Re: further on that FSB whistleblower

[olia lialina]

I don't think both letters are written and sent by a whistleblower. They are not from inside, IMHO. There is nothing one learns from them what is not in news or can't be assumed. They are written by a person competent in soviet/postsoviet history and Russian politic scene, who sees how things are covered in Russia and how the same events are covered in the West. I think it is an observer talking.The first one was more "emotional" and  was giving a hope (or feeding the hope) that there is a chance for some sort of coup d'etat.. well, maybe indeed intelligence is involved in producing these hypnotic (stylewise) revelations to sedate those who will get access to them with this hope :/On 18 Mar 2022 22:54, Michael Benson  wrote:So Christo Grozev dropped another whistleblower letter link earlier today, and hasn't changed his opinion as to the authenticity of the 'long-winded' (his phrase) writer. As in, he thinks they're genuine. See this thread:https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1504724839654907931And here's a link to the letter in English (it's also in the above thread):https://rentry.co/f96nzIt's recognizably the same sardonic voice. Best,MichaelOn Fri, 18 Mar 2022 at 15:08,  wrote:Send nettime-l mailing list submissions to
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Today's Topics:

   1. Vivek Menezes: Ukraine and the Lessons of History (Dhaka
      Tribune) (patrice riemens)
   2. Missing beginning ... (Vivek Menezes, Ukraine) (patrice riemens)
   3. A Realist Take - Emma Ashford (Brian Holmes)


--

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2022 18:31:16 +0100 (CET)
From: patrice riemens 
To: nettime-l 
Subject:  Vivek Menezes: Ukraine and the Lessons of History
        (Dhaka  Tribune)
Message-ID: <991056595.2271172.1647624676...@ox-webmail.xs4all.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Original to:
https://www.dhakatribune.com/op-ed/2022/03/18/ukraine-and-the-new-world-order

Ukraine and the New World Order
By Vivek Menezes, St Patrick's Day, 2022 ;-)

We have seen precisely this before, and Europe is doing it all over again

It may be a universal sentiment -- some scholars credit it as ?unattributable? -- with reverberations of its wisdom in everything from Plato to the oeuvre of ?Piano Man? Billy Joel.

In our contemporary reading, however, the phrase mostly refers to the two World Wars instigated in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, that wrought unimaginable destruction across the planet. Everyone was affected, and even here in the subcontinent -- which was mercifully spared the brunt -- there are locations like Kohima (*) which witnessed epic carnage of the kind no one in their right mind might want to revisit.

So difficult then, for any student of history, to watch the West tie itself in knots while hand-wringing impotently over what exactly to do after Vladimir Putin?s Russia has invaded Ukraine. We have seen precisely this before, and Europe is doing it all over again nonetheless.

In his daily video address on March 16, Ukraine?s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called Putin ?a war criminal? while directly addressing the Russian people with the pointed question, ?how does your blockade of Mariupol differ from the blockade of Leningrad during WWII??

Zelenskiy?s thrust is clear -- there is no difference.

He is implying that Russia will eventually break itself apart in the face of heroic resistance, just as the Wehrmacht foundered, weakened, and retreated from Leningrad despite its all-out siege that famously extended for ?two years, four months, two weeks, and five days.?

In fact, that kind of result is highly unlikely.

Either the Russians will methodically grind through Ukrainian defenses, to an inevitable military victory (which cannot possibly be delayed longer than the extent of the coming summer months). Or, it?s possible there will be a cease fire, which may be close after both sides say they have already agreed on the main elements to compel truce.

That happenstance -- which we must pray will occur as soon as possible -- will still leave major questions, each one loaded with ingredients for resumed conflict.

Paramount amongst these is the problem of Putin himself -- can he be restored to the kind of status quo that existed just a few weeks ago, as just another ?normal? world leader? Can the likes of Biden -- who just recently called his counterpart ?war criminal? -- afford comity after this supposed point of no return?

Even more 

Disarming Chekhov’s Gun

[olia lialina]

https://pad.profolia.org/s/chekhovs_gun

/The plan was to write a description for a series of lectures and 
conversations at Merz Akademie in upcoming semester, but it became a 
manifesto, I'd like to share with you.

/


Disarming Chekhov’s Gun

The mantra passed down from generation to generation “you can’t put a 
loaded gun on stage if no one means to fire it” first appeared in a 
letter Chekhov wrote to a young writer, criticizing the way his 
vaudeville was structured:



    "Dear Alexander Semyonovich!
    I received your vaudeville and immediately read it. It’s 
beautifully written, but its architecture is obnoxious. It’s not scenic 
at all. Think about it. Dasha’s first monologue is completely 
unnecessary. It stands out like a sore thumb. It would have fit if you 
wanted to make Dasha more than just a supporting role, and if this 
monolog – that promises a lot to the audience – had anything to do with 
the content or the effects of the play. You can’t put a loaded gun on 
stage if no one means to fire it. You can’t make promises. Let Dasha be 
silent altogether – that’s better."[1]


Dasha, her first monologue and its unkept promise did not go down in 
history, but the analogy of the loaded gun left on stage unfired did: 
Chekhov’s Gun – the dramaturgic principle that advises authors to remove 
irrelevant elements from their stories, be it in novels, theater plays, 
or later in films and television scripts. Closer to the end of the 20th 
century, the concept also entered the digital realm, from interactive 
fiction to Extended Reality.


But it is not only in literature and entertainment of all genres and 
media where playwrights’ rules are applied. Dramaturgic principles have 
long taken over the socio-political spheres of our lives that are 
computer mediated since digital environments like Aristotelian drama 
happened to be an “imitation of an action with a beginning, middle and 
end, which is meant to be enacted in real time”, as Brenda Laurel 
pointed out in Computers as Theatre, 1991.


A century after Chekhov warned against leaving unfired guns on stage, 
Laurel recognized the same pattern – “gratuitous incidents”[2] and the 
unwanted effect it can have in the design of software, when on staging 
an interactor’s experience. To properly script user’s expectations and 
actions no minor detail standing in the way of “constraining what is 
probable”[3].


30 years later software got more sophisticated, complex, and literally 
invisible. It means that today these constraints need to be tighter than 
ever before. Designers of chatbots, robots, and immersive environments 
take care that guns are fired or nonexistent. To succeed in fully 
automated environments, CGR – Chekhov’s Gun Recognition[4] algorithm, 
was suggested recently
…and then there is the concept of Schrödinger’s Gun[5], a combination of 
Schrödinger’s Cat and Chekhov’s Gun, an algorithm that can render any 
numerically represented element from gratuitous to necessary. Everything 
can be turned into a loaded gun in computer generated environments.


Outside of tropes and virtual worlds, the playwright’s principle has 
become a curse. There is Alec Baldwin’s Gun that was supposedly just a 
prop, and currently, there are Putin’s guns that we so much wanted to 
believe were just for show, not loaded at all, or at least would not fire.


What if Chekhov’s letter was never written, got lost or was simply 
ignored? What if the unimportant Dasha had a chance to recite her 
unnecessary monologue?


Imagine a world where our lives weren’t shaped by the predictable laws 
of drama and we were not a part of Aristotle’s tragic progression.


Leave the guns unfired and give the stage to Dasha!

--

    Т. 3. Письма, Октябрь 1888 — декабрь 1889. — М.: Наука, 1976. — С. 
273—275. [my translation] Source 
http://chehov-lit.ru/chehov/letters/1888-1889/letter-707.htm ↩︎


    Laurel B, Computers as Theatre, 1993 p.74 ↩︎

    Ibid., p.76 ↩︎

    Tikhonov A., Yamshchikov I. Chekhov’s Gun Recognition, 2021 
https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.13855v1 ↩︎


    Robertson J., YoungR.M., Finding Schrödinger’s Gun, AIDE, October 
2014 ↩︎


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Turin Complete User

[olia lialina]

Dear Nettimers

It's a book!

TURING COMPLETE USER – RESISTING ALIENATION IN HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION.

https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/arthistoricum/catalog/book/972 
<https://t.co/IjGGMvIMS5>


qISBN 978-3-98501-072-1

ISBN 978-3-98501-071-4 (PDF)


The following essays were written between 2012 and 2020, a time that 
will hardly be remembered for any groundbreaking hardware or software 
inventions. The iPhone, the Tesla Roadster, Web 2.0, even the Infinite 
Scroll plugin for WordPress -- all belong to the glorious first decade 
of the new millennium.


The second decade was different, it was about talking, loud and clear.
 "iPad keyboards provide a great typing experience" (Apple 2020); "We 
achieved quantum supremacy" (Google 2019); "I've built a simple AI" 
(Zuckerberg 2016); "Model S is a sophisticated computer on wheels" (Musk 
2015); "If I ever say the word ‘user’ again, immediately charge me $140" 
(Dorsey 2012)


The field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and the IT industry at 
large invested in reforming their terminology: banning some words and 
reversing the meanings of others to camouflage the widening gap between 
users and developers, to smooth the transition from personal computers 
to “dumb terminals”, from servers to “buckets”, from double-clicking to 
saying “OK, Google”.


Computer users also learnt to talk, loud and clear, to be understood by 
Siri, Alexa, Google Glass, HoloLens, and other products that perform 
both listening and answering. Maybe it is exactly this amalgamation of 
input and output into a "conversation" that defines the past decade, and 
it will be the core of HCI research in the years to come.


Who is scripting the conversations with these invisible ears and mouths? 
How can users control their lines?


I hope this book will make computer users as well as designers aware of 
their roles, and their language. When hardware and software dissolve in 
anthropomorphic forms and formless "experiences", words stop being mere 
names and metaphors. They do not only appeal to imagination and give 
shape to invisible products. Words themselves become interfaces, and 
every change in vocabulary matters.


I'd like to thank Interface Critique interfacecritique.net/ for making 
my publication possible and foremost for being a platform for this 
important discourse.


Olia Lialina

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Re: meta(verse)

[olia lialina]

I am a big fan of super cuts, still sacrificed last Sunday afternoon to go 
through all the 60 "experiences" Zuckerberg promised "to unlock".

https://pad.profolia.org/s/experience

As at least 9000 others, I  loved Sam Lavingne’s supercut of Zuckerberg’s Meta 
demo. 

I also see a huge therapeutic potential in it. Maybe UX designers will see 
themselves in this mirror? Saying “experience” instead of “interface,” 
“application,” “web,” “game,” “virtual reality,” “telepresence,” “phone call,” 
“software,” etc, is an illness of the industry.

It’s a pest that broke out of UX circles a decade ago and took over big and 
small tech. Zuckerberg is not the only one who is suffering from experience 
diarrhea. It’s everywhere. In marketing texts, in lectures, in presentations 
and conversations, and in the interfaces themselves.

I usually advise my students to pause every time they want to say “experience” 
or “technology” and try to reflect on what exactly they are talking about. I 
don’t think I’m in a position to suggest this exercise to Mark Zuckerberg. I 
will just did it for him.

The following transcript of the Metaverse Event was copied from 
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/meta-facebook-connect-2021-metaverse-event-transcript.

I edited each of the 60 occurrences of experience in oder to reveal what the 
word might have stood for, if for anything at all. Experience means correct use 
of the word as a verb or a noun.
(I cut out some conversational and “metaverse demo” parts, unless experience 
was mentioned in them.)

https://pad.profolia.org/s/experience#Oct-28-2021-Meta-Facebook-Connect-2021-Metaverse-Event-Transcript



 Felix Stalder wrote 

>
>I'm sure most of you have heard by now that Facebook is renaming itself 
>"Meta" and promoting a platform called "Metaverse", basically, a shared, 
>but heavily customizable VR/AR world.
>
>If you haven't seen the video from the keynote, have look. You won't be 
>able to get through the entire 80-minute show (I tried, and failed) but 
>here are a few minutes to get the flavor of how dated this future feels. 
>There is nothing in there that you couldn't do in Second Life and it 
>even looks pretty much the same.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElfIo6uw4g
>
>The best way to feel of the emptiness of the vision is probably through 
>a series of super-cuts of the most frequently doled out platitudes: 
>experience, the physical world, commerce/community, the future, and a 
>few more.
>
>https://twitter.com/sam_lavigne/status/1453901401977937921
>
>The sheer backwardness and ugliness of the entire vision are depressing 
>no matter whether you look at it from an aesthetic, social, or economic 
>perspective. And all of this is made worse by the company's track record 
>on these things so far.
>
>The plan is pretty obviously a land grab by the company but the curious 
>thing is why they believe that such land would exist in the first place.
>
>This happens exactly at a moment when the political class seems to have 
>given up preventing global heating to pass dangerous tipping points of 
>no return. So, this is clearly meant to paper over an increasingly 
>dystopian world to keep selling the promise of "creativity" and 
>"self-expression" as a carrot, and a "new economy" as a stick. With 
>Uber's and Airbnb's promise to monetize your spare resources as a way to 
>deal with real-life precarity ringing hollow (indeed, monetizing your 
>life _is_ precarity), the new economy of 3D creators is another promise 
>to pull yourself up on your own bootstraps.
>
>But is not just the dated dream of virtual reality replacing physical 
>reality. What's more, chasing this dream will make physical reality even 
>worse. For a lot of reasons, waste of resources, diverting attention 
>towards crap, universalizing bias, and so on.
>
>Underlying all of this is this notion of the world as a model. Sure, we 
>all operate with (implicit or explicit) models of the world in order to 
>make sense of it and be able to act in it. I'm not advocating for some 
>sort of unmediated "real".
>
>The problematic element is to have a single model which is supposed to 
>replace all others. It's not just that such a model is necessarily under 
>complex (the metaverse is cartoonishly so), but that very notion of a 
>single model is biased, violent, and will create ugly backlashes. 
>Perhaps this is the lasting influence of cybernetics, which as its 
>ultimate horizon has such a unified vision where everything could be 
>brought into its purview based on the reductionist notion of "information".
>
>Against this, a plethora of voices -- feminist, anti-racist, ecological, 
>indigenous, and more -- have sprung up to argue against the 
>impossibility of such a unified view (often denounced as colonialist). 
>They advocate for the co-existence of a wide range of 
>"being-in-the-world", each embodying a different model of the world, if 
>you will, that cannot be flattened into a single one. Rather, 

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[olia lialina]

"Sad by Manovich" or "Sad by Ars Electronica" ;)

Six false statements in four sentences is a lot! 

"New media art never deals with human life, and this is why it does not enter 
museums. It's our fault. Don't blame curators or the "art world." Digital art 
is "anti-human art," and this is why it does not stay in history. //"

 Geert Lovink wrote 

>URL or not but this is too good, and too important for nettimers, not to read 
>and discuss. These very personal and relevant observations come from a public 
>Facebook page and have been written by Lev Manovich (who is “feeling 
>thoughtful” as the page indicates).
>
>—
>
>https://m.facebook.com/668367315/posts/10159683846717316/?extid=fWYl63KjbcA3uqqm=n
>
>My anti-digital art manifesto / What do we feel when we look at the previous 
>generations of electronic and computer technologies? 1940s TV sets, 1960s 
>mainframes, 1980s PCs, 1990s versions of Windows, or 2000s mobile phones? I 
>feel "embarrassed. "Awkward." Almost "shameful." "Sad." And this is exactly 
>the same feelings I have looking at 99% of digital art/computer art / new 
>media art/media art created in previous decades. And I will feel the same when 
>looking at the most cutting-edge art done today ("AI art," etc.) 5 years from 
>now.
>If consumer products have "planned obsolescence," digital art created with the 
>"latest" technology has its own "built-in obsolescence." //
>
>These feelings of sadness, disappointment, remorse, and embarrassment have 
>been provoked especially this week as I am watching Ars Electronica programs 
>every day. I start wondering - did I waste my whole life in the wrong field? 
>It is very exciting to be at the "cutting edge", but the price you pay is 
>heavy. After 30 years in this field, there are very few artworks I can show to 
>my students without feeling embarrassed. While I remember why there were so 
>important to us at the moment they were made, their low-resolution visuals and 
>broken links can't inspire students. //
>
>The same is often true for the "content" of digital art. It's about "issues," 
>"impact of X on Y", "critique of A", "a parody of B", "community of C" and so 
>on. //
>
>It's almost never about our real everyday life and our humanity. Feelings. 
>Passions. Looking at the world. Looking inside yourself. Falling in love. 
>Breaking up. Questioning yourself. Searching for love, meaning, less alienated 
>life.//
>
>After I watch Ars Electronica streams, I go to Netflix or switch on the TV, 
>and it feels like fresh air. I see very well made films and TV series. 
>Perfectly lighted, color graded, art directed.
>
>I see real people, not "ideas" and meaningless sounds of yet another 
>"electronic music" performance, or yet another meaningless outputs of a neural 
>network invented by brilliant scientists and badly misused by "artists."
>
>New media art never deals with human life, and this is why it does not enter 
>museums. It's our fault. Don't blame curators or the "art world." Digital art 
>is "anti-human art," and this is why it does not stay in history. //
>
>P.S. As always, I exaggerated a bit my point to provoke discussion - but not 
>that much. This post does reflect my real feelings. Of course, some of these 
>issues are complex - but after 30 years in the field, I really do wonder what 
>it was all about)
>
>P.P.S.
>
>The mystery of why some technology (and art made with them) has obsolescence 
>and others do not - thinking about this for 25 years. We are fascinated by 
>19th-century photographs or 1960s ones. They look beautiful, rich, full of 
>emotions, and meanings. But video art from the 1980s-1990s looks simply 
>terrible, you want to run away and forget that you ever saw this. Why first 
>Apple computers look cool, cute, engaged? But art created on them does not? 
>And so on. I still have not solved this question.
>
>Perhaps part of this has to be with the message that goes along with lots of 
>tech art from the 1960s to today - and especially today. 19th or 20th-century 
>photographs done by professional photographs or good amateurs do not come with 
>utopian, pretentious, exaggerated, unrealistic, and hypocritical statements, 
>the way lots of "progressive art" does today. Nor do their titles announce all 
>latest tech processes used to create these photographs.
>
>
>Ars Electronica 2020: 
>https://ars.electronica.art/keplersgardens/en/ 
>
>
>Video illustration: Japanese robot at Ars Electronica 2010 -
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmabKC1P51A 

False Memories

[olia lialina]

Dear nettimers,

allow me please to share some false memories with you

online for some weeks only (not for the sake of scarcity, but due to 
high costs of running publicly accessed virtual machines)


http://art.teleportacia.org/tmp/

False Memories, Olia lialina, 2020

For Internet Explorer 6, Windows 2000, and virtual machine


My professional life happens in two dimensions. In IRL one it’s the end 
of Summer 2020, where Microsoft just announced that Internet Explorer – 
the notorious web browser that for many was the only window into the WWW 
for quarter of century – has been discontinued. It’s the end of the era.


In my Geocities Timeline, 2004 has just started. I’m surrounded by 
bright and loud web pages made for Internet Explorer 6 which, still a 
monopolist at that time, offered a lot of awesome features for web 
designers. One of them was changing the colors of scrollbars. Web makers 
of 15 years ago valued it a lot , incorporating the browser’s interface 
into their own interfaces, merging aesthetics of the page with the 
aesthetic of the window containing it, feeling in control. I have an 
impressive collection of web pages where the scrollbar is visually 
merged with the background of the web page, creates a contrast to it, 
rhymes with the title picture, or changes it’s color when moved. Rich 
User Experience at it’s best!


2004 was the last year of Internet Explorer’s dominance. In November 
that year, Mozilla released Firefox, with the aim to end Microsoft’s 
monopoly once and forever.


False Memory is a tribute to both, IE users and developers.

But also my remark on exponentially growing nostalgia about the web’s 
past. False Memory offers to immerse in netstalgia gilty pleasures: to 
idealize past, to homogenize past; to rewrite it; to remember things 
that never happened to you or at all…but you so much want to believe the 
opposite.


False Memories wouldn’t be possible without Dragan Espenschied’s 
recollections and scripts.


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Re: Digital Folklore on dat://

[Olia Lialina]

YOU are feeding Google a big time! More people follow your link, more Digital 
Folklore copies will automatically end up in Google cloud, without being seen, 
read and redistributed by its real audience. But maybe your good intentions 
will  find their way through and Google will choke! 

 eh...@posteo.net wrote 

>Don't feed the Google, just say no to Chrome!
>
>Bypass Beaker here:
>https://dat.bovid.space/f1a5ed8cd08dc9704d6261c899bbd0f5a0851e596f132d6edc562c1a4948c43e/
>
>On Monday, July 1, 2019 9:24:29 PM CEST, olia lialina wrote:
>> Dear Nettimers,
>>
>> apropos E2E, P2P, networks and their limits, tactical media and 
>> their impact.
>>
>> two weeks ago we released Digital Folklore Reader (2009) on dat://
>>
>> go to dat://digitalfolklore.org/ if you are on Beaker already
>>
>> or follow instructions at https://digitalfolklore.org/
>>
>> I keep my laptop on and my Beaker browser open for you to get 
>> the book and distribute it further!
>>
>> yours
>>
>> Olia
>>
>
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Digital Folklore on dat://

[olia lialina]

Dear Nettimers,

apropos E2E, P2P, networks and their limits, tactical media and their 
impact.


two weeks ago we released Digital Folklore Reader (2009) on dat://

go to dat://digitalfolklore.org/ if you are on Beaker already

or follow instructions at https://digitalfolklore.org/

I keep my laptop on and my Beaker browser open for you to get the book 
and distribute it further!


yours

Olia

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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Olia Lialina]

not the most urgen question, but still: does anybody understand or saw a  
proper explanation of why RT's proxy agency was the only crew filming? (RT's 
explanation, that they are the last professionals left I've seen) #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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Re: rage against the machine

[Olia Lialina]

According to NY Times, 737 MAX 8 pilots were trained on (their own?) iPads. 

What's next? Bring your own cockpit? Like suggested for car sharing interfaces 
by excited UX students all over the world these days. 

Such news scare me more than all the AI horror stories together. This 
banalization or "desktopization"* of high responsibily jobs should be seriously 
questioned. Even when it is technically possible, even if “magic pane of glass” 
has more processing power when onboard computer, even if flight deck software 
is written in Java Script, these are not sufficient reasons for a pilot to have 
it open in one of her browser tabs, even for training. 

may complex systems stay complex in the eyes of their operators

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/business/boeing-max-flight-simulator-ethiopia-lion-air.html?action=click=Top%20Stories=Homepage

"For many new airplane models, pilots train for hours on giant, 
multimillion-dollar machines, on-the-ground versions of cockpits that mimic the 
flying experience and teach them new features. But in the case of the Max, many 
pilots with 737 experience learned about the plane on an iPad."

" But Boeing isn’t planning to overhaul its training procedures. And neither 
the F.A.A., nor the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, are proposing 
additional simulator training for pilots, according to a person familiar with 
the deliberations. Instead, the regulators and Boeing agree that the best way 
to inform pilots about the new software is through additional computer-based 
training, which can be done on their personal computers."

*in 2014 i wrote about desktopization of remote piloted aircrafts for Interface 
Critique http://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/

 Olia Lialina wrote 

>i was rereading today this 5 y. o. article about a decade old accident
>
>https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash/amp
>
> following are parts of  IV. Flying Robots and the article's final statement
>
>It takes an airplane to bring out the worst in a pilot.
>[... ] 
>Wiener pointed out that the effect of automation is to reduce the cockpit 
>workload when the workload is low and to increase it when the workload is 
>high. Nadine Sarter, an industrial engineer at the University of Michigan, and 
>one of the pre-eminent researchers in the field, made the same point to me in 
>a different way: “Look, as automation level goes up, the help provided goes 
>up, workload is lowered, and all the expected benefits are achieved. But then 
>if the automation in some way fails, there is a significant price to pay. We 
>need to think about whether there is a level where you get considerable 
>benefits from the automation but if something goes wrong the pilot can still 
>handle it.”
>
>
>Sarter has been questioning this for years and recently participated in a 
>major F.A.A. study of automation usage, released in the fall of 2013, that 
>came to similar conclusions. The problem is that beneath the surface 
>simplicity of glass cockpits, and the ease of fly-by-wire control, the designs 
>are in fact bewilderingly baroque—all the more so because most functions lie 
>beyond view. Pilots can get confused to an extent they never would have in 
>more basic airplanes. When I mentioned the inherent complexity to Delmar 
>Fadden, a former chief of cockpit technology at Boeing, he emphatically denied 
>that it posed a problem, as did the engineers I spoke to at Airbus. Airplane 
>manufacturers cannot admit to serious issues with their machines, because of 
>the liability involved, but I did not doubt their sincerity. Fadden did say 
>that once capabilities are added to an aircraft system, particularly to the 
>flight-management computer, because of certification requirements they become 
>impossibly expensive to remove. And yes, if neither removed nor used, they 
>lurk in the depths unseen. But that was as far as he would go.
>
>
>Sarter has written extensively about “automation surprises,” often related to 
>control modes that the pilot does not fully understand or that the airplane 
>may have switched into autonomously, perhaps with an annunciation but without 
>the pilot’s awareness. Such surprises certainly added to the confusion aboard 
>Air France 447. One of the more common questions asked in cockpits today is 
>“What’s it doing now?” Robert’s “We don’t understand anything!” was an extreme 
>version of the same. Sarter said, “We now have this systemic problem with 
>complexity, and it does not involve just one manufacturer. I could easily list 
>10 or more incidents from either manufacturer where the problem was related to 
>automation and confusion. Complexity means you have a large number of 
>subcomponents and they interact in sometimes unexpected ways. Pilots don’t 
>know, becau

Re: rage against the machine

[Olia Lialina]

i was rereading today this 5 y. o. article about a decade old accident

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-flight-447-crash/amp

 following are parts of  IV. Flying Robots and the article's final statement

It takes an airplane to bring out the worst in a pilot.
[... ] 
Wiener pointed out that the effect of automation is to reduce the cockpit 
workload when the workload is low and to increase it when the workload is high. 
Nadine Sarter, an industrial engineer at the University of Michigan, and one of 
the pre-eminent researchers in the field, made the same point to me in a 
different way: “Look, as automation level goes up, the help provided goes up, 
workload is lowered, and all the expected benefits are achieved. But then if 
the automation in some way fails, there is a significant price to pay. We need 
to think about whether there is a level where you get considerable benefits 
from the automation but if something goes wrong the pilot can still handle it.”


Sarter has been questioning this for years and recently participated in a major 
F.A.A. study of automation usage, released in the fall of 2013, that came to 
similar conclusions. The problem is that beneath the surface simplicity of 
glass cockpits, and the ease of fly-by-wire control, the designs are in fact 
bewilderingly baroque—all the more so because most functions lie beyond view. 
Pilots can get confused to an extent they never would have in more basic 
airplanes. When I mentioned the inherent complexity to Delmar Fadden, a former 
chief of cockpit technology at Boeing, he emphatically denied that it posed a 
problem, as did the engineers I spoke to at Airbus. Airplane manufacturers 
cannot admit to serious issues with their machines, because of the liability 
involved, but I did not doubt their sincerity. Fadden did say that once 
capabilities are added to an aircraft system, particularly to the 
flight-management computer, because of certification requirements they become 
impossibly expensive to remove. And yes, if neither removed nor used, they lurk 
in the depths unseen. But that was as far as he would go.


Sarter has written extensively about “automation surprises,” often related to 
control modes that the pilot does not fully understand or that the airplane may 
have switched into autonomously, perhaps with an annunciation but without the 
pilot’s awareness. Such surprises certainly added to the confusion aboard Air 
France 447. One of the more common questions asked in cockpits today is “What’s 
it doing now?” Robert’s “We don’t understand anything!” was an extreme version 
of the same. Sarter said, “We now have this systemic problem with complexity, 
and it does not involve just one manufacturer. I could easily list 10 or more 
incidents from either manufacturer where the problem was related to automation 
and confusion. Complexity means you have a large number of subcomponents and 
they interact in sometimes unexpected ways. Pilots don’t know, because they 
haven’t experienced the fringe conditions that are built into the system. 

[... ] 
 At a time when accidents are extremely rare, each one becomes a one-off event, 
unlikely to be repeated in detail. Next time it will be some other airline, 
some other culture, and some other failure—but it will almost certainly involve 
automation and will perplex us when it occurs. Over time the automation will 
expand to handle in-flight failures and emergencies, and as the safety record 
improves, pilots will gradually be squeezed from the cockpit altogether. The 
dynamic has become inevitable. There will still be accidents, but at some point 
we will have only the machines to blame.

 Morlock Elloi wrote 

>Handling of the recent B737 Max 8 disaster is somewhat revealing.
>
>What seems to have happened (for the 2nd time) is that computing machine 
>fought the pilot, and the machine won.
>
>It looks like some cretin in Boeing that drank too much of AI Kool Aid 
>(probably a middle manager) decided to install trained logic circuit 
>that was supposed to make new aircraft behave (to pilots) like the older 
>one. As its operation was far too complicated (ie. even Boeing didn't 
>quite understand it) they decided not to inform pilots about it, as it 
>could disturb the poor things with too much information.
>
>One part of the unknown operation appears to be the insistence of ML 
>black box on crashing the airplane during ascent. As it had full control 
>of the trim surfaces there was nothing pilots could do (I guess using 
>fire axe to kill the circuit would work, if pilots knew where the damn 
>thing was.)
>
>That's what the best available info right now is on what was the cause.
>
>What is interesting is how this was handled, particularly in the US:
>
>- There were documented complaints about this circuit for long time;
>- FAA ignored them;
>- After the second disaster most of the world grounded this type of 
>aircraft;
>- FAA said there is nothing wrong 

Re: YouTubers Union!

[olia lialina]

"- Disable the bots - At least verified partners have the right to speak
to a real person if you plan to remove their channel."


Indeed, Felix
this demand makes it very strong. So honest and down to earth, and so desperate in its 
"at least"




On 22.10.18 13:11, olia lialina wrote:


power to the soviets! peace to the people! land to the peasants! 
factories to the workers! ad money to the youtubers!


On 22.10.18 12:56, wrote:

[It doesn't seem like gaining much traction beyond the occasional media
story. But still, it's interesting in terms of the demands. Two new
basic rights are demanded: the right to be recognized as a market
participant and to right to be heard by a human. Felix]


The Spark

https://youtubersunion.org/

Welcome to the official homepage of the YouTubers Union!

We are a community based movement that fights for the rights of YouTube
Creators and Users. Our core demands are:

- Monetize everyone - Bring back monetization for smaller channels.

- Disable the bots - At least verified partners have the right to speak
to a real person if you plan to remove their channel.

- Transparent content decisions - Open up direct communication between
the censors ("content department") and the Creators.

- Pay for the views - Stop using demonetized channels as "bait" to
advertise monetized videos.

- Stop demonetization as a whole - If a video is in line with your
rules, allow ads on an even scale.

- Equal treatment for all partners - Stop preferring some creators over
others. No more “YouTube Preferred”.

- Pay according to delivered value - Spread out the ad money over all
YouTubers based on audience retention, not on ads next to the content.

- Clarify the rules - Bring out clear rules with clear examples about
what is OK and what is a No-No.


United We Stand!






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Re: YouTubers Union!

[olia lialina]

power to the soviets! peace to the people! land to the peasants! 
factories to the workers! ad money to the youtubers!


On 22.10.18 12:56, wrote:

[It doesn't seem like gaining much traction beyond the occasional media
story. But still, it's interesting in terms of the demands. Two new
basic rights are demanded: the right to be recognized as a market
participant and to right to be heard by a human. Felix]


The Spark

https://youtubersunion.org/

Welcome to the official homepage of the YouTubers Union!

We are a community based movement that fights for the rights of YouTube
Creators and Users. Our core demands are:

- Monetize everyone - Bring back monetization for smaller channels.

- Disable the bots - At least verified partners have the right to speak
to a real person if you plan to remove their channel.

- Transparent content decisions - Open up direct communication between
the censors ("content department") and the Creators.

- Pay for the views - Stop using demonetized channels as "bait" to
advertise monetized videos.

- Stop demonetization as a whole - If a video is in line with your
rules, allow ads on an even scale.

- Equal treatment for all partners - Stop preferring some creators over
others. No more “YouTube Preferred”.

- Pay according to delivered value - Spread out the ad money over all
YouTubers based on audience retention, not on ads next to the content.

- Clarify the rules - Bring out clear rules with clear examples about
what is OK and what is a No-No.


United We Stand!






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Re: On #deletefacebook in the Netherlands

[olia lialina]

so many options, tools and manuals!
but nothing will bring back Hyves :/
http://profolia.org/access/material/25.jpeg



On 12.04.2018 16:52, Geert Lovink wrote:

Dear nettimers,

it’s been a busy week here in NL with the Facebook exodus movement. 
Numbers of people that left are of course very hard to estimate but I 
guess it been so far 10-20.000 people who followed the ByeByeFacebook 
call of the Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach, last Sunday night:


https://in.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-netherlands/widely-watched-dutch-comedian-says-bye-bye-facebook-idINKBN1HG290

Next Monday night there’s a meeting in De Waag of the Facebook 
Liberation Army where we will discuss all these issues. The 
announcements are in Dutch, and so will the gathering be, I suppose. 
This is a follow-up of the Facebook Farewell Party in the Amsterdam 
main theatre, in April 2015.


Below there’s a link list that we just compiled. I have been posting 
daily link lists to the Unlike Us list, which was founded in 2011 by 
me and Korinna Patelis and is still active. If you like, forward the 
list list, change it, add others to it.


Best, Geert

—

*Facebook Liberation Army Link List (April 12, 2018)*
*Compiled and edited by Geert Lovink & Patricia de Vries (Institute of 
Network Cultures)*


*Facebook Delete Manuals*
https://pageflows.com/blog/delete-facebook/
https://www.ghostery.com/blog/ghostery-news/after-cambridge-analytica-scandal-how-to-delete-your-facebook-account/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/03/28/people-really-deleting-their-facebook-accounts-its-complicated/464109002/
https://androidreader.com/how-to-delete-your-facebook-account-step-by-step/
https://beat.10ztalk.com/2018/03/26/why-deletefacebook-is-a-bad-idea-unless-you-have-these-4-questions-answered/
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/21_delete_facebook/

*Divorce Tools*
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90164935/want-to-fight-back-against-facebooks-algorithm-check-out-these-tools
https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/facebook-container-extension/
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/21_delete_facebook/
https://degooglisons-internet.org/

*Departure & Alternatives*
https://gab.ai/
https://medium.com/we-distribute/a-quick-guide-to-the-free-network-c069309f334
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-competition/
https://www.tippereconomy.io/
https://mastodon.social/about
http://www.orkut.com/index.html
https://peepeth.com/about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSbNdBmWKE
https://degooglisons-internet.org/
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/prevaat-the-privacy-focused-social-network#/
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-alternatives/
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/21_delete_facebook/#decide
http://threatbrief.com/deletefacebook-5-best-facebook-alternatives-focus-privacy/
https://mashable.com/2018/03/20/facebook-replacement-openbook-competition/#frm9x3CADZqZ

*The RSS Alternative*
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/07/rss-is-undead/
https://www.wired.com/story/rss-readers-feedly-inoreader-old-reader/

*To Regulate or Not to Regulate*
http://www.ctrl-verlust.net/cambridge-analytica-the-kontrollverlust-and-the-post-privacy-approach-to-data-regulation/
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-current/
https://medium.com/@YESHICAN/an-open-letter-to-facebook-from-the-data-for-black-lives-movement-81e693c6b46c
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/algorithms-powerful-europe-response-social-media
https://www.republik.ch/2018/03/27/menschen-wuerden-ihre-daten-verkaufen-wenn-sie-koennten
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/21_delete_facebook/
*
*
*Long Reads & Analysis & Opinion*
*
https://cyberwanderlustblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/why-feminists-should-abandon-social-networks-ideology/ 


https://thebaffler.com/latest/cambridge-analytica-con-levine
*
https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult
https://labs.rs/en/the-human-fabric-of-the-facebook-pyramid/
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/cambridge-analytica-and-our-lives-inside-the-surveillance-machine
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/03/26/Quit-Facebook/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/facebook-zuckerberg-apologies/?utm_term=.156887e60e4b
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-a-history-of-mark-zuckerberg-apologizing/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/technology/zuckerberg-elections-russia-data-privacy.html

*(Tech) Facts &  & Threads*
https://mashable.com/2013/06/26/facebook-shadow-profiles/#b9irCKx_MZqz
https://medium.com/tow-center/the-graph-api-key-points-in-the-facebook-and-cambridge-analytica-debacle-b69fe692d747
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-28/fakebook-its-way-zero
https://twitter.com/therealjpk/status/976484505035751424
https://twitter.com/ashk4n/status/983725115903852544
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2_fUqaHGe8


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#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
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Re: Please show some conscience

[olia lialina]

it is more than surprise!

you know, when i hear computer scientists, developers, software 
engineers saying AI to an algorithm (whatever algorithm), or to an app 
that -- i don't know -- connects daylight data with alarm clock, naive 
me, who hoped to see singularity with her own eyes one day, is just very 
very frustrated


But leaving singularity and naive me aside... this change in jargon is 
more than a trend. Meaningless, inconsistent, but persistent substitute 
of computational terms, processes and products with "AI" is how IT 
industry is protecting themselves from 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_explanation and any other 
attempts to ask questions. AI noise is how silicon valley is working on 
alibi, getting ready to shift the blame for everything what goes wrong 
onto "emancipated machine intellect". I am sure we will here this 
argument in court.



On 23.03.2018 16:35, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
oh, but Olia, don't be surprised, you know this from way back when...: 
these kinds of ideological tropes appear as _essential_ and _truthful_ 
to the believers and the ideologues, whereas they appear as 
"arbitrary, inconsistent and meaningless" only to skeptics and 
non-believers. (And we know what can happen to such heretics...)


Francis Hunger calls it "Enhanced Pattern Recognition"; but it is 
unlikely that the believers and ideologues of "AI" will follow his 
suggestion.


Regards,
-a



Am 23.03.18 um 15:40 schrieb olia lialina:

what really strikes me (not only in this text but in so many of the last
three years) is arbitrary, inconsistent and just meaningless use of the
term AI. And this from people who are actually doing it!


On 22.03.2018 18:37, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Twitter thread from GOOGL ML employee:


François Chollet

The world is being shaped in large part by two long-time trends:
first, our lives are increasingly dematerialized, consisting of
consuming and generating information online, both at work and at home.
Second, AI is getting ever smarter.

These two trends overlap at the level of the algorithms that shape our
digital content consumption. Opaque social media algorithms get to
decide, to an ever-increasing extent, which articles we read, who we
keep in touch with, whose opinions we read, whose feedback we get.

Integrated over many years of exposure, the algorithmic curation of
the information we consume gives the systems in charge considerable
power over our lives, over who we become. By moving our lives to the
digital realm, we become vulnerable to that which rules it -- AI
algorithms.





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Re: Please show some conscience

[olia lialina]

what really strikes me (not only in this text but in so many of the last 
three years) is arbitrary, inconsistent and just meaningless use of the 
term AI. And this from people who are actually doing it!



On 22.03.2018 18:37, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Twitter thread from GOOGL ML employee:


François Chollet

The world is being shaped in large part by two long-time trends: 
first, our lives are increasingly dematerialized, consisting of 
consuming and generating information online, both at work and at home. 
Second, AI is getting ever smarter.


These two trends overlap at the level of the algorithms that shape our 
digital content consumption. Opaque social media algorithms get to 
decide, to an ever-increasing extent, which articles we read, who we 
keep in touch with, whose opinions we read, whose feedback we get.


Integrated over many years of exposure, the algorithmic curation of 
the information we consume gives the systems in charge considerable 
power over our lives, over who we become. By moving our lives to the 
digital realm, we become vulnerable to that which rules it -- AI 
algorithms.


If Facebook gets to decide, over the span of many years, which news 
you will see (real or fake), whose political status updates you’ll 
see, and who will see yours, then Facebook is in effect in control of 
your political beliefs and your worldview


This is not quite news, as Facebook has been known to run since at 
least 2013 a series of experiments in which they were able to 
successfully control the moods and decisions of unwitting users by 
tuning their newsfeeds’ contents, as well as prediction user's future 
decisions.


In short, Facebook can simultaneously measure everything about us, and 
control the information we consume. When you have access to both 
perception and action, you’re looking at an AI problem. You can start 
establishing an optimization loop for human behavior. A RL loop.


A loop in which you observe the current state of your targets and keep 
tuning what information you feed them, until you start observing the 
opinions and behaviors you wanted to see.


A good chunk of the field of AI research (especially the bits that 
Facebook has been investing in) is about developing algorithms to 
solve such optimization problems as efficiently as possible, to close 
the loop and achieve full control of the phenomenon at hand. In this 
case, us.


This is made all the easier by the fact that the human mind is highly 
vulnerable to simple patterns of social manipulation. While thinking 
about these issues, I have compiled a short list of psychological 
attack patterns that would be devastatingly effective


Some of them have been used for a long time in advertising (e.g. 
positive/negative social reinforcement), but in a very weak, 
un-targeted form. From an information security perspective, you would 
call these "vulnerabilities": known exploits that can be used to take 
over a system.


In the case of the human mind, these vulnerabilities never get 
patched, they are just the way we work. They’re in our DNA. They're 
our psychology. On a personal level, we have no practical way to 
defend ourselves against them.


The human mind is a static, vulnerable system that will come 
increasingly under attack from ever-smarter AI algorithms that will 
simultaneously have a complete view of everything we do and believe, 
and complete control of the information we consume.


Importantly, mass population control -- in particular political 
control -- arising from placing AI algorithms in charge of our 
information diet does not necessarily require very advanced AI. You 
don’t need self-aware, superintelligent AI for this to be a dire threat.


So, if mass population control is already possible today -- in theory 
-- why hasn’t the world ended yet? In short, I think it’s because 
we’re really bad at AI. But that may be about to change. You see, our 
technical capabilities are the bottleneck here.


Until 2015, all ad targeting algorithms across the industry were 
running on mere logistic regression. In fact, that’s still true to a 
large extent today -- only the biggest players have switched to more 
advanced models.


It is the reason why so many of the ads you see online seem 
desperately irrelevant. They aren't that sophisticated. Likewise, the 
social media bots used by hostile state actors to sway public opinion 
have little to no AI in them. They’re all extremely primitive. For now.


AI has been making fast progress in recent years, and that progress is 
only beginning to get deployed in targeting algorithms and social 
media bots. Deep learning has only started to make its way into 
newsfeeds and ad networks around 2016. Facebook has invested massively 
in it.


Who knows what will be next. It is quite striking that Facebook has 
been investing enormous amounts in AI research and development, with 
the explicit goal of becoming a leader in the field. What does that 
tell you? What do you use AI/RL 

Not Art

[olia lialina]

Dear nettimers,

Earlier this month I had a chance to introduce my thoughts on what media 
theory's role in universities of applied arts could be in times when 
Media is vanishing and Technology is raising.
Let me share it with you. I paste the first part below but suggest to 
follow the link for the annotated hyper-linked multimedia version


http://contemporary-home-computing.org/art-and-tech/not/

Not Art

On the role of Media Theory at Universities of Applied Art, Technology 
and Art and Technology.


/Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, November, 201

Thank you for the chance to introduce my ideas. I’m a net artist,
active in the field since 20 years, 16 of these years I am teaching
new media designers at Merz Akademie. I’m also a co-author of the
book Digital Folklore. Since the beginning of the century I collect,
preserve and monumentalize the web culture of the 90’s. “What Does
It Mean to Make a Web Page” is the doctoral thesis I work on right
now.

As an artist, researcher and teacher I value user culture and medium
specificity in both design and research, and as an every day routine.
I see my work contributing to critical digital culture, media literacy
and the development of languages and dialects of New Media.

But there are many obstacles on my way. Three years ago I grasped
and boiled them down to three: technology, experience and people.
Or rather “technology,” “experience” and “people”—I
have nothing against any of these concepts unless they are used by
hardware and software companies as substitutes for “computer,”
“interface” and “users.”

The situation is serious and these substitutions are happening on an
epidemic scale.

In my essays Turing Complete User[1] and RUE[2] I trace the
metamorphoses that happened to the terms “users” and
“interfaces.” Today, talking about the role of media theory at
the University of Applied Arts, I would like to start to elaborate on
“technology” and why to resist “Art and Technology.”

I should note that by defending the words in the left column, I always
find myself in an unfortunate situation. First of all because in our
field you should always go for the new, the next term if you are
unsatisfied with the current one,—not backwards, at least not to
the nearest past. Nobody wants to be called “user.” The effort to
deface this word was enormous and successful. Even when you understand
that “people” coming from the tech industry’s mouth is pure
hypocrisy, you would prefer to fight for your user rights by calling
yourself “digital citizen,” not a user… though there is no
digital city, state or constitution.

And I also find myself in awkward situations. Like it is the case now,
because I know that there is Art and Technology department at your
University; and because the next moment I use an institution as an
example that I have very close relations to, and that is probably the
only one in the world that supports my work, because it is devoted to
net art and keeping an archive of it: Rhizome at the New Museum in New
York.

A year ago, during their community campaign, Rhizome, whose priority
is to push critical digital culture released nicely designed bags.
If it would be another organization, or if it would be a bag of a
size that wouldn’t suggest that its purpose is to carry around your
personal computer, I would pass by, but it was not the case, so the
bag was vandalized.

“Don’t fall for the word ‘technology’”, Ted Nelsons
concludes in the last paragraph of Geeks bearing Gifts,[3] “It
sounds determinate. It hides the fights and the alternatives. And
mostly it is intended to make you submissive.” He appeals to not
accept computer technology as WYSIHAM—his own acronym for What You
See is Wonderfully, Happily, Absolutely Mandatory—but to see the
tensions, the history and the alternatives. It is an important call,
but only one third of the argument I have against the term technology.

Submission is one issue, but sedation is even more important.
“Technology” as a replacement for digital technology or computer
technology, who are in turn already substitutes for “programmed
system,” is a figure of speech known as synecdoche: in this
particular case when the whole is referring for a part.

It is a rhetorical trope that makes the computer dissolve in all
other technologies, becoming an invisible part, just one of many
technologies. It is in the interest of the industry, because it makes
users unaware of the computer as a system that is programmed, that can
be reprogrammed any moment, that could potentially be programmed or
reprogrammed by their users.

There are (re-)programmable technologies and many that are not
programmable. But constant repetition of the word technology instead
of computers sedates and makes forget that the system you hold in your
hands is a programmable one.

It appears that another good reason to say technology instead of
computer is that anyway—they say—computers are inside almost every
piece of technology anyway, or as Kevin Kelly 

Re: ttip: digital respect and resistance

[olia lialina]

On 10.10.2015 00:48, Kristoffer Gansing wrote:


But as I hinted at in the beginning, part of the problem is that we are
always busy somewhere else. This might be both the biggest asset and
curse of media art and digital culture : that it is always moving on.
The next place, the next site, the next discourse, the next big trend.
When is digital art and culture going to really grow up and deal with
the here and now? How can you formulate a real alternative in the
present when you are always too busy being tele-present?


Dear Kristoffer,

I maybe misreading you, but I think there is sort of contradiction in 
what you say. Or rather, the answer to your  own question is in the 
preceding sentence.
This state of being tele-present  (great alteration of the meaning of 
the term, by the way!)  is the outcome of this constant urge or drive of 
new media art (artists, curators and events) to deal with "here and 
now", with the next big "hear and now". Drones yesterday, Snowden today, 
TTIP tomorrow... and then it's already  time again for the next round of 
the Internet of Things.



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Re: nettime Digital Citizenship: from liberal privilege to democratic

[olia lialina]

Dear Richard

It's impossible to disagree, the only problem is that  there are no 
digital citizenship and digital citizens.

In the end of the day this form of address is more sedative than empowering.
We are computer users. And I don't mean that we should accept it. We 
should rather insist on it! And fight for the User Rights.
The rights to log out (as solid guarantee for constitutional right to 
privacy), to see the computer, to own data,
 symmetrical access, full control over the computing that my computer 
does, to undo, etc (more suggested at 
http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/)


I know that calling yourself a computer user is not that appealing as 
netizen or digital citizen, but in times of invisible computing User is 
the best (the last) reminder that there are those who developed the 
system and those who use it, and that you are dealing with the 
programmed system first and foremost.
The better future and truly human civilization you are anticipating can 
only be build by those aware/educated about their role, freedoms and 
duties as users.


greetings

olia


On 23.03.2015 04:02, Richard Barbrook wrote:


In the second decade of the 21st century, citizenship is defined not
just by the people being able to choose the political leadership of
their nation through regular elections, but also by the legal protection
of their human rights, such as media freedom, personal privacy, fair
trials and religious toleration.

[...]

  The creation
of a Net Bill of Rights codifies the mutually agreed principles for
regulating individuals' on-line activities in the common interest. By
collectively defining a new vision of digital citizenship, this
generation can make its own world-historical contribution towards
building a truly human civilisation. The better future must be
anticipated in the troubled present.  Let's seize this opportunity to
transform our utopian dreams into everyday life!

Richard Barbrook,
8th March 2015,
London, England.

...


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Re: nettime Rich User Experience, UX and Desktopization of War

[olia lialina]

On 18.01.2015 18:03, Florian Cramer wrote:


On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 11:27 PM, olia lialina o...@profolia.org wrote:

  and the morning after UX, when people (formerly known as users)
  beiing fooled into invisible computing paradigm, find out that
  computers are there but the only think they can do with them is to
  take out the battery

Even that is overly optimistic. Nowadays, you can't even remove (or
swap) the battery of most mobile devices.
-F


Writing this paragraph I had in mind a very vivid picture from 30C3: J. 
Appelbaum theatrically taking battery out of his phone to switch it off.
But true! the sentense should read: but the only thing they can do with 
them is to buy a new one.

There are more examples in the text.
thank you
olia


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Re: nettime paying users for their data

[olia lialina]

Dear Felix

I'm afraid you are mixing up value of personal data and value of time 
spend filling a service with this data.

related, two demands on the User Rights:

The Right to get Revenue
http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/u0ibb/

The right to be the (prime) beneficiary of whatever is created from our 
'cognitive surplus'.
http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/ict3g/be-the-prime-beneficiary-of-whatever-i

yours

olia




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nettime Hyves: the Money

[olia lialina]

Dear nettimers, especially Dutch ones

Hyves.nl is closing on Friday

There are still some hours left to grab your stuff!

You could also help Archive team by runningthe warrior
http://tracker.archiveteam.org/hyves/


I was not an active Hyves user. So after getting a note that the service 
was to be closed on the 29th of November 2013 and there was one week to 
download the files, I personally didn't have a lot to worry about. But I 
looked around and carried out what I could.


http://contemporary-home-computing.org/hyves/money/

With this money we can build a social network that will never be sold to 
Yahoo, will not become a gaming portal and will allow animated GIFs in 
the backgrounds of user profiles!




Why Hyves matters? This is what I wrote 2 years ago about it as one of 
the last Pimp my Profile networks


http://contemporary-home-computing.org/still-there/hyves.html


best

olia





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Re: nettime UserRights

[olia lialina]

Dear Burak

so nice to here from you. what do u think about Turing Complete User 
article?


and thank you for reminding about user labor! a great project indeed.
did it develop any further?

do u think u can formulate some write for userrights that would link and 
remind about this initiative. i can do myself, but is of course nicer to 
have more people contributing.


where are u nowdays?

greetrings from dragan
olia


On 10/11/2013 04:12 PM, Burak Arikan wrote:


Hi Olia, this is simple and awesome. It should be developed further to
include the almost invisible interfaces of social software.

In this regard, we've designed a framework for sustaining user labor across
the web. This can obviously be tied to user rights.

http://userlabor.org

...


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Re: nettime Computer for Cynics - Ted Nelson Series 2012

[olia lialina]

with the right links

best

olia

Computers for Cynics 0 - The Myth of Technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGPQaICjk

Computers for Cynics 1 - The Nightmare of Files and Directories
http://youtu.be/Qfai5reVrck


Computers for Cynics 2 - It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6SUOeAqOjU

Computers for Cynics 3 - The Database Mess
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhzD2FKEEds

Computers for Cynics 4 - The Dance of Apple and Microsoft
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xL19f48m9U

Computers for Cynics 5 - Hyperhistory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9PmIkAYhI0

Computers for Cynics 6 - The Real Story of the World Wide Web
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWDPhEvKuRY

Computers for Cynics N - CLOSURE: Pay Attention to the Man Behind the
Curtain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w950GgRzbJk


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nettime TLDs, URLs and the location bar

[olia lialina]

Hello nettimers

I'm absolutely indifferent to top level domains and domain names in 
general. Would not give a cent for .art after my name, not even for .lol
At the same time I'm  a big old fan of both URLs and the location bar. 
http://art.teleportacia.org/Location_Yes/ (1999)

I'm fascinated about the way one can narrate in the location bar and 
communicate literary everything through it, including business interests 
and copyright issues. All significant net art projects are incorporating 
address space, some of them take place in this bar solely. And I always 
try to resist any attempt to hide the adress bar in favour of a cleaner 
presentation. And am very sensitive to the intentions of developers to 
get rid of this interface artefact that look oh so unnecessarily 
technical. Because it is the last command line users still have. Our 
only front end to the algorithmic culture :)

So I have mixed feelings when watching the new top level domain rush. 
The nice and optimistic one is that if big players are keen to pay all 
those hundreds of thousands for the words to appear in the location bar, 
it means the location bar will still stay visible in the browsers. And 
that browsers and the WWW are still the future.

At the same time -- I'm getting pessimistic again -- if really big big 
players would care about the content in the address bar, they would 
already find the way to have facebook, google or amazon as a top 
level domain. So the interest is not that huge?

What do you think? Will the location bar survive?

best

olia
http://art.teleportacia.org/


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