Re: [governance] VW

2015-09-28 Thread Michael Gurstein 
  [Orig CCed to  -- mod (tb)]

David,

Let's assume for the moment that we agree that the fundamental and overriding 
objective is the protection of the public interest in the operation and 
evolution of the Internet (and not for example as seems to be (or at least to 
have been) the case with some of our colleagues that the fundamental objective 
is the protection of the integrity of the Internet itself).

The questions then are several:
1. how is the public interest defined
2. who is to be involved in making those definitions
3. what procedures are to be followed in making and implementing those 
decisions
4. and so on.

Certainly the private sector and particularly the Internet giants have to have 
a significant role in advising on this process--as Jeremy pointed out--they 
have a lot of the knowledge and expertise and already are making a lot of the 
rules. But should they be involved in actually defining and making the rules?

However much Facebook or Google are attempting to in effect become the Internet 
-- they are not the Internet, they are private corporations seeking in various 
ways (sometimes ethical sometimes less so) to pursue their own private 
interests--and we would not expect anything else.  In fact under certain 
jurisdictions they are legally obliged to act in this way.

Why VW is pertinent is because it shows the depths to which a major corporation 
will go in pursuit of those interests.  Fortunately there is a legal regime 
which was meant to govern their actions and which they fraudulently flouted.  
Imagine if they had been in a position to legally and with an enthusiastic 
welcome participate in the definition and implementation of that legal regime 
(notably one of the reasons that their actions were undetected for so long is 
because following the logic of governance in the age of neo-liberalism, funds 
for enforcement were cut back in the various jurisdictions and the companies 
were given the responsibility of "self-enforcement"!). 

Do you really believe that these companies would somehow end up pursuing the 
public interest rather than their own private interests and with their wealth 
and power (and capacity for political influence) not in the end "do whatever it 
takes" to skew the outcome in their favour and further closing the circle by 
structuring the rules and the structures of accountability to support their 
private interests.

I agree with you about the need for transparency and accountability for the TPP 
and TISA etc.etc. and quite honestly I think the active promotion of the 
multistakeholder model by the major proponents of these types of agreements is 
precisely because they recognize the difficulty they are having in pursuing 
these given Civil Society (and Labour and other) opposition they are concluding 
that where there is a multistakeholder approach with a coopted/compromised 
civil society is a part of the process, it is a lot easier to control and 
implement the outcome than it is by pursuing the current TPP and TISA model.

M

-Original Message-
From: David Cake [mailto:d...@difference.com.au] 
Sent: September 28, 2015 10:48 AM
To: governa...@lists.igcaucus.org; Michael Gurstein 
Cc: t byfield 
Subject: Re: [governance]  VW


> On 28 Sep 2015, at 6:16 am, Michael Gurstein  wrote:
> 
> Ted and all,
> 
> Far be it from me to second guess the insight (or well-placed cynicism) of 
> Nettimer folks but dare I say that not all folks who should be, are quite as 
> perspicacious.
> 
> The flavour of the day in global governance circles--think managing the 
> Internet (ICANN etc.), the environment, "sustainable development" and on and 
> on is what is being called "multistakeholderism" i.e. where governments, the 
> private sector, civil society and all get together and "find consensus" 
> solutions on to how to manage the world for the rest of us.

> 
> Significant portions of Civil Society have bought into this approach 
> which is firmly premised on the notion that somehow the private sector 
> should be directly involved in making governance decisions because 
> well, they are so public spirited, or that they have the long term 
> interests of everyone at heart ("they are people too aren't they"), or 
> we can trust them much more than those perfidious folks in government, 
> or they are "accountable" to their shareholders and wouldn't do 
> anything completely untoward to risk shareholder value etc.etc. (you 
> know the drill???

Shocking though it is when policy is determined via open and 
transparent meetings of government, private sector, civil society, academia etc 
get together to work out policy, I still find it preferable to the de facto 
alternatives - which is usually government and the private sector get together 
secretly and work out a deal. I vastly prefer multistakeholderism to processes 
like the

Re: Astroturf 'Apptivism' and the 'Sharing Economy' (Mondato)

2015-09-28 Thread Daniel Gonzalez Gasull 
   On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 7:05:41 AM UTC-7, patrice wrote:
   
   > Original to:Â  http://mondato.com/blog/apptivism/
   >
   > (Bwo Eduard de Jong Frz.)
   >
   > ASTROTURF APPTIVISM AND THE SHARING ECONOMY

   From Wikipedia:

   "Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or
   organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is
   supported by grassroots participant."

   That's not what is going on here, since the message is always clear to
   be coming from Uber.

   I like the neologism 'apptivism'.


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Re: VW

2015-09-28 Thread Andreas Broeckmann 

Am 27.09.15 um 23:09 schrieb Florian Cramer:


WWII. As far as I know, all profits that the state of Lower Saxony
makes from its remaining 20% share go into the endowment. And, Leuphana
is a state university of Lower Saxony.


(marginalia)

folks, i think this is besides the point, but before assumptions about 
the amounts of funding by the VolkswagenStiftung to Leuphana and its 
Centre for Digital Cultures get completely out of hand, i suggest that 
whoever wants to make claims about that should first do the research, 
e.g. here:


https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/funding/funding-statistics.html

... probably to find that less than 20% (just a guess) of the funding 
for the CDC in the last 3 years (it has not existed longer) came from 
VolkswagenStiftung (more from EU-EFRE, same from DFG; besides, formally, 
Leuphana is also not a state university but a foundation, but since it 
is basically treated like a public university, that's probably a 
legalistic detail).


the german mass media are playing the game of "who knew what when" this 
morning.


personally, i am looking at the case mostly from the perspective of my 
small collection of software-induced fuck-ups, accidents, frauds, etc., 
which begin to pile up into a relief picture of the vulnerability of 
both the technical and social (belief) systems that our glorious 
"digitised culture" is relying on.


regards,
-a


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Re: VW

2015-09-28 Thread Geert Lovink 
   a fwd. from the rethink uva list (university of amsterdam) /geert

   From: "Engelen, Ewald" 

   Subject: Re: [Rethink UvA] We can't let VW get away with this

   Date: 28 September 2015 7:44:04 am GMT+2

   Volkswagen is also an aggressive tax evader, using Dutch shell
   companies (of course) to do so

   Volkswagen Financial Services it is called

   Here is the website

   http://www.vwfs.nl/content/sites/vwcorporate/vwfs_nl/en/home.html

   e


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Re: FW: VW

2015-09-28 Thread Armin Medosch 
 Hi,

   Â well said:

 What VW tells us (and why "motivation" is worth looking at) is that
 when push comes to shove we really really need some structures of
 accountability that are responsive to "our", the public's needs and
 not the shareholders and that multistakeholderism as a system of
 governance is basically giving away the keys to the kingdom.

   which leads me to a slightly different topic, this fascination for
   "civil society" that has become so endemic, especially also with regard
   to the current refugee crisis. While the states are failing to organize
   this migration with some dignity, the heroism of civil society becomes
   fetishized. Although I would not regard myself as a statist, there is
   something suspicious in this construction. This article from Rastko
   Mocnik provides some perspective on the notion of civil socitey from a
   post-Yugoslav position

   
http://www.internationaleonline.org/research/real_democracy/6_the_vagaries_of_the_expression_civil_society_the_yugoslav_alternative

   last not least a short report from a small, unimportant country in the
   center of Europe:yesterday the post-Haider Freedom Party won 30+
   percent of the votes in Upper Austria, an economically strong region
   whose capital is Linz which hosts Ars Electronica. Now guess what, the
   F-Party celebrated its victory in the rooftop bar of Ars Electronica
   Center
   best
   Armin

   Â Â
   Â

 Mike
 -Original Message-
      From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org    Â
 [mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield
 Â  Â  Â Sent: September 27, 2015 12:08 PM
 Â  Â  Â To: nettim...@kein.org
 Â  Â  Â Subject: Re:  VW
 Â  Â  Â On 25 Sep 2015, at 20:59, Michael Gurstein wrote:
 Â  Â  Â > Thanks Ted, very useful.
 Â  Â  Â >
 Â  Â  Â > I guess what I'm curious about is the motivations, individual 
and/or
 Â  Â  Â > corporate thought processes/incentives etc. that underlie the 
initial
 Â  Â  Â > decision to go down this path and then the multitude of 
decisions at
 Â  Â  Â > various levels up and down the organization to continue on this 
path.
 Â  Â  Â <...>
 Â  Â  Â Michael, your line of questions seems to be a high priority for the
 Â  Â  Â media: today's NYT top story is "As Volkswagen Pushed to Be
 No. 1,      Ambitions Fueled a Scandal." Personally, I don't
 think there's been much      innovation in the motivation dept
 since, say, Sophocles, so the      human-interest angle isn't
 very interesting, IMO. If anything, it's the      primary
 mechanism in diverting attention from the real problem, namely,  Â
 Â  how to address malfeasance on this scale. Corporations are
 treated as      'people' when it comes to privatizing profit, but
 when it comes to      liabilities they're become treated as
 amorphous, networky constructs,      and punishing them becomes
 an exercise in trying to catch smoke with      your hands.
 Imagine for a moment that by some improbable chain of events    Â
 VW ended up facing a 'corporate death penalty,' there remain all
 kinds      of questions about what restrictions would be imposed
 on the most      culpable officers, how its assets would be
 disposed of, and what would      happen to its intellect
  ual property. (It'd be funny if the the VW logo      was
 banned, eh? I'm not suggesting anything like that could actuallyÂ
 Â  Â  happen, of course.) The peculiar details of this scandal could
 spark a      systemic crisis of a different kind, one that makes
 evading guilt more      difficult. The 'too complex for mere
 mortals' line won't work in this
 Â  Â  Â case: VWs have come a long way since the Deutsche
 Arbeitsfront or R.
 Â  Â  Â Crumb-like illustrated manuals about _How to Keep your
 Volkswagen      Alive_, but not so far that people will blindly
 accept that they can't      understand them. Popular
 understanding of negative externalities in      environmentalism
 is decades ahead of its equivalent in finance. And it    Â
 doesn't hurt that Germany, which has done so much to bend the EU to
 its      will, looks like it'll be the lender of last resort.
 Â  Â  Â  <...>

 <...>


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VW

2015-09-28 Thread patrice 

"Bad employees come up with problems - or excuses; good employees come 
up with solutions"
(New Management mantra)

Mething Michael was right with asking the question about the internal 
workings that made the VW clusterf%$#&^*k 'happen'. And I also think it 
has to be analysed and answered before we move further - it's not the 
paramount issue, Jaromil and John are right about that, but tackling the 
issue is a prioritary, necessary condition to be able to go forward. The 
more so since the mechanism is not limited to the 'commercial' world, it 
is universal.

Besides the above, another concept to keep in mind is "plausible 
deniability". It is what the now ousted president of VW invoked "I am 
responsible, but I didn't know" - bit strange for someone having 
asserted before he knew every screw of a Beetle, but that's not really 
the point. The point is that subalterns are expressivily prevented, 
forbidden, to tell superiors about problems and risks which might slow 
or even halt 'advances' (be it in the form of profits, political gains, 
academic credits etc etc etc). Incidentally this also (partially) 
explains the quandary whistleblowers find themselves in.

And there is nothing recognizablym, demonstrably, - within the system - 
evil about it. As they say at M$ "it's not a bug, it's a feature".

Modern Management and its governmental equivalent 'New Public 
Administration" function, like the rest of the neo-liberal system, on 
the principle of externalising the burden and the liabilities downwards 
the pyramid and internalising all benefits and credits upward. Of course 
that is in itself nothing new (it is known in French as "faire payer les 
lampistes"), but it has reached a rare degree of sophistication in our 
times, in parallel with the ever growing technological complexity. Its 
most disturbing aspect is that it has been mentally internalised by all 
parties in a form of particularly perverse TINA, blanking out 
everybody's conscience, and even consciousness, from the top to the 
bottom of the pyramid.

The bad news is that this situation is not amenable to improvement. Any 
attempt at it turns out into fighting the symptoms, not the causes (VW's 
new directorate's statements are surrealistic manifestations of this 
approach) and even more probably into what was (un)funnilly called in 
the former DDR "verschlimbesseren" (betterworsening?).


Cheers from p+2D!
(Meanwhile in Athenes ... ;-(


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Extent & mechanisms of censorship

2015-09-28 Thread James Wallbank 

Hello Nettimers,

There is (or at least there was, until recently) a particular photograph 
on the internet. Black and white, cropped to an approximately square 
format. It appears to have been taken with a flash, or supplementary 
lighting, in a dark interior. The upper right quarter of the image shows 
an area of dark background and a circular table with a white tablecloth.


A central figure, in the foreground, faces left. His face, visible in 
profile, is that of a young man, his expression unreadable. His right 
hand is raised. He appears to be seated, and is wearing some kind of 
military or psuedo-military dress uniform, perhaps like the ringmaster 
of a circus.


The upper left quarter of the picture contains the most detail. In the 
upper centre left is a young man in a dark dress suit, who appears to be 
playing a supporting role. Two hands, from a figure standing behind him, 
reach over his shoulders, perhaps to tie or untie his bow tie, or to 
restrain him. The upper body of the owner of the hands is invisible, as 
the upper edge of the picture crops it off.


The upper left and centre left of the picture shows a young man, naked 
except for a bow tie. His face is clearly visible, and his expression is 
apprehensive. From the angle that the photograph was taken, his genitals 
are concealed by an object on the lap of the seated figure in the 
foreground.


The perspective of the photograph is quite unusual. The (presumably 
horizontal) back of the chair of the figure in the foreground, and the 
angle of the circular tabletop in the background (again, likely to be 
horizontal) suggest that the picture was taken from a height of 
approximately 1.5m. The eclipsing of the naked figure's genitals by the 
thing on the lap of the seated ringmaster suggests something else: that 
the naked figure and his dark suited companion are both kneeling, and 
that the incident depicted is some kind of ritual.


The naked figure is entirely recognisable as a major British public 
figure. The object in the foreground is the head of a pig.


What exercises me about this image is not the incident depicted, nor 
whether or not it is a fake.


What concerns me is the sequence of events immediately following the 
publication of a book that revealed the incident that this photograph 
appears to document.


As you may be aware, that book's publication precipitated amusement, 
scandal and argumentation online, the volume of which is hard to 
overstate. The sheer scale of the sudden outpouring of emotion in the UK 
was a newsworthy item in itself, and has been notably under-reported by 
British media.


A hashtag associated with the incident trended as number one in the UK 
for 24 hours or so, but disappeared from top trend tracks surprisingly 
quickly.


Searches using a popular search engine revealed this picture on the 
first page of search results in the day following the breaking of the 
scandal, but it quickly became invisible. Searches using other search 
engines over the following period have revealed the image less and less 
prominently. I have noted a US website which appears to have removed 
content quickly and untidily (404 not found) while cached search results 
showed that the image had been published.


Tweets including the image, that were visible in the immediate period 
following, the scandal, have been deleted. Facebook postings that 
include this image have been removed.


There appears to have been a massive, alarmingly successful attempt to 
prevent the transmission and dissemination of this image. I should note 
that the suppression of the image is some of the best evidence that it 
may indeed be genuine.


The mechanisms by which this image has been erased from the internet are 
of intense interest. They are likely to leave traces vulnerable to 
forensic investigation. That the effort to suppress this image has thus 
far itself remained invisible, suggests that deep, structural 
vulnerabilities in digital networks have been exploited. This is 
possibly the most chilling aspect of the event.


I welcome:

* Vigorous dissemination of the image in question.
* Merciless ridicule of its principal subject.
* Investigation into the mechanisms by which this image has been suppressed.
* Information about the extent of such suppression: is it limited to the UK?
* The publication of discoveries regarding what must surely be an 
extensive and coordinated campaign of internet censorship.


Best Regards,

James
=


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