Re: Dugin to lead Russia's Channel One (?)

[Ted Byfield]

Thanks for this, Olia.

So while Western intellectuals prop him up as the latest incarnation of the 
Rasputin > Zhirinovsky trope — a subspecies of Orientalism, imo — at least one 
Russian outlet is taking the piss. 

But if people are really wedded to the tragic worldview, we could debate 
whether this squib is authentic or 'really' the work of some intelligence 
outfit messing with our heads. On second thought, nah.

Cheers,
Ted

On 19 Mar 2022, at 14:30, olia lialina wrote:

> It is from satire magazine Panorama
>
> https://panorama.pub/news/aleksandr-dugin-naznachen-generalnym-direktorom-pervogo-kanala
>
>
>  Panorama is like Onion or Titanic in Germany
>
>
>
>  On 19 Mar 2022 18:54, Ted Byfield  wrote:
>> via Facebook. I have no idea if this is true, but if it is it should be an 
>> opportunity to see a bit more clearly whether Dugin is really so significant.
>>
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - -
>>
>> Осетия - АланИр  ·
>>
>> Алина Доева  · March 17 at 11:57am

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Dugin to lead Russia's Channel One (?)

[Ted Byfield]

via Facebook. I have no idea if this is true, but if it is it should be an 
opportunity to see a bit more clearly whether Dugin is really so significant.

- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - -

Осетия - АланИр  ·

Алина Доева  · March 17 at 11:57am

Alexander Dugin has been appointed General Director of Channel One.

At an emergency meeting, the Board of Directors of Channel One decided to 
terminate the contract with Constantine Ernst.

A well-known Russian philosopher and political scientist Alexander Dugin has 
been appointed as the new general director of "Pervogo".

"For me, this assignment became a pleasant surprise. I am a faithful son of 
Russia and the Russian people, who have now finally begun to wake up. My front 
is an information war. I will expel the entire Russophobic element from the 
state, all these liberals, comedians and once and for all I will end the stench 
and stupid shows," the philosopher said.

Dugin added that all employees of the channel will have a personal interview 
with him, and his colleagues from the Eurasian Youth Union will analyze their 
social media pages. After this, a decision on the termination of the employment 
contract may be made.

In addition, in the broadcast network "First Channel" in early April there will 
be new programs - "Project Eurasia", "Conservative Revolution" and "The Theory 
of the Multipolar World", which will be the director himself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cheers,
Ted
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Medialab-Prado might disappear in less than one week! Urgent action needed

[César García Sáez]

Hi everyone,

I'd like to share some news about recent developments in Madrid that might
lead to the disappearance of Medialab-Prado in less than a week.

By the end of January, Marcos García, former director of the center
announced he would not be renewed on his position. This sparked some alarms
about the future of the program.

Two weeks ago, national newspaper ElMundo announced that Medialab-Prado
would leave their current building in autumn and be integrated into
Matadero (another local center).  Medialab-Prado program would be replaced
by a contemporary art gallery and cultural industries hub, without any
trace of free culture, citizen participation or new media.

A community led effort called WeAreTheLab  raised
alarms about this movement, given there is no free space at Matadero (nor
public plans to accommodate any area for Medialab-Prado). So this looks
like they are trying to dismount Medialab-Prado by removing the material
infrastructure, removing any budget and leaving it orphaned. Most people
see this as an intermediate step before destroying it.

Matadero has announced it will be removing the international residences
program, substituting it is an immersive experience center, consisting of
multi projector installations with 10 EUR fee per person.Right now, it
seems like Madrid is moving to a model of "Culture is for those that can
afford it (with special focus on tourists instead of citizens)".

Today, we have discovered that all workers at Medialab are supposed to move
by next Monday. No Autumm or future date whatsoever. Next Monday.

- What is supposed to happen with the current building? No public project
or information about it.

- When asked about the current citizen projects? Everyone is supposed to
pack and remove everything before next Monday. There is no space at
Matadero for project materials whatsoever.

- What about international residencies and open projects? No idea, everyone
must leave by the end of this week.

Medialab-Prado will effectively close this week at all effects until
further notice.

So far the conversation on how to save the lab has happened mostly in
Spanish, from communities close to the Medialab-Prado. Several people have
expressed their support using Twitter under the hashtag #savethelab /
#wearethelab.

Any kind of support, idea, plan, alternative would be welcome!

Best,
César
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Re: Not One

[mp]

--- if you don't know it, condemned to repeat it, farce, tragedy and
collapse:

On 12/10/2020 10:45, John Young wrote:
> 
>> So long as heirarchical structures endure, with the few managing the
>> many from any ideological or intellectual top down control, it is
>> unlikely much will change for most humans. Royalty of thought is so
>> deeply embedded in "advanced" societies it is nearly unavoidable.
> 
>> Being on top is inevitably corrupting. "Best" minds, talents and
>> skills are as inequal, unjust, self-satisfying, collegial and
>> standards enforcing as "best" wealth, conviction, rewards, titles,
>> perquisites, followers, believers.

“The intellectuals cast a veil over the dictatorial character of
bourgeois democracy not least by presenting democracy as the absolute
opposite of fascism, not as just another natural phase of it where the
bourgeois dictatorship is revealed in a more open form.”

– Bertolt Brecht

"...The opposition from the left, led by Léon Blum, strongly opposed
this “fascist” practice, but it is significant that once the Left took
power with the Popular Front, it asked parliament in June 1937 for full
powers in order to devalue the franc, establish exchange control, and
impose new taxes. As has been observed, this meant that the new practice
of legislation by executive [governativo] decree, which had been
inaugurated during the war, was by now a practice accepted by all
political sides.”

- Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception
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Re: Not One

[John Young]

So long as heirarchical structures endure, with the few managing the 
many from any ideological or intellectual top down control, it is 
unlikely much will change for most humans. Royalty of thought is so 
deeply embedded in "advanced" societies it is nearly unavoidable.


Being on top is inevitably corrupting. "Best" minds, talents and 
skills are as inequal, unjust, self-satisfying, collegial and 
standards enforcing as "best" wealth, conviction, rewards, titles, 
perquisites, followers, believers.


St Peters or Mecca brazen spectacularism and global faith 
obsequiousness to support autocratic political powerhouses no 
different than exclusive nuclear club global intimidation terrorism, 
or, more trivially, degrees, prizes and honors awarding for "best 
and brightest."  Apologias for whatever agenda are sine qua non for 
kiss-up kick-down.



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Re: Not One

[Molly Hankwitz]

Hello...interesting thread! Thank you, Zak for querying the potentials of a
Biden militarism. It's difficult to respond to the critique without giving
up other more hopeful impressions I have about Biden and the coming
election and the American people at present because I am like Brian, I
believe, believing that we are at a potentially very positive turning point
for politics in this country - a turning point that will come from the
continued pushing from below of the grassroots movements -blank & brown
lives, the womens' movement, LBGTQ movement, democratic socialists, the
young and very hardworking politicians such as AOC who pushes for a Green
New Deal...these leanings are the progressive "left" in this country; and,
curiously, our progressive "left" merges important aspects of
identity-politics (like anti-binary thinking) and socialism  along with
enough education and wealth in the hands of progressives to get the votes;
to get the steam; to get the press.
My money is on this progressive wave of politicians - Buttar, AOC,
Khan...These figures are representative of one of the many America's that
Brian mentions (Neyrat). But, these politicians will not be President, and
if Harris were to outlive Biden and become President, I'm not 100%
convinced of her ability to do much more than wallow in neo-liberal goals.

New national goals - this is spot on - that is what this country needs and
what Trump's administration has drawn a bow around so adroitly. It will be
the apparent climate crisis and the spread of disease which will end his
presidency if nothing else can. But we can't be fooled that efforts to
produce a more climate-wise American or a more careful and germ-free
society can't be co-opted and capitalized on for purposes of Wall Street.
We need new policies, new approaches, and investment in what has been great
about this country - an actively secular, free public education for all,
the legalization of blackness and reproductive rights, the capacity to
elect our own leaders, socialist, communist, liberal democrats...Agreed,
bourgieous democracy is far and away different from fascism. What Hitler
and Trump have in common is the unself-conscious desire to dictate even if
it means adopting the most unseemly aspects of their populist flocks.

We have long had fascism in America, just no one in power who had the
hubris to draw it out flagrantly as we have seen Trump (and GWBush with his
photo opps hyping the military from atop aircraft carriers) do. Fascism
lurks in the marching bands of many American high schools and in the JROTC
and in corporate hierarchies and the minds of phys ed teachers, many of
whom are ex-marines. Militarism does not have to be fascist, but fascists
love the "disciplines" of  military might. Fascists promote ideal bodies
and deterministic thinking. Fascism lurks where people are made to line up,
take orders, obey...the populist white nationalists behind Trump are
profoundly anti-intellectual, anti-gay, anti-feminist, racist...they love
someone who gives them someone else to blame. Hitler's German populists had
their scapegoat: immigrants. The Proud Boys (whom we chased out of San
Franscisco) have theirs: immigrants.

I wanted to shout to livx - as she took Trump from being a "gross uncle" to
being "a serial killer" and I agree with this point of hers.

We will only be able to effect change in this country through the continued
opening up of our government to the voices of the people either through
representation at the level of Congress or through making them listen. What
appears to be is that Biden is willing to take on Warren and Sanders into
his circle; he is willing to listen and not simply be a figurehead for
Clinton style neo-liberal ideas.

The fact of social change in our country has already happened...as the
civil rights movement of the last few months and the tremendous outpouring
of resistance to Trump has shown. What we do not have...but which I hope we
will have...is a government that can deal with the political difference
that has flourished among the American people.

Along with the normalization of American capitalist imperialism at least
within our country is the very very huge power of the corporate-led media
to encourage that normalization. Yet, too, the Trump administration has
fostered a regrouping in our information gathering and investment in truth.
The media has a lot to answer for in creating the enemies and the goals.

As for modernity and fascism - Fordism helped usher in the Holocaust as an
efficient means to eliminate society of unwanted populations. Adolf Hitler
had a photo of Henry Ford in his office. The concept of modernity that
ended empirical monarchies had to do with unity through industrialization,
and that is a good idea when in the hands of modernists, and an evil in the
hands of Hitler...but, ultimately, it was people and their unformed hearts
and minds which put Hitler, and Trump into po

Re: Not One

[Keith Sanborn]

Not a precise match between modernity and bourgeois democracy, but close enough 
to provoke reflection. Still, while bourgeois democracy and fascism may both 
show aspects of modernity, such as rationalization of “production” and its 
corollary destruction, that does not make them ethically identical. Roosevelt 
does not equal Hitler.

> On Oct 10, 2020, at 3:04 PM, mp  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/10/2020 19:45, Keith Sanborn wrote:
>> Again the "always already.”
>> 
>> What if fascism is not a mask? The voices of the dead should be listened to.
> 
> Waves and particle, apples and oranges. My way, your way, anything goes
> tonight.
> 
> Zygmunt Bauman, who is dead and spend considerable time developing a
> voice that made sense of the Holocaust, to which many students of
> Sociology have been subjected, investigated the relations between
> fascism and modernity, and I wonder if he would readily agree that, as
> you write, "..there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between
> bourgeois democracy and fascism..".
> 
> Here from a random blog:
> 
> "...In Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman contends that the
> Holocaust should not simply be understood as an accident along the road
> to modernity. Rather, Bauman argues that modernity provided the
> “necessary conditions” (Bauman, 13) for its undertaking. As Bauman puts
> it, the Holocaust was “a legitimate resident in the house of modernity”
> (Bauman, 17). To support this contention, Bauman suggests that the
> principles of rationality and efficiency which so uniquely characterize
> the modern era may have had, in the case of the Holocaust, some
> unintended consequences: “at no point of its long and tortuous execution
> did the Holocaust come into conflict with the principles of rationality.
> The ‘Final Solution’ did not clash at any stage with the rational
> pursuit of efficient, optimal goal-implementation” (Bauman, 17)...".
> 
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Re: Not One

[mp]

On 10/10/2020 19:45, Keith Sanborn wrote:
> Again the "always already.”
> 
> What if fascism is not a mask? The voices of the dead should be listened to.

Waves and particle, apples and oranges. My way, your way, anything goes
tonight.

Zygmunt Bauman, who is dead and spend considerable time developing a
voice that made sense of the Holocaust, to which many students of
Sociology have been subjected, investigated the relations between
fascism and modernity, and I wonder if he would readily agree that, as
you write, "..there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between
bourgeois democracy and fascism..".

Here from a random blog:

"...In Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman contends that the
Holocaust should not simply be understood as an accident along the road
to modernity. Rather, Bauman argues that modernity provided the
“necessary conditions” (Bauman, 13) for its undertaking. As Bauman puts
it, the Holocaust was “a legitimate resident in the house of modernity”
(Bauman, 17). To support this contention, Bauman suggests that the
principles of rationality and efficiency which so uniquely characterize
the modern era may have had, in the case of the Holocaust, some
unintended consequences: “at no point of its long and tortuous execution
did the Holocaust come into conflict with the principles of rationality.
The ‘Final Solution’ did not clash at any stage with the rational
pursuit of efficient, optimal goal-implementation” (Bauman, 17)...".

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Re: Not One

[Keith Sanborn]

Again the "always already.”

What if fascism is not a mask? The voices of the dead should be listened to.

What if it is? 

I will not take a revisionist line, but there is a qualitative and quantitative 
difference between bourgeois democracy and fascism. They are not identical. In 
the larger picture or the smaller picture, either wholesale or retail. The 
problem is that they are in the process of merging: as Debord observed about 
China and elsewhere: the concentrated and the diffuse spectacle are in the 
process of merging. They have merged already in China. Internally and 
externally, the synthesis created in China is a formidable example, NOT to be 
followed. It should be stopped by any means necessary. But don’t take the 
sucker punch. The heads of state command much greater resources of physical and 
psychological violence.

Keith 

> On Oct 10, 2020, at 2:30 PM, mp  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 10/10/2020 16:37, Brian Holmes wrote:
>> 
>> So in the end, I agree with Zak a lot more than I thought at first, but
>> still not entirely. You ought to post more often, Zak.
>> 
>> Solidarity, Brian
> 
> I don't know what Zak meant exactly and there are certainly immediate,
> good reasons to vote for Biden (and hope his health won't last Harris be
> presidenta) - and if for nothing else, then for the joy of seeing Trumps
> face in defeat.
> 
> Zak made me think about the system as such.
> 
> What does left and right represent other than a legacy of the spatial
> room distribution of the two elitist groups that constituted the
> National Assembly that killed the French Revolution?
> 
> If we suspend disbelief about higher powers at play - beyond agency and
> conspiracy - and think of the political system known as liberal
> democracy as an intelligent (gaia like?) beast that tends towards an
> equilibrium in order to sustain itself and continuously distribute power
> and privilege disproportionally. [For that is its purpose and intent,
> right?].
> 
> Then what could fascism be?
> 
> Imagine fascism as a mask that the elite puts on when the forces of
> exploitation and extraction have spawned too much unrest and rendered an
> otherwise obedient body of people unruly. When the rate of dispossession
> becomes unpalatable, when the addictive and soporific effects of grain
> (bread and beer) and circus no longer can contain the domesticated
> masses, something has got to give. It seems.
> 
> Instead of liberalism giving in, however, the fascist mask comes on.
> 
> Fascism "presents itself" as a threat, as a far worse proposition, and
> even some rebels who used to operate outside of society, and of course
> everyone within the political spectrum not consumed by fascist
> fantasies, including academics, now favour a return to liberal democracy
> - how else can they keep their jobs and their cushioned existence?
> 
> "Look, I know liberalism/capitalism is bad, but don't be insensitive,
> this is worse, we must return".
> 
> Captured, then, we are in a pendular swing of things. No transcendence.
> 
> Fascism as a mirage. Liberalism as a clear-sighted response. Forth and
> back. So history goes and ensures repetition. Fascism makes liberalism
> sustainable. Desirable.
> 
> So, "they" - the Trumpists -  might intend to bring the system down, as
> it was suggested, but they might effectively just be recalibrating it.
> 
> Even though he was awarded the Nobel prize, I still like him, so here goes:
> 
> "...Oh, but you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all
> fears,
> 
> Bury the rag deep in your face, for now's the time for your
> tears..."
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Re: Not One

[mp]

On 10/10/2020 16:37, Brian Holmes wrote:
> 
> So in the end, I agree with Zak a lot more than I thought at first, but
> still not entirely. You ought to post more often, Zak.
> 
> Solidarity, Brian

I don't know what Zak meant exactly and there are certainly immediate,
good reasons to vote for Biden (and hope his health won't last Harris be
presidenta) - and if for nothing else, then for the joy of seeing Trumps
face in defeat.

Zak made me think about the system as such.

What does left and right represent other than a legacy of the spatial
room distribution of the two elitist groups that constituted the
National Assembly that killed the French Revolution?

If we suspend disbelief about higher powers at play - beyond agency and
conspiracy - and think of the political system known as liberal
democracy as an intelligent (gaia like?) beast that tends towards an
equilibrium in order to sustain itself and continuously distribute power
and privilege disproportionally. [For that is its purpose and intent,
right?].

Then what could fascism be?

Imagine fascism as a mask that the elite puts on when the forces of
exploitation and extraction have spawned too much unrest and rendered an
otherwise obedient body of people unruly. When the rate of dispossession
becomes unpalatable, when the addictive and soporific effects of grain
(bread and beer) and circus no longer can contain the domesticated
masses, something has got to give. It seems.

Instead of liberalism giving in, however, the fascist mask comes on.

Fascism "presents itself" as a threat, as a far worse proposition, and
even some rebels who used to operate outside of society, and of course
everyone within the political spectrum not consumed by fascist
fantasies, including academics, now favour a return to liberal democracy
- how else can they keep their jobs and their cushioned existence?

"Look, I know liberalism/capitalism is bad, but don't be insensitive,
this is worse, we must return".

Captured, then, we are in a pendular swing of things. No transcendence.

Fascism as a mirage. Liberalism as a clear-sighted response. Forth and
back. So history goes and ensures repetition. Fascism makes liberalism
sustainable. Desirable.

So, "they" - the Trumpists -  might intend to bring the system down, as
it was suggested, but they might effectively just be recalibrating it.

Even though he was awarded the Nobel prize, I still like him, so here goes:

"...Oh, but you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all
fears,

Bury the rag deep in your face, for now's the time for your
tears..."
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Re: Not One

[Brian Holmes]

>
> Zak McGregor wrote:
>
> Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses
> probably an even greater risk to their lives than Trump. The US left needs
> to realise that they a. can't effect meaningful change through the ballot,
> and b. need to bring the entire system down from within.
>

 On the face of it, this seems absurd, and others have already said why.
Yet two things strike me.

First, having lived outside the United States for a long time, the hardest
thing that confronted me on returning was the normalization of US corporate
imperialism and the cult of the military. At every public appearance of a
soldier who spent years butchering people overseas, you're supposed to
respect their suffering and emphasize with their PTSD, instead of publicly
asking how the endless wars can be ended, who are the criminals who
organize those wars, and why so many soldiers sign up voluntarily for one,
two, three tours of "duty," which itself is a sickening misnomer for the
betrayal of humanity. Sure, I well understand that many people left behind
by the capitalist economy are lured into the military, and I respect and
support the ones who admit their mistake and denounce their abusers. But
not the others, not those who form the recruiting pool for the militias and
the Trumpistas. The majority of USians fail to look outside their country,
to find solidarity with the victims of its brutality, and they were shocked
and amazed that someone would want to blow up the World Trade Towers! Huh?
Why exactly should the US have the right to rain infinite bombs on the
Middle East or anywhere else around the world, and never receive any
violent answer? Even many of my friends here still seem to think Obama was
a noble man and a force for good in the world! Huh? The guy who supported
the Arab dictators, prolonged the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, cozied up to
the surveillance capitalists and used their manipulation techniques, and
supported the fracking industry to the point where the US became the
largest exporter of fossil fuels under his watch? If you have the slightest
political discipline, and not the fuzzy emotional attachments that are
exalted here in the name of populism, then these things become obvious. Of
course such ignorance is not shared by everyone, there is definitely not
one America as Frederic Neyrat says, but the normalization of imperialism
is a lot worse than pitiful, it's abject and criminal in itself, and that's
what Zak's talkin' about imho.

Second, as already stated I am definitely going to vote Biden/Harris and I
encourage everyone who can to do so, in order to open up a viable space in
which to fight for real change in this country and in the world - a fight
that will require activism and mass demonstrations in addition to everyday
commitment, organization, institution-building and the development of a
left worthy of the name. Yet it's interesting to see what has led to this
moment. All the grassroots pressure that elected a Black man to the
presidency in 2008, that created and supported the Black Lives Matter
movement, that worked in favor of immigrant rights, and that pushed the
environmental state into open conflict with extractivist industry, all that
led to the backlash called Trump - by far the weakest and most incompetent
president the US has had since it rose to hegemony after WWII. Thanks to a
terrible circumstance -- which, from this one angle and this one only, is a
blessing in disguise -- Covid-19 struck and revealed exactly how
incompetent and stupid Trump is, breaking his power (at least, if you get
out to vote, folks) and even more importantly, revealing the inner rot of
this country, with its racist police, its militias, its savage industrial
corporations, its fascist Silicon Valley tycoons, etc etc etc. In this
sense the system has definitely been undermined from within, although it
took the pandemic to precipitate the breakdown.

Now we are finally in a good position in this country. Our abusive
dominance of world politics has been shattered by Trump's arrogance. Our
systemic racism is officially recognized as an historical fact that must be
changed. The pathology of our militarism has been exposed by the gun-toting
Proud Boys and Three Percenters. Our economy is durably damaged (notably
the fossil fuel sector, the airlines sector, the agricultural export sector
- in other words, some of those whose CO2 emissions are murdering planet
earth). No armed revolution could have achieved this, it would have been
nipped in the bud by the FBI, just as they rightly stopped the bomb-happy
militia in Michigan. Instead it has been done by a combination of tireless
ecological, multiracial and socialist critique, and by the sheer force of
unconscious internal contradictions. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not wish
for the country's entire economic or even military system to disintegrate,
because out of those ruins some new fascist monster w

Re: Not One

[Ryan Griffis]

Zak McGregor wrote:
> 
> Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses 
> probably an even greater risk to their lives than Trump. The US left needs to 
> realise that they a. can't effect meaningful change through the ballot, and 
> b. need to bring the entire system down from within.

I think I’ll stick to listening to those who have historically suffered the 
most under the “system” and who have led/are currently leading the fight 
against it (and have always had the most significant expressions of 
international solidarity), but thanks for your suggestions.
Ryan
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Re: Not One

[Christiane Robbins]

Zak,

Not certain that I am following you accurately, as it seems as if you are 
presenting us with the devil’s choice - choosing between one’s own survival or 
perishing for the sake of your unspecified “greater risk”.

I’m not sure of your citizenry but as a woman living in the USA at this moment, 
amongst other significant factors, I am subject to the distinct threat of the 
overt forces of misogyny ( see the attempt to kidnap and Lynch the Gov. of 
Michican as a most recent example).  

Make no mistake these are not illusionistic threats.  They are real, they are 
deliberate and they are growing …and their intent is to "bring the entire 
system down from within."

> On Oct 7, 2020, at 2:29 AM, Zak McGregor  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 6 Oct 2020 19:00:39 -0400
> Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
>> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
>> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
>> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
>> any time. 
> 
> Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses 
> probably an even greater risk to their lives than Trump. The US left needs to 
> realise that they a. can't effect meaningful change through the ballot, and 
> b. need to bring the entire system down from within. 
> 
> -- 
> Zak McGregor 
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Re: Not One

[Joseph Rabie]

Dear Zak,

Your insightful comments below would make all self-respecting revolutionaries 
proud.

> Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses 
> probably an even greater risk to their lives than Trump.

Could you be more specific about this?


> The US left needs to realise that they a. can't effect meaningful change 
> through the ballot, and b. need to bring the entire system down from within.

How should they go about this? Normally when you bypass the ballot, you end up 
in the Gulag, or whatever the local equivalent is.

Cheers! -
Joe.


> -- 
> Zak McGregor 
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Re: Not One

[Zak McGregor]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2020 19:00:39 -0400
Keith Sanborn  wrote:

> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
> any time. 

Then the cycle will never end. For people outside the USA, Biden poses probably 
an even greater risk to their lives than Trump. The US left needs to realise 
that they a. can't effect meaningful change through the ballot, and b. need to 
bring the entire system down from within. 

-- 
Zak McGregor 
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Re: Not One

[Keith Sanborn]

True with respect to Tienanmin, but Mao was a believer that political power 
grows out of the barrel of a gun. He sent in the army in 1967 to end the 
“cultural revolution” he had begun. The reference to Andrew Jackson, for those 
not familiar with some of the intricacies of US History refers to his refusal 
to abide by a Supreme Court ruling rejecting the enforcement of Georgia laws on 
the Seminole People, among other violations of the Constitution in favor of the 
use of military force.

> On Oct 7, 2020, at 1:26 PM, Dan S Wang  wrote:
> 
> Though there is much in this exchange to discuss, I'll limit myself to a 
> correction on a peripheral point: it wasn't Mao that sent in the army. It was 
> Deng. As long as we're on the issue of how the US is perceived, how 
> homogenous or heterogeneous it is, , I think it's not such a small thing 
> to correctly note a detail about an event (the '89 social movement) that 
> fundamentally shook a country with almost twice the population of the US and 
> the EU combined, and produced world-changing economic and ecological 
> repercussions.
> 
> With you in the political fever,
> 
> Dan w.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Resident Artist, 18th Street Arts Center
> IG: type_rounds_1968
> danswang.xyz
> 
> ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
> On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 9:30 PM, Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
> We have even seen those actions in the street here, though more as 
> provocation than as dissent. Mao, Lukashenko, Andrew Jackson, and Trump sent 
> in the Army. Putin perfers poison. The point is: we, as citizens of the 
> United States, have a responsibility to cut off the link between Trump and 
> the Army and the Supreme Court as soon as possible and the most direct route 
> at the moment is the election in a month. Maybe Covid will help in its own 
> special way, if roid-rage doesn't buoy Trump up until the election.
>> 
> 
> 

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Re: Not One

[Dan S Wang]

Though there is much in this exchange to discuss, I'll limit myself to a 
correction on a peripheral point: it wasn't Mao that sent in the army. It was 
Deng. As long as we're on the issue of how the US is perceived, how homogenous 
or heterogeneous it is, , I think it's not such a small thing to correctly 
note a detail about an event (the '89 social movement) that fundamentally shook 
a country with almost twice the population of the US and the EU combined, and 
produced world-changing economic and ecological repercussions.

With you in the political fever,

Dan w.


-- 

Resident Artist, 18th Street Arts Center
IG: type_rounds_1968
danswang.xyz

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 9:30 PM, Keith Sanborn  wrote:

We have even seen those actions in the street here, though more as provocation 
than as dissent. Mao, Lukashenko, Andrew Jackson, and Trump sent in the Army. 
Putin perfers poison. The point is: we, as citizens of the United States, have 
a responsibility to cut off the link between Trump and the Army and the Supreme 
Court as soon as possible and the most direct route at the moment is the 
election in a month. Maybe Covid will help in its own special way, if roid-rage 
doesn't buoy Trump up until the election.
>


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Re: Not One

[Christiane Robbins]

Dear Fellow Travelers,

Keith points below are not only sage, they are of an absolute necessity in the 
USA … and I (as a direct descendant of those puritan settler-colonialists, 
aboriginal and colonized peoples ( yes,Trump’s worst nightmare) I couldn’t 
agree any more.

Christiane Robbins


> On Oct 6, 2020, at 4:00 PM, Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
> Dear Nettimers,
> 
> An appeal to the history of settler colonialism and the continued history of 
> slavery is appropriate and accurate but at this moment used as a reductio ad 
> absurdum is just dangerous. I am not a believer in justice through bourgeois 
> democracy but the violence promoted and actualized under the Trump regime 
> must be stopped. Think of Biden/Harris as a tourniquet applied to staunch 
> fatal bleeding. 
> 
> Let me end with this: the day after Trump was elected, my students at the New 
> School, most of them women, were in a state of shock and for good reason: one 
> shared with the class that after Trump’s win had been announced she was 
> walking down the street near the “campus” in New York City and a young guy 
> walked up to her and said, “Now I can grab your pussy whenever I want.” And 
> disease entity called Trump was not even inaugurated yet. The irresponsible 
> minimization of covid which has lead directly to deaths and the work of the 
> “Proud Boys” as agents provocateurs, which again lead to deaths. 
> 
> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
> any time. 
> 
> Keith Sanborn 
> 
>> On Oct 6, 2020, at 2:42 PM, Ryan Griffis  wrote:
>> 
>> Tue, 6 Oct 2020 11:12:55 -0500, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
>> 
>>> A subject, be it collective or individual, is always divided. The One is an
>>> imposture.
>> 
>> Thank you Frederic, for stating what I would have hoped was a shared 
>> understanding of nation-state politics, especially on an international list 
>> focused on “networked culture.” 
>> 
>> I wrote the following just before receiving Frederic's message, then decided 
>> not to send it. But, maybe it’s worth adding to Frederic’s rightful call to 
>> dispense with the collapsing of people into nation-states? Anyway, here it 
>> is...
>> 
>> I don’t mean to overstate the point here, but discussions of “democracy in 
>> the US” (as with discussions of the political economy anywhere in the world) 
>> should really be more responsible to actual history. Personally, I think 
>> such responsibility is necessary to have a meaningful international leftist 
>> perspective on solidarity.
>> For starters, the settler-colonial status of the US as an ongoing form of 
>> occupation can’t be simply glossed over.
>> But specifically to the question of democracy, it might be more useful to 
>> understand the situation as the *continued prevention* of democracy, rather 
>> than its collapse, as if it was somehow ever stable or even meaningfully 
>> democratic in some historical sense.
>> Just to provide *some* specifics.
>> It would be ridiculous to consider the rollback of voting rights for 
>> formerly incarcerated individuals (essentially a poll tax) in my settler 
>> home state of Florida without recognizing that the very rights being 
>> undermined *were just recently granted* to begin with.
>> Exactly 100 years ago there, leading up to the 1920 election, there was 
>> widespread mass violence perpetrated against black residents to re-solidify 
>> an anti-democratic, white supremacist regime.
>> For anyone interested in this specific history who is not familiar, I’d 
>> recommend Paul Ortiz’s excellent book “Emancipation Betrayed.”
>> 
>> Trump may be a glaring and garish example of white supremacist 
>> anti-democratic/fascism in the US, but it’s not like the foundation wasn’t 
>> already set. 
>> IF we’re able to move the US in a more democratic direction, it will be 
>> through continued struggle that builds on the history of such struggles that 
>> have been occurring for well over 100 years (some would say it’s more like 
>> 500 years). IMHO, these struggles are not best understood as trying to 
>> *perfect* the US as a democracy, but as part of a movement to achieve (and 
>> maintain) liberation for all people (which is no simple concept in a 
>> settler-colonial state). Our foundation as a nation-state built on 
>> internationally coordinated, genocidal violence (that predates the actual US 
>> nation-state, obviously) seems like it begs for us to understan

Re: Not One

[Keith Sanborn]

Dear Ryan et al.

You needn’t apologize for anything.

In an sense I felt your post, Ryan, extended what I considered the 
proliferation of received and somewhat opaque terminology with which I felt 
Eric’s earlier post was riddled. I should have spoken to that. Now is not the 
time. Considering the history of the suppression of voting rights is indeed 
relevant as is settler colonialism. But those should not become meaningless 
mantras. Americans seem to forget their history more easily than most—given as 
so many of us are to millenialist illusionism—so it is important to remind them 
of it and of the need to change it. If those phrases get you into the street, 
they are working. If not…

My concern is that the proliferation of theoretical jargon does not advance us 
towards preserving the United States from the continuing slide towards, for 
lack of better words, “nationalist authoritarianism,” of the sort we have seen 
in Poland, Hungary, Russia, India and to a certain degree even in Britain. 
Italy has also shown that potential. The list is long, but the European 
examples seem more important, with their declining lip service to even 
bourgeois democratic values, let alone a shared historical project. With some 
exceptions, the virus has brought forward the tendency towards nationalist 
cocooning trending widely as well as violent reactions more in sympathy with it 
than against it. In Belarus and Kyrghyzstan, at least they are rebelling 
against it, even within a limited framework. We have even seen those actions in 
the street here, though more as provocation than as dissent. Mao, Lukashenko, 
Andrew Jackson, and Trump sent in the Army. Putin perfers poison. The point is: 
we, as citizens of the United States, have a responsibility to cut off the link 
between Trump and the Army and the Supreme Court as soon as possible and the 
most direct route at the moment is the election in a month. Maybe Covid will 
help in its own special way, if roid-rage doesn't buoy Trump up until the 
election.

We need vital action now, even if that means dirtying our hands with bourgeois 
democracy and voting, yes even in the face of historical voter suppression. We 
need to support those fighting against that and help where we can. We need a 
pragmatic, empirical approach rather than a strictly theoretical one. I refuse 
to give in to the “always already” endgaming of so much historical, social 
theorizing. Call it naive. I don’t care. I felt you were continuing the 
discussion in that direction.

I am not arguing against theory, but it should arise out of and be informed by 
practice—immediate experience—more than by other theory. Right now we are 
sorely in need of theory from praxis—or should I say immediate experience—and 
more praxis from that theory. And more praxis than theory.

As Brecht, no lover of bourgeois democracy, who faced historical Fascism, said: 
“Erst kommit das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.” Very approximately, “First 
comes feeding, then comes morality.” No doubt I have decontextualized the 
original.

Keith



> On Oct 6, 2020, at 9:31 PM, Ryan Griffis  wrote:
> 
> Hi Keith and all,
> I’m confused as to why you’d interpret my comment as an *appeal to the 
> history of settler colonialism and the continued history of slavery* as *a 
> reductio ad absurdum*. Just to be clear, this isn’t some kind of academic 
> discussion to me.
> 
> I certainly never suggested that voting for Biden/Harris (or any number of 
> other electoral decisions against the GOP and fascists) was somehow 
> antithetical to long-term struggles for liberation. Nor did I minimize the 
> enacted and potential violences of the Trump regime.
> (I mean, are any US voters on nettime *not* voting against Trump? Does that 
> even need to be asked here?)
> 
> My specific reference to the election of 1920 in Florida, for example, is not 
> one that easily lends itself to a falsely simplistic binary pitting 
> revolution against a compromised bourgeois democracy. Nor is it some distant, 
> irrelevant historical story in the current moment. The Proud Boys (and all 
> their white nationalist friends) are not historical outliers, after all. You 
> know, the “again” in MAGA and all.
> 
> If anything, I figured my comments would encourage situating electoral 
> politics more completely into struggles for liberation. To do otherwise would 
> be to completely disregard that history and those that fought (and died) to 
> simply exercise the most basic rights that supposedly define democracy, in 
> 1920 and before/after.
> 
> To try to restate the main reasons I responded in the first place: for many 
> in this country, even the *semblance* of democracy has been a fraught (at 
> best) lived experience and recognizing that is part of the struggle for those 
> of us who have a normalized experience of bourgeois democracy (that’s why I 
> responded to

Re: Not One

[Ryan Griffis]

Hi Keith and all,
I’m confused as to why you’d interpret my comment as an *appeal to the history 
of settler colonialism and the continued history of slavery* as *a reductio ad 
absurdum*. Just to be clear, this isn’t some kind of academic discussion to me.

I certainly never suggested that voting for Biden/Harris (or any number of 
other electoral decisions against the GOP and fascists) was somehow 
antithetical to long-term struggles for liberation. Nor did I minimize the 
enacted and potential violences of the Trump regime.
(I mean, are any US voters on nettime *not* voting against Trump? Does that 
even need to be asked here?)

My specific reference to the election of 1920 in Florida, for example, is not 
one that easily lends itself to a falsely simplistic binary pitting revolution 
against a compromised bourgeois democracy. Nor is it some distant, irrelevant 
historical story in the current moment. The Proud Boys (and all their white 
nationalist friends) are not historical outliers, after all. You know, the 
“again” in MAGA and all.

If anything, I figured my comments would encourage situating electoral politics 
more completely into struggles for liberation. To do otherwise would be to 
completely disregard that history and those that fought (and died) to simply 
exercise the most basic rights that supposedly define democracy, in 1920 and 
before/after.

To try to restate the main reasons I responded in the first place: for many in 
this country, even the *semblance* of democracy has been a fraught (at best) 
lived experience and recognizing that is part of the struggle for those of us 
who have a normalized experience of bourgeois democracy (that’s why I responded 
to Frederic’s post). I guess what I’m saying is that this is not a new fight 
for many, and I think it’s important to keep that front-and-center. If that 
seems somehow reductive, well, I’m not sure what else to say.

Maybe I’d say to ask those leading the fight in the US right now, with BLM and 
the Poor People’s Campaign (for example), whether they think this is about 
*preserving* democracy or *creating* democracy for their constituencies. I 
think it’s possible to recognize the difference and it matters in understanding 
what you are fighting for and with whom.

Apologies for any crossed-wires, misunderstandings.

best,
Ryan

> On Oct 6, 2020, at 6:00 PM, Keith Sanborn  wrote:
> 
> Dear Nettimers,
> 
> An appeal to the history of settler colonialism and the continued history of 
> slavery is appropriate and accurate but at this moment used as a reductio ad 
> absurdum is just dangerous. I am not a believer in justice through bourgeois 
> democracy but the violence promoted and actualized under the Trump regime 
> must be stopped. Think of Biden/Harris as a tourniquet applied to staunch 
> fatal bleeding. 
> 
> Let me end with this: the day after Trump was elected, my students at the New 
> School, most of them women, were in a state of shock and for good reason: one 
> shared with the class that after Trump’s win had been announced she was 
> walking down the street near the “campus” in New York City and a young guy 
> walked up to her and said, “Now I can grab your pussy whenever I want.” And 
> disease entity called Trump was not even inaugurated yet. The irresponsible 
> minimization of covid which has lead directly to deaths and the work of the 
> “Proud Boys” as agents provocateurs, which again lead to deaths. 
> 
> We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
> And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
> death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
> any time. 
> 
> Keith Sanborn

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Re: Not One

[Keith Sanborn]

Dear Nettimers,

An appeal to the history of settler colonialism and the continued history of 
slavery is appropriate and accurate but at this moment used as a reductio ad 
absurdum is just dangerous. I am not a believer in justice through bourgeois 
democracy but the violence promoted and actualized under the Trump regime must 
be stopped. Think of Biden/Harris as a tourniquet applied to staunch fatal 
bleeding. 

Let me end with this: the day after Trump was elected, my students at the New 
School, most of them women, were in a state of shock and for good reason: one 
shared with the class that after Trump’s win had been announced she was walking 
down the street near the “campus” in New York City and a young guy walked up to 
her and said, “Now I can grab your pussy whenever I want.” And disease entity 
called Trump was not even inaugurated yet. The irresponsible minimization of 
covid which has lead directly to deaths and the work of the “Proud Boys” as 
agents provocateurs, which again lead to deaths. 

We are talking about the death of even the semblance of bourgeois democracy. 
And in its place not revolutionary socialism, or an anarchist utopia, but 
death-dealing fascism. Given the choice, I will vote for bourgeois democracy 
any time. 

Keith Sanborn 

> On Oct 6, 2020, at 2:42 PM, Ryan Griffis  wrote:
> 
> Tue, 6 Oct 2020 11:12:55 -0500, Frederic Neyrat wrote:
> 
>> A subject, be it collective or individual, is always divided. The One is an
>> imposture.
> 
> Thank you Frederic, for stating what I would have hoped was a shared 
> understanding of nation-state politics, especially on an international list 
> focused on “networked culture.” 
> 
> I wrote the following just before receiving Frederic's message, then decided 
> not to send it. But, maybe it’s worth adding to Frederic’s rightful call to 
> dispense with the collapsing of people into nation-states? Anyway, here it 
> is...
> 
> I don’t mean to overstate the point here, but discussions of “democracy in 
> the US” (as with discussions of the political economy anywhere in the world) 
> should really be more responsible to actual history. Personally, I think such 
> responsibility is necessary to have a meaningful international leftist 
> perspective on solidarity.
> For starters, the settler-colonial status of the US as an ongoing form of 
> occupation can’t be simply glossed over.
> But specifically to the question of democracy, it might be more useful to 
> understand the situation as the *continued prevention* of democracy, rather 
> than its collapse, as if it was somehow ever stable or even meaningfully 
> democratic in some historical sense.
> Just to provide *some* specifics.
> It would be ridiculous to consider the rollback of voting rights for formerly 
> incarcerated individuals (essentially a poll tax) in my settler home state of 
> Florida without recognizing that the very rights being undermined *were just 
> recently granted* to begin with.
> Exactly 100 years ago there, leading up to the 1920 election, there was 
> widespread mass violence perpetrated against black residents to re-solidify 
> an anti-democratic, white supremacist regime.
> For anyone interested in this specific history who is not familiar, I’d 
> recommend Paul Ortiz’s excellent book “Emancipation Betrayed.”
> 
> Trump may be a glaring and garish example of white supremacist 
> anti-democratic/fascism in the US, but it’s not like the foundation wasn’t 
> already set. 
> IF we’re able to move the US in a more democratic direction, it will be 
> through continued struggle that builds on the history of such struggles that 
> have been occurring for well over 100 years (some would say it’s more like 
> 500 years). IMHO, these struggles are not best understood as trying to 
> *perfect* the US as a democracy, but as part of a movement to achieve (and 
> maintain) liberation for all people (which is no simple concept in a 
> settler-colonial state). Our foundation as a nation-state built on 
> internationally coordinated, genocidal violence (that predates the actual US 
> nation-state, obviously) seems like it begs for us to understand the US 
> beyond the exceptional, cohesive case put forward by the ruling classes (i.e. 
> settler white supremacists and neoliberal oligarchs).
> 
> Apologies if this is all pedantic… I’m just frustrated by the tone of 
> discussions about “American Democracy” that maintains imaginary clean 
> spatio-temporal boundaries that prevents us from talking about actual 
> struggles for liberation, both “inside” and “outside” any enforced borders.
> 
> Best,
> Ryan
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the n

Re: Not One

[Ryan Griffis]

Tue, 6 Oct 2020 11:12:55 -0500, Frederic Neyrat wrote:

> A subject, be it collective or individual, is always divided. The One is an
> imposture.

Thank you Frederic, for stating what I would have hoped was a shared 
understanding of nation-state politics, especially on an international list 
focused on “networked culture.” 

I wrote the following just before receiving Frederic's message, then decided 
not to send it. But, maybe it’s worth adding to Frederic’s rightful call to 
dispense with the collapsing of people into nation-states? Anyway, here it is...

I don’t mean to overstate the point here, but discussions of “democracy in the 
US” (as with discussions of the political economy anywhere in the world) should 
really be more responsible to actual history. Personally, I think such 
responsibility is necessary to have a meaningful international leftist 
perspective on solidarity.
For starters, the settler-colonial status of the US as an ongoing form of 
occupation can’t be simply glossed over.
But specifically to the question of democracy, it might be more useful to 
understand the situation as the *continued prevention* of democracy, rather 
than its collapse, as if it was somehow ever stable or even meaningfully 
democratic in some historical sense.
Just to provide *some* specifics.
It would be ridiculous to consider the rollback of voting rights for formerly 
incarcerated individuals (essentially a poll tax) in my settler home state of 
Florida without recognizing that the very rights being undermined *were just 
recently granted* to begin with.
Exactly 100 years ago there, leading up to the 1920 election, there was 
widespread mass violence perpetrated against black residents to re-solidify an 
anti-democratic, white supremacist regime.
For anyone interested in this specific history who is not familiar, I’d 
recommend Paul Ortiz’s excellent book “Emancipation Betrayed.”

Trump may be a glaring and garish example of white supremacist 
anti-democratic/fascism in the US, but it’s not like the foundation wasn’t 
already set. 
IF we’re able to move the US in a more democratic direction, it will be through 
continued struggle that builds on the history of such struggles that have been 
occurring for well over 100 years (some would say it’s more like 500 years). 
IMHO, these struggles are not best understood as trying to *perfect* the US as 
a democracy, but as part of a movement to achieve (and maintain) liberation for 
all people (which is no simple concept in a settler-colonial state). Our 
foundation as a nation-state built on internationally coordinated, genocidal 
violence (that predates the actual US nation-state, obviously) seems like it 
begs for us to understand the US beyond the exceptional, cohesive case put 
forward by the ruling classes (i.e. settler white supremacists and neoliberal 
oligarchs).

Apologies if this is all pedantic… I’m just frustrated by the tone of 
discussions about “American Democracy” that maintains imaginary clean 
spatio-temporal boundaries that prevents us from talking about actual struggles 
for liberation, both “inside” and “outside” any enforced borders.

Best,
Ryan
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Not One

[Frédéric Neyrat]

Dear nettimers:

A kind request: I beg to stop speaking about the USA as a consistent,
homogeneous, entity, hence judgements about loving or hating "the USA." It
really does not make any sense. Should we really utter something like USA =
Trump or whoever/whatever?

As a French citizen, should I say: France = Macron = neoliberal
authoritarianism? No, I will not do that because I know about the forces
and spirits that in France reject this lethal equation.

We should not forget that Trump and his unmasked clones only represent one
dimension of the US.

Reducing a country to those who steal its representation is the best way to
strengthen their power, the power of the One.

I think it is more interesting, truer and politically useful, to divide
countries, be it the USA, Italy (is Berlusconi or Salvini the essence of
Italy?), Spain (Franco's ghost is not the essence of Spain, right?), etc.,
in order to make alternative possibilities appear.

A subject, be it collective or individual, is always divided. The One is an
imposture.

Best,

Frederic Neyrat

__
 Website: Atopies <https://atoposophie.wordpress.com/>
___ ALienstagram <https://www.instagram.com/alienocene/>
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Call for participants and speakers: Imagining an AI Commons: A One-Day Workshop on AI and the Commons

[Fenwick Mckelvey]

Please circulate widely. We are looking for a participants and a couple
more speakers. Happy to answer questions from the list too. Its a rolling
deadline, but we're hoping to make a decision about attendance by late
September.
AI Commons Workshop

*Imagining an* *AI* *Commons: A One-Day Workshop on* *AI* *and the*
*Commons*

6 December 2019

Montreal, Quebec

*Hosted at Machine Agencies, Milieux Institute, Concordia University*

(Please find the submission form
<https://machineagencies.org/events/aicommons-cfp/#gotoform> below)

How can artificial intelligence be oriented toward the common good? The
belief in AI for good has widespread acceptance in the industry and among
governments. Declarations from around the globe—Canada, China, South Korea,
France, and more
<https://medium.com/politics-ai/an-overview-of-national-ai-strategies-2a70ec6edfd>—call
for the development of AI to have a social purpose. But what is that
purpose?

The workshop seeks to develop a vision for a commons-based approach to the
future of AI. It is an intervention to develop democratic approaches to
digital disruption and understand transformations in citizen
engagement. The workshop will produce a public report on the possibility of
an AI as well as a series of video interviews capturing the discussion.

Without clear direction, AI risks becoming privatized and at odds with a
common world. In a recent study, researchers calculated the costs of
training a deep neural network model for use in natural language
processing. Their findings are alarming. The energy required can result in
CO2emissions equal to the lifetime emissions of five cars. Meanwhile, the
financial cost of the computing needed to carry out this research has
become so high that academic researchers cannot participate, enclosing
AI innovation
within the profit-oriented technology industry.

A commons approach to AI seeks to mitigate these harms, just as
commons approaches
in other areas have intervened in environmental devastation and the
privatization and commodification of knowledge. The term “commons” was
initially rooted in theories about the conditions and consequences of
sharing resources. But theorists and activists have worked to broaden it,
naming new commons in order to advocate for their protection while
developing praxis to govern them. This shift in understanding has been
greatly informed by indigenous scholarship and indigenous people’s
histories, epistemologies, and practices, which offer a wealth of
approaches to the management and preservation of common resources, material
and otherwise.

In this workshop, we invite you to reflect broadly on artificial
intelligence and its relation to the commons as you consider the following
questions:

   1. What should an AI Commons be?
  1. How could a commons-based approach guide the development of AI?
  2. How does a commons approach differ from proposed ethical or
  rights-based frameworks?
   2. How could the development of AI today—including the infrastructure
   and knowledge at its foundation—become a commons?


   1. What forms of collective action and governance would be necessary?
  What movements and efforts already exist?
  2. What latent commons or undercommons might we find in thinking about
   AI?
   1. Could AI reshape how we think about the commons, leading to new
   theories or practices?


   1. How might related (or unrelated) approaches to the commons be
  understood through AI and the commons (e.g., making kin, new
  materialism, infrastructures of care, or platform cooperativism)?
  2. What histories and instances of the commons does an AI commons require
  for context and inspiration?
   1. How might we imagine a future common world for the machines,
   environments, humans, and other life drawn together by the industrial
   efforts around AI?


   1. How can humans, AI, and other agents collaborate equitably in these
  commons?
  2. How might AI reproduce sustainably within the natural commons,
  unseating extractive and settler approaches to common worlds?

We invite people from diverse professions and communities to contribute as
either a workshop participant or a speaker. Participants are expected to
prepare a short 500-word position statement on one of these questions to be
shared before the workshop then workshopped in groups to draft a shared
response to these questions to be integrated into a public position paper.
Speakers are expected to prepare a short 15-minute presentation,
participate in a roundtable and animate around 1-2 of these questions.

The workshop is invite only. Some travel funds will be available for
speakers.

Please apply at: https://machineagencies.org/events/aicommons-cfp/

*This workshop is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and
the Milieux Institute for Arts + Technology at Concordia University.*
#  dis

Invitation for a one week worklab regarding blockchain in October

[the6]

Dear all,

https://mur.at/ is hosting a one week worklab "block that chain" in
October this year.  Here is the open call

  https://mur.at/post/call-for-participation/

Looking forward to your submission.

Cheers,
-- 
j.hofmüller

Optimism doesn't alter the laws of physics.
Subcommander T'Pol

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One more from Athenes: against the eviction of the Elleniko health centre

[Patrice Riemens]

IN SUPPORT OF THE METROPOLITAN SOCIAL HEALTH CENTRE OF ELLINIKO (MKIE)

The state company of ELLINIKO A.E. issued last week an ultimatum 
demanding "Metropolitan Social Health Centre of Elliniko" (MKIE) to 
evacuate its premises in the publicly owned old airport of Elliniko. 
This is in order to facilitate the privatization of the old airport, 
despite the resistance of all those who demand a creation of a 
Metropolitan park, a green area of culture and sport activities open to 
all in its space.


The ultimatum demands the MKIE to empty its premises by the 30th of June 
(!), without proposing any alternative space for re-location in another 
public building. Therefore, this is not just an eviction but a lethal 
blow.


MKIE was founded in December 2011 and it has been the continuation of 
the vast mobilizations of Syntagma sq. in that summer. It was and still 
is the response of socially active and sensitive citizens against the 
violence of the crisis and austerity that was imposed to the many by the 
few.


Its primary aim has been the provision of free health services and 
medicine for anyone uninsured, unemployed and poor, the first victims of 
the crisis who were abandoned by the public health care services. At the 
same time, it claimed the reinstatement of free and universal health and 
medical care for all those excluded from them.


Moreover, with its action created a new way and mode in the provision of 
health services, putting the human beings in the center of health 
practice, and not only the illness.


Based on self-organization, autonomy, horizontal democratic function and 
without any kind of political or economic bonds, MKIE inspired and 
brought together hundreds of volunteers. All these years, the latter 
have cared with solidarity and respect 7.366 individual patients in over 
64.000 visits to MKIE. Moreover, the needs of MKIE are supported by 
solidarity actions developed by thousands of people in Greece and 
internationally.


The MKIE from its start serves people from all over Attica and beyond. 
It has also supported with medicine, refugee camps, NGOs and public 
hospitals. MKIE wants to continue without any obstacle its operations 
because it is still a need for this. For that reason, MKIE is determined 
to fight shoulder to shoulder with all its patients and supporters.


We, the undersigned, who work in academic and research institutions, 
recognize the immense social and humanitarian contribution of the MKIE. 
Moreover, we consider it an innovative example of communal management of 
public assets and of urban space, an incubator of novel approaches to 
the health practices, and a space where new social relations and 
knowledge is produced. Therefore, we state wholeheartedly our support in 
its struggle to continue its route on the road of solidarity, dignity, 
respect and humanism.


pictures & report on MKIE:  
http://www.recentering-periphery.org/athens-hellinikon-international-airport/


If you would like to express your solidarity to the volunteers and the 
patients of MKIE, you could sign the following letter by sending an 
e-mai to  until 20th June. Please state your full 
name, title and affiliation.

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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Magnus Boman]

>
> ...
>
> Hi,
>
> thanks guys for your opinions on blockchais, But neither pointing to
> authority in the matter (apprently we are all experts all the time) nor
> polemicizing against a non-mature technology will help me in
> understanding the phenomena. let's get back to the subject in ten years.
>
> -Oli
>

oblig hack: I just finished attending Financial Crypto 2018, including a
Bitcoin workshop and a Smart Contract workshop. For the latter, I co-wrote
a paper with the take home msg that smart contracts is neither smart, nor
contracts (https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.09535).

The consensus (!) at the utterly useless closing conference panel was that
the (permission-less) blockchain is as useless as the panel itself, but it
will probably take decidedly less than the ten years you are asking for,
Oli, to make it useful for certain applications, e.g. as a distributed
ledger for land ownership and use, or my fav: an immutable cultural
geography ledger. Runner up anti-dystopia alt-right norm eliminator:
trustless norm encoder for intensional communities (cf. "Circles").
M.
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

I regret to be this anal - nettime is not (that) technical forum, but in 
this case blockchain has has nothing to do with securing IoT 
communications. At best, blockchain can provide authentication (ie. 
public key tied to identity), with properly expensive PoW, which is not 
the case here.


This reminds me that there is one sensible use of blockchain: public key 
directory. Too bad no one uses PGP any more.


Which brings me to another really interesting question: why don't DNS 
CAs use blockchains for storing certificate chains, instead of burning 
them into browsers via custom deals with multiple browser peddlers?




I believe that this use of blockchain is simply as a secure protocol for
the internet-of-things – and for (future) autonomous driving. (It's that
potential external control of one's car – or whatever – that's spooky.)


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Anthony Stephenson]

>
>
> That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW consisting
> of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where is the
> consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU cluster doing
> hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is contradiction
> in terms.
>
> This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for
> 'technology'.
>
>
I believe that this use of blockchain is simply as a secure protocol for
the internet-of-things – and for (future) autonomous driving. (It's that
potential external control of one's car – or whatever – that's spooky.)

-- 

- *Anthony Stephenson*

*http://anthonystephenson.org/* 
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[tbyfield]

On 2 Mar 2018, at 15:17, Morlock Elloi wrote:

> We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!

block.critique


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Carsten Agger]

On 03/03/2018 09:20 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

And then, cryptocurrencies don't make very much economic sense either. 
Their only merit is have bootstrapped rethinking money and currencies 
- even though not necessarily in the 'right' direction.


Talking about monetary alternatives, I find LETS currencies much more 
interesting, such as (e.g.) the Puma in Seville, 
https://monedasocialpuma.wordpress.com/


One important difference from Bitcoin etc. is that the scope of LETS 
currencies are strictly local - they simply don't work outside of their 
area. Also, they are strictly community-based, meaning that they will 
only work if you build a community around them or use them to strengthen 
an existing one - they are much more collectivist, even "socialist" or 
at least left anarchist in mobilizing local communities around, e.g., 
the creation of food markets; thirdly, this means that their value as a 
currency is directly proportional to how much the money circulate - the 
more they do, the more of the local economy is being build by people in 
that locality itself, and the better; but fourthly, that also means that 
these currencies are complimentary and can't stand alone (you can't by 
oil or electric power with money that's only good in your own 
neighbourhood).


If we want to rethink money, there are many more directions in which to 
go than the cryptocurrencies' neoliberal vision of a return to the gold 
standard. The concept of "aging money" as defended in Michael Ende's 
novel "Momo", among other places, is an example.


Nice weekend to everyone!
Carsten
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[oli]

On 02.03.2018 22:27, Carsten Agger wrote:
> 
> 
> On 03/02/2018 09:17 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
>> That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW
>> consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where
>> is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU
>> cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is
>> contradiction in terms.
>>
>> This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for
>> 'technology'.
>>
>> We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!
>>
> The good thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian visions is that they
> won't ever actually come to pass. Blockchain is impractical and useless
> from a technical point of view. It's pure hype and nothing more.
> 
> On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian
> visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a
> Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an
> ordinary database.
> 
> So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance
> nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it won't
> ever make much of a difference in the technological sense. Its hype
> might, but Blockchain itself is useless outside the realm of
> cryptocurrencies. I say that as someone whose background is in
> technology, specifically computer science.
> 
> Best
> Carsten


Hi,

thanks guys for your opinions on blockchais, But neither pointing to
authority in the matter (apprently we are all experts all the time) nor
polemicizing against a non-mature technology will help me in
understanding the phenomena. let's get back to the subject in ten years.

-Oli


-- 
gpg --recv-keys 0xF7FF417738641ACAB2AABB0540A278BC354F8D5A

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Blockchain Halelujah! (was: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Re-routed to nettime, since the off list discussion got interesting. 
Below a  piece by Eduard who asked me to post it on nettime - after some 
light editing.

Cheers and don't churn out too many blockchains in the w/e!

(It might be advisable to read bottom up from now ...



 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re:  Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our 
world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

Date: 2018-03-03 09:30
From: Patrice Riemens <patr...@xs4all.nl>
To: Morlock Elloi <morlockel...@gmail.com>
Cc: Eduard Karel de Jong <edu...@dejongfrz.nl>, Geert Lovink 
<ge...@xs4all.nl>


Woooaaah! Time for a fresh Sokal-Bricmont! I can't wait!


On 2018-03-03 08:45, Morlock Elloi wrote:

You wouldn't believe pointless papers that postdocs at top
universities are churning out:

"Securing Bitcoin wallets via threshold signatures"
"Scalable and Incentive-Compatible Blockchain Design"
"A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy"
"Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving
Smart Contracts"
"Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation"

I cannot even imagine what a college course on the blockchain would
comprise of. Sounds like a course on replacing front left tire on 2010
white Toyota Camry.


On 3/2/18, 08:08, Patrice Riemens wrote:


Aloha,

I am amazed, nay flabbergasted, too at the amount of hot air being
displaced by the Blockchain (indeed what the French call 'une usine a
gaz'). In a recent NYT there was an article about college cousres on 
the

blockchain being in such heavy demand (i& in the US that means
'effective' demand) that universities were scrambling to fill the gap.

Such a phenomenon creates a reality entirely of its own, which you
cannot negate. Criticising it will earn you no credit whatsover, and
when the whole thing collapses - not if but when, and that still can
take some time, see BTC (or 'XBT')'s current valuation), nobody's 
going

to compliment you on foresight - some might even accuse you of having
provoked it.

Sometimes, this, together withthe 'acceleration' going with it, gives 
me

a strong taste of TEOTWAWKI upcoming ...

Cheers all, p+7D!
(snowed in in Fiesole's publib ... ;-)


-

Post by <edu...@dejongfrz.nl>


Indeed! Blockchain is nothing new!! At least not new at the higher of
level of trust in society or the possibilities of IT technology  to
lead to a dystopian future.

However, what is actually new with Blockchain, is the huge amount of
hype around it, the worldwide ramping up of university courses in
blockchain programming, and the apparent, blissfull ignorance of
many of those participating in it of the libertarian (read: illiberal,
right wing) bias it 
encapsuletes: "There is no need to trust another human to

interact with, since algorithmic consenus takes over, your property
rights are clearly determined  for all to see, be challenged by no one, 
and  they're fixed for eternity too."


This hype leads potential users of the technology to forget common IT
development practices, abandon legacy systems, and ignore all the many
subtle and not so subtle requirements for IT system to work discovered
during years of operation and maintenance.

Abandoning a legacy system, starting with a "Tabula Rasa" is several
orders of magnitude cheaper than extending an old system.

Using blockchain gives an excuse to bypass written and unwritten and 
ignore

regulations and customer protection laws, as these may not fit with the
centralised processing model of each time updating just as single
block in the chain of blocks.

In this reasoning Blockchain is really a new type of technological
threat, not because of its technology but because of the (not so) hidden 
agenda of its proponents and believers.


It could well be that the near-religious belief in the transformative 
nature of the Blockchain actually reveals a deep satisfaction with the 
status quo, often expressed these days in a longing for radical change
(a.k.a. 
'disruption'). The tabula rasa promise implied by Blockchain may 

then be recognised as what is needed to make that change. This reminds 
me of what I once heard about cultural context of the start of WWI: 
There was, on 
both sides, dissatisfaction with the (political) status quo,

and a brief quick war was precisely the technological 'fix':
telephones, machine guns and the railway network altogether would make 
for just such a "Tabula Rasa"...


Cheers
Eduard
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

On 2018-03-02 22:27, Carsten Agger wrote:

On 03/02/2018 09:17 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW 
consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where 
is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU 
cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is 
contradiction in terms.


This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for 
'technology'.


We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!


The good thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian visions is that
they won't ever actually come to pass. Blockchain is impractical and
useless from a technical point of view. It's pure hype and nothing
more.

On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian
visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a
Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an
ordinary database.

So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance
nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it
won't ever make much of a difference in the technological sense. Its
hype might, but Blockchain itself is useless outside the realm of
cryptocurrencies. I say that as someone whose background is in
technology, specifically computer science.



And then, cryptocurrencies don't make very much economic sense either. 
Their only merit is have bootstrapped rethinking money and currencies - 
even though not necessarily in the 'right' direction.


On a more general plane, dystopian visions (whether Blockchain-based or 
not) and surveillance nightmares unfortunately represent the entropy 
state of social systems, and can only be avoided with a lot of 
consciencious, collaborative efforts - exactly what the current 
dispensation actively discourages ...


Have a happy week-end!
p+7D!
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

Interesting point of view!

Non-blockchain technologies are badder (because they are far more 
efficient and actually work) for implementing dystopia, so blockchain's 
dismal inappropriateness and inefficiency are counter-measures against 
the dystopia. It's a poison pill.


Finally I get it.

Blockchain everywhere!


On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian
visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a
Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an
ordinary database.

So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance
nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it won't
ever make much of a difference in the technological sense.


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Carsten Agger]

On 03/02/2018 09:17 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW 
consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where 
is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU 
cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is 
contradiction in terms.


This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for 
'technology'.


We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!

The good thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian visions is that they 
won't ever actually come to pass. Blockchain is impractical and useless 
from a technical point of view. It's pure hype and nothing more.


On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian 
visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a 
Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an 
ordinary database.


So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance 
nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it won't 
ever make much of a difference in the technological sense. Its hype 
might, but Blockchain itself is useless outside the realm of 
cryptocurrencies. I say that as someone whose background is in 
technology, specifically computer science.


Best
Carsten
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW consisting 
of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where is the 
consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU cluster doing 
hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is contradiction 
in terms.


This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for 
'technology'.


We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!


see for instance Porsche's one blockchain per car:


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[oli]

Hi,

On 01.03.2018 04:32, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> I have hard time understanding how is blockchain special, unique, and
> apart from other technologies, relative to dystopian outlook in the
> article.
> 

Yeah, it is rather dystopian. There is this logical expansion for
commodified societies inherent to blockchain technologies that is the
focus of the article.

> The only difference between blockchain and prior technologies (public
> cryptography, including signatures and certificates, databases, etc.) is
> the verifiable permanence of the previously unknown commitment: once
> something is put there, it is hard to modify later. I want to be very
> specific here: if someone has committed something to blockchain in the
> past, and the verifier knew nothing about that commitment until the
> present, the verifier can verify the commitment once it gets interested
> in it.
> 
> This is the *only* difference. There is nothing else.
> 
> Blockchain is specifically redundant if:
> 
> a - the verifier knew about the commitment at the time of committing
> (just keep the hash);
> 
> b - the verifier wants to check authenticity of the commitment
> transported over untrusted channel, from a trusted authenticated
> committer (use committer's public key);
> 
> There are more, but these two are relevant.
> 
> While the article elaborates on real issues when computing machines
> start to mediate the totality of human interactions, these issues have
> nothing to do with blockchain, that's bs. Using popularity of the
> 'blockchain' meme to prop them up is misleading and will fire back.

the difference is that blockchains are automated verifiers and reference
for verification. i agree that much of the projected ideas around
blockchains may be solved with common techniques. and that blockchains
still need some further development. but once the proof is cheap and the
transactions are fast, it scales well enough. and there will be thousand
blockchains. see for instance Porsche's one blockchain per car:

https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/themes/porsche-digital/porsche-blockchain-panamera-xain-technology-app-bitcoin-ethereum-data-smart-contracts-porsche-innovation-contest-14906.html

Or Lenovo's Patent for paper verification:

http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0=20180046889=4E2C6B937301=http%3A%2F%2Fappft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect1%3DPTO2%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526u%3D%25252Fnetahtml%25252FPTO%25252Fsearch-adv.html%2526r%3D1%2526p%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPG01%2526S1%3D20180046889.PGNR.%2526OS%3Ddn%2F20180046889%2526RS%3DDN%2F20180046889

Of course, this is still R

> 
> Every single of the enumerated mechanisms can be better executed without
> blockchain. Immutability of previously unknown commitments is not a
> factor in any of them. In each of them either (a), (b), or both, hold true.
> 
> This includes smart contracts, which are programs ran on distributed VM
> where the majority of identical results wins. The results mean
> something, but who cares? The only things the results affect are inside
> the VM itself (like transfer of funds of blockchain-based currency
> between accounts.) For anything outside VM we are back to (a) and (b).

There is this automated link between value administration and 'contract'
execution. Imho there has nothing been like this before. And it is scary.

> 
> For example, the smart contract stipulates that you must have sex with
> person X if account Z transfers specific amount to account Y. This
> happens, but you don't feel like it. So X sends the police to force you.
> This is much easier achieved by registering the contract on the sex
> police computer.

Enforcement of contracts is subject to the regime's inherent power's. Of
course. This will never change.



> 
> And so on.
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

I have hard time understanding how is blockchain special, unique, and 
apart from other technologies, relative to dystopian outlook in the article.


The only difference between blockchain and prior technologies (public 
cryptography, including signatures and certificates, databases, etc.) is 
the verifiable permanence of the previously unknown commitment: once 
something is put there, it is hard to modify later. I want to be very 
specific here: if someone has committed something to blockchain in the 
past, and the verifier knew nothing about that commitment until the 
present, the verifier can verify the commitment once it gets interested 
in it.


This is the *only* difference. There is nothing else.

Blockchain is specifically redundant if:

a - the verifier knew about the commitment at the time of committing 
(just keep the hash);


b - the verifier wants to check authenticity of the commitment 
transported over untrusted channel, from a trusted authenticated 
committer (use committer's public key);


There are more, but these two are relevant.

While the article elaborates on real issues when computing machines 
start to mediate the totality of human interactions, these issues have 
nothing to do with blockchain, that's bs. Using popularity of the 
'blockchain' meme to prop them up is misleading and will fire back.


Every single of the enumerated mechanisms can be better executed without 
blockchain. Immutability of previously unknown commitments is not a 
factor in any of them. In each of them either (a), (b), or both, hold true.


This includes smart contracts, which are programs ran on distributed VM 
where the majority of identical results wins. The results mean 
something, but who cares? The only things the results affect are inside 
the VM itself (like transfer of funds of blockchain-based currency 
between accounts.) For anything outside VM we are back to (a) and (b).


For example, the smart contract stipulates that you must have sex with 
person X if account Z transfers specific amount to account Y. This 
happens, but you don't feel like it. So X sends the police to force you. 
This is much easier achieved by registering the contract on the sex 
police computer.


And so on.



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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[oli]

Alice Weidel is not listed on the site of the event. Nevertheless, she
was a trader or broker for some hedge fund or so, afair. Her 'expertise'
lies in finance, therefore the guardian article's claim is not totally
out of the blue. Since I am located in Hamburg, I will follow the news
on the event.

On a more general note around blockchains: I guess we all agree that
talking about "the internet" is not very informative, I hope we will
soon establish the same consensus on the topic of blockchains. There are
massive R efforts on the way, money flows in on a large scale and I
think it is okay to say that blockchains, open or closed, decentralized
or centralized, will help to further tighten the machine control
paradigm around our societies.

I recently made an effort to speculate a bit about the relation of
private property and the trajectories of blockchains, published on the
moneylab blog

http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2018/02/07/the-blockchain-as-a-modulator-of-existence/
:


The Blockchain as a Modulator of Existence

By: Oliver Leistert

The advent of the blockchain as a protocological internet layer for
values corresponds to a continuing monetization pressure and ongoing
expansion of identification strategies. Notwithstanding these
trajectories, behind this prospected killer application resides first of
all a sovereign chronological regime that has the capacities to proof
and modulate the existence, identity and administration of data, assets,
goods and services from a distance on micrological scales.

“As far as agency is concerned, the law holds that things and media
are strictly passive.” Cornelia Vismann

Without doubt, one of the most common and important techniques since the
advent of massified networked computing has been the basic computational
operation to copy and paste. To copy the contents of an address space to
another in (networked) computers seems to be the one fundamental
operation a networked society is relying on – on the operational level
of computing itself and on the individual and societal level of swapping
clusters of large files. In the digital realm, scarcity up until today
proved too counter-intuitive and technically non-viable or too expensive
to implement on a general scope. This became manifest in fundamental
attacks endemic and systemic to digital cultures on property regimes,
whose operationability had formerly been intrinsically secured by the
simple fact that consumers did not have the means to copy goods as they
wished. If there is one single capturing method that blockchain
technologies are aiming at it is to limit ubiquitous copy and paste in a
broad sense, to migrate from copy to cut (if at all), to
insert a digital proof of identity for data that may then be linked with
appliances and other machines such as media player or access control via
interfaces. “The business of embedding artificial scarcity into the
digital asset is aligned with what appears to be an inevitable and
continued enclosure of the mythos of online commons within colonial
apparatus.”i The introduction of a time stamped proof of existence in a
presumably tamper-proof distributed ledger yields the late introduction
of scarcity on the protocol level, almost fifty years after the
introduction of TCP/IP.

In the blockchain era, prospected to be in full bloom in ten years,
goods and services – physical or digital, manual or automated – are
bound to a time stamp in the blockchain that is cryptographically
secured. This time stamp marks the beginning of what might be called the
post-digital, signified at its most basic function by remote,
blockchain-based controls of existence. Property regimes in a very
general sense then may be executed automatically by machines through
permissionless (open access), distributed, or permissioned, centralized
ledgers.

This text describes the very real possibility of this new kind of
sovereignty – the sovereignty of the post-digital that modulates
ownership and use of its commodities new from scratch, and as an
extension and update of the bourgeois operating system, designed by the
vectorialist class.ii At its most radical trajectory, control shifts
from external, non-digital, human-centered legal and administrative
procedures, such as contracts, to internal, machine centered and
executable qualities of the commodities, goods and services themselves.
Test cases and applications are already deployed in a variety of fields.
Even if they fail in their first testing phases, the stakes are too high
for fine grained monetization schemes and profits on new frontiers to
emerge to not continue intensive R

‘Smart’ ≈ blind, ‘Contract’ ≈ Code

The originality and limitation by design of blockchain-based distributed
databases is their append-only regime. All past elements are read-only
and only the current block is a write operation. And furthermore, since
the chain is secured in backward direction via hashes, its complete
verification (or falsification) is via

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

After witnessing assorted Bitcoin, blockchain, Ethereum and related 
meetings, lectures, conferences and such, audiences ranging from people 
from the street to Ivy League PhDs:


- Most informal meetings have pure religious feeling; people smile and 
listen. The content is irrelevant. Idiocy rules. Most come for the cult 
value - tech scene lost the ideological steam, and anything, anything 
that projects into rosy (dys)(u)topia can get lots of attention. Every 
industry needs a church. 1 in 100 attendees understands issues;


- Professional/academic gatherings are fueled by the VC money, hoping to 
take a piece of the action from the finance folks. Large number of 
otherwise sane postdocs are churning out irrelevant papers with word 
'blockchain' in them. 1 in 10 attendees understands issues. Lots of 
lurkers from the finance industry. Some shake their heads in disbelief;


The confluence of the religious component for the masses, and a fuzzy 
possibility of grabbing control of money flows from the traditional 
players, appears to be the winning combination. One feeds the other.





Since anything a blockchain can be put to use to can be done more
easily, more efficiently, more securely, and usually also at a lower
_final_ cost by humans, I have come to suspect, nay be convinced, that
blockchain and other pieces of tech solutionism are mainly intended, and
deliberately so, to take human beings out of as many loops as possible,
possibly with the perspective of getting rid of them altogether when
transitioning into the bliss of post-human algocratic singularity for
the sole benefit of an ueberfintech elite, indubitably gifted with
eternal (because machinistic) life to boot.


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

I did a linguistic experiment - replaced word 'Blockchain' with 
'mayonnaise' throughout the article, and the amount of sense remained 
constant (that particular word was sense-neutral.)


It's very hard to find actual use for blockchain.

This thought experiment provides some help: imagine a large (200m ?) 
vertical rock face just outside the city, that everyone can see. You can 
hire crews with scaffolds and chisels to write something on it, and it 
stays there forever. It cannot be forged, as they use Times Roman Light 
font, so any alteration becomes obvious.


WTF would you use this for? To write down exactly what for the 
posterity? Decisions from the City Hall? Property tax records? 
Population count? How are you going to deal with clerical errors? Why 
are you doing this?




Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to
radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action


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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Yes, I completely agree with Carsten.

And as I cannot repeat often enough that I am a mere 'text filterer', 
which is the primary purpose of nettime (see at bottom) I will repeat 
again that I do not necessarily agree with other people's text I post, 
but do so only because I find them interesting, usually reflecting a 
(slightly?) more mainstream take on issues being discussed on this list 
(pro memoria: social media critique and the 'told you so' faktap).


Worse still I am part of the minority (of more than one, fortunately, 
but less so of hackers, unfortunately) who thought from day one that the 
blockchain was a 'gas plant', as the French say (une usine a gaz). Since 
anything a blockchain can be put to use to can be done more easily, more 
efficiently, more securely, and usually also at a lower _final_ cost by 
humans, I have come to suspect, nay be convinced, that blockchain and 
other pieces of tech solutionism are mainly intended, and deliberately 
so, to take human beings out of as many loops as possible, possibly with 
the perspective of getting rid of them altogether when transitioning 
into the bliss of post-human algocratic singularity for the sole benefit 
of an ueberfintech elite, indubitably gifted with eternal (because 
machinistic) life to boot.


The blockchain definitely belongs to the long list of things that better 
had not been invented and represent in the end a huge waste of time, 
talent, and resources.


Cheers from snowy Tuscany, where we still shift stamped paper
p+2D!



On 2018-02-23 13:38, Carsten Agger wrote:

On 23-02-2018 13:11, Patrice Riemens wrote:



Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology 
Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step 
ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it 
to radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action

[...]

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.



It's ironic, amusing more likely, that the conclusion of the book
"Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain" is that the "Blockchain revolution"
will likely not amount to much of anything. The main reason is this:
Who needs a global, public and distributed ledger? What's it good for?

As a matter of fact, all proposed use cases I've seen founder on the
problem of reliability: Yes, if your crate of organic bananas has a
bar code, and that bar code was entered on the block chain along with
a statement that the crate was shipped from a fair trade/fair pay
organic cooperative in Costa Rica, nobody can know if that means that
the physical crate was actually there only that someone says that it
was. You might improve on that situation with tamperproof, sealed
cryptographic tokens, but you still don't know if the bananas were in
the crate at the time. An ordinary inspections regime would probably
work better. I.e., all use cases for blockchains which require
real-world interaction requires some sort of verification that the
data entered is correct, which the blockchain itself can't certify -
anything beyond the simple fact that the information was entered. And
that sort of tracking could ordinarily best be achieved by that
high-end bleeding edge innovation called a "database"; along with an
external verification process, the advantages of using a blockchain
over a database are exactly zip.

Now, if the data had to do with the blockchain itself and were
entirely digital ... then it's another matter. That's why blockchains
make sense for cryptocurrencies. But cryptocurrencies are not really
useful, and in their current incarnation are riddled by scams to an
extent where the best advice anyone could give is to stay the f...
away.

Distributed ledger systems do exist, though - one is called "Git". And
it's very useful for tracking source code changes. And as opposed to
blockchain, transactions can be reversed and history can be rewritten,
which is actually a necessary feature (e.g., with the GDPR coming up
here in the EU).

So, fortunately or unfortunately, it's not likely that Blockchain is
going to reshape anything, except for possibly the wallets of some
quick movers and scam artists.

Best
Carsten
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Carsten Agger]

On 23-02-2018 13:11, Patrice Riemens wrote:



Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology 





Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it 
to radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action

[...]

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.


It's ironic, amusing more likely, that the conclusion of the book 
"Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain" is that the "Blockchain revolution" 
will likely not amount to much of anything. The main reason is this: Who 
needs a global, public and distributed ledger? What's it good for?


As a matter of fact, all proposed use cases I've seen founder on the 
problem of reliability: Yes, if your crate of organic bananas has a bar 
code, and that bar code was entered on the block chain along with a 
statement that the crate was shipped from a fair trade/fair pay organic 
cooperative in Costa Rica, nobody can know if that means that the 
physical crate was actually there only that someone says that it was. 
You might improve on that situation with tamperproof, sealed 
cryptographic tokens, but you still don't know if the bananas were in 
the crate at the time. An ordinary inspections regime would probably 
work better. I.e., all use cases for blockchains which require 
real-world interaction requires some sort of verification that the data 
entered is correct, which the blockchain itself can't certify - anything 
beyond the simple fact that the information was entered. And that sort 
of tracking could ordinarily best be achieved by that high-end bleeding 
edge innovation called a "database"; along with an external verification 
process, the advantages of using a blockchain over a database are 
exactly zip.


Now, if the data had to do with the blockchain itself and were entirely 
digital ... then it's another matter. That's why blockchains make sense 
for cryptocurrencies. But cryptocurrencies are not really useful, and in 
their current incarnation are riddled by scams to an extent where the 
best advice anyone could give is to stay the f... away.


Distributed ledger systems do exist, though - one is called "Git". And 
it's very useful for tracking source code changes. And as opposed to 
blockchain, transactions can be reversed and history can be rewritten, 
which is actually a necessary feature (e.g., with the GDPR coming up 
here in the EU).


So, fortunately or unfortunately, it's not likely that Blockchain is 
going to reshape anything, except for possibly the wallets of some quick 
movers and scam artists.


Best
Carsten
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[m...@tilmanbaumgaertel.net]

Unfortunately Alice Weidel is not on the list of speakers on the website of this conference, as the text claims...
-- 
Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android Mobiltelefon mit 1&1 Mail gesendet.Am 23/02/2018, 13:11, Patrice Riemens <patr...@xs4all.nl> schrieb:

Some connex pbs have caused my post to be send unedited. Here's the 
correct version (fingers X-ed)

---

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology



Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to 
radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action

By Josh Hall
Fri 23 Feb 2018


Alice Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland.’ 
Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.

For most people, blockchain technologies are inseparable from bitcoin, 
the cryptocurrency that has been particularly visible in the news 
recently thanks to its hyper-volatility. Crypto-entrepreneurs have made 
and lost millions, and many people have parlayed their trading into a 
full-time job. But blockchain technology, which allows for immutable 
records of activities, stored on a ledger that is held not just in one 
place but massively distributed, has applications in every conceivable 
area in commerce and beyond. Soon, there will be blockchains everywhere 
that transactions happen.

While the focus has so far been on currencies such as bitcoin, what’s 
less well known is the large and growing community of blockchain 
developers and evangelists, many of whom believe that the technology 
could herald radical changes in the ways our economies and societies are 
structured. But there’s a big question at the heart of that community: 
what might a world built with the help of blockchain technology look 
like?

Unchain, a large bitcoin and blockchain convention based in Hamburg, 
seems to have a potential answer. Along with speakers from blockchain 
startups, cryptocurrency exchanges and a company that purports to offer 
“privately managed cities as a business”, the conference programme also 
features Alice Weidel, listed on the site as an “economist and bitcoin 
entrepreneur”.

In fact, Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland, which 
recently became the third largest party in Germany’s Bundestag. Weidel’s 
election campaign in 2017 was the party’s breakthrough moment, and what 
many have seen as a watershed in German politics – the return of 
far-right, populist ethno-nationalism to the federal parliament.

Since 2015 the AfD leadership has adopted increasingly hard lines on 
borders, migration, Islam and Europe. The party has also attempted to 
recuperate language associated with historic Nazism; in 2016, the AfD’s 
then chair, Frauke Petry, called for the rehabilitation of the word 
“völkisch”, which is seen to be inextricably linked with National 
Socialism.

Weidel is thought to represent the more “moderate” wing of the AfD, in 
comparison with her colleague in the Bundestag Alexander Gauland, who 
has pushed for Angela Merkel to close Germany’s borders and to deliver 
ways by which immigrants can be repatriated. But the tension between the 
“moderate” and extreme wings of the AfD has been seen as a conscious 
tactic, in which Gauland pushes taboo subjects which Weidel then makes 
more palatable. Weidel herself, though, has also previously appeared to 
describe German Arabs as “culturally foreign” and to encourage a return 
to the paranoiac xenophobia of the Third Reich by describing Merkel’s 
government as “pigs” who are “puppets of the victorious powers” from the 
second world war.

The rise of the AfD has caused deep soul-searching in Germany. But 
outside of the country’s borders, Weidel’s invitation to the Unchain 
summit also poses questions for the nascent blockchain community. On one 
side are those who believe that crypto technologies should be used to 
divert power away from states (particularly social democratic states) 
and into the hands of a righteous vanguard of rightwing libertarian 
hackers.

Some of these people are now in positions of significant power: Mick 
Mulvaney, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, is a 
staunch bitcoin advocate and his appointment was warmly received by some 
crypto news publications. Mulvaney has previously addressed the John 
Birch Society, an extreme rightwing pressure group that was formed to 
root out communists during the cold war but that now specialises in part 
in Federal Reserve conspiracy theories – a popular theme on some bitcoin 
forums. In June, the John Birch Society demanded that the Russia 
investigation be dropped; their “speakers bureau” offers talking heads 
o

Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Some connex pbs have caused my post to be send unedited. Here's the 
correct version (fingers X-ed)


---

Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/blockchain-reshape-world-far-right-ahead-crypto-technology



Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead
Crypto technology is coming to a crossroads. Those who want to use it to 
radically redistribute wealth must take urgent action


By Josh Hall
Fri 23 Feb 2018


Alice Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland.’ 
Photograph: Axel Schmidt/Reuters


Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From 
currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, 
blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields.


For most people, blockchain technologies are inseparable from bitcoin, 
the cryptocurrency that has been particularly visible in the news 
recently thanks to its hyper-volatility. Crypto-entrepreneurs have made 
and lost millions, and many people have parlayed their trading into a 
full-time job. But blockchain technology, which allows for immutable 
records of activities, stored on a ledger that is held not just in one 
place but massively distributed, has applications in every conceivable 
area in commerce and beyond. Soon, there will be blockchains everywhere 
that transactions happen.


While the focus has so far been on currencies such as bitcoin, what’s 
less well known is the large and growing community of blockchain 
developers and evangelists, many of whom believe that the technology 
could herald radical changes in the ways our economies and societies are 
structured. But there’s a big question at the heart of that community: 
what might a world built with the help of blockchain technology look 
like?


Unchain, a large bitcoin and blockchain convention based in Hamburg, 
seems to have a potential answer. Along with speakers from blockchain 
startups, cryptocurrency exchanges and a company that purports to offer 
“privately managed cities as a business”, the conference programme also 
features Alice Weidel, listed on the site as an “economist and bitcoin 
entrepreneur”.


In fact, Weidel is the co-leader of Alternative für Deutschland, which 
recently became the third largest party in Germany’s Bundestag. Weidel’s 
election campaign in 2017 was the party’s breakthrough moment, and what 
many have seen as a watershed in German politics – the return of 
far-right, populist ethno-nationalism to the federal parliament.


Since 2015 the AfD leadership has adopted increasingly hard lines on 
borders, migration, Islam and Europe. The party has also attempted to 
recuperate language associated with historic Nazism; in 2016, the AfD’s 
then chair, Frauke Petry, called for the rehabilitation of the word 
“völkisch”, which is seen to be inextricably linked with National 
Socialism.


Weidel is thought to represent the more “moderate” wing of the AfD, in 
comparison with her colleague in the Bundestag Alexander Gauland, who 
has pushed for Angela Merkel to close Germany’s borders and to deliver 
ways by which immigrants can be repatriated. But the tension between the 
“moderate” and extreme wings of the AfD has been seen as a conscious 
tactic, in which Gauland pushes taboo subjects which Weidel then makes 
more palatable. Weidel herself, though, has also previously appeared to 
describe German Arabs as “culturally foreign” and to encourage a return 
to the paranoiac xenophobia of the Third Reich by describing Merkel’s 
government as “pigs” who are “puppets of the victorious powers” from the 
second world war.


The rise of the AfD has caused deep soul-searching in Germany. But 
outside of the country’s borders, Weidel’s invitation to the Unchain 
summit also poses questions for the nascent blockchain community. On one 
side are those who believe that crypto technologies should be used to 
divert power away from states (particularly social democratic states) 
and into the hands of a righteous vanguard of rightwing libertarian 
hackers.


Some of these people are now in positions of significant power: Mick 
Mulvaney, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, is a 
staunch bitcoin advocate and his appointment was warmly received by some 
crypto news publications. Mulvaney has previously addressed the John 
Birch Society, an extreme rightwing pressure group that was formed to 
root out communists during the cold war but that now specialises in part 
in Federal Reserve conspiracy theories – a popular theme on some bitcoin 
forums. In June, the John Birch Society demanded that the Russia 
investigation be dropped; their “speakers bureau” offers talking heads 
on subjects including why the US must leave the UN, “the Trojan horse 
called immigration”, and “the global warming hoax”.


But there is another tendency: one that believes blockchain tech should 
be used as part of a liberatory political project, one that can

Re: Bankruptcy of ideologies ... except one

[Johnatan Petterson]

I read le Monde Diplomatique.
Do you really see these millions of discontent or content people,
pressurize on their heads of states, as them to trigger the general
implosion?
I do not trust any ability to predict a course of events.
I am Cartesian, scientist, or a digital artist rather-whatever.
I think that some predictions are not related to truth, yet each is a way
on a path to construct something,
its part of another (non-conscious ) process. In a statement, I would
search to know to decipher what social machine,
this statement belongs to. Social Machines are generally not
explicitly  referred to in the statements.
 These Social Machines do not pertain a Sphere of Referenciality. Nobody
knows about them, its not the job of the human mind to reckon' them.
such a social machine: Its existence is something which can be sensed
though, even if it has no name,
appearing to the searcher of 'truth', if that makes any sense.

[The Social Machine can be tiny micro-molecular, or/and more hazy/general
in its relations to other Social Machines.]

Having said this, I don't see if China as a State (not talking about Social
Machines anymore) can have a perspective
to win something out of a war with Nato? I don't follow many news on
internet so I don't know what could Nato win something substancial from
waging a war with China?
Counterpunch is busy trying, not to build a Post-Siriza Internationale
Constituant power, but to feed on, and create ressentment against the
Elites, or (e)lites if ya want,
I am, wondering why Counterpunch does that: 1§1) they have an audience, and
decades of book-reviews, which might be what people call 'ideology'. <<- if
this last word makes any sense.
If you go on their website, you can see how typically American, they are,
in their modes of expression, platform of remedies to all illnesses, they
are a bit like in the book
'The Confident-Man' by Herman Melville, this situation of deterritorialized
psyche in a destroyed american big desert, since landing there without
Mammy and Daddy,
having nothing else to do than selling news and advertizing
miracle inducing products.

To build a Post-Siriza, one thing for sure is the Left to close down this
type of platform/ideology out from the (de)construction. Or it's a sham.

Respectuously,
JohnnyTan







2017-10-24 6:07 GMT+02:00 Morlock Elloi <morlockel...@gmail.com>:

> One should be carefully following 19th CPC National Congress. It's more
> relevant than Drudgereport.
>
> Tl;Dr: that no one will separate China from its components (Taiwan & South
> China Sea island) was mentioned 9 times. The Party will maintain strict
> control of all Chinese politics.
>
> 1.4 billion Chinese stand behind this (west-funded jokers like Dalai Lama,
> Wei Wei etc. notwithstanding.).
>
> 0.32 billion Americans stand behind, or against, restroom access for
> feeblegendered.
>
> 0.51 billion EU citizens stand for, or against, immigration and pensions.
>
> 0.14 billion Russians stand behind Putin.
>
> The stage is set for war.
>
> Guess who is going to win (hint: those willing to die.)
>
> On 10/23/17, 19:39, Johnatan Petterson wrote:
>
>> Hi.
>> I don't qualify to answer about ideology.
>> I am an ignorant as to the communist jargon used by counterpunch.
>> I don't even like Kant. It's so confused.
>> But I'd just venture to say that 'the objective conditions' referred to
>> at the end of the article,
>> if they are not there, it seems they can be found on the road forward,
>> obviously, if the Elites in China,
>> for example, are attracted onwards, they are not appealed by Mao. My
>> guess (i only know China by West TV)
>> is that the Institutions, like schools, etc, are still appealed by Mao.
>> If a Post-Siriza, neo Hardt-Negri constituant power emerges, it is from
>> people who can go further onwards,
>> why? because it's the sense of the animal which is Humanity, it's head,
>> or brain, if you want. The Head is Prospective, it searches.
>> I reckon' the belly is important, and I say: it is wrong to think that
>> Archaism and Onwardness contradicts.
>> That might be , the hidden line for a new future to loom up from
>> nothingness: this ignorance from the Elites in China or West,
>> that Archaism, High-Tech, do not contra-dict, and Belly and Nose can
>> re-shuffle for Humanity's benefit.
>>
>> -JohnnyTan
>>
>> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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#  distributed via : no commerc

Re: Bankruptcy of ideologies ... except one

[Morlock Elloi]

One should be carefully following 19th CPC National Congress. It's more 
relevant than Drudgereport.


Tl;Dr: that no one will separate China from its components (Taiwan & 
South China Sea island) was mentioned 9 times. The Party will maintain 
strict control of all Chinese politics.


1.4 billion Chinese stand behind this (west-funded jokers like Dalai 
Lama, Wei Wei etc. notwithstanding.).


0.32 billion Americans stand behind, or against, restroom access for 
feeblegendered.


0.51 billion EU citizens stand for, or against, immigration and pensions.

0.14 billion Russians stand behind Putin.

The stage is set for war.

Guess who is going to win (hint: those willing to die.)

On 10/23/17, 19:39, Johnatan Petterson wrote:

Hi.
I don't qualify to answer about ideology.
I am an ignorant as to the communist jargon used by counterpunch.
I don't even like Kant. It's so confused.
But I'd just venture to say that 'the objective conditions' referred to
at the end of the article,
if they are not there, it seems they can be found on the road forward,
obviously, if the Elites in China,
for example, are attracted onwards, they are not appealed by Mao. My
guess (i only know China by West TV)
is that the Institutions, like schools, etc, are still appealed by Mao.
If a Post-Siriza, neo Hardt-Negri constituant power emerges, it is from
people who can go further onwards,
why? because it's the sense of the animal which is Humanity, it's head,
or brain, if you want. The Head is Prospective, it searches.
I reckon' the belly is important, and I say: it is wrong to think that
Archaism and Onwardness contradicts.
That might be , the hidden line for a new future to loom up from
nothingness: this ignorance from the Elites in China or West,
that Archaism, High-Tech, do not contra-dict, and Belly and Nose can
re-shuffle for Humanity's benefit.

-JohnnyTan


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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Bankruptcy of ideologies ... except one

[Johnatan Petterson]

Hi.
I don't qualify to answer about ideology.
I am an ignorant as to the communist jargon used by counterpunch.
I don't even like Kant. It's so confused.
But I'd just venture to say that 'the objective conditions' referred to at
the end of the article,
if they are not there, it seems they can be found on the road forward,
obviously, if the Elites in China,
for example, are attracted onwards, they are not appealed by Mao. My guess
(i only know China by West TV)
is that the Institutions, like schools, etc, are still appealed by Mao.
If a Post-Siriza, neo Hardt-Negri constituant power emerges, it is from
people who can go further onwards,
why? because it's the sense of the animal which is Humanity, it's head, or
brain, if you want. The Head is Prospective, it searches.
I reckon' the belly is important, and I say: it is wrong to think that
Archaism and Onwardness contradicts.
That might be , the hidden line for a new future to loom up from
nothingness: this ignorance from the Elites in China or West,
that Archaism, High-Tech, do not contra-dict, and Belly and Nose can
re-shuffle for Humanity's benefit.

-JohnnyTan

2017-10-23 18:34 GMT+02:00 Morlock Elloi <morlockel...@gmail.com>:

> The article below illustrates what happens when ideologies die ... except
> one, the will for power. There is nothing exciting offered today except
> conquering the world, killing half the population and ruling the stone age
> remnants with high tech. The alternatives are so fu*king boring - saving
> this or that, not doing this or that, resisting this or that, going back X
> years to some nostalgic equilibrium. Fu*k that. Let's have some action!
>
>
>
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/23/careening-toward-nuc
> lear-war-the-political-paralysis-of-europe-russia-and-china/
>
>
> Careening Toward Nuclear War: the Political Paralysis of Europe, Russia
> and China
>
> by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
>
> Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis has there been such an unstable
> situation in the global political system, including the system of
> management of nuclear arms and US power.
>
> To the already exceptionally tense and dangerous atmosphere around North
> Korea there has now been added a crisis over Iran, which is pushing the
> European powers and Russia to become aligned against the policies of USA
> and Israel preparing a new, greater and, very probably, nuclear war against
> Iran. A very serious political crisis is smoldering in Washington itself,
> with some people believing it is the most serious in the history of the
> United States.
>
> In the most official way, in front of the representatives of all the
> nations of the world, for the first time since the defeat of Nazi Germany
> in 1945, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has spelled out
> the threat of annihilating a nation of 25 million people.
>
> His speech represents the negation of all achievements of human
> civilization. And this speech did not provoke any serious, proportionate or
> meaningful reaction in the world.
>
> The absence of such reaction can be attributed to various factors and
> different calculations. But its consequence is none other than to
> legitimize that kind of threats today and their  realization tomorrow.
>
> Such a lack of reaction does not deter and discourage, it encourages and
> facilitates the use of nuclear weapons and it increases the obvious risk of
> a global catastrophe, something which was proven especially in the 20th
> century. In the wake of the 1st World War both camps believed the other one
> was bluffing, and that, in any case, the conflict would not last more than
> a few months. The conflict lasted four years and destroyed all Europe.
>
> The policy of trying to appease and accommodate Hitler has also been the
> main policy of Britain, France and USSR, before the 2nd World War. It only
> encouraged Nazi German aggression and facilitated the War. Germany all but
> won it, its troops having been stopped only some miles from the Kremlin. It
> was finally defeated, but only at an unbelievably enormous cost paid by all
> European nations, and in particular by the Soviets, the Yugoslavs, the
> Greeks and the British.
>
> The deafening silence of Europe, the European Left, Russia and China
>
> It is obvious that the actions and the policy of the US government under
> President Trump took all major powers by surprise and shocked them. They
> did not expect them, did not forestall them and now limit themselves more
> or less to a role of spectator of actions that literally could involve the
> survival of humanity.
>
> Europe hopes it will wake one day with the Trump problem having been
> resolved by itself. From time to time they say to Americans that what they
> are doing is terrible and dangerous (it 

Bankruptcy of ideologies ... except one

[Morlock Elloi]

The article below illustrates what happens when ideologies die ... 
except one, the will for power. There is nothing exciting offered today 
except conquering the world, killing half the population and ruling the 
stone age remnants with high tech. The alternatives are so fu*king 
boring - saving this or that, not doing this or that, resisting this or 
that, going back X years to some nostalgic equilibrium. Fu*k that. Let's 
have some action!




https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/23/careening-toward-nuclear-war-the-political-paralysis-of-europe-russia-and-china/


Careening Toward Nuclear War: the Political Paralysis of Europe, Russia 
and China


by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

Never since the Cuban Missile Crisis has there been such an unstable 
situation in the global political system, including the system of 
management of nuclear arms and US power.


To the already exceptionally tense and dangerous atmosphere around North 
Korea there has now been added a crisis over Iran, which is pushing the 
European powers and Russia to become aligned against the policies of USA 
and Israel preparing a new, greater and, very probably, nuclear war 
against Iran. A very serious political crisis is smoldering in 
Washington itself, with some people believing it is the most serious in 
the history of the United States.


In the most official way, in front of the representatives of all the 
nations of the world, for the first time since the defeat of Nazi 
Germany in 1945, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has 
spelled out the threat of annihilating a nation of 25 million people.


His speech represents the negation of all achievements of human 
civilization. And this speech did not provoke any serious, proportionate 
or meaningful reaction in the world.


The absence of such reaction can be attributed to various factors and 
different calculations. But its consequence is none other than to 
legitimize that kind of threats today and their  realization tomorrow.


Such a lack of reaction does not deter and discourage, it encourages and 
facilitates the use of nuclear weapons and it increases the obvious risk 
of a global catastrophe, something which was proven especially in the 
20th century. In the wake of the 1st World War both camps believed the 
other one was bluffing, and that, in any case, the conflict would not 
last more than a few months. The conflict lasted four years and 
destroyed all Europe.


The policy of trying to appease and accommodate Hitler has also been the 
main policy of Britain, France and USSR, before the 2nd World War. It 
only encouraged Nazi German aggression and facilitated the War. Germany 
all but won it, its troops having been stopped only some miles from the 
Kremlin. It was finally defeated, but only at an unbelievably enormous 
cost paid by all European nations, and in particular by the Soviets, the 
Yugoslavs, the Greeks and the British.


The deafening silence of Europe, the European Left, Russia and China

It is obvious that the actions and the policy of the US government under 
President Trump took all major powers by surprise and shocked them. 
They did not expect them, did not forestall them and now limit 
themselves more or less to a role of spectator of actions that literally 
could involve the survival of humanity.


Europe hopes it will wake one day with the Trump problem having been 
resolved by itself. From time to time they say to Americans that what 
they are doing is terrible and dangerous (it is indeed terrible and this 
is exactly why they are doing it!). In Germany many top specialists on 
foreign policy published an appeal in Zeit. They believe German 
“anti-Americanism” is the danger, not the US policy that is fueling it!


The European Left seems interested only in defending pensions, and it is 
not doing very well even at that. They don’t want to identify themselves 
with a regime like the North Korean, but they forget that what is going 
on has nothing to do with the type of the regime. On the contrary, the 
external, imperialistic pressure on non-Western countries, beginning 
from the USSR, has always been a strong factor contributing to the rise 
of authoritarian types of government, as the best suited for a country 
to oppose a threat of aggression. At the very least it can plausibly 
justify this authoritarianism.


Western interventions in the Third World have played a great role in the 
advent of authoritarian regimes. Imposing “democracy” was never the aim 
of the West in the Arab and Muslim World and the results of 25 years of 
disastrous wars in the Middle East are here for everybody to see. Even 
in Russia it was the US administration which pushed and enthusiastically 
supported the violent dissolution and bombing of the Russian Parliament 
by President Yeltsin in 1993 (probably the most democratically elected 
parliament in Russian history), in order to permit the passage of Soviet 
property to a handful of oligarchs from 1994

Re: to Brexit or not to Brexit that was only one of the

[Brian Holmes]

On 06/25/2016 10:30 PM, siegel allan wrote:


the present moment is simply a prologue marking more critical
struggles that lay beyond our immediate horizon or sense of the
possible


Man, that's the interesting thing.

[Allan and I met each other in Budapest for the first time a few weeks
ago and discovered how many non-stop ideas fit into two hour's time.
Talk about the next 5 mintues!]

Concernig the history of colonialism that you evoke amidst present
racist backlash, let's just imagine: what if all the "outs" of society
actually got it together to form a new inside?

There has been a slow but tremendous rise of social movements since
2008, to the point of historical significance as people begin grasping
that they need to create original motivations and organizational
forms. A situation like Budapest, with its crony-corporate national
deal, is just the advance mirror of what could become the new
normal, in any of the so-called democracies. In the face of that,
the political inventiveness of people on the ground is, I gotta say,
prodigious, also in Budapest where I was totally impressed. This is
accompanied by a growing capacity to analyze and, most important, an
actual curiosity about this strange unsettling surrounding thing most
call "the world."

Now, how do you get from "let's imagine" to actually seeing something
emerge?

There are many ways but I would think that all of them need a new and
more penetrating common sense of the multiple powers that be fuckin'
us up and preventing any resolution to the terminal crisis of the
postwar imperial order.

Why don't we work on that in the context of one of your university
projects, Allan?

best, Brian



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to Brexit or not to Brexit that was only one of the questions

[siegel allan]

Hello,

As Brian Holmes has stated, "Yesterday's vote is a stunning development and it 
foreshadows the possible end of an era shaped, in many positive respects, by 
1968 and  the immense and diverse forces of liberation that flowered in its 
wake.” This is only partially true; but, nevertheless, indicates an important 
frame of reference in regards to the implications of the Brexit vote. Like the 
’68 events, and more generally the political movements that flowered during the 
post-war period (including the revolutionary movements in Africa and Latin 
America as well as the civil rights and anti-war movements in the U.S.) what 
was brought into the foreground was the necessity of the Western democracies to 
deliver on the promises of their anti-colonial rhetoric. They didn't. And, 
putting aside (for the moment) whatever truths lay behind the propaganda 
battles of the Cold War, what we do know is that the colonial powers of Europe 
and the neo-colonial upstart, the U.S, needed to be forcibly pushed to 
relinquish their colonial dominions AND often the changes that did take place 
were short lived or only partial. But this serves only as a fragmentary context 
of the times.

What was significant about this historical moment is that it dramatically 
highlighted the disconnect between the rhetoric of democratic regimes and 
social reality. In the U.S. this disjuncture was painfully obvious in regards 
to the limitations on human rights and violence directed towards America’s Afro 
American citizens, in particular. And, while the post-68 generations carried 
forward many forces (and ideas) regarding human liberation, and other social 
movements, “in their wake” was an equally forceful counterrevolution 
incorporating what Marcuse called ‘repressive tolerance’ as well as an 
avalanche of neoliberal policies and wars that created the ground work for new 
forms of social alienation and political disconnections. 

The complexity and diversity of today's emerging social movements are 
significant and have parallels with an earlier time; they define a prologue 
that suggests new forms of political dscourse and actions; they consciously 
seek to diverge from traditional and stale political institutions. We see this 
in the Bernie Sanders campaign in the U.S., in France, In Spain, in Greece and 
very soon in England. The common denominator here is youth, disempowered and 
disillusioned youth who, like the youth in ’68, see the political rhetoric of 
the established political parties as a sham: their rhetoric riddled with lies 
and disinformation. The Iraq war in this sense was a watershed for it not only 
brought havoc on to the region but was justified by pompous sloganeering and 
policy statements that were little more than conscious deceptions designed to 
sway public opinion.

When I say that the present moment is simply a prologue marking more critical 
struggles that lay beyond our immediate horizon or sense of the possible, I 
mean exactly that. What is required now is a rigorous sifting through the 
ideological terrain and a thorough critique of the viability of existing 
political institutions; the moment requires also a decisive leap in our 
collective ideological imaginations; a leap that strenghtens nascent, 
innovative, political institutions; that articulates new forms of governance; 
and, most definitely, developes and publicises social and economic policies 
that courageously break new ground. 

allan


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nettime one-liners digest [x3: olma, ray, harrison]

[nettime's_weekend_warrior]

Re: nettime how google made the cia

 seb olma sebo...@xs4all.nl
 Tapas Ray tapasr...@gmail.com

Flick Harrison fl...@flickharrison.com

 Re: nettime The Greek elections?

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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subject: Re: nettime how google made the cia
From: seb olma sebo...@xs4all.nl
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 13:47:47 +0100

sorry, Freudian slip there, it should of course read: =E2=80=98how the =
cia made google=E2=80=99

 On Jan 29, 2015, at 12:10 PM, seb olma sebo...@xs4all.nl wrote:

 has anyone seen this? it=E2=80=99s a crowdfunded project by investigative 
 journalist 
 Nafeez Ahmed.
 ...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 17:43:17 +0530
From: Tapas Ray tapasr...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: nettime how google made the cia

Re-hosted by OpEdNews.

On Thursday 29 January 2015 04:40 PM, seb olma wrote:

 has anyone seen this? it's a crowdfunded project by investigative journalist 
 Nafeez Ahmed.

 perhaps not very surprising yet rather interesting in its detail...

 https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
 ...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Subject: Re: nettime The Greek elections?
From: Flick Harrison fl...@flickharrison.com
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 23:00:56 -0800

On Jan 28, 2015, at 02:02 , mp m...@aktivix.org wrote:

 The linear, one-dimensional spectrum of left-right politics is not just
 speaking to the stupid, it is stupidifying, not to say stupefying. Even
 mainstream political philosophers have abandoned that in textbooks
 decades ago.

Better tell Syriza that.  It seems to be working for them.

-- 
* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison 

* FLICK's WEBSITE: 
http://www.flickharrison.com

??? Grab this Headline Animator

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


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nettime Geert Lovink Patrice Riemens: The Bitcoin Experience, Part One

[Patrice Riemens]

Geert Lovink  Patrice Riemens

The Bitcoin Experience - Part One


We admit: we are fazed and befuddled by the Bitcoin phenomenon. And we
are getting more so as we progress - or think to progress - in getting
to grips with it. It has meanwhile become clear that Bitcoin, probably
to the chagrin of its believers, has become much more than, well,
Bitcoin. That is why we have decided, both to split our essay (essay is
the right word indeed, an attempt) in two parts - and to take it, to use
the charitable word, as a 'work in progress', even though the gestation
period of even this first part has been inordinately long. We have also
taken the open Source injunction to 'release early' to heart - was it
only because writing appears to stay stuck in the incubation stage. This
first part, which was our original plan, is about Bitcoin we know as
Bitcoin. What the Dutch so nicely call 'progressive understanding' has
compelled us to look at the inevitable: Bitcoin after Bitcoin. So the
Part Two will look at the probable inescapability of digital
crypto-currencies 'liberated' from the fiat and the sovereign - and its
consequences. If we ever manage amidst our befuddlement.  Hopefully you
will bear with us - after all you are not obliged to read, less so to
believe, as the 'Bitcoiners' do. But if you plod on, let us pray first:

OUR BANKER WHO ART IN CYBERSPACE
SATOSHI BE THY NAME
THY BITCOIN COME
DOLLAR BILLS BE GONE
IN OUR POCKETS, AS IT IS ONLINE
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR CONFIRMED TRANSACTIONS
AND FORGIVE US OUR DOUBLE SPENDING
AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN TRENDON SHAVERS
AND LEAD US NOT FROM THE BLOCKCHAIN
BUT DELIVER US THE MINED BLOCKS
FOR EVER AND EVER
AMEN

(from the Bitcoin Magazine, November 2013 issue)


Bitcoin is not the response to an effective demand, but to an emotional
desire. The internet crypto currency expresses a longing for liberation
through the mediation of technology. It grows out of a post-apocalyptic
will to start all over again, in between financial crises of epic
proportions, to put an end to the never-ending recession. This time, so
do believers in Bitcoin maintain, the economy will be lead by our tribe
of techno-libertarians, and not by the vile, corrupted banksters and
politicians in their employ. Amidst the rubble of the collapsing global
capitalism, there is nothing left to demand — who would listen anyway?
What is your blueprint for the next monetary system? After all, Bitcoin
architecture is not a given. Let’s be frank: everything is up for grabs,
including the premises of the Bitcoin project itself, which is what we
intend to do here.

The historical concurrence between Bitcoin and Occupy is no coincidence.
The enthusiasm for Bitcoin amongst geeks and IT entrepreneurs stems from
the popular disillusionment with the financial system, matched with an
equally strong belief in the Internet ideology of nodism and anonymity.
In line with the 'anarcho-geek' character of Bitcoin,[1] its 'rugged
individualists' community exudes a deep distrust, even hatred of all
'big' institutions, foremost governments (as exemplified by the US
government), but also of big business and large financial institutions.
All stand accused, and to a large extent for good reasons, to squeeze
the 'little guy' out of a living by all possible means.

Geeks and assorted believers in information technology assume that the
only solution to overturn this unfair system is to truly implement the
distributed, decentralized, 'original' values of the Internet. They
reject the Internet of monopolies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook to
embrace a romanticized version of it. They call, not for the Internet of
the military, the telecommunication giants and their centralized
logistics, but for a peer-to-peer assemblage of users who arrange their
own monetary rewards. E-commerce was in their eyes was its failed,
compromised fore-runner since it did not question the nature of the
currencies being used.

Bitcoin is driven by the eagerness of a specific, 'tech' elite to
achieve social escape velocity so as to bail out from the murky
complexity of the world. It should be seen as the umpteenth avatar of
the privileged classes wanting to pull out of the grudge of everyday
reality and its messy social sphere. Bitcoin is part and parcel of the
'Masters of the Universe' narrative, this time in its 'Geek'
declination, but given its appeal, it cannot be considered as some
subaltern, folkloric movement. The Bitcoin ideology reflects a profound,
and widely shared, distrust in existing organizational formats and
practices.

Bitcoin is based on ‘distributed trust’ instead of ‘contract trust’.
Governments and banks, among other 'real world' institution, function on
basis of contract trust, enshrined and enforced by way of charters,
constitutions, laws and regulations etc.  Instead Bitcoin believers want
a technology-implemented, disseminated form of trust, shared and borne
by all the individuals involved, not unlike the broadcast - one-to-many
- vs

nettime One Chain to Rule Them All by Eduard de Jong

[Geert Lovink]

One Chain to Rule Them All
by Eduard de Jong

Original on the INC/MoneyLab website: 
http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2014/12/16/one-chain-to-rule-them-all/.

See also: 
http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/2014/03/23/edward-de-jong-towards-an-open-e-currency-system/.

(the upcoming INC MoneyLab Reader (out in February 2015) contains a long
interview with the former DigiCash employee Eduard de Jong)

In the wake of the Bitcoin phenomenon, the term ?block chain,? which
describes a critical, technical aspect of the Bitcoin payment system, is
presented by Bitcoin adherents as a technical innovation on par with the
invention of the transistor, accrediting it with a similar scope of
fundamental change in society. This short write-up attempts to demystify
some of the mythical thinking around block chains.

The technological advances that have led to the block chain stem from
two different approaches in the 1980s for repeatedly applying a
cryptographic hash function.[1] The first approach came from Ralph
Merkle,[2] who used the hash function to construct a binary ?tree? of
hashes with each of the ?leaves? of the hashes used as a one-time-only
key to create a special kind of public key signature. The tree is build
by hashing each pair of leaves together and by continually pairing the
results of this until a single hash value is obtained. The final, single
hash value, called the ?root? of the Merkle tree, is?indirectly?a hash
over all the data in the leaves.

The second approach came from Leslie Lamport.[3] He created a way to
generate one-time passwords to secure computer logins over an insecure
network. It all starts with computing a series of hash functions,
starting from a random number and subsequently using the previous
function?s output as a starting point. The original random number is
then stored as the master password, and the list of hash values is given
to the user. The result of the last hash computation serves as the first
one-time password. The next time a password is needed the input value in
the last computation is used. Subsequently, each of the inputs to a hash
computation in the chain is used as a new one-time password, until the
last computation, when the master password is reached. At this time a
new master password is generated and a new hash chain calculated. Its
values are sent to the user as a new sequence of one-time passwords. The
sequence of one-time passwords is called a ?Lamport-chain,? or simply a
?hash chain.?

A Bitcoin block chain can be seen as a combination of a Merkle-tree with
a Lamport-chain: each one-way computation uses the result of the
previous computation as input in order to make a chain (Lamport), and
uses an additional hash value as input (Merkle) to add new data.

Chains, or trees, of hash functions have been used in different
proposals for the implementations of electronic money. For example,
e-Cash, the electronic money implemented by DigiCash, uses a specially
constructed tree of hash values to encode the value of a money transfer
protected by a digital signature over the root of the tree. Ted
Pederson,[4] working with DigiCash in the European Cafe project,
describes the use of a single chain as being similar to the
Lamport-chain passwords in the way it reveals a preimage with the
payment of small amounts.

This posting provides the theoretical basis for analysing the security
of payments protected by a one-way chain. Stanford,[5] together with the
present author, suggests a practical implementation for electronic cash
whereby each preimage in a hash chain is used as a payment of a unit
value. In this electronic cash system unit values are specified by the
merchant, while the security is provided by the hash chain. This also
protects the moneys received, which are cryptographically bound to the
merchant, as well as the process of redemption.[6] In 2000, a hash chain
was proposed to securely record the progression of operations. In the
same year, this author[7] filed a patent for the use of a chain of
one-way functions to protect both communication with a smart card and
the operations inside it. The hash chain was built by a sequence of
hashes: the first hash sending input data to a smart card; the second
hash, which was computed from the first, was changed in the card memory,
and the third hash was created over the memory record and any output
data. The chain could be extended to include any number of subsequent
interactions with the smartcard.

Using the hash chain in this way, with each new hash value in the chain
adding a hash over additional input data, is a very secure way to record
events. It establishes a time line in which earlier events are being
included in the chain of later event. An example of such an event is the
secure version control of documents like business contracts or a set of
program files. Git is such a software code version control system that
uses a hash chain. By binding the present with the past, a hash chain
can provide non

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nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #10

[Patrice Riemens]

(section 10)

Substitutes for presence and emotional solace

Many question marks remain on the issue of language, which is, as we wrote
earlier, the second boundary of human, and hence, social, experience.
Social network algorithms are in any case much less sophisticated than the
human language, the semantic web is still in its infancy, and hence, for
the time being, it is up to the users to make themselves better understood
by machines, which they do by compulsively updating their online profile,
by holding back on their emotive expression in order to fit into the 140
signs limit (the prescribed Twitter format), or by endlessly clicking the
'Like' button.

The first (human) boundary, the body, gets an even more brutal treatment.
One must physically adjust to the social media, by being instantly
reactive, and by training for a new digital mobility - literally so: the
motricity of one's fingertips, so as to handle ever smaller keyboards and
touch screens. It is the eye, however, which moves into the driver's seat
as, and despite the (yet unfulfilled) promises of 'virtual reality', the
screen presents the sole access point to these media. Touch, taste, and
smell are entirely absent (save for some video games where there is some
touch simulation - but still only through the screen). These senses are 
under-used in real life also, anyway. Hearing has to cope with low-quality
sounds: those from an mp3 device, or the ringtones of a mobile phone,
which are rubbish compared to to analog stereo. And yet, what is expected
from social media is always the contact with others, hence a physical
contact, even if it has to be mediated. Seen in this light, all social
media are a way to substitute for presence and make it possible to create
simulacra which conceal absence and physical distance. They restore
somewhat the otherwise fading remembrance of the other. Without social
media, our daily life might well-nigh become insufferable, now that we
have become accustomed to be reachable at all times, while at the same
time being able to organize the procrastination of our physical presence
since we do not possess the gift of ubiquity. Yet still, as Facebook has
promised us, we feel that we take part in the creation of new, shared
world while comfortably ensconced in front of our computer - without
running the risk of confrontation with the dangers of the physical world.

And that is not the whole story. Everything comes and happens faster
online, everything appears much more real than in reality, and everything
looks so much more - intense. So how to be with one hundred, or one
thousand, 'friends', and interact which each and every one of them? How to
keep up with all the information about people, groups, firms, newspapers,
all interesting, all influential? Well: mission impossible! On the
contrary, with Facebook, Twitter, and other social media this form of
simultaneous presence is substituted by sharing the platform prescribed by
the social medium, and becomes the experience that shapes the pattern of
everyday life. Yet, paradoxically, if you want to be socially more active,
and to train and let grow your digital self, you need to be more passive
in the physical sense. You need to spend a lot of time on your profile in
order to make it attractive and popular. You need to exercise for many
hours everyday, you must commit yourself to hands-on interaction with
smartphone and laptop. During all these hours spend online the body
becomes one big eye, with which one exercises to surf, without (being able
to?) totally immersing; the hearing is hardly ever used, yet one is always
at the ready to satisfy solicitations coming from the reality 'outside'.

Real experience then becomes rarer, but also more boring and repetitive
compared to online sociality, where everything is both more plentiful and
more fluid. It may even become tricky, since there are no 'friends' like
on Facebook in reality, nor subscribers like on Twitter. Erzatses for
presence keep reality at a distance and even tend to substitute for
reality itself, and this in an ever more convincing and less constraining
manner. Tools increasingly monopolize the very demands they pretend to
satisfy and fast become the only response possible, irreplaceable and
inevitable [43]. If everyone moves by car it becomes quite dangerous to go
on foot, even if traffic is slow. If everybody communicates by way of a
mobile, it will become difficult to find someone to chat to: the passer-by
you see in the street do talk to somebody, but that somebody stands at the
other end of an electro-magnetic spectrum. To sum it up, the real has
become much less attractive as one prefers to remain seated and use only
the glance, plus a remote and a keyboard, instead of getting up and going
out to explore reality with one's whole body and all its senses. There is
an anthropological transformation going on, which is governed by the media
as these are able to make us forget that they are mere instruments

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #9,

[Patrice Riemens]

In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #9, 2 (end)

(...)

Paradoxically, the webization of the social by way of mass profiling
results in anti-social outcomes, since we all can become guilty by
association - and innocent by dissociation. And as human decision makers
are increasingly delegating their power to algorithms, one can only expect
an increasing number of evaluation errors, and also ever larger ones, of a
kind that would be  easily avoidable in real life, or within decentralised
systems. To bear the same name as someone with a less than clean criminal
record, or as a terrorist on the books with the Feds becomes a crime by
association: machines turn us into defendants because they are unable to
distinguish us from someone who bears the same name. And if we have been
victim of identity theft, and someone uses our credit card for an illegal
activity, we are not only being swindled, but become culprits also,
insofar as our digital alter ego makes this manifest beyond any doubt. We
are then no longer in a regime of 'innocent till proven guilty', but of
'guilty till proven innocent'. The generalised criminalisation of society
is the logical outcome of profiling procedures - which themselves are
anyway derived from criminal profiling. In the end, their only
beneficiaries are the ill-intended, who are always conscious of the need
to always have an alibi at hand.

Newbie internauts therefore lay themselves open to all kinds of abuse
because of profiling which turn them into potential culprits. A Facebook
account, or for that matter, on Google+ or Twitter, is not owned by the
account holder. It is a space that has been provided to the user for free,
in exchange letting her/himself be cut up in commercially interesting bits
and pieces. Strangely enough, the user her/himself carries as such zero
value, since sHe must, not only prove sHe actually is who sHe pretends to
be, but also that sHe is innocent. In Facebook's case, there are a number
of reasons for which one can get kicked out. The most common one is use of
a fake name. Some fakes are easy to notice, but not all are. 'Superman' is
most likely an alias, but which algorithm is smart enough to make out
whether 'Ondatje Malimbi' is truly a Kenyan user with a Swedish mother? To
do so it would require access to civil registries, tax-office files and
social security data bases. A scenario actually not that far of (##*). And
by the way, we may notice that authoritarian governments appear to have
far less reservations about implementing 'radical transparency'.

Maintainers of social networks play a decisive role when it comes to what
is, or is not, legit. Hence they do help shape the rules of the society in
which we live. They do not have the power to send somebody to prison - yet
- but they actively cooperate with governments to enforce the laws of the
land, written and unwritten. Google has specifically, since the beginning,
partnered with the American intelligence community. What we know to-day as
'Google Earth' started as military cartography software developed by
In-Q-Tel, and sold to Google in 2004. In-Q-Tel is a venture capital firm
with CIA connections [42]. Ever since the USA Patriot Act was voted, with
its harsh penalties for any actor found out to help 'the enemy', on-line
services providers have become extremely cautious. They'll rather go for
pro-active censorship than to run the risk to host potential terrorists on
their servers, or even people not looked upon kindly by the US government.
Paradoxically, in countries under US embargo, dissidents' profiles are
(also ? - transl.) often closed while the regime's supporters are able to
propagate their views without hindrance on the government's controlled
servers. While eulogizing Iran's 'Twitter Revolution', nobody, not even
the people in the Administration - who waxed eloquent about its democratic
properties - seems to have noticed that Twitter was in effect infringing
the US embargo by offering its services to iranian citizens ...

Censorship is at the order of the day on Facebook, which often projects
itself as guarantor of the net's neutrality - a concept we have already
criticised. Facebook's very peculiar idea of democracy is based on its
moralism, as we have seen it at work before. Any user raising the
suspicion of engaging into hate speech may be expelled at once. Here's a
characteristic example:

My Facebook account has been cancelled, and also 's because we were
the administrators of the 'Against Daniela Santanchè' group (A.S. is a
extreme right wing Italian politician), or rather, I was administrator and
 the developer. I tried to log in, but I only got a message that my
account had been de-activated. I then send a message to the address I had
found in the FAQ. I got no answer. I got the following response two weeks
later, after I had send yet another message:

Here is Facebook's automated response message:

[NB This is a translation from the text of the book, itself

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #8,

[Patrice Riemens]

(continued from section 8, 1)


Understanding how Web 2.0 firms are evaluated in terms of worth and
earnings is no easy task - to say the least. But we could possibly use
some simple arithmetics to shed light on the issue. Let us assume that
Facebook's value in January 2011 was indeed $50 bn. At that time Facebook
claimed 5 lakhs users. $50bn divided by 500 millions equals $100, with
other words each and every Facebook account holder is worth 100 $1 notes.
Would I be one of the (ueber)rich investors on Goldman Sachs' client list
who'd bet, let's say, $50m (and has thus become 0.1% owner of Facebook), I
would just pay some sucker - for a song of course - to create an account.
Or rather 1000 accounts - with a lot of links and entries (easy to do with
customized software doing it automatically). Thus, at the rate of $100 for
each account created, I make $1 lakh. I spend $50 on each account for 'the
work', and get $100 in return. In case there is any rich person among our
readers, let her or him please make her/himself known to us since we know
how to 'generate' hundreds of Facebook accounts and we would gladly accept
some of all that money being created out of thin air! this is actually the
message of so-called 'abundance capitalism': everybody's going to get rich
without doing anything, since the machines will do all the work for us.
But for the time being the machines are mostly placing bets on the stock
exchange, using sophisticated algorithms, all this within an increasingly
competitive and aggressive cultural environment while inflicting ever
higher workloads on humans. And no consideration whatsoever is being paid
by greedy economic operators to the disastrous consequences this has on
individuals' lives. It has been proved over and again that the cult of
chance which is emblematic for the stock exchange, enhances a positive
assessment of risk-taking and hence encourages irresponsible or even
downward criminal behaviour.


Free Choice and the /Opt-out/ Culture

Social network gurus have a lot in common with financial traders. They are
young, 'hungry', without scruples, white and male ... and with
relationship blues. We will come to talk - at length - about /nerd
supremacy/ later on. For the time being, let's  simply state that going by
Mark Zuckerberg's positions with regard to social practices and believing
he has got hold of the magic recipe is tantamount to entrusting one's
dentition to a dentist with rotten teeth. Even if he is a great
practitioner, the least that can be said is that he doesn't care very much
about his own outlook. let us not forget that the Good Sheperd here is
more interested in the data we are supplying than in our well-being. And
in the end, it could very well be that this radical transparency idea is
the mechanised solution that has been devised in order to remedy the
unabillity to manage personal relationships through reasoned choices.

Speaking of 'free choice', there is a corollary to the power 'by default'
which is worth noticing: the culture of /'opt-out'/. To modify the
settings of millions of users without notifying them (of the change),
giving them only scant and obscure information about it, and this always
after the fact, is the same as to state, by implication, that users
themselves have no clue about what they really want, or at least, that
their service provider knows better than they do themselves. Digital
social networks accumulate humongous amounts of users' data and know how
to monetize these with increasing efficacy thanks to retro-active systems
('votes', 'likes', forward to a friend, notify fraudulent messages, etc.).
All this since they do know the real identity of their users and have a
more encompassing view of them than they possibly could have themselves.
Seen from their side it is logical to think that any change will be of
benefit to them, since the data proves it in an unequivocal way. And this
being so, users can always decide to remain outside, to choose to forgo
this innovation, to /opt-out/. The parity  new = better is easy to grasp,
hence innovation imposes itself all by itself. Yet this issue is a very
uncomfortable one , since, technically speaking, it is increasingly
difficult to enable millions of users to choose easily what should be
shared, and how to share it, by explicitly asking for their consent, and
hence permitting them to express a wish, desires, preferences, or
(outright) will, and so to operate within an /opt-in/ logic (meaning to
choose to enter, to adhere (in)to the new functionality). Also, as we see
in the 'Google culture', celebrating the cult of innovation, of permanent
research and development, means that all the newness is usually released
in beta version, and hence not yet tested. The users are expected to
submit usable feedback so as to achieve true usability. Imposing a change
that turns crappy then becomes a manageable risk, since it can always be
redressed if too many users start complaining.

Let's give a concrete

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #8,

[Patrice Riemens]

Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part One, section #8, 1

Free Markets and Financial Bubbles

The radical transparency of Facebook users finds no equivalent in the
firm's own financial dealings, which are singularly opaque and openly
flout every rule of the market economy, despite the latter's regulatory
minimalism and arbitrariness. This dangerous game has resulted of late in
developments heralding an even larger speculative bubble than the
'dot-com' one at the Millenium's beginning. In discussing them we will
use, on purpose, only  unimpeachably pro-market sources, such as the /Wall
Street Journal/ and the /Financial Times/.

Here is a story that almost beggars belief. On January 3, 2011, it is
discovered that Goldman Sachs is, together with the Russian company
Digital Sky technologies, in the process of investing 500m $ in Facebook
[39], while giving its richest clients the opportunity to invest in their
turn (Goldman Sachs is, as risk accessor one firm which is among the main
actors answerable for the financial crisis). The Security and Exchange
Commission (SEC), the body that is supposed to supervise the financial
markets, goes on red alert: one of the few rules it strictly enforces
being that no more than 500 separate investors are allowed in off-exchange
deals, and that above that number resorting to the primary market becomes
mandatory, meaning Wall Street. But in order to enter an IPO (initial
Public Offering) companies need to make their accounts public, so as to
enable investors and potential shareholders to arrive at an informed
business decision. Goldman Sachs' route around this 'obstacle' was to
create a special vehicle for a few selected ueber-rich clients, while
making 1,7bn $ profit in the process. This clearly bypasses the rules of
the market, enabling Facebook's shares to continue being traded on the
secondary market, and hence avoid the need to make the firm's balance
sheet public.

By a strange coincidence, the firm's valuation is multiplied in the next
twelve month by a factor five, and then doubles again in the following
half-year: at the end of 2009, Facebook was esteemed to weigh $ 10
billion, rising to $ 25bn in July 2010, and to a further $ 33bn in August.
There was  talk of $ 50bn by the end of december 2010 [40]. Meanwhile,
post-dotcom Google's valuation was $ 23bn in August 2004 (when it IPO-ed),
but Google is at least an innovative technology firm, whereas Facebook
merely offers a cocktail of already existing technologies. And then,
surprise: on January 20, 2011, it was announced that the Facebook IPO
won't happen, as Goldman Sachs got cold feet at the prospect of a tussle
with the SEC, with American small investors furious to be kept out of this
juicy deal, while ueber-rich speculators who went onboard with Goldman
Sachs' offer were already laughing all the way to the bank at the
prospects of fat profits [41].

Facebook manages to skirt even the most minimal of financial controls. The
firm's valuation is six times profits (only two times for Google), and it
has accumulated half a billion dollars in cash so it can indulge in new,
fancy take-overs. Fact is, that Goldman Sachs was able to finance Facebook
out of its own debts (just six month before investing, Goldman Sachs had
to fork out $ 550m on settling a case of fraudulent misconduct), and this
by luring investors with a prospective IPO of Facebook. When Facebook
finally came to Wall Street, it was valued at $ 115bn. Call it a great
bargain for those early investors, who're bound to cash in big time, but
it is less likely to be a sweat deal for the small investors, as such
astronomic valuations are fast on their way to cause a phenomenal
financial bubble. Early financing for Twitter, Groupon, and all other
technological start-ups was a matter of millions, not billions Dollars.
Yet all the same, the mechanism which made it possible to milk colossal
profits out of 2.0 start-ups' IPOs has begun showing serious structural
strains. This is well illustrated in the analysis of post-IPO
transactions in Linkedin (May 2011) and Groupon (November 2012) shares,
which (we take as) early signs of the impending collapse of Facebook
(##*). The two afore-mentionned firms had something of a rocky round on
the stock exchange, especially Groupon, which had carried out the most
important financial operation in the technology sector since Google's IPO
in 2004. And soon after the 180 days anti-speculation delay before which
trades were not allowed, Linkedin shares also went South, big time.
Meanwhile, Groupon shares' devaluation had started right after the IPO, as
if the boom-bust (or creation-evaluation-investment-profit-taking) cycle
had suddenly accelerated yet again.

Surely, these firms do not rely on virtual profits only, and in any case,
they are totally dependent on the data they have massively collected from
their users. As a consequence, investors have started to have second
thoughts about these firms' growth potential

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, section 7,

[Patrice Riemens]

NB.  There will be an interruption in the translation flow for a few days
as I am moving to Firenze, where I'll have little or no connectivity - nor
very much time. Feuilleton likely to be revived after March 5th.  Doewie!


-

Privacy no more (continued)


Or, more simply: As I don't want to go out with you tonight, I should be
able to tell you I'm tired - and that's it. I don't want you to feel hurt,
or worse still, you to think I'm making fun of you or taking you for a
ride, all this because the next day, you're going to find out on a common
friend's Facebook wall that I wasn't at home the previous night, and
actually had gone to a party with other friends. Social life is far more
complex than radical transparency is able to anticipate, unless we are
prepared to shed of the largest part of us that makes us different (from
others), and which is precisely what renders us attractive and desirable
(to others), and also ensures that we do not simply become lost in a group
where all hold the same opinion on all things.

The personal data we entrust to social networks, foremost (#***) Facebook,
are kept in the /clouds/, that informational overhang above us, a domain
not under our control, quite unlike the private diary we used to guard
jealously in the past. Not so long ago, account holders could not even
delete their Facebook entries, whic instantly became the 'non exclusive
property' of the firm, for these data to be sold to third parties. Of
course, nobody was talking about copyright here.  Sure, Facebook does not
intend to make money with our holiday pics (OMG so lame, so wacky) nor
with our posted messages (and never mind the grammar). We (the average
user) are not artists ripe for the pluck and exploitation. Yet, the /data
mining/ [32] taking place in order to profile individual users, all this
material accumulating in data-bases, a.k.a. Big Data, constitute a serious
problem. There is no free lunch, and especially not in the world of Web
2.0, where the price to be paid for the 'free service' (It's free and
always will be proclaims Facebook's start page) is to assent to the
retrieval, indexing, and exploitation of all the data in the users'
profiles, and more importantly, of those pertaining to their reciprocal
relations. And then (for the owners) to laugh all the way to the bank.

But what about privacy then? Well, on-line sociality is based on the
absence of the same, meaning on the possibility scan e-mails, pictures,
blogs, texts, etc: anything that can be extrapolated by way of key words
in order to show contextualised and personalised advertisements, and all
this is obtained from exchanges that are usually deemed to be 'private and
confidential'. Google and Facebook and all social networks in general
illustrate the existence of domains (spheres) which are neither public nor
private, and which are managed by technocrats, and more particularly by
technocrats in the employ of private companies fueled by the profit
motive. Privacy, literally speaking, is /the right to be left alone/
(#). For this reason, speaking of privacy in a collective, but
privately-owned social network is an oxymoron, since the prime objective
of a network is the circulation of information. When the information
consists of the identities of the people making up the network, the idea
to stay out (while being part of it) is a non-goer. The only way to stay
out is to not connect at all.

Privacy is therefore a pie in the sky: it only comes becomes manifest when
one realizes that it has been breached. Ever since the Echelon scandal
[33], everybody knows that privacy doesn't exist any more - at that for
quite a long while. Yet, the problem with surveillance is not so much the
disapearence of privacy, as the fact that the ensuing control and
monitoring extends for a long period of time. Let's stress it again: every
user has (and leaves) a digital 'finger print', a unique and personal
identity-marker. Being part of a network means to be connected and to
leave traces of one's passage. It is the same with (tele)phones: even if I
get rid of my previous mobile, I am most likely to call the same people
with my new phone as with my old one, and hence, to re-draw again (the
graph of) my social network. If there exist a users profile that looks
like exactly the same, identification is automatic and immediate: it can
only be me. The way social networks function makes this even more
worrying, because usually the names of members of a group are not hidden
to non-members, so as not to limit the possiblilty of not-yet members to
join the group. And it is easy to generate identifiers, or trace-marks, at
the group level. It is for instance possible to establish a list of all
Facebook groups with one member only. (HEU? -transl)

To encourage the free flow of knowledge has nothing to do with this type
of 'sharing' everything and anything whatever in an automated and
mandatory  fashion. Copyleft (for instance, is about encouraging the free
flow

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 6,

[Patrice Riemens]

Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium

And this is not all: identities are constantly evolving. At 15, fast and
furious rebelion against one's parents is the thing to do, but at 30 this
doesn't make very much sense  - and if still the case, the symptom of
something much more serious dooms up, typical a person whose growing-up
process hasn't been particularly smooth. Our mates from primary school, at
least those we haven't lost of sight altogether (only to find them back on
Facebook of course) all remember a very much different persons. In the
same vein, our first loves may in retrospect see us as the sunshine in
their lives, while our ex-partner hates our guts because of the alimony
that has to be vired every month. Which we repay in kind by showing only
coldness and ill temper: love is over, everything's different, Baby! We
change, we have changed and our social relations reflect the change that
makes us alive. We'll give here a few examples to show how perverse are
the mechanisms of fixed identity/identification that are proposed, or
rather imposed, by Facebook. These examples, admitedly a bit simplified,
and which we have set in the feminine gender, are unfortunately fast
becoming, or have become, reality.

Example 1, abusive dismissal:
A very competent young female teacher, adored by her students, is filmed
being seriously plastered at a party among friends. Explicit pics and
clips are circulating in no time on Facebook, posted and reposted by
'friends' of 'friends' of 'friends' ... till they reach her director and
the college's boeard. Upon which she is no longer allowed to apply for
tenure, and gets a severe reprimand. Her plea that her private life has
nothing to do with her work as teacher is dismissed, and she herself gets
the sack for being a bad example to her students.

Example 2, violence at home:
A mother tries to protect her child against her violent husband, gets
beaten up, and then raped in the process. After untold sufferings, she
manages to escape her tormentor. She moves to another, far-away city and
starts her life afresh, together with her son. Crisis over - so she
thinks. But there is Facebook. Her tormentor finds her out, either simply
by reading her messages, or by checking out on an application she
sometimes uses, and which gives away the user's exact location. In order
not to be found out, this woman, will have to close her acount, whatever
she tries otherwise. In her case, being on Facebook can put her life in
peril.

Example 3, suicide:
A young woman is capptured on video by 'friends' while she's cock-sucking
her boy-friend in the college's toilet. The clip is instantly on line, and
in no time everyone knows about her private, but now very public skills,
which are profusely commented on Facebook. She tries to defend herself,
switches educational institution, but to no avail: her new pals are also
on Facebook, and are very well clued in on 'what kind of girl she is',
thank you. She is constantly ridiculed, insulted and marginalised. You
did it, so now you get what you deserve is the backdrop, but also often
explicit attitude, which convinces her that her life is longer worth
living. She slashes her arteries in her bathtub after having written 'I am
not like that' on her Facebook wall.[28]

(end of section 6)

(section 7)

Privacy no more. The ideology of radical transparency.

Facebook, in its first five years of 'public' existence (2005 - 2010) has
increasingly narrowed the private space of its users [29] Facebook centers
its public relations drive around transparency, or even, radical
transparency: 'our transparency with regard to machines shall make us
free' [30]. We have already deconstructed the assertion that you can't be
on Facebook without being your authentic self [31a]. The 'authentic
self', however, is a tricky concept. Authenticity is a process whereby one
is oneself with others, who in their turn, contribute to one's personnal
development. It is not an established fact, fixed once and for all.

But the 'faith' of/in Facebook is a blind faith, an applied religion,
impervious to reason. Indeed:

Members of Facebook's radical transparency camp, Zuckerberg included,
believe more visibility make us better people. Some claim, for example,
that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating
on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency
should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually
accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarassing things. The
assumption that transparency is inevitable was reflected in the launch
of the News Feed in September 2006. It treated all your behaviour
identically[...]
[31b]

The fact that 'behavioural' social networks and 'affinity' ones are merged
together online, is, as we have seen before, the cause of serious problems
in daily life, when not of very real dangers. Yet the merger is one of the
main credo of Facebook, and this for very precise, commercial motives

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 6,

[Patrice Riemens]

Part One, Section 6, # 1.


Public and Private, Ontology and Identity

Is what is private also public? According to Facebook, everything private
should tend towards becoming as public as possible. Public meaning of
course  managed by, published on, and made available through Facebook, a
private enterprise. But the social networks to which an individual belong
are not the same as her or his 'behavioural networks' (that of people sHe
meets often, without them being 'friends', like parents, ofsprings,
siblings, neighbours, etc. They do not correspond either with his/her
on-line networks. Danah Boyd's writings in the matter are particularly
clear [25]. The fundamental issue always remains the same: that of the
personal ontology being created within a collective context. This is how
Mark Zuckerberg thinks about it:

You have one identity, he emphasized three times in a single interview
with David Kirkpatrick in his book, 'The Facebook Effect.' The days of
you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for
the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.
He adds: Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of
integrity.
[26]

We at Ippolita have always taken as a premise that identity is the place
of difference, and this for biological, psychological, and cultural
reasons we have already expounded [27]. With his moralism, Zuckergerg
gives the impression he is about to cleave through the Gordian knot of
mendacity, by asserting the necessity to have one identity, and one only,
clear, and precise, so as not to lie to oneself and to others. Zuckerberg
would like us to believe that he aims to reconstitute our identities,
shattered in thousands fragments in our relentlessly competitive modern
lives, and that he wants to give us back our lost (mythical) integrity. So
he pushes us to elaborate a personal profile, reconciling, as in a
succesful advertisement of ourselves: a hard working, hard playing
personna, an affectionate familly man/woman, a luscious sexual subject, a
spiritual and friendly me, a social and charitable character, and so
forth. Facebok as the byword for specialised mass self-marketing.

Abolishing identity is admittedly impossible. Just as it is impossible to
abolish power. And we may be glad about that: it is what makes evolution,
change, and communication possible. Identity needs to be managed,
multiplied, altered, re-created - just like power needs to be. To
communicate means to talk-write from out a specific place, that is to
assume an identity, or to built up a knowledge-power. Writing is based on
language, which is based on identity, which in its turn is based on power.
Whichever are the means we use in order to communicate, we are already
entangled in the negotiation of identities, both personal and collective.

But social life, as practised today, flawed and pefectible as it may be,
implies the possibility to circulate, at will, different versions of
ourselves, resulting in different identities for others to repercuss,
leading us to adjust ourselves to new social relationships. We are not
'the same person' to each and everyone. So the question is not about being
able to access various level of depths within a single individual profile,
but to be really different according to the prevailing situation. Despite
this apparent incoherence, this is abolutely necessary and positive for
us, in order to be in accordance with our own integrety. As we shall see
later on in detail, it is important to spread out the knowledge-power, by
strengthening the bonds with our loved ones, by establishing connexions
where there were none before, by cutting off the dead wood. What
definitely should not be done is to solidify the knowledge-power into a
static identity by accumulating data whose association leads to a
segmentation that is only commercially relevant, and has the
personalisation of advertisements for sole purpose.

In daily (real) life, we do not behave the same way in the presence of our
parents as we do when we are with our children. We don't talk with our
children about our prefessional problems, unless we want, for some reason,
to make them feel they bear some responsability for them. And if we would
talk about the same with our friends, we still would do that in a
different manner. We are not going to parties together with our parents,
and certainly not with the postman, even though we (used to -transl.) see
him every morning. We don't have sex with our boss either (or at least,
not everybody does). So why should sHe be our 'friend' on Facebook, for
Chrissake, or, worse still, share the information which we reserve to our
partner? Yet, the affection that bonds us to the members of our own family
is no less the affection we feel towards our friends. And we spend most
probably more time at work than enjoying our love life. This is simply
because we have are faced with different types of relationships, within
different social networks, each

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 5,

[Patrice Riemens]

In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, section 5, #3 ( end)


Now, one will better understand what the real implication is of the
statement attributed to Pierre Levy: No one knows everything, everyone
knows something, all knowledge resides in the Net(works). [22] This is a
very treacherous aphorism indeed, both on account of what it implies, and
due to its consequences. Hence, it demands our full attention. The
articulation between 'no one', 'every one' and 'all' together amounts to a
dialectical pea soup, nothing less. Indeed, overcoming individual
boundaries (thesis: no one knows everything) happens by way of a positive
reassessment of scattered knowledge (antithesis: everyone knows
something), to arrive at the synthesis which equals a total tipping over
into the external: all the knowledge is 'out there' (that is: all there
is, period, if one's epistemological point of departure is that reality
equals information). It sounds entirely reasonable: since everybody knows
something, just have everybody spit out what sHe knows, and all becomes
clear. To do the trick, let everyone reach out and help her/himself in the
vast repository of knowledge 'out there'. In that sense, to be part of the
construction of shared worlds looks like kids' play.

But, as we will soon see in detail, everything, really everything, 'out
there', has been the creation of individual minds, who are able to
socialise, and then (and only then) to become something collective. The
apparently innofensive idea to hoard knowledge 'out there' in order to
exploit it to the tilt belongs to the belief in information as such [23]
Well, we're sorry to say: there exists no information 'as such', unless it
is meta-category intended to wipe off, as with a sponge, the complexity of
communicative interactions. What is the substance of information?
Intangible and ethereal, digital information needs heavy hard disks made
up of metals, silica and rare earths as support. Engineering and industry
are required to manufacture the circuits through which information flows
around; electricity (obtained from coal, oil, nuclear fusion, the wind or
the sun) is essential to make information available. Also, without
extremely sophisticated data unbundling mechanisms, information would not
at all be understandable to us. The digital world is not disembodied, it
is material. And on the other hand, no support is external to us.
Knowledge cannot be separated from the human brains producing it. To put
it in more technical terms: minds are co-extensive to bodies, and bodies
are co-extensive to minds. It may be that, some day, non-human bodies will
be able to display conscious mental abilities, but these will not be of a
human variety.

Consequently, even if this type of external support (whether digital or
otherwise) would exist for knowledge (as it already exists for information
- but then, information is not self-conscious) it would not act in our
collective interest. (The concept of) Automatic sociality run by machines
is an absurdity. Even without going deeper into the argument, we are able
to state with certainty that data in general, and Big Data in particular,
is devoid of intelligence. Quantity of information does not in itself
generate sociality. And the quantity of information generated by Big Data
does not make it amenable to sociability. Big Data does not liberate or
empower us, neither does it make us autonomous and happy, automatically.
The collective network intelligence is actually a reactionnary dream of
control. The collective imagination, when it stops looking at and
reflecting about itself [24], gels, and engenders oppressive institutions.
Institutions are of course necessary for social organisations, but almost
always they will hide their historical origins. They do not operate for
the good of people, but in order to perpetuate themselves and
self-reproduce, sucking the life-blood of individuals in the process. It
is not difficult to envisage that the institutions which would come out of
the collective technological imagination will be even more more inhuman
than the ones we have already witnessed in history. Just take the example
of digital control, that is digital policing: whereas it is, generally
speaking, always feasible to escape human domination, how will it be
possible to rebel against the 'external' machine that has been entrusted
with the task to ensure the law is respected? [25]. It is not by accident
that institutions are step by step adopting the network model and thereby
transform themselves in reticular (network/ed) organisations. In doing so,
they unload the negative externalities onto the weak parts of the network,
and manage to accumulate even more power in the process. And when
institutions don't even have a public remit, or a quasi-democratic facade,
but are blatantly governed by anti-social principles, such as are
anarcho-capitalist private enterprises like Facebook, it should be easy to
see that the social network being shaped

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 5,

[Patrice Riemens]

Part One, Section 5 (The Performance Society), #2


Enthusiast technophiles, evangelists of mass on-line participation would
like us to believe that /distracted-attentive/ internauts are generating,
by the sheer virtue of their numbers, a humungous surplus value, ready to
be converted in cold, hard cash. It is true that in a knowledge economy,
the more people bring in their own expertise, the more the common amount
of riches increases. Yet it is just as fallacious to pretend that we have
all globally become wiser. To know everything about a sitcom, about
celebs, about the latest fashion trend in Soho when one lives in East
Oslo, does not amount to know more (useful) stuff or to know it better.
And one does not become a smarter person by being, up to the minute, on
top of what our digital 'friends' are doing on Facebook, or by assiduously
following our would-be 'fans' on Twitter. The sum total of this kind of
knowledge serves one purpose only: to spin faster and faster the iddle
machine of digital evolution. Raoul Vaneigem's jubiliation on being able
to 'say anything, nothing's sacred' becomes dull as dishwater in view of
the mass of banalities being circulated (on the social) networks. Thus,
everything ends up being half serious and half trite, everything is
relative, and 'equipollent' (equivalent in significance), because it looks
like as if nothing new can ever be said.

And yet not all knowledges are born equal. Not all is equivalent. It's
true that my dotty old aunt Margareth will never be able to handle a
smartphone or a VCR - though she might learn it if given personalised
instructions. But she knows damned well how to live in her world, which
continues to be the real world for the largest part of the world's
population, and also for us, even though we tend to forget it when
ensconsed in front of our screens. Is there so much difference between,
say, repairing a leaking tap at home, or mending socks, or singing,
dancing, biking, or even being able to listen to a friend's confidences,
and to learn how to post messages on one's Facebook wall - and why is it
called a wall, by the way? The latter maybe is because it is intended to
be covered by graffitis - ad infinitum. So the two types of competences
might have a comparable  degree of complexity, but both are, in fact, very
different. The first type makes individuals more autonomous, the second
type is a knowledge-power that is entirely dependent on productions which
are heteronomous (that is directed by others according to someone else's
rules) vis a vis the world outside. This holds particularly true for those
users who haven't got any clue about how Facebook works, technically
speaking (and who have thus zero autonomy with respect to the tool), even
though they make a compulsive use of it. This because when rules change,
by virtue of 'default power', on Facebook, or on the platform I use to
build up my identity, I become confused, and as a user I get lost since
what I mastered has become useless knowledge which I now need to update.
In a certain sense it's me that has become outdated and in need of an
upgrade within this permanent education format where you learn strictly
nothing save to know how to adapt to the system. When a tab moves, when
the arrangement of the personnal account is altered by the service
provider in order to enhance the user's experience it is the identity
itself which is shaken up. What to do then against the programmed
obsolescence of the expertise when nothing that exist in the format
actually relies on us in any sense?

The very concept of opposition and critical attitude becomes obsolete as
well, just as the ability to seek alternatives. Thought's articulation is
sucked away by the velocity of change, the escape velocity needed to flee
the inconsistency of the sociality that is being created. In the next
chapter, however, we will see that this new sociality is part of a very
explicit ideological project: anarcho-capitalist fundamentalism, a project
that totally resonates with a vision of technology as liberation and
salvation. The words used to represent users' on-line experience tell all
is needed about the hollowness of the myth of digital participation. ' I
Like', 'FirstLink', 'Click Here',  'What Are You Thinking Right Now?':
it's all about /stimuli/ which are not even binate, but unidirectional.
Declaring one's tastes on Facebook is Okay, but to criticise doesn't make
any sense. The most common rejoinder being: 'well, if you don't like it,
why you would you go there? There's everything on-line, so you're entirely
free to choose what you do like'.

But freedom is not the same thing as the freedom to choose between black
and white. It is a constructive process, which, when undertaken without
necessary nuances, leads to absurd simplifications. 'Voting' procedures
may sometimes be implemented, e.g. on Amazon reccomendations, or regarding
the evaluation of Wikipedia entries. The pooling of these resources and
their analysis

nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 5,

[Patrice Riemens]

Part One, Section 5,1.


The Performance Society

To sum up: opening an account with/on Facebook means sharing digital
'materials' which make up virtual identities. I am what my behavior
on-line is. But spending time creating an on-line image of the self does
bear consequences for (one's) life off-line. The virtual identities one is
able to construct with the help of Facebook's tools are generally 'flat':
they lack the depth characteristic of real identities, which are rich in
shades and nuances. In real life, before commituing to utter what one
'really thinks', one takes time to think and weight in the fors and
contras. One doesn't storm into the street to shout out that one has just
been dumped - by way of a SMS - and is available again on the meat market.
Facebook demands unfiltered action - and this maximum 'sincerity' often
amounts to crass stupidity and guile.

But human feelings are far more complex, not to say fd up. Literature,
the arts, and creativity in general all show the extraordinary capicity of
human beings to create shared worlds that enable to feel in harmony with
others. The risk is very high that massive partaking in life on social
network won't lead to 'collective authorship', but to a buzz-swarm of
totally superficial interactions. As Michel de Certeau has convincigly
argued [15] it is time, and time only, which makes it possible to shape
the everyday world 'below'. When one does not have a place of one's own,
one acts on someone else's territory; if one is unable to put a strategy
in practice, one can resort to tactics. In theory, personal time can
therefore be used to build up significant relationships, also within
heteronymous contexts as are social networks, whose rules are not
established by users themselves. But even when they attain a high degree
of sophistication, subversive tactics in the use of the tools provided
very rarely result in genuine zones of experimentation. The living time is
next to always reapropriated by the digital spaces and diverted towards
profit generation. Hence, an increasing number of people, and that include
technolphiles, are beginning to understand that there is something badly
amiss with the system. As artist Richard Foreman has phrased it: we've
been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable
but statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google
net.[16a] For sure, speed is a two-sided sword. The illusion of immediate
search results on request (Google) and of immediate sociality on demand
(Facebook) reduce the depth of book culture and also the possibility to
build up a signification-rich shared world. Richard Foreman again:

But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of
complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure
of information overload and the technology of the instantly available. A
new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of
dense cultural inheritance—as we all become pancake people—spread wide
and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by
the mere touch of a button. [16b]

Individual interiority empties itself here in order to completely pour
itself again into the vessel of digital exteriority. This process is
related to external stress, that is the permanent pursuit of significant
responses (in terms of knowledge) and worthwhile contacts (in terms of
affect) seeked by individuals. The networks' responses, as they are given
by mechanical appliances (computers, cables, infrastructures) and content
devices (software programs), belong to the scientific domain. But as
Feyerabend noted before, where science wants to impose a single truth, it
displays the quality of the religious [17]. As the mother of technical
thought and technological objects, it operates like a vapor saturating all
discursive space, by imposing itself by way of the proselyting methods
which have been invented and perfected by the world's most ancient and
most effective universal hierarchy: the Catholic Church. Just as a good
shepperd takes good care of his flock, so does the modern technocrat cater
for all the needs of his sheep, provided they are docile and transparent,
are sincerely declaring all their concerns, and welcome with fervor the
(Holy) Gospel of the Digital Society. What is new is that the sheep now
need to actively self-define themselves acording to the criteria that have
been put at their disposal (#*). They do not constitute an indistinct
mass, yet their identities differ only minimally, and these variations are
defined by very clearly specified criteria. That is the only way digital
technologies can offer a personalised and immediate truth satisfying all
the users' wishes at the same time. Google, Facebook and the other small
deities of the economy of search and attention, are hence all minor
hypostases (underlying substances) with the help of which one celebrates
the High Mass of Superior and Liberating Technology

nettime Ippolita Collective: In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One Section 4,

[Patrice Riemens]

Part One, Section 4.


Psychological Dynamics: narcissism, exhibitionism, and emotional porn

The first thing we share on Facebook is obviously our own identity, be it
through our (real) name, or, possibly, an avatar. Date of birth and sex -
at the moment two options only, male or female - must be provided, this to
avoid youngster under 13 registering. Or so they say. In practice,
whatever name is given is almost invariably the true first- and surname.
As the homepage states as a welcome Facebook enables you to connect and
share with people in your entourage [8]. It is of course easier to trace
somebody if sHe uses her 'real' identity.

Facebook doesn't like us to make use of fake names, since its network
profiles itself as a community where people use their real identities. We
require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who
you're connecting with. This helps keep our community safe. The security
of our community is very important to us. Hence we will delete any account
registered under a false name as soon as we find them out. [9] Ippolita,
being a collective using a name at variance with the identity of its
members while promoting the usage of multiple identities at the same time
cannot help but to completely repudiate such an approach. And this besides
the obvious fact that one individual's identity is ever mutating, even in
terms of biology, and that a name and a place of birth are a bit skinny as
identifier of a human being. The self presents itself to the world as a
theatre play. Identity is a permanent 'under construction' project, it is
neither stable nor unchanging. Only the dead are fixed, living beings are
not - that's why they are living [10]. But we'll leave the philosophical
aspects of identity to rest for now, and concentrate on what makes up the
negotiation () of the virtual/on-line identity.

The avatar we chose for our profile is of paramount importance. Hence we
will post a photograph that shows us under the most favourable angle and
arouses interest (with the viewer). This is our 'True Me', not those
pictures where we look tired, bored - or blasted. Embarassing pictures are
those of others, which we will ferret out, in accordance with the dynamics
of exposure and self-exposure: everyone wants to present their best face
while looking for the defects in others with unhealthy abandon. On
Facebook we are all Narcissus looking at his own image as reflected by the
social network. Hence it is important to hide what is embarassing and
unfit to be told, as it risks to make one un-'liked'. And since Facebook
had been originally conceived as a speed-dating site, albeit one geared to
'fish' in the largest possible 'pond' (yet in a very elitist spirit de
prime abord: that of the most closed American shop: the Ivy League
universities, now transformed in a kind of 'mass elitism' [11]), it is
clear that in order to achieve maximum dating score, one needs to show
one's very best face.

The mirror's second move is the image that reflects itself. We reflect in
order to please, not in order to complain. But Narcissus' mirror image
cannot be but a form of exhibitionism to the square power. Compulsive use
is characteristic of the discovery of a new game, especially when the
game's rules compell total self-disclosure - though the more obscene parts
should be expunged, since it is well-known that the Supreme Guardian of
Mores - i.e. Facebook) will terminate accounts if found to host pictures
of naked bodies. Celebrity demands some sacrifices, yet even
micro-celebrity, the currency of Facebook, can only be obtained through
exhibitionism. Fans must be able any time to connect with their
micro-idol.

In the society of the massified spectacle, we are all at the same time
applauding spectators, and comedians on stage playing out our virtual
identities. One is impressed by the amount of personal details about their
lives people are prepared to disclose just to get some attention. It is
easy to demonstrate that social network constitute a remarkable arena of
self-exhibitionist masturbation: create a Facebook account with a
believable first- and surname (neither too common nor too obviously
bogus), open an e-mail address (created on Google, and linked to all
mailing lists, newsletters and RSS feeds your alter ego should be
interested in), tell where you went to college, name the football team
you're fan of, quote in detail which music you like and what your hobbies
are. Send as many friendship requests as possible, Facebook will help you
discover scores of new 'friends' you'd never known they existed. Answer
with enthusiasm to those you want to befriend you, send 'm funky links,
kinky LOLcats, offer to take care of their /farmville/[12] stuff - and
yours will be plenty of attention in return. Adding a little 'social
engineering' to your spiel will even make you learn next to everything
about your new 'friends'.



[8] http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Well, good luck with opening this page

nettime Ippolita Collective: in the Face Book Aquarium, Part One section 2,

[Patrice Riemens]

NB, I am now in Casa Nostra! With view of the Sempione/Simplon!

Part One, section 2 The era of democratic attention-distraction, last part.


Evgeny Morozov is among those rare authors to have warned against the
(dirty) tricks of the Net, as well as against technology-worship and
Internet-centrism. The Byelorussian author reminds us that the essence of
technology is not technological, but can (only) be analyzed in terms of
sociology,  economics, political science, psychology or anthropology. It
is therefore absurd to think the Internet as an independent, solely
technological object, that would absorb and (re)transmit all other
discourses. More an Aristotelian propriety than a Kantian category,
technology has morphed into a conceptual and discursive omnibus of sorts,
as the technological object appears to be gifted with a virtuous
propriety, 'technologicity', which is the concrete manifestation of a
technological ideal. And this ideal finds it natural environment in the
hi-tech object. It is a propriety entirely devoid of concrete meaning,
just as if 'hippicity' was the property unique to horses and humanity the
same to human beings. We need to really go into the issue without hiding
behind foggy pronouncements.

On the other hand, one should also avoid the the opposite extreme

[lengthy Morozov quote here]. (will be inserted from original later)
gist: it's absurd to think that some technologies are, given a favorable
context, sui generis better than others at producing good political 
social outcomes] [4].

It is often argued that it's all about the use that is made of a
technology, since in itself, a technology is neither good nor bad, but
neutral. This is a fallacy. Technology is everything but neutral. Every
tool has specific characteristics that need to be analysed. But it is also
useful to look at the issue in its general context. Technology goes
together with power, and the usage of technological instruments implies a
competence, which is the outcome of (a form of) knowledge. This puts the
user in a dynamic of power: 'in relation to'. Applying a technology is not
a commitment-free activity, because it alters the identity of its user. A
plumber derives his identity as a plumber from his mastering of plumbing,
that is his knowledge, and the ability to apply it. It is essential to
understand that the use of social communication toold not only alters the
identity of the users, but also of the collective identity (of the
collectivity/community as a whole). The use of (communication) technology
is a social context is a source of social power, 'socio-power'. Under this
term we undertand:

(...) the conditioning forces which shape the relations between
individuals and collectivities Thses forces express themselves in the
'devices' (**) which operate through the everyday socialisation processes,
meaning all those moments when subjectivity is put into rapport with
common sense, norms of behaviousr, judgemental criteria, notions of
belonging and exclusion, as well as with the concept of deviance. (...)
Power activates the mechanisms (i.e. sanctions) and certain classes of
outcomes (i.e. the production of a particular behaviour) which are
analogous to those produced by the socialisation process. Their
differences stem from the 'devices' being used: whereas power is usually
visualized in specific moments, socio-power is (much more) holistic,
invasive, and ubiquitous. It is operative in the organisation of knowledge
and the regulation of practices, Socio-power hence should not be
exclusively seen as the power to alter someone else's behaviour by force.
It is rather a much more subtle, and rather imperceptible ability to shape
a given course of action and to make it more or less desirable, and to
coax and encourage certian dispositions. [5]

Seen in this perspective, we have distanced ourselves noticeably from
Morozov's position, who, as befits a good and sincere democrat, really
believes that Western governments are on a mission to export democracy the
world over. Now given the fact that socio-power is so invasive, it becomes
necessary to abandon the analysis of large, oppressive systems
(governments, big business, international politics) in order to
concentrate on the small gaps and shifts and little deviancies, thanks to
which the contours of escape opportunities opening up in everyday practice
become visible. So let us not limit ourselves to am mere critique of the
meddling of social media with today's sociality, as if it was Facebook's
fault that people now only communicate through virtual channels. One need
to dig deeper, was it only because the users them selves are clamoring for
this interference and are making it possible at the same time. Our
analysis keeps its distance from those large, oppressive actors who appear
to be dominant and representative of the Zeitgeist of the knowledge
society. Let us refrain from thinking that each and every new
technological gadget is potentially a tool of emencipation

Re: nettime Ippolita Collective: In the Facebook Aquarium (part One, #2.2)

[Florian Cramer]

 'Mediatic euphoria' is never a good thing, because it is based on the
 implicit idea of technological determinism, a belief that is itself
 solidly grounded in the Enlightenment tradition.


I dare to disagree. Technological determinism, as far as represented in
late 20th century media theory and media philosophy, has been clearly
grounded in anti-enlightenment and anti-humanist traditions of thinking. In
the prominent case of Friedrich Kittler (drawing on Heidegger, whose
philosophy of technology drew on C.F. J?nger), it even could be argued that
his strand of media theory and technological determinism was first of all a
polemical construct created to voice radical opposition against
enlightenment schools of thought, Frankfurt School critical theory (whose
dialectics of enlightenment at least recognized one positive 50% in
enlightenment philosophy) and post-marxist cultural studies.

What is really at the core of the issue: whether technology is a cultural
construct for which there can be political intervention (a view that would
unite enlightenment thinkers and even those critical cultural studies
people who see the enlightenment tradition as a tool of capitalist and
Western hegemony), or whether technology is an a priori, with culture and
politics as its products, and intervention as a hopeless form of naive
humanism.

Florian


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nettime Ippolita Collective: In the Facebook Aquarium (Part One, #2, 1)

[Patrice Riemens]

NB I the previous (first) installment of this feuilleton it was
erroneously mentionned that the commercial rights for this book were
resting with Feltrinelli editore (as for the Google book). In fact, the
(commercial) rights rest exclusively with the Ippolita Collective. So the
correct mention is:
This book and translation are published under Creative Commons license
2.0  (Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike).
Commercial distribution requires the authorisation of the copyright holders:
Ippolita Collective  i...@ippolita.net 



(Part One, #2,1)


The era of democratic /attention-distraction/

The 'Web 2.0' does not stand for a set of new technologies [3], but rather
refers to a (new) mode of behaviour: to stay on-line all the time in order
to chat with friends, post pictures, texts and videos, to share all these
with one's /community/, to remain connected, to be part of the
'Zeitgeist', of the on-line world. 'Share!' is probably the slogan best
suited to describe this phenomenon. And maybe it's also the biggest
stupidity ever invented, but then - going by the numbers, the public is
for it, massively. E-mails, IRC chats, blogs, mailing lists, feeds, 
peer-to-peer, VoIP - you name it, wasn't that enough to share with? Nope,
because as per the belief in unlimited growth, the gospel of Californian
turbo-capitalism, one always needs more, bigger (or smaller but more
powerful), faster. Many among us bemoan this, and yet we're doing it too,
embracing with enthusiasm to-day's ideology: our latest mobile is more
powerful than our old desk-top computer, our new laptop has more capacity
that the old server at the office, this just-on-the-market messaging
program enables us to send attachments larger than anything we have been
sending before - combined, and our new digital camera has a better
resolution than our old television set!

With Facebook, the we want it all and we want it now - but then faster!
has entered a new,  quasi-religious phase. Salvation is the promise, and
Share and Thou Shall Be Happy! is the message. With more than nine
hundred million users in May 2012 (*), being the population of  United
States and European Union combined, exponential growth, a global scale of
operation and yet organised as (separate) groups of friends, well, that
is something which couldn't escape the prying eyes of the Ippolita
Collective. And indeed, a radical critique of Facebook is a must, not only
because one should always go after the biggest quarry, but also because
such is part and parcel of Ippolita's core tactics. This as we want to
develop new (technological) instruments of self-management and of autonomy
which are not pressed on us from above under a well-policed theory, but
which have their basis in every-day usages and subversion practices  on
which we want to build our future worlds.

Now, if you are  Facebook fan (or of LinkedIn, MySpace, Groupon, Twitter,
etc.), and that to the point that you are unable or unwilling to take a
closer look at what is happening behind the scenes, then maybe you should
stop reading here. Our aim is namely not to convince you that Facebook is
the devil incarnate; if we study social networks here, the aim is merely
to arrive at a better understanding of the present. Hence, this is not an
'objective' enquiry. Starker: our line is entirely subjective,
opinionated, partisan, and based on a crystal clear postulate: the 'Web
2.0', and primarily Facebook, is a phenomenon of technocratic delegation,
and is as such dangerous. It doesn't matter wether the instruments
themselves are good or bad, or wether we love or hate them, and it doesn't
matter either wether we are captive and deluded users or on the contrary,
slick 'n' smart /geeks/.

The key assumption that underlies all the research conducted by the
Ippolita Collective is very simple: to connect to a network means tracing
a line between a point of origin and another point. In a certain way, it
is the same as opening up one's window to another world. It is not that
easy to engage in exchanges and to open up, because neither is immediate
or natural.  Specific competences, which one must develop in accordance
with one's personal needs and capacities, are necessary. And there is also
no such thing as absolute security - the only security you can be sure of
is when you do not connect - at all. But since we want to get in touch
with /the others/ and because we want to create tools to make this
possible, we are not going to renounce connectivity. Yet at the same time,
we are unwilling to lamely adopt al the 'new new' tech gadgets. Our aim is
rather to create tools for liberation you can't do without.

The 'rhizomatic' diffusion of social networks creates its own dynamics of
inclusion/exclusion which are the same as those we witnessed during the
boom days of mobile phones. People without a Facebook account are part of
no community at all! To put it even more strongly: they simply do not
exist, and it becomes difficult for them to stay

Re: nettime In an Internetworked World No One Is Foreign

[Newmedia]

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







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Re: nettime In an Internetworked World No One Is Foreign

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 03:04:02PM +0200, robert adrian wrote:
 
 Whenever you get a free offer there is usually a catch somehwere -
 so when DARPA donated TCP IP free to the world 

The apple was never poisoned. The principals who invented packet
switching and prototyped it were all civilian, academic researchers.
The subsequent branching out of the technology into all nooks and
crannies of human endeavour is simply because it was so damn useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

...

Misconceptions of design goals[edit]

Common ARPANET lore posits that the computer network was designed to
survive a nuclear attack. In A Brief History of the Internet, the
Internet Society describes the coalescing of the technical ideas that
produced the ARPANET:

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, only the unrelated
RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later
work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability,
including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the
underlying networks.[12]

Although the ARPANET was designed to survive subordinate-network
losses, the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network
links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the
resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles
Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:

The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System
that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such
a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's
mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized
had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that
there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers
in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have
access to them, were geographically separated from them.[13]

Packet switching pioneer Paul Baran affirms this, explaining: Bob
Taylor had a couple of computer terminals speaking to different
machines, and his idea was to have some way of having a terminal speak
to any of them and have a network. That's really the origin of the
ARPANET. The method used to connect things together was an open issue
for a time.[14]




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nettime In an Internetworked World No One Is Foreign

[michael gurstein]

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/in-an-internetworked-world-no-one-is-foreign

In an Internetworked World No One Is Foreign


by  http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/ Michael Gurstein 

As everyone knows there have been some startling and shocking
revelations concerning the surveillance activities of the USA's NSA.
This has occasioned considerable to-ing and fro-ing from the US
Executive Office, from the major Internet corporations implicated in
these revelations, and from various elements of civil society.

To an equally astonishing and disturbing degree much of this to-ing
and fro-ing has centred around whether the rights of Americans have
been assaulted. Watching these discussions unfold including from US
colleagues in civil society, it has been interesting how a fine bright
line has been drawn between the rights of citizens and residents of
the USA and everyone else. The argument appears to be that while
the rights of Americans are somehow sacrosanct--protected by among
other things the US constitution and duly constituted legislation,
foreigners i.e. everyone else in the world have no rights--are fair
game for whatever actions the NSA or whoever chooses to invoke.

As a non-USAian watching all of this unfold I've been equally
astonished and horrified that otherwise perfectly sane and reasonable
people who pop up in all the right places often saying useful things
internationally could be so tone deaf when dealing with a real issue
with global ramifications.

As I've been thinking about this I haven't been quite sure why the
terminology of Americans good--foreigners suspicious should
grate so much.

We (being those of the non-USAian persuasion) are so used to listening
to cultural messages coming from the US including via movies,
television, music and so on that at some unconscious cultural level
we are all Americans now. So when the divide between those placing
themselves under the shading protection of the US constitution and
everyone else is so actively and frequently expressed, the real divide
is made even clearer and more explicit.

However, as we all know as well, the Internet as a communications and
expressive platform knows few if any boundaries. While on the Internet
of course, some are more equal than others the specific nationality
as framed by boundaries and constitutions and legislation is left
somewhere in the background only to be invoked at times of crisis or
system failure.

 And that is why the language and conceptualization of the US vs.
foreigners seems so odd and unsettling since on the Internet no one
is a foreigner (and no one is a national except possibly of the
nation of the Internet and its netizens/citizens...

 This isn't to idealize the Internet as a place without boundaries
but rather to state the obvious, I'm able to and am frequently
active in being in my home in Canada or with my friends in Brazil
or with business colleagues in India instantaneously and seamlessly
from anywhere I happen to be able to connect--no passports,
no jurisdictional entanglements, in many cases no authorities
evidently hovering in the background. So when something like Ed
Snowden's revelations re-arrange again the Internet world around
boundaries--around us and them, citizens and foreigners it
feels, well, so 20th century.

And to go on a wee bit--what is equally unsettling is the knowledge
again that we (foreigners) have gleaned from Ed Snowden's revelations
that the marginal and largely notional protections that distance
and boundaries have up to now offered to us from the over-weaning
and often absurdist actions by US authorities can now be seen as
having been finally and irrevocably disappeared; and while we may
be foreigners from the perspective of rights, we are very much
not foreigners from the perspective of being somehow subject to the
actions of US authorities wherever we may or whatever we may be doing
anywhere in the world.

And of course, this is the case not simply for the usual
(legitimate) suspects but also for ordinary citizens, businesses,
governments, whatever--since the power of the Internet and the
facility with which its depth of penetration has been projected almost
universally has meant that the power wielded by those authorities is
now global in scope and reach and essentially unrestricted in its
actions. Thus in the sense of being subjects to US authority (or the
authority of anyone with the wealth and facility to effectively use
these tools--recent days have seen reports of similar actions by
spooks in India and Brazil) no one is now a foreigner--in that area
we are all equal and equally powerless.

So, if we are all -- USAians and everyone else now subjects of the
omnipresent eyes, ears and capacities for actions at a distance
of the Internet and ICTs in general; where are the structures and
rules, procedures, legislative mechanisms that would allow all of
us--citizens of an Internet-enabled world to hold those wielding this
authority to some