlockel...@yahoo.com writes: Desire is but hard-coded goals, that got hard-coded for reasons that were prevalent in the past. Now that the technology can cheat and s(t)imulate, the firmware is trashing in useless loops. Desires are amplified and have practically squeezed out ideas and ideologies. The cat has encountered the eternal laser pointer. <...> # 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
Political-Economy and Desire
Folks: In preparation for some work on the impact of digital technology on "political-economy," I have been re-reading Mandeville, Smith, Maltham, RIccardo and others (including various commentators like Marx) to try to sort out what *assumptions* were made about humans in the "beginning" of this inquiry. As many know, the overwhelming issue they were dealing back then with was "passion" and, in various ways, how to relate an economy which was driven by passion with earlier notions of "morality." (Btw, the notion that human economic activity is somehow "rational" was not prominent among their assumptions and, from what I can tell, didn't actually take hold in economics until it was proposed by those like Herb Simon in the 1960s, who, arguably, were really promoting artificial intelligence and had to somehow fit computers without "desires" into their schema.) Perhaps most famously, Bernard de Mandeville's 1705 "The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves turn'd Honest" and his 1714 "The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefit" lays out an early version for what today we might call the "commodification of desire." The 300 year-long result of the changes chronicled by the early political-economists was global Industrialism (aka Capitalism?) and an apparently endless parade of large-scale production/consumption -- which, while certainly relying on a stream of technologies, was also fundamentally based on a "revolution" in "moral sentiments." Yes, it is important that this result has greatly increased the world's population, life-expectancy and overall living standards -- including in places that industrialized but would not typically be called "capitalist." What I'm wondering is if any contemporary "political-economists" have re-appraised the topic of desire and asked the question if one ever gets to the situation where "enough is enough"? Is there a "limit" to desire? If so, then what are the political-economic implications of changing that assumption about economic behavior? And, have any come to the conclusion that *yes* some have already passed that point in a meaningful way -- so that they are now living in a "post-desire" economy? The assumption most in the public sphere seem to make is that endless economic "growth" should be expected since the economy is endlessly driven by insatiable desires. Or, alternately, if economic growth isn't possible (even taking into account population growth), then we still need to satisfy those expanding desires some other way -- typically by "redistributing" what we already have. But is that a reasonable starting assumption -- specifically regarding endless growth in *desire* driving economic growth? Clearly, "pre-capitalist" society didn't work that way. Are the usual explanations (lack of technology, scarcity, etc.) -- particularly when presented by those who *assume* endless growth in desire -- credible? Indeed, why should "post-capitalist" society work that way? A related question: what happens to consumption (and growth) when an economy shifts from material goods to services (as some economies did when the term "post-industrial" was coined in the 1950s)? Moreover, what happens when an economy shifts to "information" (as some economies did when it became commonplace to refer to living in the "information age")? Do "people" ever have enough stuff? And, is that the same question as can "people" ever have enough love? Enough sex? Enough excitement? Enough attention? Enough information? Most importantly -- do assumptions about "human nature" originally made in the 17th/18th century still apply today? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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
