Organic Intellectual Work: Interview with Andrew Ross [REVISED]

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/interview-with-andrew-ross/

Organic Intellectual Work
Interview with Andrew Ross

By Geert Lovink

Does cultural studies scholar and labour activist Andrew Ross need to 
be introduced? I became familiar with the work of U.S. American 
researcher of Scottish decent in the early nineties when his co-edited 
anthology Techno-Cultureand books No Respectand Strange Weatherreached 
wide audiences. His highly readable books deal with a range of topics 
from sweatshop labour, the creative office culture of the dotcoms, 
middle class utopias of the Disney town Celebration to China's economic 
culture as a global player. For outsiders, Andrew Ross might embody the 
'celebrity' persona of academia, but he is someone I experienced as 
modest and open, a prolific writer who is very much on top of the 
issues. To me Andrew Ross has been a role model of how to reconcile the 
world of High Theory with the down-to-earth work within social 
movements, a tension that I have been struggling with since the late 
seventies. Reading Andrew Ross makes you wonder why it is so hard to be 
an organic intellectual after all, as Antonio Gramsci once described 
it, a figure which is light-years away from the abstract universes of 
the Italian autonomous theorists such as Negri, Virno and Lazzarato. No 
esoteric knowledge of Spinoza, Tarde or Deleuze is necessary to enjoy 
Ross. We do not read about exploitation in a moralistic manner but 
instead obtain a deeper understanding of the complex contradictions 
that the global work force has to deal with.

Australian post-doc researcher Melissa Gregg, whose book Affective 
Voicesdeals with the history of (Anglo-Saxon) cultural studies, 
includes a chapter about Andrew Ross. Gregg describes Ross as an 
"intellectual arbiter between the academic politics of cultural studies 
and the activist imperatives of the progressive Left." His "academic 
activism" describes the "human cost of economic growth," thereby 
counterbalancing the "neglect of material labour conditions." Instead 
of fiddling around with concepts and terminologies, Ross describes the 
"human face of economics" much like Barbara Ehrenreich's investigative 
journalism, reaching into the category of airport non-fiction. The 
suspicious attitude towards appropriate payment is the key obstacle to 
an effective labourist politics among Leftist intellectuals. In the 
case of the no collar culture "not only did the culture of willing 
overwork severely haemorrhage any chance of a sustainable industry, but 
investment in the cult of creativity disassociated no collar work from 
the manual labour involved in producing the tools of their craft." In 
the following email exchange with Andrew we focused on the topics of 
research methodology and style of writing, the role of ethnography, the 
question of creative labour and strategies of activism.

GL: Suppose you were to write one of those booklets and we would 
entitle it Letter to a Young Researcher. How would you approach this? 
Could you tell us something about your method? Is it fair enough to say 
that you moved on from General Theory to case studies? Clearly, 
students need to know about both, but I have the feeling that theory is 
a dead end street these days and that your research methodology offers 
an alternative.

AR: Since I came of age, intellectually and politically, in the 1970s, 
I was a paid-up member of the Theory Generation, dutifully 
participating in Lacan and Althusser reading groups, and the like. But 
even then, I was rarely comfortable with the hothouse climate around 
what you call General Theory. Even then, I was learning that theory 
should be approached as simply a way of getting from A to B. It wasn't 
the only way to get from A to B, nor was it always the best way, and it 
was easy to get stuck en route with all your mental wheels spinning in 
the air. Indeed, I saw some of the best minds of my generation--to 
paraphrase Allen Ginsberg--vanish down that path. I'm glad I survived, 
I've been in recovery for two decades now.

When it comes to method--and this is what I tell my graduate 
students--it's more important to know what A and B are. Once you have a 
good sense of your object and the questions you want to answer, then 
you are in a position to choose your methods--i.e. how to get from A to 
B. In most disciplines, the method comes first, and is then applied to 
an object. For us, it's the other way around. The questions and the 
goals determine the methods. So, how will I answer those questions? Do 
I need to do interviews, or conduct surveys? Do I need to visit sites, 
or consult archives? What kind of reading do I need to do, and what is 
the likely audience? In the program where I teach, our students are 
trained in more than one method--ethnography, historical inquiry, 
textual analysis, data analysis--and

Organic Intellectual Work: Interview with Andrew Ross

[Geert Lovink]

Organic Intellectual Work
Interview with Andrew Ross

By Geert Lovink

Does cultural studies scholar and labour activist Andrew Ross need to 
be introduced? I became familiar with the work of U.S. American 
researcher of Scottish decent in the early nineties when his co-edited 
anthology Techno-Cultureand books No Respectand Strange Weatherreached 
wide audiences. His highly readable books deal with a range of topics 
from sweatshop labour, the creative office culture of the dotcoms, 
middle class utopias of the Disney town Celebration to China's economic 
culture as a global player. For outsiders, Andrew Ross might embody the 
'celebrity' persona of academia, but he is someone I experienced as 
modest and open, a prolific writer who is very much on top of the 
issues. To me Andrew Ross has been a role model of how to reconcile the 
world of High Theory with the down-to-earth work within social 
movements, a tension that I have been struggling with since the late 
seventies. Reading Andrew Ross makes you wonder why it is so hard to be 
an organic intellectual after all, as Antonio Gramsci once described 
it, a figure which is light-years away from the abstract universes of 
the Italian autonomous theorists such as Negri, Virno and Lazzarato. No 
esoteric knowledge of Spinoza, Tarde or Deleuze is necessary to enjoy 
Ross. We do not read about exploitation in a moralistic manner but 
instead obtain a deeper understanding of the complex contradictions 
that the global work force has to deal with.

Australian post-doc researcher Melissa Gregg, whose book Affective 
Voicesdeals with the history of (Anglo-Saxon) cultural studies, 
includes a chapter about Andrew Ross. Gregg describes Ross as an 
"intellectual arbiter between the academic politics of cultural studies 
and the activist imperatives of the progressive Left." His "academic 
activism" describes the "human cost of economic growth," thereby 
counterbalancing the "neglect of material labour conditions." Instead 
of fiddling around with concepts and terminologies, Ross describes the 
"human face of economics" much like Barbara Ehrenreich's investigative 
journalism, reaching into the category of airport non-fiction. The 
suspicious attitude towards appropriate payment is the key obstacle to 
an effective labourist politics among Leftist intellectuals. In the 
case of the no collar culture "not only did the culture of willing 
overwork severely haemorrhage any chance of a sustainable industry, but 
investment in the cult of creativity disassociated no collar work from 
the manual labour involved in producing the tools of their craft." In 
the following email exchange with Andrew we focused on the topics of 
research methodology and style of writing, the role of ethnography, the 
question of creative labour and strategies of activism.

GL: Suppose you were to write one of those booklets and we would 
entitle it Letter to a Young Researcher. How would you approach this? 
Could you tell us something about your method? Is it fair enough to say 
that you moved on from General Theory to case studies? Clearly, 
students need to know about both, but I have the feeling that theory is 
a dead end street these days and that your research methodology offers 
an alternative.

AR: Since I came of age, intellectually and politically, in the 1970s, 
I was a paid-up member of the Theory Generation, dutifully 
participating in Lacan and Althusser reading groups, and the like. But 
even then, I was rarely comfortable with the hothouse climate around 
what you call General Theory. Even then, I was learning that theory 
should be approached as simply a way of getting from A to B. It wasn't 
the only way to get from A to B, nor was it always the best way, and it 
was easy to get stuck en route with all your mental wheels spinning in 
the air. Indeed, I saw some of the best minds of my generation--to 
paraphrase Allen Ginsberg--vanish down that path. I'm glad I survived, 
I've been in recovery for two decades now.

When it comes to method--and this is what I tell my graduate 
students--it's more important to know what A and B are. Once you have a 
good sense of your object and the questions you want to answer, then 
you are in a position to choose your methods--i.e. how to get from A to 
B. In most disciplines, the method comes first, and is then applied to 
an object. For us, it's the other way around. The questions and the 
goals determine the methods. So, how will I answer those questions? Do 
I need to do interviews, or conduct surveys? Do I need to visit sites, 
or consult archives? What kind of reading do I need to do, and what is 
the likely audience? In the program where I teach, our students are 
trained in more than one method--ethnography, historical inquiry, 
textual analysis, data analysis--and are encouraged to be flexible in 
their application. They a

no comments?

[Geert Lovink]

This is what Rhizome made of it... Anyone at nettime has already seen 
this show and would like to comment on it? Best, Geert

New Media History Refreshed

As with any vibrant art form, new media finds itself historicized
in multiple and evolving ways. Significant attention has been paid
to whether the field is alive, dead (date negotiable), or risen
from the grave, and to defining its constituent elements. Automatic
Update, an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art organized
by Barbara London, argues that new forms of media art rose with
the swell of the dot-com era and became mainstream in its wake.
The five installations included, all drawn from the moment after
the bubble burst, speak less to the internet or interactivity and
more to a culture saturated with media of all kinds. As markers
of this designated cultural moment, the works on view vary widely
in their ideas and approaches. Jennifer and Kevin McCoy explore
the interplay between the construction of cinematic genre and the
development of personal history in Our Second Date (2004). Xu Bing
ponders remote communication in Book from the Ground (2007, and in!
-progress) in which a dialogue between two individuals, separated
by a mylar screen, is translated into a vocabulary of computer-like
icons. Also featured are new and recent works by Cory Arcangel, Paul
Pfeiffer, and Rafael Lozano-Hammer. It's arguable whether new media
art has become mainstream, yet the assertion that the Internet has
fundamentally changed contemporary culture and propelled new art forms
is undeniable. This influence is explored in screenings organized by
London with Hanne Mugaas that run concurrently with the exhibition,
including signature works by film and video-makers such as Iara Lee,
Kristin Lucas, Takeshi Murata, Miranda July and Marcin Ramocki, among
others. Automatic Update is on view until September 10th. - Lauren
Cornell

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/automatic_update/index.html




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Interview with Vito Campanelli about Web Aesthetics

[Geert Lovink]

Interview with Vito Campanelli about Web Aesthetics
By Geert Lovink

Ever since I worked with Matthew Fuller in 2004 on A Decade of Web
Design, I have been interested in the question if there is such a
thing as ‘web aesthetics’ that could operate beyond the overheated
nineteen nineties Internet rhetoric. It is easy to historicize
‘net.art’ as a pseudo historical avant-garde and then declare it
dead, but what’s the point of such an all too obvious statement? The
Web continues to grow and change at an astonishing rate. It is not
sufficient to criticize Web 2.0 as a remake of dotcommania. Corporate
and state dominance of the Web continues to be a threat, but this
should not shy us away from a rigorous theorization of the Web in all
its aspects. It was on the Web that I first encountered the works
of the Italian theorist, Vito Campanelli, culminating in a visit to
his hometown, Naples, in October 2006. After an inspiring meeting
in-real-life we continued our exchange online, culminating in this
online interview.

Vito Campanelli is assistant professor of “Theory and technique of the
mass communication” at University of Napoli ‘L’Orientale’ and a free
lance contributor to magazines such as Neural, Boiler, and Memenest.
Vito also co-founded the web designers collective Klash. From there,
he joined USAD in 2005, a research and development group focused on
e-learning. He is also an independent curator, working for cultural
events in Naples such as Sintesi, the Electronic Arts Festival, and is
the originator of the Web aesthetics research project called The Net
Observer. More recently he co-founded the Napoli new media initiative
MAO, the Media & Arts Office. Vito Campanelli published the book,
L’arte della Rete, l’arte in Rete. Il Neen, la rivoluzione estetica
about the artist Miltos Manetas.

GL: Let’s start. You’re working on ‘web aesthetics’. The first
association, of course, would be with web design, HTML and the look
and feel of a website. But perhaps that’s not what you’re aiming at.

VC: In my research into aesthetic forms of the Net, I make a clear
division between commercial expressions and aesthetic expressions,
without qualification. I’m not so interested in the latter, while
I’m fascinated by the former - those aesthetic forms that exhaust
their essence just in being there, without any intent or aim that
exceeds the personal expressive needs of whoever designed them. This
distinction could seem arbitrary- it could also find a basis if we
consider that modern mediated mass communication is poles apart
relative to any aesthetic feeling: vulgarity and arrogance nullify any
hypothesis of meaning. On the contrary, the research of an aesthetic
point of view is the attempt to assign - again - a sense to our human
paths.

In my opinion aesthetics is the more powerful answer to the violence
of mass communication (or modern commercial communication).
Mass communication eludes every determination, it aims to be
contemporaneously ‘one thing, its own opposite - and everything
between the two opposites’. Exposing the message to all its possible
variants, it finishes to abolish it. Indeed, the goal of mass
communication is always the dissipation of any content.

The only alternative to the effects of mass communication is a
return to an aesthetic feeling of things, a kind of aesthetics not
so much ideological, but rather more active (e.g. Adorno) - a kind
of aesthetics able to bring again into society and culture feelings
of economic unconcern (rather an unconcerned interest), discretion,
moderation, the taste for challenge, witticism, and seduction.
Aesthetics is exactly this.

Talking about feelings and emotions means to free oneself from the
communication domain, while facing a category of beauty has become
one of the most subversive actions we can devise in contrast to
the reigning ‘factory of culture and consensus’. Within this view
I’m suggesting, technology stays in the background: it creates the
necessary conditions for spreading one’s own creativity through
digital media. If we accept this position, no matter if a website is
made using HTML or Flash, what’s really important is the beauty it
expresses.

GL: Do you find it useful to build a bridge back to the “classics” of
aesthetics - from Kant to Croce? How should we read such old authors
in the light of the Internet and its development?

VC: A theory that doesn’t interface itself to the historical
presupposition of our thinking is nothing more than a stupid and
useless utopia. Nevertheless, the authors you mentioned are not at
the center of my thoughts. Kant doesn’t attribute any cognitive value
to art, while Croce is sidelined with respect to Internet and its
socio-cultural postulates. In Croce’s aesthetics there is a strong
devaluation of technique, as he considers it extrinsic to the art and
linked instead to the communication concept. Moreover, Croce himself
doesn’t pose the question of communication. The intuition-expression
is indeed alr

"call for blogging code of conduct"

[Geert Lovink]

Dear nettimers,

I wonder how many of you follow the 'Kathy Sierra' case and what you
make of it. My first response was that this scandal was the final
chapter of the A-list, the presumed consensus culture of prominent
US-bloggers that got famous by linking to each other in the time when
blogging was still (relatively) new. It was a cozy scene, an elite in
the true sense of mainly conservative techno-libertarians that were in
the unique position to have opinions. As one could expect, some were
lefty-liberal whereas others supported George W. Bush. So far nothing
to write home about. When blogs got hip and hot, around 2002-2003,
this culturally homogeneous group lifted each other up during the
growth era of what a little later Tim O'Reilly coined Web 2.0. It may
sound inward looking but the good side of this self-referentiality
was that there was social control, some 'culture' and a 'community'
to take of certain rules. Over the past two years, with global blog
numbers rising to 100 milllion, the A-list core fell apart with the
Sierra cyberbullying case as a late manifestation of this trend.
Another reading is one that Kathy Sierra has given over the past days.
There are tons of stalkers, and always have been on the Internet.
Receiving death threats is probably as old as the medium email. Male
geek culture that preaches freedom and does not believe in regulation
can't respond very well to cyberbullying and rather not like to talk
about it. But this is also old news, at least for nettimers. So what
other interpretations are there? Shocklogs finally arriving in the
USA? An Iraq war that escalates within US borders, four years late?

Geert

--

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6502643.stm

Call for blogging code of conduct
Kathy Sierra went public on her fears in her blog

The support for a blogger hounded by death threats has intensified
with some high profile web experts calling for a code of conduct in
the blogosphere.

The female blogger at the centre of the row has been shocked to
discover that hers is not an isolated incident.

It has led her and others to question some of the unwritten rules of
blogging.

It could force a re-examination of the way the tight-knit blogging
community behaves.

  Among those calling for a bloggers' code of conduct is Tim O'Reilly
- one of the web's most influential thinkers. "The fact that there's
all these really messed-up people on the internet is not a statement
about the internet." He told BBC Radio Five Live that it could be time
to formalise blogging behaviour.

"I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable
behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of
[legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation."

While condemning the bloggers who issued the threats, Mr O'Reilly was
keen that the whole blogosphere should not be tarred with the same
brush.

"The fact that there's all these really messed-up people on the
internet is not a statement about the internet. It is a statement
about those people and what they do and we need to basically say that
you guys are doing something unacceptable and not generalise it into a
comment about this is what's happening to the blogosphere."

Cyber-bullying rife

Ms Sierrra has personally witnessed the usually harmless feuding that
is part and parcel of blogging take on an altogether more sinister
tone, with threats of a violent and sexual nature gathering pace over
the last month.

She agonised over whether to publicise what had happened to her, she
told the BBC News website.

Since describing the campaign against her, she has been shocked to
discover that cyber-bullying is widespread.

"As well as around 900 comments on my blog and hundreds of comments on
other blogs, I have received around 300 personal e-mails and about 70%
of them say they have been through a similar thing," she told the BBC
News website.

Among the messages is one from a blogger Ms Sierra described as "far
more prominent than me" who has been avoiding industry conferences
because of persistent online threats.

Ms Sierra herself pulled out of a planned appearance at ETech in San
Diego this week.

She believes it is time the technology blogging community sat up and
took notice.

"I think there is a culture of looking the other way. When other
prominent people look the other way it is creating an environment that
allows this type of behaviour," she said.

She also thinks it could be time to re-examine whether the blogosphere
needs to be completely uncensored.

"There is an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that it is wrong to
delete nasty comments. It suggests that you can't take criticism but
now there is a sense that this is nonsense," she said.

Tough on women

Denise Howell, a US lawyer and blogger, believes that the blogosphere
is no place for legal requirements.

"The tools of the Live Web have made it easier than ever for
ordinary people to communicate and express views in their individual
capacities,

radical sadness--exchange between ken wark and geert Lovink

[Geert Lovink]

Email exchange between Ken Wark and Geert Lovink

Held during the week after Jean Baudrillard passed away.

KW: You ask: what is radical sadness? That's an
excellent question, and Jean poses it to us, so it's a
good place to start. I have certainly felt a sadness
since I heard Jean had died, but it is not yet a
radical sadness. Maybe if I work on it I can
radicalize it. With Jean dead, an era seems to end. I
have lost, not exactly a 'father' but a crazy adopted
uncle. He showed me what to do when you were no longer
a militant. That theory should be 'radical' or not at
all. How not to be a bureaucrat of thought.

But radical sadness? That is another thing. Perhaps it
begins with the claim that disappointment isn't
personal. It is the world that has let us down. And we
have the right not to just give in and accept
'reality'. Hurling oneself against that world in the
name of another one may be futile, but one does not
just accept one's sorry lot. There are other paths.

The path Jean himself took is not necessarily the one
to follow. It's a Nietzschian thing. "My followers are
not my followers." But he opens up a whole family of
tactics. But perhaps it begins and ends with affect.
It is the real itself that failed us.

GL: Maybe I am searching for an alternative style, to
avoid the official obituaries that focus on his
all-too-obvious career highlights and post-correct
opinions such a la "The Gulf War didn't happen". What
happens when one of your teachers that most influences
your thinking dies? In my Baudrillard, is one of three
sources of inspiration that I encountered
simultaneously in 1983 and that have stayed with me
ever since (the other two are Virilio and Theweleit).

In 1986-1987 our group ADILKNO intensely studied The
Fatal Strategies that had just came in out in a Dutch
translation. We even gave weekly courses for
interested members of autonomous movements and
produced a small dictionary to explain the unique
terminology that comes with this book. I guess it is
obvious that Baudrillard played a formative role for
an entire generation of media theorists that grew up
during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The urgency of his work somehow faded, at least for
me, in the second part of the 1990s, but then it
bounced back with the latest Cool Memories and The
Conspiracy of Art. It was always interesting to see,
as you say, how one struggles with the process of
identifying with an author who so clearly cannot be
turned into an (academic) school, as happened with
Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze.

What is important here, at this moment, is to
distinguish between the beauty of ideas and not to
treat them as lifestyle guides. Ideas alienate,
disrupt, cool down and should not be elevated into a
belief system. Baudrillard's struggle against his
illness is a story of warmth and humanness. To project
some of notions onto one's life, his life for that
matter, luckily doesn't work. What we see here is a
sabotage of life against death, an element that we
find throughout the work of Elias Canetti, who, as we
know, strongly influenced Baudrillard.

Radical sadness in this respect is an attempt to
circumvent the conventions of the everyday. There is
the revolt again death and an ironical play with it.
Baudrillard did not want to surrender. If we want to
talk the language of theory, it is not the task of
subject to take over the role of the object and all
its (passionate) indifference. Theory should not end
up in the self-help section. Death can spread
disillusion or reinstate illusion (to reformulate what
he once said).

How do read his book The Symbolic Exchange and Death
and related remarks on the death revolt at the moment
when the author himself passes on?

KW: For Baudrillard, our faith in the real is one of
the elementary forms of religious life. While there
are plenty of 'realist' philosophers, particularly in
America, none bother to question the reality of the
real itself. Baudrillard's thought was not an
unmasking of the unreal but rather took place outside
of the procedure of falsification. For him theory was
closer to poetry, an operation that made nothingness
out of the power of the sign. Everything he wrote was
marked by a radical sadness and yet invariably
expressed in the happiest of forms. After the
foreclosure of so many seemingly 'radical' projects,
he pursued the last one left to him, a symbolic
exchange outside of the endless proliferation of
indeterminate signs. He returned the world to itself
exactly as it was given, as an enigma. But always at
least as a far more elegant and astonishing one.

GL: What strikes me most, going through my German,
Dutch and English collection of his writings is his
amazing ability to integrate news events into his
theories, and to see news events themselves as major
theory. Still one would never think of him as a
commentator, let alone a journalist. It

Re: shocklogs wikipedia entry

[Geert Lovink]

Thanks, Pit.

Here an update. A while the entry deleted (again).

What is kind of amazing is the Anglo-Saxon language policing, which  
term is and is not 'proper' English. An (English) wikipedia entry  
cannot be valid if it based on 'foreign language' sources now about  
that? Wikipedia is not a dictionary and in fact there are many  
Englishes so it makes you wonder why in particular 'neologisms' are  
targetted. and not names of (famous) persons, as Pit Schulz mentioned.

Below I have copy-pasted some of entries of the delete discussion.

The following contribution asks the key question: "This article is well  
resourced and only being targeted because of US-centric editing. As a  
regular reader of Wikipedia (yes, I know, our opinions are not as  
important as those of OCD-disorder-driven editors) I am interested in  
terms which may not be used in the US but are used elsewhere. In this  
case, it only takes a bit of Google research (search "shocklog blog")  
to see this term has a meaning and is in use. Is Wikipedia an American  
or global project?"

Some others:

   * Merge with Blog, as a "Shocklog" is a type of blog. Flakeloaf  
04:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

   * Delete Lacks sources demonstration sufficient use to satisfy  
WP:NEO. Sources consist of a couple of foreign-language blogs and an  
on-line Master's thesis. Need published sources complying with WP:RS  
--Shirahadasha 04:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

* Delete, basically a neologism, and an imprecise one at that. Is  
Stile Project a "shocklog"? Lankiveil 05:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

* Very Strong Delete One of the "sources" cited puts the nail in the  
coffin on this one!

From "Masters of Media:"[1] "To our surprise the term shocklog, a  
wellknown term in the Netherlands, was nowhere to be found on the rest  
of the World Wide Web. We wanted that to change, so we -The Masters of  
Media- coined the term on a new English Wikipedia entry."

So, they invented it and posted it on Wikipedia in order to coin a  
new term.zadignose 18:17, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

* Can it be speedied? If not, DELETE per Zadignose. -Penwhale |  
Blast the Penwhale 20:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

* Delete WP:NEO--Dacium 05:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

  * Not Delete The entry is based on two published sources; two MA  
thesis' which were published by the University of Amsterdam. Just to  
clear up the confusion with regards to the Masters of Media blog post,  
they -MofM- did NOT make up this term, they only created an entry in  
Wikipedia about it! "With 'coining a term to the world" they mean  
introducing published material via wikipedia to a larger public. The MA  
thesis' and the videofiles date earlier than the MofM post (and  
wiki-entry) does. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by  
83.160.180.211 (talk) 10:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

  * Then it's a WP:COI issue. Note that OA of article only  
contributed to 2 articles (the other being Roy Ascott), and Annemamedia  
(talk • contribs) has no other edits apart from this article. -Penwhale  
| Blast the Penwhale 11:10, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

 * I see nothing on the link you cited to indicate it is a conflict  
of interest. Please recheck your link and see  
WP:No_original_research#Citing_oneself. How many articles the OA has  
edited seem irrelevant. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by  
150.182.148.34 (talk) 16:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

* Delete: still a neologism in English, and acknowledged by the  
authors to be "nowhere to be found on the rest of the World Wide Web".  
-- The Anome 11:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

* Delete, and do not merge anywhere. Blatantly invented word.  
Flyingtoaster1337 13:18, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

* Not Delete This article is well resourced and only being targeted  
because of US-centric editing. As a regular reader of Wikipedia (yes, I  
know, our opinions are not as important as those of OCD-disorder-driven  
editors) I am interested in terms which may not be used in the US but  
are used elsewhere. In this case, it only takes a bit of Google  
research (search "shocklog blog") to see this term has a meaning and is  
in use. Is Wikipedia an American or global project? —The preceding  
unsigned comment was added by 150.182.149.137 (talk) 19:33, 22 January  
2007 (UTC).

* Not Delete Wholehearted agreement. I, too, am a regular reader  
and believe that neologisms such as these are essential parts of the  
Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LordFoom (talk  
• contribs) 07:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

* Delete — the Anome (talk • contribs) put it well: a term "nowhere  
to be found on the rest of the World Wide Web" is not a fit subject for  
a Wikipedia article ➥the Epopt 17:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

* Delete From en wikipedia until notable in en WP:RS sources,  
regardless of where en is spoken. Ronabop 18:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

* Strong Merge to Shock site. A blog is by defin

Greenpeace launches greenmyapple campaign

[Geert Lovink]

(after e-waste campaigns such as http://www.e-waste.ch/ this greenpeace 
initiative, targetted at apple, seems to be the next level, focussed on 
the production, and no longer on the recycling economy and the 
management of the waste side of computer use. geert)

http://www.greenmyapple.org

We love Apple. Apple knows more about "clean" design than anybody, 
right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product 
range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to 
abandon? A cutting edge company shouldn't be cutting lives short by 
exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That's why 
we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple.

We're Greenpeace, and we want a fresh green Apple.

Right now, poison Apples full of chemicals (like toxic flame 
retardants, and polyvinyl chloride) are being sold worldwide. When 
they're tossed, they usually end up at the fingertips of children in 
China, India and other developing-world countries. They dismantle them 
for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens 
their health and the environment.

You can't recycle toxic waste

If Apple doesn't drop the toxics from its products, it doesn't matter 
how good a recycling program they have. Because toxics make recycling 
more hazardous. And eventually, the toxic chemicals will be released. 
Dropping toxics makes reuse and recycling of products simplier, safer 
and cheaper.

Recycling - Apple finally came around to a limited recycling program in 
the US, but they can do better. We want them to offer a comprehensive 
take-back and recycling program worldwide. Not just in the US or where 
Apple is legally compelled to.

It's time for Apple to use clean ingredients in all of its products, 
and to provide a free take-back program to reuse and recycle its 
products wherever they are sold. That means: Remove the worst toxic 
chemicals from all their products and production lines. Offer and 
promote free "take-back" for all their products everywhere they are 
sold.

We're not asking for just "good enough." We want Apple to do that 
"amaze us" thing that Steve does at MacWorld: go beyond the minimum and 
make Apple a green leader.

Go on, be a tiger

It's not about bruising Apple's image, Apple should be an environmental 
leader. We want Apple to be at the forefront of green technology, and 
to clearly show other companies how to do it the right way. But YOU 
have to tell Apple to go green to the core -- they listen to their 
customers, not to Greenpeace.

Innovative or Conventional?

Of course Apple isn't the only company that needs to change its ways. 
But in a recent Greenpeace scorecard, Apple ranked lower than HP, Dell, 
Nokia, and Sony. For an industry innovator, Apple is falling off the 
cart while the leaders of the industry are speeding ahead.

Apple is lagging behind both Dell and HP, who have both promised to 
start removing toxic chemicals from their products. And HP and Dell 
both have much better global "take back" programs than Apple.

Start a revolution on your desktop

Enough talk - let's get going. Ready to take a bite of Green Apple? 
Join thousands of other cool Green Apple activists and take action 
today.

Still got questions? Check out the questions about the campaign and 
iPoison + iWaste for more details about the campaign and Apple's 
environmental record.

If you want to get involved, visit the iBuzz page: 
http://www.greenmyapple.org/buzz


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Re: shocklogs wikipedia entry

[Geert Lovink]

Update: Wikipedia editors are again considering to delete the shocklog 
entry. Interesting remark is this context is their suspicion of 
'foreign language' blogs being involved as references. But who is 
foreign in this case? English for those write Dutch? Or Dutch for those 
know only English? Interesting to see how Larry Singer's Citizendium is 
putting pressure on Wikipedia to get rid of 'neologisms' and barbarian 
non-Anglo knowledge... Best, Geert

--

An editor has nominated the article Shocklog for deletion, under the 
Articles for deletion process. We appreciate your contributions, but 
the nominator doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for 
inclusion, and has explained why in the nomination (also see What 
Wikipedia is not and Deletion policy). Your opinions on why the topic 
of the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with 
the article are welcome: participate in the discussion by editing 
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shocklog. Add four tildes like this 
˜˜˜˜ to sign your comments. You can also edit the article Shocklog 
during the discussion, but do not remove the "Articles for Deletion" 
template (the box at the top of the article), this will not end the 
deletion debate. Jayden54Bot 13:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

seemingly a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms Cornell Rockey 
02:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Blog, as a "Shocklog" is a type of blog. Flakeloaf 04:10, 21 
January 2007 (UTC)
Delete Lacks sources demonstration sufficient use to satisfy WP:NEO. 
Sources consist of a couple of foreign-language blogs and an on-line 
Master's thesis. Need published sources complying with WP:RS 
--Shirahadasha 04:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Delete, basically a neologism, and an imprecise one at that. Is Stile 
Project a "shocklog"? Lankiveil 05:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

--

On 17 Jan 2007, at 11:54 AM, Geert Lovink wrote:

> (dear nettimers, together with students of the masters-of-media blog at
> the university of amsterdam i have been working on a wikipedia entry
> about so-called shock logs or shock blogs. it is been an interesting
 <...>


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shocklogs wikipedia entry

[Geert Lovink]

(dear nettimers, together with students of the masters-of-media blog at 
the university of amsterdam i have been working on a wikipedia entry 
about so-called shock logs or shock blogs. it is been an interesting 
experience to see that our entry has been deleted on a number of 
occasions because the entry term was too close to the contemporary and 
lacked reliable references. for instance, on 19:59, 6 January 2007 The 
Epopt (Talk | contribs) deleted "Shocklog" because it was a neologism. 
after this incident we brought back the entry and added a few 
references. let's see what happens next. regards, geert)

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

A shocklog is a weblog that usually contains controversial, critical, 
surprising and/or appalling content. The term shocklog is a combination 
of the words shock and weblog. In the past shock has been combined with 
other words to create popular terms, for example Shock Jock, Shock Rock 
and Shock Site. In all these cases the term is used to underline 
offensive and provocative content.

Shocklogs are weblogs that use shock and slander to sling mud at 
current affairs, public individuals, institutions and so on. Authors of 
shocklogs usually comment on an item in a very provoking and insulting 
way, often resulting in even more seriously offensive comments, such as 
threats of rape and murder. Occasionally shocklogs will incite the 
reader to undertake some (online) action, usually in the nature to 
harass or harm a specific target. The shocklog has a close relation to 
the static shock sites. The popularity of shocklogs make it interesting 
for advertisers and therefore these sites become forced to provide 
shocking material, sometimes leading to harassments and false 
accusations of innocent people.

Contents
  [hide]
1 Shocklogs and the mass media
2 The Netherlands
3 Shocklog popularity
4 References
5 See also
6 Further reading

[edit]Shocklogs and the mass media

Through their provocative actions, shocklogs have attracted the 
attention of national mass media more than once. By posting content on 
their weblogs they have alerted the media about certain issues. In 2004 
Dutch weblog Geenstijl and their visitors joined in a competition to 
come up with a name for a new taste of Doritos chips. Although there 
were some debates, in the end the Doritos Geenstijl was available in 
Dutch supermarkets. In 2006 the same weblog posted confidential and 
personal information of Ernst Wesselius, who was with the justice 
department in the Netherlands Antilles. The shocking part was that the 
weblog also posted personal erotic stories written by him. Retecool, 
another Dutch weblog, was mentioned in the news in 2005 when they asked 
their visitors to post edited photos about a new Dutch television 
channel called Talpa. When Talpa send the weblog the demand of deleting 
the posts, the weblog posted this message directly on the weblog. After 
24 hours the weblog decided to delete the photos. There have been 
countless more cases in which the shocklogs attracted the attention of 
national media, usually by calling on the participation of their 
readers.

[edit]The Netherlands

Shocklogs are especially popular in The Netherlands (called 
Treiterlogs). The main shocklogs do not only post offensive content 
exclusively, but they do draw a crowd that is often interested in 
expressing their frustrations. In many cases the delicate topics 
discussed on those sites anticipate on current sentiments in Dutch 
society. In this respect an example can be seen in the community’s 
response to the messages posted regarding the murder on the Dutch film 
director Theo van Gogh in 2004. When it became clear that the suspect 
had a Moroccan background, and that he’d acted on behalf of his radical 
islamic beliefs, the discussions on various shocklogs got overheated. 
The murder on Theo (who actually was quite experienced in posing 
controversial statements himself) leads to numerous ‘debates’ that 
consisted merely of explicit and even racist comments. The largest 
shocklogs in The Netherlands are Geenstijl, Jaggle, Retecool and 
Volkomenkut. The unique visitors on those sites vary from an estimated 
25 thousand to 38 thousand a day. The thing these Dutch shocklogs have 
in common is a more or less provocative style describing news facts, 
other websites and blogs.

[edit]Shocklog popularity

In 2005 the popular Dutch shocklog Geenstijl won the Dutch Bloggies 
award for Best Weblog. Probably due to its popularity with its readers 
it won a Dutch Bloggies award from the public for Best Weblog in 2006. 
The popularity of the shocklogs raised concerns in the traditional 
media [1].

[edit]References

Helm, Sjoerd van der. Bloggen is zo 2004. Een onderzoek naar de 
Nederlandse weblogwereld Masterthesis. Media Studies, Specialisation 
New Media. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands: 2005
Masters of Media. Shocklog: Introducing the term to the world 
Collaborative blog. Media Studies, Specialisatio

blogging, the nihilist impulse

[Geert Lovink]

(dear nettimers, this is a shortened version, first published in the  
german and danish editions of lettre internationale, of my ongoing  
essay on blogging. it was published recently on the web by  
http://www.eurozine.com. an extended version will appear in my next  
book zero comments that routledge new york plans to put in july 2007.  
the editor has not done anything with manuscript ever since I submitted  
early september 2006, so that was kind of encouraging news... if you  
are interested to read the pdf version and would know publishers would  
could do a translation, let me know. routledge only owns the rights to  
the english version. best, geert)

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-en.html

Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse
By Geert Lovink

"An der rationalen Tiefe erkennt man den Radikalen; im Verlust der  
rationalen Methode kündigt sich der Nihilismus an. Der Radikale besitzt  
immer eine Theorie; aber der Nihilist setzt an ihre Stelle die  
Stimmung." Max Bense (1949)

Weblogs or blogs are the successors of the '90s Internet "homepage" and  
create a mix of the private (online dairy) and the public (self-PR  
management). According to the latest rough estimates of the Blog  
Herald,[1] there are 100 million blogs worldwide, and it is nearly  
impossible to make general statements about their "nature" and divide  
them into proper genres. I will nonetheless attempt to do this. It is  
of strategic importance to develop critical categories of a theory of  
blogging that takes the specific mixture of technology, interface  
design, software architecture, and social networking into account.

Instead of merely looking into the emancipatory potential of blogs, or  
emphasizing their counter-cultural folklore, I see blogs as part of an  
unfolding process of "massification" of this still new medium. What the  
Internet lost after 2000 was the "illusion of change". This void made  
way for large-scale, interlinked conversations through freely available  
automated software.

A blog is commonly defined as a frequent, chronological publication of  
personal thoughts and Web links, a mixture of what is happening in a  
person's life and what is happening on the Web and in the world out  
there.[2] A blog allows for the easy creation of new pages: text and  
pictures are entered into an online form (usually with the title, the  
category, and the body of the article) and this is then submitted.  
Automated templates take care of adding the article to the home page,  
creating the new full article page (called permalink), and adding the  
article to the appropriate date- or category-based archive. Because of  
the tags that the author puts onto each posting, blogs let us filter by  
date, category, author, or other attributes. They (usually) allow the  
administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permissions and  
access are easily managed.[3]

Microsoft's in-house blogger Robert Scoble lists five elements that  
made blogs so hot. The first is the "ease of publishing", the second he  
calls "discoverability", the third is "cross-site conversations", the  
fourth is permalinking (giving the entry a unique and stable URL), and  
the last is syndication (replication of content elsewhere).[4] Lyndon  
from Flock Blog gives a few tips for blog writing, showing how ideas,  
feelings, and experiences can be turned into news format, and showing  
how dominant PowerPoint has become: "Make your opinion known, link like  
crazy, write less, 250 words is enough, make headlines snappy, write  
with passion, include bullet point lists, edit your post, make your  
posts easy to scan, be consistent with your style, litter the post with  
keywords."[5] Whereas the email-based list culture echoes a postal  
culture of writing letters and occasionally essays, the ideal blog post  
is defined by snappy public relations techniques.

Web services like blogs cannot be separated from the output they  
generate. The politics and aesthetics defined by first users will  
characterize the medium for decades to come. Blogs appeared during the  
late 1990s, in the shadow of dot-com mania.[6] Blog culture was not  
developed enough to be dominated by venture capital with its hysterical  
demo-or-die-now-or-never mentality. Blogs first appeared as casual  
conversations that could not easily be commodified. Building a  
laid-back parallel world made it possible for blogs to form the  
crystals (a term developed by Elias Canetti) from which millions of  
blogs grew and, around 2003, reached critical mass.

Blogging in the post-9/11 period closed the gap between Internet and  
society. Whereas dot-com suits dreamt of mobbing customers flooding  
their e-commerce portals, blogs were the actual catalysts that realized  
worldwide democratization of the Net. As much as "democratization"  
means &qu

Web 3.0: for the user, by the user, of the user

[Geert Lovink]

NUWeb: A project for Web 3.0: for the user, by the user, of the user!

Taiwan's National ChungCheng University announced, in a press 
conference held in Taipei on December 27, a Web 3.0 project with a goal 
to build a new Web that is for the user, by the user, and of the user. 
Prof. Sun Wu, the leader of the project, said, "In Web 1.0, contents of 
the Web were provided by Content Service Providers (CSP) such as news 
companies or general institutes who set up websites to provide the 
information service, while the users are purely information consumers. 
In Web 2.0, many web service providers, such as Myspace, blogger, 
Youtube, Flickr, digg, Wikipedia, etc., set up websites that allow the 
users to participate in community sharing and collaboration, so the 
users are no longer purely information consumers, they are also the 
content providers. In a sociological sense, Web 2.0 is an era that the 
Web is for the user and also by the user."

"However", Professor Wu continued, "The Web 2.0 era still have some 
serious problems that makes it far from being an ideal Web era, so 
there is a need for the Web to move on to its next stage."

"Although the Web was once dreamed to be a Utopia, the cruel fact is 
that the Web is now basically in the hands the commercial power. More 
extremely, the Web is now dominated by the super empires: Google, 
Yahoo!, and Microsoft, which control over 80% of the Web power. Most 
Net users are basically living on the free services provided by the 
super empires in the Web, yet ironically, such services are for the 
purpose of making money. The dominance problem causes two other serious 
problems, the autonomy and the privacy problems. As the Net users rely 
more and more on these super portals, their personal data and privacy 
are at stake, being potentially utilized for monetization, or even 
worse, being leaked out to criminal groups. As the service platform is 
owned by the service providers, the users do not have autonomy. They 
have to agree to an unfair TOS (terms of service) before they are 
entitled to receive the service. When YouTube was sold for 1.6 billion 
US dollars, its users have no say and no share at all even though the 
value of YouTube was created by tens of millions of "You" in this 
Tube."

"Info-sharing which is the most attractive feature of the Web is still 
limited and sometimes inconvenient in the Web 2.0 era. For example, the 
Net users very often have to take a lot of effort to upload pictures or 
other stuff to the web service sites, which could be time consuming or 
cumbersome. As the servers have space limitation, the sharing is 
limited by size too. Such tedious processes and the size limitations 
sometimes would discourage the information sharing at all. For example, 
for a group of friends who join a trip together and return with giga 
bytes of pictures and videos, it will be a headache as to how to share 
those multimedia files"

"All the above-mentioned problems, the dominance, autonomy, privacy, 
and limitation of sharing, all come from a common cause: the fact that 
the Net users do not have a powerful web server of their own and do not 
have their own Web", observed Professor Sun Wu.

Because website is the main platform for information sharing as well as 
other Web activities, owning no website means having no power and no 
property in the Cyberspace. That is the root of the problems.

"Our solution is the NUWeb project", said Prof. Wu with a smile. 
"NUWeb, which stands for Net User's Web, is a new Web system for the 
Net users. It is a project to pursue the Web 3.0 idealism. It will 
empower the Net users by providing a software that will turn the user's 
PC into a high power Web service site through which the users can 
conduct information sharing, community service, blog publishing, etc., 
in a much more efficient and convenient way, with virtually no size 
limitation and with full autonomy of their own."

"In our opinion, Web 3.0 is a social revolution in the Cyberspace to 
pursue democracy; a Web that is for the user, by the user, and of the 
user."

"Technically speaking, NUWeb is a user-centric software. It is a 
decentralized portal and information system aiming at providing a more 
efficient and effective information sharing, community service, and 
information management."

"NUWeb is composed of three main subsystems: NUWeb PP: A personal 
information and service platform for the users to set up their own 
portal right on their PCs. NUWeb CP: A community portal system, and 
NUWeb.cc, the community center of the NUWeb Cyberspace.", "With NUWeb, 
the users can set up their own websites in a few minutes easily without 
the need to apply for URL and without the need of knowledge for website 
administration."

"As the web server is resident in the user's own PC, the users have 
full control of the sharing regarding what to share and who to share, 
without the file size limitation. The users not only have a higher 
flexibility and ca

Interview with Saskia Sassen by Magnus Wennerhag

[Geert Lovink]

Denationalized states and global assemblages
Interview with Saskia Sassen by Magnus Wennerhag

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-11-20-sassen-en.html

"The liberal state has been hijacked for neoliberal agendas," says 
Saskia Sassen in interview, and in some cases even for "very modern 
despotisms". It is necessary to repossess the state apparatus for 
genuine liberal democracy, and ideally to create a "denationalized 
state".

Magnus Wennerhag: Today, there is an obvious difference between the 
rhetoric of liberalism – that is, liberalism as political ideology – 
and the actual workings of the state in liberal-democratic polities. 
 From an historical perspective, how should we understand this 
difference?

Saskia Sassen: I would distinguish two issues. One is that 
historically, liberalism is deeply grounded in a particular combination 
of circumstances. Most important is the struggle by merchants and 
manufacturers to gain liberties vis-à-vis the Crown and the 
aristocracy, and the use of the market as the institutional setting 
that both gave force and legitimacy to that claim. Seen this way, why 
should liberalism not have decayed? What rescued liberalism was 
Keynesianism, the extension of a socially empowering project to the 
whole of society. This is the crisis today: Keynesianism has been 
attacked by new types of actors, including segments of the political 
elite. What is happening today is on the one hand a decay (objectively 
speaking) of liberalism even as an ideology – being replaced with 
neoliberalism, attacks on the welfare state, etc – and, on the other 
hand, a decay of the structural conditions within which Keynesian 
liberalism could function. So the struggle today has been renamed: one 
key term is democratic participation and representation, and those who 
use this language will rarely invoke liberalism. When we praise 
liberalism, it is often a situated defense: as against neoliberalism, 
as against fundamentalisms and despotisms – this is not necessarily 
invoking historical liberalism, which at its origins was defending the 
rights of an emerging class of property owners, but the best aspects of 
a doctrine that had to do with the fight against the despotism of Crown 
and nobility.

MW: In your new book Territory, authority, rights: From medieval to 
global assemblages (Princeton University Press, 2006) you call the 
development of the US state "illiberal". Is this a more general 
development that can be seen in other countries as well?

SS: Theoretically speaking, I would say that we will see similar trends 
in other liberal democratic regimes that are neo-liberalizing their 
social policies, hollowing out their legislatures/parliaments, and 
augmenting as well as privatizing or protecting the power of their 
executive or prime ministerial branch of government. That is to say, we 
will see these trends where we see the conditions I identify for the 
US, even though they will assume their own specific forms and contents. 
I would say that Blair's reign in the UK especially since the war on 
Iraq has clearly moved in this direction. Instead of being guided (and 
disciplined!) by the Cabinet, which is parliament based, Blair set up a 
parallel "cabinet" at Downing Street from which he got much of his 
advice and confirmations of the correctness of his decisions. This had 
the effect of hollowing out the real Cabinet. This may also explain why 
some of the leading figures of the real Cabinet resigned: Robin Cook, 
Clare Short. All of this is well known and much commented on in the UK. 
At the same time, I would argue that even though Berlusconi's regime 
had some of these features, it was more a consequence of corruption and 
manipulation of the political apparatus than the type of systemic 
development I am alluding to. The answer to your question is also 
empirical: we need research to understand where this systemic trend is 
emerging and becoming visible/operational.

MW: Many European countries are currently contemplating introducing 
some type of "citizenship tests". In Sweden, the traditionally social 
liberal Folkpartiet has pursued this issue and proposed that immigrants 
have to pass a language test to become Swedish citizens. Generally, the 
party wants to apply more paternalistic political measures – "tough on 
crime", more discipline in schools – especially regarding immigrants. 
The corresponding political party in Denmark has, during its time in 
office, brought this development even further. Speaking of liberalism 
as a political ideology, do you see it as being in the midst of a 
crisis, or is it simply adapting to the conditions of the prevailing 
(economic, political, legal, etc) order?

SS: I would say traditional liberalism is in crisis, or at least being 
attacked by the governments themselves as well as by powerful economic 
actors and certain traditional society sectors, such as fundamentalist 
evangelical groups in the US. Why should it last forever? Nothi

old and new media: the fight is on

[Geert Lovink]

(Old and new media, once seen by some as a jolly hybrid, are ready for 
a fight. Watch this video: a clash between a 'journalist' and a 
'shockblog' founder. Wikipedia reports that "on 30 November 2006, a 
senior journalist at The Daily Telegraph, Glenn Milne, had to be 
restrained and escorted from the stage of Melbourne's Crown Casino 
Palladium Ballroom, after he attacked and berated another journalist 
during the prestigious Walkley journalism awards." Thanks to Josephine 
Starrs for the pointer. Geert)

--

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/11/30/116427768.html

THE most prestigious night in Australian journalism erupted into farce 
last night when one of the nation's leading political commentators 
physically assaulted a rival.

A red-faced Glenn Milne marched on to the stage during the presentation 
of an award by Stephen Mayne and abused the founder of the Crikey 
website.

He pushed Mayne in the chest and repeatedly referred to him as "a 
disgrace". Mayne jumped off stage as Milne, slurring his words, 
continued to abuse him.

Milne, who writes for the Sunday Herald Sun, Sunday Telegraph and The 
Australian, was restrained by security guards and escorted off stage.

There has been bad blood between the pair since 2005 when Mayne 
criticised Milne's reporting of a squabble between NSW politicians Bob 
Carr and John Brogden.

"I just saw this man with drunken, wild eyes coming at me. He threw me 
off the stage. It was quite a drop and I've twinged my ankle as a 
result," Mayne said. "Glenn Milne is not even in the top 50 Crikey 
victims list. This proves what thin-skinned souls some journalists 
are."

--

See also:

http://www.crikey.com.au/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crikey


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"in association with nettime.org"

[Geert Lovink]

> CYBERSALON @ THE DANA CENTRE
> DIGITAL WORK & CREATIVE MAPPING
> The Science Museum's Dana Centre, 165 Queen's Gate, South Kensington, 
> London SW7 5HE 
> Date: March 07 - to be announced
> Cost: Cost and booking details to be announced
> Nearest tubes: South Kensington/Gloucester Road
>
> A one-day conference in association with nettime.org  
> which explores the geographical and social structures of workers in 
> the Creative Industries and particularly the New Media sector


#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
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iTube, YouSpace, WeCreate

[Geert Lovink]

(The MyCreativity convention on creative industries research in
Amsterdam is on today and tomorrow. Below the intro that Ned Rossiter
and I wrote for a free newspaper that was printed on this occasion in
a circulation of 10.000. More on www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity.
Geert)

Intro to the MyCreativity newspaper

iTube, YouSpace, WeCreate

Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter 

**Have We Been Creative Yet?**

Conferences on 'creative industries' have become a set feature in many
countries over the past few years. They usually consist of government
policy-makers, arts administrators, a minister or two, a handful of
professors, along with representatives from the business community
eager to consolidate their government subsidies. What's missing?
Forget about analysis or critique. And there's not going to be any
creative producers or artists about – the condition of possibility
for 'the generation and exploitation of intellectual property'. For
students and starters, these conferences cost too much to register.
These events are for captains-of-industry only. Why bother anyway
to mix-up with the dressed-up? There are coffee breaks dedicated to
'networking', but the deals appear to have been done elsewhere.

**The Tragedy of the Suits**

 From an anthropological perspective, such policy-meets-business
events index the class composition of the creative industries. And in
some respects, the endangered species might be those positioned as
managerial intermediaries – the policy writers, consultants and arts
administrators, government ministers and business representatives. The
increasing proliferation of social networks associated with new media
technologies is one explanation for this: who needs an intermediary
when you're already connected? The consultancy class is in danger
of becoming extinct due to Web transparency. The other key reason
concerns the disconnect between political architectures of regulation
and the ever-elusive transformations of cultural production situated
within information economies.

**Dream, Yo Bastards**

The MyCreativity project, of which this newspaper is a part, is
not focussing on the critique of creative industries' hype. It
was our intention to go beyond the obvious deconstruction of the
Richard Florida agenda. Our interest has always been about setting
forth expansive agendas and understandings of the interrelations
between culture, the economy and network cultures. Critique should
aim to change policies, and define alternative models, instead of
merely deconstructing the agenda of today's business politicians.
MyCreativity emphasizes re:: and search. Let's formulate questions
and new strategies. Neither excitement nor scepticism are sufficient
responses. Since policy formation is never about the production of
original ideas, but instead is a parasitical function, we have some
confidence that eventually the range of activities and concepts
generated within MyCreativity and similar events will trickle up
the policy food chain of creative industries. No need for extensive
lobbying. Copying, after all, is the precondition of TheirCreativity –
an activity engaged in concept translation.

**Trading the Playful**

The scattered and fragmented character of experiencing work and
working conditions, in short its postmodern nature, means that young
people in particular entering the labour market are fully exposed to
neo-liberal conditions. The rhetoric of deregulation has always been
a ruse for ever-increasing stratagems of biopolitical re-regulation.
Intellectual property regimes are the official doctrine behind that
story. But how many get a taste of the revenues? Where are the
property disputes and why don't we hear from dissidents that refuse to
sign copyright contracts? Technologies of control and the surveillance
society comprise a more sinister, invisible power. The political of
creativity is never found within policy pronouncements but instead
accumulates as a class tension between creative labour and creative
capital.

**No Sublime**

Where lies creativity in all this? Isn't all this talk about economy
and money killing the very untamable energy to tinker? The delicate,
subversive and playful act of putting things together can all too
easily be destroyed by pragmatic considerations. What creative
industries calls into question (and in fact destroys) is the romantic
position of the artist. In this, there is the notion that the artist
is destined to be poor and will have to be desperate in order not to
lose inspiration. Wild gestures and inspiration will be killed by
a professional approach in which the artist gets stuck into fixed
patterns and styles. This, we all know: a rich artist is a dead artist
and current intellectual property arrangements only further strengthen
this rule. What is important to note is that today's creative work
leaves behind such notions and places the creative producer in the
midst

Internet and the Intellectuals

[Geert Lovink]

Dear nettimers,

as some of you will know this week IGF, the Internet Governance Forum
(http://www.intgovforum.org/) is on in Athens. It's the forum that
has been created by Kofi Annan after the the second World Summit on
the Internet Society, held in Tunis, November 2005. There are over
1200 delegates from 90 countries. Even though the topics look familiar
the overall tone seems somewhat less formal. The topics vary from
promomoting multilingualism and local content, openness, security and
access (see program: http://www.intgovforum.org/wksshop_program3.htm).
One workshop clearly stood out for me, one that I had never seen
in this Internet governance, namely the role of intellectuals in
the IGF. As some of you might know in 1997 I wrote an essay about
virtual intellectuals Below an excerpt. I associate the sudden
appearance of this topic with the remark of Nitin Desai, chair of
the Internet Governance Forum organising group, who said: "The
net has outgrown its origins as a network run by and for computer
specialists. With a billion plus users world-wide it is no longer the
preserve of scientists and technologists. The big expansion now is
taking place in the non-English speaking developing world. It is now
becoming a central part of public administration, business operations,
telecommunications, news dissemination and entertainment."

Geert

--

http://info.intgovforum.org/wksp28.php

Intellectuals in the IGF policy process:  From knowledge to results

The IGF is a deliberative body – it ‘thinks’ about the governance
question, intending to move thought to ‘action’ in its policy
audience. This puts a premium on disciplined and methodical analysis –
which is the preserve of intellectuals and academics, when they hew to
their core. How best can IGF engage its intellectuals, to maximize the
quality of IGF output over its five years?

For the first half, the workshop asks, ‘What is the role of
intellectuals?’ The second half of the workshop asks, ‘How might that
work?’ A two-panelist team ‘provokes’ discussion for each segment,
with brief presentations. The objective is discussion.

Among the questions to be addressed:

Are intellectuals wise people who guide the policy-making process, or
can there be a complementary partnership between the doers and the
thinkers?

If intellectuals accept a place of trust, as neutral investigators,
how do they keep that faith when they advocate policy?

What is the place of trust, between intellectuals and policy makers?

How can policy makers and intellectuals get best results for and from
each other? What working methods and time frames serve best?

Are there particular requirements on the intellectual community?

The central objective is fruitful discussion among all who attend.
Likely outputs are action items: how IGF may most effectively engage
its intellectuals over five years.




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re: Important Thai education site closed

[Geert Lovink]

> From: somkiat tangnamo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Oct 1, 2006 2:54 AM
> Subject: Statement of the Midnight University
>
> Statement of the Midnight University
>
> "Opposing the Closure of Channels of Free Communication"
>
> Beginning on Friday September 29th, the Midnight University's website 
> has been blocked by the Ministry of Information and Communication 
> Technology (ICT), Thailand. However, ours was not the first one to be 
> blocked or tampered with by the power of the Coup Council. The 
> Midnight University's considered reaction to the September 19 th coup 
> is strong disapproval of such a reckless solution to the nation's 
> political problems. Nonetheless, we also realize that it is too late 
> to reverse it and the only way out is to lend a hand in pushing our 
> country back onto the path of democratic development.
>
> The Council for Democratic Reform (CDR) has claimed that this coup is 
> the beginning of a political reform process which includes the 
> drafting of a new constitution. And yet, the provisions concerning the 
> drafting of a new constitution and political reform in the Provisional 
> Constitution of the CDR do not allow the full and free exercise of 
> political rights and civil liberties by the people, which is the key 
> condition for a successful political reform. Popular participation 
> does not simply mean being selected to sit in a constituent assembly, 
> but also denotes the opportunity for mutual learning and free exchange 
> of ideas. Therefore, an atmosphere of subjection and control by the 
> military under the CDR will rule out any possibility of genuine 
> political reform.
>
> For that reason, the Midnight University held a press conference on 
> September 28th, to oppose the political reform process as stipulated 
> in the Provisional Constitution and propose an alternative that would 
> allow for the full restitution of rights and liberties to the people. 
> To get our point across, we performed a symbolic act of tearing up 
> copies of the Provisional Constitution and posted a report of the said 
> event on the Midnight University's website.
>
> Hence, the ICT's immediate imposition of a blockage on our website.
>
> Actually, it is not hard for the Midnight University to overcome this 
> technical difficulty. We have indeed received various offers from 
> foreign servers to host our website. Be that as it may, we are of the 
> opinion that the problem of availability of a public space is not 
> technical in nature, but essentially political. And it has arisen 
> because the self-proclaimed "Council for Democratic Reform" has used 
> its coup-begotten power to impose a blockage on public space. 
> Therefore, we need to fight this illegitimate power together right 
> here in this land rather than evade it and find a new public space 
> elsewhere.
>
> As the Midnight University has earlier warned, political reform 
> couldn't be realized in an atmosphere shorn of people's rights and 
> liberties. That the Coup Council has thoughtlessly closed down 
> websites that expressed dissenting views on the coup shows that it is 
> incapable of leading a political reform that is free and equally open 
> to all. To bring this power to an end peacefully, Thai society must 
> not submit to it. Instead, we should together pressure it to stop the 
> violation of people's rights and liberties at once.
>
> It is true that, given freedom, there will be some who would exploit 
> it to try to destroy or disrupt political reform. And yet, only the 
> full exercise of rights and liberties can enlighten and empower a 
> society to fight the lies and half-truths of corrupt politicians 
> seeking a return to power. On the contrary, a society whose learning 
> and communication is kept under tutelage will remain weak and unable 
> to resist them.
>
> In place of an arbitrary and selective censorship based on a 
> subjective feeling of distrust and animosity of the censors, the 
> complete and indiscriminate opening of all channels of communication 
> will result in a free, fair and predictable rule of the game for all, 
> thus rectifying the arbitrary, unchecked and uncontrolled exercise of 
> power that is a major weakness of all coup-makers. By guaranteeing the 
> equal rights and liberties of the people to information, the Coup 
> Council will be able to tap into the real source of power far greater 
> than whatever it can get from its illegitimate coup.
> 30 September 2006


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Pew: Experts assess Future of Internet

[Geert Lovink]

(report full of contradictions and yesterday's predictions. interesting 
that the growing international dimension of the Internet is not 
mentioned at all, except for a reference to mandarin. it is quite clear 
which narrow group of wasp expertocracy the pew internet project 
focused on here, and how predictable the outcome then becomes... thanks 
to soenke for fwding. /geert)

The Pew Internet Project announces the release of its second report on
The Future of the Internet.  The press release is below; for the full
report, please visit:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp

Experts and analysts assess the future of the internet

(Washington, September 24) - A survey of internet leaders, activists,
and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

o   A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new
opportunities in a "flattening" world.
o   Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more
activity is automated and "smart agents" proliferate. However, a
significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans'
ability to control the technology in the future. This significant
majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our
ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major
surprises in the survey.
o   Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker
productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
o   Tech "refuseniks" will emerge as a cultural group characterized
by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign
way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of
violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
o   People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about
themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some
privacy.
o   English will be a universal language of global communications,
but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other
languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

At the same time, there was strong dispute about those futuristic
scenarios among notable numbers of 742 respondents to survey conducted
by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. Those
who raised challenges believe that governments and corporations will not
necessarily embrace policies that will allow the network to spread to
under-served populations; that serious social inequalities will persist;
and that "addiction" is an inappropriate notion to attach to people's
interest in virtual environments.

The experts and analysts also split evenly on a central question of
whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater
transparency of people and institutions afforded by the internet: 46%
agreed that the benefits of greater transparency of organizations and
individuals would outweigh the privacy costs and 49% disagreed.

"Key builders of the next generation of internet often agree on the
direction technology will change, but there is much less agreement about
the social and political impact those changes will have," said Janna
Quitney Anderson, lead author of the report "The Future of the Internet
II," and communications professor at Elon. "One of their big concerns
is: Who controls the internet architecture they have created?"

The report is built around respondents' responses to scenarios
stretching to the year 2020 and hundreds of their written elaborations
that address such things as the kinds of new social interactions that
will occur when more "meetings" take place on screens; the changes that
will occur in nation-states; the evolution of autonomous technology; and
the proper ways to police the internet.

The Pew Internet/Elon survey was conducted online by invitation to
experts identified in an extensive literature and periodical review and
active members of several key technology groups:  The Internet Society,
The World Wide Web Consortium, the Working Group on Internet Governance,
ICANN, Internet2 and the Association of Internet Researchers. Many
respondents are at the pinnacle of internet leadership. Some of the
survey respondents are "working in the trenches" of building the Web.
Most of the people in this latter category came to the survey by
invitation to those on the email list of the Pew Internet Project. The
survey was an "opt in," self-selecting effort. That process does not
yield a random, representative sample.

On September 20th the Pew Internet Project released a Data Memo,
Politics Online, August 2006:

On a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the internet
for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term
elections. That corresponds to 19% of adult internet users, or 13% of
all Americans over the age of 18.

This is a high-point in the number of internet users turning to
cyberspace on the average day for political news or information,
exceeding the 21 million figure registered in a Pew Internet Pr

Critique of Ranking and Listing; Exchange with Kenneth C. Werbin

[Geert Lovink]

Critique of Ranking and Listing
Exchange with Kenneth C. Werbin
By Geert Lovink

Since the early nineties I have been engaged in email-based 
mailinglists. In the beginning it was a tool for to communicate and 
exchange texts and arguments with a growing group of people. I hesitate 
to use the word community as I never saw lists as safe areas for 
identity building but as arenas of contestation. To me, email lists 
were primarily discursive machines, essential in the making of a 
networked digital public domain. As it happens things started to get 
complicated. Group psychology kicked in, there was 'symbolic capital' 
created and people's time and emotions had to be rewarded. Five or so 
years ago the study of list cultures emerged. These were not technical, 
even though many complained about the technical limitations of list 
software such as Majordomo, Listserv and Mailman. It was the limited 
complexity of the dialogues, the lack of overview one gets of threaded 
discussions that irritated common users who had no emotional investment 
in the project.

Even though I had a particular interest in contemporary studies of 
German fascism, I never made the link between electronic mailing lists 
and the bureaucratic efforts of Eichmann's assistants to list Jews, 
gypsies and others. The computer aspect of listing deportees had been 
described by Goetz Aly and Karl-Heinz Roth in their brief but excellent 
1984 book Die restlose Erfassung (The Nazi Census), which, at the time, 
made a big impact on me. As Michael Kater writes in his review (1), 
order is the premise of destruction. We all somehow know that Ordnung 
by punchcard prepared the path to Auschwitz. But to read all the 
details, and then remember, and implement its consequences in everyday 
politics is something else. In particular if you've made computing your 
passion and profession, as happened to me. Edwin Black's IBM and the 
Holocaust from 2001 provided us with the complete history. Far more 
detailed, it fails the analytic clarity of Aly and Roth, and political 
engagement, as this booklet was part of a poltical campaign against 
organizing a census in West-Germany. The collective memory of why 
authorities gather data of entire populations, back then, and a broad 
resistance was still alive, back then--and vanished so rapidly, 
particularly after 911. The resistance in 1970 against a census in the 
Netherlands is one of the first campaign that I remember. My parents, 
and in particular my mother refused categorically and explained the 
protest to me. The burning of Amsterdam's population register was one 
of the many heroic acts of the Dutch resistance that I grew up with. 
However, the attack in March 1943 came too late, and the question why 
the deportation of Jews was so systematic, so successful, particularly 
in my birth town, so proud of its Nazi resistance, could only be posed 
in the nineties, and is still a matter of fierce debate.

Hailing from a long-line of Marxist thinkers and activists, as well as 
Shoah descendants, Montreal-based Kenneth C. Werbin works as a PhD 
student in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia 
University. His nearly finished dissertation, The List Serves: Bare 
Life in Cybernetic Order, probes questions of list culture; arguing 
that the Third Reich's engagement of a conjunction of early IBM 
computing technology, listing practices, and discourses of 
surveillance, identification and control, was the first cybernetic 
feedback system for maintaining social order around bare life; and 
investigating how the resonance of this conjunction reverberates today. 
Also a part-time lecturer, Kenneth participates as a moderator/event 
coordinator for the University of the Streets Public Dialogue Series, 
and is a student researcher with the Canadian Research Alliance for 
Community Innovation and Networking. I got into contact with Kenneth 
Werbin in 2005. The context of this exchange was the June 2006 debates 
on the nettime list concerning moderation and the growing limits of 
email lists in an era in which most users hang out on the Web, play 
games on their mobile phones and no longer care about their 
over-spammed email inboxes.

GL: Could you give a short history of the list? I am only familiar with 
the sociology of the cue, a mass practice in Eastern Europe.

KW: When I first began my work on how lists serve, I was very narrowly 
investigating email lists, or listservs. However, in historicizing the 
use of lists in power/knowledge, I ended up going much further back to 
ancient times, discovering that the majority of early writings were 
constituted in lists, and much of early social organization revolved 
around listing practices. While there is little research that 
explicitly treats these questions, I am grateful that I stumbled across 
the work of the anthropologist Jack Goody (2) who studied early 
Sumerian, Mesopotamian and Assyrian documents, and pr

re: Steve Cisler in search for ISEA 2006 blogs

[Geert Lovink]

> From: "Edward Shanken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Here are some more:
>
> http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ICSummit2006/wiki/
>
> And some additional individual blogs listed here:
> http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/ICSummit2006/wiki/pmwiki.php? 
> n=Main.BlogList
>
> Edward Shanken
> ISEA Rapporteur
> Professor of Art History
> Savannah College of Art & Design





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more from steve cisler on isea conference streaming

[Geert Lovink]

> Streaming of ISEA main talks
> open Quicktime player and put in this url:
> rtsp://130.65.200.17/zero1.sdp  I tried it and it
> works
>
> higher bandwidth:
> rtsp://130.65.200.17/zero1-hq.sdp
>
> S. Sassen talks at 4 pm California time.
>
> www.socialtext.net/isea2006/index.cgi  for the
> rapporteurs scribing here.


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Steve Cisler in search for ISEA 2006 blogs

[Geert Lovink]

> The kiwis are writing a lot:
> http://www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/list/by/ISEA
>
> ISEA by Proxy: Blog Collection 0.1
>
> ISEA2006Rapporteur
> http://www.eu.socialtext.net/isea2006/
>
> media arts network [ma-net]
> http://www.ma-net.org/isea.html North West UK
> perspectives.
>
> CRUMB Crisis Centre http://www.crisistobliss.net/
> Amazing recipes!
>
> The Observatory http://www.scanz.net.nz/theobservatory/
>
> Patrick Lichty's perspectives
> http://exoagency.blogspot.com/
>
> Ken Gregory's Perspectives
> http://cheapmeatdreamsandacorns.blogspot.com/

What other blog are covering ISEA?

geert


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Out-Cooperating the Empire? - Exchange with Christoph Spehr

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire- 
exchange-with-christoph-spehr/

Out-Cooperating the Empire?

Exchange between Geert Lovink and Christoph Spehr on Creative Labour  
and the Hybrid Work of Cooperation

I have just finished an exchange with Christoph Spehr, the German ‘free  
cooperation’ theorist, on creative labour and the hybrid work of  
cooperation. This online dialogue grew out of the work that Trebor  
Scholz and I did on the documentation of the Free Cooperation project.  
A book is scheduled to come out with Autonomedia late 2006 in which a  
key text on the art of (online) collaboration was written by German  
theorist Christoph Spehr. The following dialogue started as a series of  
comments by Christoph Spehr on the introduction to the Free Cooperation  
anthology that Trebor Scholz and I wrote in January 2006. An earlier  
online interview between Christoph Spehr and me took place in June 2003  
and can be found in the nettime archive. In this conversation we try to  
jump over our shadows and discuss precarious work, the gift economy  
concept and the relation between online and offline work. What does it  
mean to ‘out-cooperate’ the Empire in the sense of out-playing,  
out-performing the System? Is it aimed at creating  
‘surplus-virtuosity’, drawing from a rich and diverse pool of lived  
experiences? Out-cooperating strategies should be read as the network  
equivalent of the outsourcing logic and relates back to questions of  
scalability, mass-adoption of ‘social networking’ practices admidst a  
looming crisis how to monetarize cultural artifacts (and earn a decent  
income). (Geert)

Cooperation & Individualization

GL: I discussed with you whether to have the word ‘online’ in the title  
of our Free Cooperation book, but you didn’t prefer that. Is it because  
the Internet hype is over? Why do you dislike writing texts on online  
collaboration? Or do you think the distinction between real and virtual  
should not be made?

CS: I really think such a distinction leads us into the wrong  
direction. We all are tempted to produce texts that look smart because  
they put ‘online’ and ‘cooperation’ in the title. It’s part of a  
wishful promise to scrutinize exciting, new, really sophisticated forms  
of interaction. But I doubt that there is such a thing as  
non-sophisticated social interaction. It’s no accident that it’s much  
easier to make a computer predict the course of a space vessel than to  
program a roboter to bake pancakes. Space is very empty. The Internet  
is empty, compared to a kitchen. It’s a point of view that we’d do  
‘basic stuff’ at home in the kitchen with our kids, partners,  
organizing the day etc., and do ‘advanced stuff’ out there in Internet  
communities or doing conferences – an idiom of would-be  
patriarchal-academic classism. Cooperation is alwaysa complex thing.

GL: What do we mean by complexity? For me this word has often been  
misused by experts who are incapable or just too lazy to explain what a  
subject matter is all about and instead say: ‘You have to understand,  
this is a complex matter.’

CS: People using the term ‘complexity’ in that way have no idea about  
its meaning. All they want to say is ‘Keep out - this is not your  
business.’ But complexity is something completely different. A complex  
structure is one with a high density of information, a great range of  
reactions and options without being really random, something that  
cannot be brought down to a formula, cannot be exactly predicted. We  
are only just beginning to understand how complex structures work or  
are generated. Variety, feedback, interaction play a great role. We  
have come to see complex structures everywhere: life, nature, history,  
is like that. So while we think we would give orders, realize plans,  
understand processes, what we really do is a labour of managing  
complexity, with more or less satisfying results.

The point is, writing a program is usually much less complex than what  
happens in a kitchen - cooking, talking, raising children, forming  
ideas, reaffirming and changing social structures, doing the dishes.  
But when we try to build online networks and online communities, we  
should learn from ‘real life’ networks and communities. And maybe,  
‘real life’ interaction may get inspired by how we do it in the Net,  
too. And both should show a different strategy of managing complexity  
than the dominant actors in bureaucracy, in the military, in politics  
do. Theirmain strategy remains one of reducing complexity by  
authoritarian means, bringing it into hierarchical order. But they,  
too, are learning, and learning fast.

GL: Now what was that about the Internet. Is it complex? Or, is  
cooperation on the Internet complex?

CS: It is the strength of the Internet that it has a structure of  
emergence: building rich structures out of very few and very simple  
rules. But when it comes to cooperationon

Adrian Lucas: Network-Subject Duality

[Geert Lovink]

(This is a short text that Adrian Lucas, a consultant on risk 
aggregation in Zuerich sent me. I thought it was interesting enough to 
forward it to nettime. Adrian gave permission to send it to the list. 
Geert)

Network-Subject Duality
By Adrian Lucas

What the wave-particle duality is to physics (2 alternative ways of 
reading physical phenomena), network-subject duality is to society?

Unfortunately, networks are rarely thought of as wave-like (using terms 
of light: interference, diffraction, etc) except perhaps by Deleuze, 
instead networks are conventionally imagined as many-particle systems; 
i.e. if you ask someone in the street what a network is, they will 
probably give you a 'particle-like' view, and say it's a number of 
subject-nodes connected by links between them. It's very difficult for 
us to exit the subject-centric view; similarly scientists find it very 
difficult to exit a particle-centric view of physics or biology 
(biologists try it with their discourses on 'holism', but how many are 
up to the challenge?). Subjects and networks are possibly neither real 
nor true, but they are 2 very effective, and complementary, ways of 
reading, of trying to make sense of, societal phenomena.

Is there a third paradigmatic way of reading societal phenomena? I 
would argue that Marxist thinking is subject-centric (proletariat as 
revolutionary subject), and in that sense Marxism is like classical 
economics, just upside down, the view from those who realise that they 
are exploited (as I say "Exploitation makes the world go round"). I 
don't know of a third paradigm for reading society, and since the 
subject-centric view (despite Barthes, Deleuze, Foucault) is still so 
dominant, I do think network-centric readings are very necessary, and 
extremely difficult (because we keep falling back into many-subject 
mode..).

I would also differentiate art and culture, and say that art is 
subject-centric, whereas culture is network-like. "Network cultures" is 
not an oxymoron but a tautology; "culture is always network-like", 
"culture is network". Art is completely implicated in the 
subject-centric paradigm of classical economics and communism, the only 
difference between the two is that the official art of communism is an 
art of a many-subject body. What the Soviet dissidents did was not so 
much art as culture, but after the dissolution of Sovietism, and 
therefore of dissidism, that network culture was labelled Moscow 
conceptualists, and it was particularized and individualized, 
privatized. That's an interesting thing; culture can always be 
(afterwards, when the network sustaining culture implodes) 
particularized, individualized, subjectified.


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Yahoo! clear worst offender in censorship tests on search engines

[Geert Lovink]

(I heard from some in mainland China that the situation for ordinary
Internet users has indeed deteriorated compared to one or two years
ago. The question remains: is the censorship somehow still marginal or
indeed already substantial? Or have we passed that point? /Geert)

http://www.rsf.org

Yahoo! clear worst offender in censorship tests on search engines

Reporters Without Borders said it found Yahoo! to be the clear worst
offender in censorship tests the organisation carried out on Chinese
versions of Internet search engines Yahoo!, Google, MSN as well as their
local competitor Baidu.

The testing threw up significant variations in the level of filtering.
While yahoo.cn censors results as strictly as baidu.cn, search engines
google.cn and the beta version of msn.cn let through more information
from sources that are not authorized by the authorities.

While Microsoft has just said it does not operate censorship, Reporters
Without Borders found that the Chinese version of its search engine
displays similar results to those of google.cn, which admits to
filtering its content. Searches using a "subversive" key word display on
average 83% of pro-Beijing websites on google.cn, against 78% on msn.cn.
By contrast, the same type of request on an uncensored search engine,
like google.com, produces only 28% of pro-Beijing sources of
information. However, Microsoft like Google appears not to filter
content by blocking certain keywords but by refusing to include sites
considered illegal by the authorities.

The press freedom organisation is particularly shocked by the scale of
censorship on yahoo.cn. first because the search results on "subversive"

key words are 97% pro-Beijing. It is therefore censoring more than its
Chinese competitor Baidu. Above all, the organisation was able to show
that requests using certain terms, such as 6-4 (4 June, date of the
Tiananmen Square massacre), or "Tibet independence", temporarily blocked
the search tool. If you type in one of these terms on the search tool,
first you receive an error message. If you then go back to make a new
request, even with a neutral key word, yahoo.cn refuses to respond. It
takes one hour before the service can be used again. This method is not
used by any other foreign search tools; only Baidu uses the same
technique.

Reporters Without Borders calls for search engines operating in
repressive countries to refuse to censor certain content said to be
"protected", such as information on human rights and democracy. "We 
are convinced that these companies can still access the Chinese
market without betraying their ethical principles. They must
however adopt a firm and clear position in relation to the Chinese
authorities", it stressed.

Methodology

Reporters Without Borders tested Chinese search engines by using
the following "subversive" key words: "6-4" (4 June, date of the
Tiananmen Square massacre), "Falungong", "Tibet Independence",
"Democracy" , "Human rights" and "press freedom". The first ten
"results displayed by each search engine were analysed and then
"divided into "authorized" and
"unauthorized" sources of information.

Research test on "press freedom" (in Chinese), the first ten results:

-  Google.com: 7 "unauthorized", 3 "authorized" sites (72 million results)
-  Google.cn: 5 "unauthorized", 3 "authorized" (52 million results)
-  Msn.cn (Beta): 3 "unauthorized", 7 "authorized" (800,000 results)
-  Yahoo.cn: 1 "unauthorized", 9 "authorized" (240,000 results)
-  Baidu.cn: 3 "unauthorized", 7 "authorized" (450,000 results)


More search results can be found at the Reporters without Borders -
Reporters sans frontieres website in an MS-Excel spreadsheet marked
http://www.rsf.org/IMG/xls/060614chine_moteurs_GB.xls







- End forwarded message -

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Support Iraqi Bloggers-Interview with Cecile Landman (Streamtime)

[Geert Lovink]

Support Iraqi Bloggers
Interview with Cecile Landman
By Geert Lovink

Cecile Landman is a Dutch freelance investigative journalist, who 
specializes in the facts behind the news. One of the areas she 
researches and works in is Italy, a country she is passionate about. 
Cecile has often said to me that she was born in the wrong part of 
Europe as her energetic character does not resonate well with the cold, 
Calvinist Dutch, and their similar meteorological condition. Yet, the 
Italian language and lifestyle can also be a culture that one inhabits 
and carries around, no matter where you are. And that's what Celice 
does, when she logs on the Net. Since mid 2004 Cecile is in daily 
contact with Iraqi bloggers. Together with founder Jo van der Spek, 
Cecile forms the spill of Streamtime, an international support campaign 
for new media initiatives in Iraq. The work of Streamtime goes back to 
the nineties 'tactical media' concepts and initiatives, in particular 
Press Now, an Amsterdam-based support campaign for independent media in 
former Yugoslavia, founded in 1993. The scene around Press Now, closely 
connected to Internet provider xs4all and cultural centre De Balie, is 
also known for its efforts to keep the Belgrade radio station/Internet 
initiative and cultural hotspot B92 in the air and online, in 
particular during the Kosovo war and the NATO bombings of Serbia in 
1999.

Fast-forward four, five years and the situation looks pretty different. 
Efforts to support independent media and Internet initiatives in Iraq 
after the US-led invasion of 2003 have been quickly aborted because of 
hostage taking, killings and car bombs. One year after their arrival, 
NGOs and aid agencies had to pull out. Government agencies and 
foundations refused to allocate financial resources because they judged 
the situation too risky. By late 2004 hardly any media support work 
could be done inside Iraq anymore, even for the cynical reasons that 
added to the risks involved and the paucity of financial support, 
travel insurance had simply (and perhaps ironically) become insanely 
expensive. Workshops like the ones done by the Berlin-based group 
Streamminister have been held in Amman, Jordan since. After initial 
funding which was provided by, amongst others, the HIVOS Foundation, 
Streamtime no longer has any financial support or funding. In response 
to the deteriorating security situation, Streamtime gradually started 
to focus on online support of Iraqi bloggers, inside or outside the 
country. What Cecile shares with many of her Italian friends and 
colleagues is a warm interest in power structures behind the media 
spectacle. In the case of Italy we only need to mention the mafia, 
banks, the army, the Vatican and the P2 loge, and not to forget as 
well, of course, various fascist leagues. Enough to investigate--and a 
good school for spin watchers.

GL: Cecile, could you describe us how an average blogging day of yours 
looks? Do you visit sites and follow links? How do you store and 
process all the information you find?

CL: When I get up I start up the computer and the coffee machine 
simultaneously. Firstly I'd check some sites of the various bloggers 
that I am most curious about and familiar with. I am interested in 
their personal lives, but also how they write, how they play with 
different writing styles, and concepts of what 'information' 
constitutes according to them. I am looking for amazing stories and 
styles, not necessarily those that are most likely to reach mainstream 
media, but stories that can give insight how 'the Iraqi soul' is 
developing through all they're being confronted with, the immense and 
so destructive daily economical, political, military and every day 
violence. On a daily basis I'd visit at least a dozen Iraqi blogs. In 
addition, I check some specific Italian as well as international media 
sites, or specific news sites, varying from the big press-agencies to 
GNN (Guerilla News Network) to some more personal preferred ones, just 
for fun. I occasionally visit a Dutch site. There are also days that I 
visit no more than ten sites and that's it.

Visiting Iraqi blogs has become an evolving ritual, together with but 
not necessarily parallel to the developments in the broader Iraqi 
blogosphere. I know quite a few inside stories from the Iraqi 
blogosphere and not all of them can be shared. Secrecy is absolutely 
inevitable. Through chats and bloggers who I have met personally, my 
insights also change and as a consequence some bloggers, in my eyes, 
have become 'mainstream' bloggers who I rarely visit anymore. Others 
are starting to provoke, or in 'the beginning' had a serious blog, then 
developed more provocative sites, sometimes alongside their more 
mainstream and less personally informative blog(s) and started to write 
more provocatively. Through different ways of writing they're testin

Re: nettime as idea

[Geert Lovink]

Felix Stalder writes:

On 9 Jun 2006, at 10:38 AM, Felix Stalder wrote:

> I agree, on many levels, nettime works quite well, so there is not an
> urgent need to change something. But, this does not mean it cannot be
> improved. Sure it can. But to do that, we need concrete ideas, what
> would you, personally, individually, like to see in nettime, and how
> do you put up the resources to do it? The easiest thing is to do it
> yourself.

Yourself, right. OK, but why are Felix and Ted excluded from this? Why 
is it such a hilarious idea that cannot be debated that both, after 
seven or more years, now step down and hand over the paswords to an 
interim group or some other group that will sort out who will do the 
moderation next? Why is rotation of the moderation of nettime-l not a 
constructive, concrete proposal?

Another concrete proposal I have is to close down 
nettime-l@bbs.thing.net and take another address, in close 
collaboration with The Thing. It would at least temporarily take away 
some of spam problems.

Yours, Geert



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Re: report_on_NNA

[Geert Lovink]

> For the sake of clarity Geert are you putting yourself forward for
> all the hard work involved in being part of the next stage in the
> 'rotation'. you are proposing or is this a prompting that others
> rather than yourself should put themselves forward to take up this
> burden ?

No, not at all. Did I suggest that? There are, no doubt, so many
competent people on nettime-l who can do this job. I did that work in
95-99 and rotation means that's it up to others to do the moderation,
which Pit Schulz and I never merely understood as 'filtering' and
dealing with spam, subs and unsubs but more as animating, hosting,
inviting people to post, write reports, respond to postings, etc.
Doing newspapers and meetings was also part of that but let's leave
that aspect out for the moment. I think it is not just a burden but
can be fun as well, in particular if you do it with an open group.
Moderation over the past years has too much been associated with
'censorship', deciding what has to be included and what not. There is
surprisingly little of that at nettime and I never accused Felix and
Ted of doing such a thing. In 98-99 there was a rotating group that
did the broader moderation work. Ted was one of them, so was Matthew
Fuller, Katrien Jacobs, Sandra Fauconnier who did the announcements
etc. etc. That's what I was suggesting. The Fibreculture group in
Australia consists of 10-15 people and they do rotating moderation.
One big difference there is, of course, that the Fibreculture list is
still open which makes the moderation work so much easier. Because
of traffic and spam nettime-l cannot be open, I hope everyone will
understand this. If not, please read the nettime-bold archives.
Nettime had to be closed late 1997, something that I always regretted
but that's history.

Geert





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Re: report_on_NNA

[Geert Lovink]

Hi all, just a few comments. I enjoyed the Montreal nettime online and 
the tech worked out fine. It is really a shame that the announcement of 
this (online) event came through only hours after the event ended. The 
reason for this is simple. Ted and Felix should be thanked for their 
massive work, move on and rotate, leaving others (a bigger group, I 
would suggest) to moderate the central nettime-l list. To correct Ted 
(with whom I have not been in direct contact for many years), I left 
the nettime-l moderation group early 2000. I wrote down my version of 
the nettime history till 2000 in my book Dark Fiber. I am indeed one of 
the founders of nettime and take credit for that work from 95-99, yes. 
Besides that I am, still, a regular contributor to nettime-l and 
nettime-nl. We do not hear much from the other language lists in this 
debate, but they exist and some of them do very well. Maybe not as 
lively discussion channels, but the problems that nettime-l has are 
actually shared by many lists. Regards, Geert




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definition of snarkyness

[Geert Lovink]

(While digging through the blogosphere I came across this German (?) 
theory prose on Revenge of the Blog. Net Criticism in the Age of Web 
2.0? /geert)

http://pitsch.wordpress.com/2006/04/04/snarkyness/

Snarkyness

It would be wonder if American bloggers wouldn?t develope their ?own? 
jargon. We can speak of the top of a pyramide of attention of bottom-up 
citizen blogging which is lead by a relatively closed circle of ?class 
A? bloggers. Such a classication refers more to quality control in 
industrial production than the ranking in sports which would be how one 
would use it Germany (?Oberliga?). In these language games, which are 
certainly right now heavily researched by academia, a term which 
appeared often describes the writing style of blogger, more a common 
attitude than a distinctive form to differentiate one blogger from 
another. ?Snarky? to my ear it sounds more like witty sarcasm than cold 
cyncism, it contributes more to the Young Urban Professional than to 
the authoritarian character described by Adorno, who?s cynicism is a 
way of distancing himself from his own ethical involvement. The snarky 
voice of blogger seems to have an east coast origin, or better british 
origin. It has not reached the center of Californian ?positivism?, as 
expressed in the ?inspired? writing of Tim O?Reilly and colleagues at 
O?Reilly Radar, which is maybe a good example for a specialized ?blog? 
which is not just a self-run-ego-booster but rather tends towards an 
interesting model of coders of programs as writers of articles and 
self-promoters of their philosophy of coding.

The importance of the ?universal tone? of the snarky voice is expressed 
by the connotation of the attributed sound of the human voice. to have 
a ?voice? on the net, is maybe the most central aspect of blogging, 
especially because this sound is expressed textually and only newly in 
the direct form of podcasts. Snarky refers ethymologically to the nasal 
aspect of snoring or snorting. This sonority refers both to a certain 
private informality of the ?pyjama blogger? but also a certain state of 
routine and disconnectedness to a feedback which would allow to 
modulate the expressions. the opposite would be described by another 
emerging term ?Emo?, which stands for emotional and expressive, and is 
used both in music and programming.

Again, to me the sound of blogging is more like the one of the office 
chats, the talks around the coffee or copy machine in the morning. the 
brevity has less to do with the time of the readers but the one of the 
writers, which very soon have to direct their attention to their days 
work. in this way blogging is the conversaiton of the world wide white 
collar force, which is often working from home today.

In distinction to the authoritarian character described by Max Weber in 
the rigidly hirarchized administration of the Prussian State, the new 
authoritarian character is a liberal one, he is contributing to an 
economic culture which integrated a protestantic work ethics and loaded 
it with hedonism and fun. the new authoritarianism is much more 
machinic and structural to a degree of micro-management. another word 
which is very fashionable with bloggers is procastination. it describes 
a hesitation of fulfilling small tasks. it is enemy number of the 
blogger. between snarkyness and procastination lays the new work ethics 
which follow the subjectivification of the knowledge worker in the 
neo-liberal world society.

Published: 4.4.06 / 10am






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Supporting Iraqi Radio Journalists (interview with Anja Wollenberg)

[Geert Lovink]

Supporting Iraqi Radio Journalists
Interview with Anja Wollenberg, Media in Cooperation & Transition  
(Berlin/Amman)
By Geert Lovink

Media in Cooperation & Transition (MICT) is a Berlin-based organization  
that was founded in late 2004 out of a radio program that was conducted  
as Iraqi German cooperation (TELEPHONE FM, by streamminister) and that  
was broadcasted in Baghdad. With an emphasis on cooperation, mixing  
Internet streaming technology with old school radio techniques MICT is  
running media projects ever since with Iraqi partners in Iraq,  
addressing an Iraqi audience. MICT-projects have a focus on the  
political process in Iraq, respectively the elections and the  
constitutional process in the last year. MICT is run by Klaas  
Glenewinkel an Anja Wollenberg and could be considered a sister  
organization of Streamtime, the support campaign for Iraqi bloggers, in  
which I am involved, with, in fact, equally strong roots in radio and  
streaming. This interview could be read as a follow-up of the one I did  
with Streamtime member Cecile Landman, earlier this year  
(http://www.networkcultures.org/weblog/archives/2006/01/ 
support_iraqi_b.html#more).

GL: Your website looks slick and corporate. Yet, there can't be a more  
unglamorous place to work than Iraq. It seems such a big contrast. How  
do you deal with this? Free and independent radios and newspapers in  
Iraq seem to be involved in such a heroic and titanic struggle.

AW: In Iraq today you will find a high degree on plurality in the media  
landscape, professionalism in reporting has increased dramatically,  
governmental censorship has vanished and the right to free speech is  
generally given, although seriously damaged by the growing lack of  
protection for journalists. But independency is definitely missing. It  
has not developed yet in the field of media. There is no market, no  
market research, no legal framework. Instead media in Iraq are with  
almost no exception partisan and biased. In lack of a market they  
depend on donors and donors are rarely free of interest when it comes  
to the Iraqi situation.

>From my point of view the current struggle in Iraq is in the first  
place not about freedom, democracy or independence. It is primarily  
about power and its redistribution. The political conflicts revolve  
around this, the constitutional process did revolve around this, the  
elections do and the media are hopelessly and actively involved in this  
process of redistribution. Independency is lip service in Iraq today.

It will only become reality in the framework of an according law, on  
the ground of an emerging market and a less fragile power situation.  
But from what I understood the Iraqi user, reader, viewer is quite  
capable to differentiate. As media users Iraqis derive from a tradition  
of political propaganda. Not trust but distrust in media is the common  
attitude. In general they tend to make use of different media sources  
including foreign Broadcasters such as Al-Jazeera, Radio Monte Carlo  
and BBC World.

How do we deal with contrast? The 50 team-members we worked with in the  
last year came from 5 different countries and were located in 3  
different places (Amman, Iraq and Germany). Contradicting views and  
environments were an essential part of our daily work. Therefore the  
structure of cooperation, the culture of communication and the design  
of the editorial workflows gradually adapted to the need for creating  
common perspectives with those involved on a daily basis. That is a  
challenge, indeed.

GL: Over the past year or so you have been giving media trainings in  
Amman, Jordan to Iraqi radio journalists. What have your experiences  
been so far?

AW: The participants for the trainings we do are mostly the  
correspondents for the media-projects we run. Trainings are embedded in  
an ongoing cooperation and they are usually combined with a workshop  
where we discuss concept and content for the upcoming program with the  
correspondents. This has always been an extraordinary experience with  
the Iraqi colleagues. They are absolutely committed to their work and  
they like very much to engage in this kind of discussion.

Most of them understand journalism as a moral mission. They act in the  
name of truth as a symbol for a new decade. To me this belief in truth  
and the effort to erase subjectivity from journalistic work may bring  
along problems though. Journalists, who are not reflecting on and  
dealing with their subjectivity but just reject it, become vulnerable  
for abuse in the power struggle that Iraq is going through. As I said:  
media in Iraq are biased and partisan. You cannot ignore that, but many  
Iraqi journalists tend to do so.

Another observation is quite interesting: a multitude of international  
media institutions (dpa, reuters, BBC, Deutsche Welle, MICT, IWPR, CNN,  
RFI, UN?) is offering media training to Iraqi journalists who at

THE WAR TAPES

[Geert Lovink]

(is this where tactical media is, right now, giving camcorders to US
soldiers, in the hope they will shoot interesting footage? i bet they
will. hard not to, i would say. anyone seen this film yet? /geert)

http://www.thewartapes.com/

In March 2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several
members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital
video cameras.

THE WAR TAPES is the movie they made with Director Deborah Scranton and
a team of award-winning filmmakers. It?s the first war movie filmed by
soldiers themselves on the front lines in Iraq.

THE WAR TAPES follows three men: Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack
Bazzi, and Specialist Mike Moriarty. Steve is a young carpenter with a
dark, irreverent sense of humor who joined the Guard for college money.
Zack is an inquisitive, ironic traveler and university student. Mike is
a husband and father of two, driven to fight by honor and redemption.
You will see Operation Iraqi Freedom through their eyes.

The soldiers were not picked by casting agents or movie producers. They
selected themselves. 10 soldiers from Charlie Company carried cameras
on IED-riddled roads and into combat?and into their own internal
conversations. They learned how to choose and tell their stories in
constant instant message conversations with Director Scranton. They
filmed under unbelievable conditions. The unit was based at LSA
Anaconda in the deadly Sunni Triangle, under constant threat of ambush
and IED attacks. They traveled, as a unit, 1.4 million miles during
their tour, and lived through over 1,200 combat operations and 250
direct enemy engagements.

Because it?s filmed by citizen soldiers telling their own stories, THE
WAR TAPES is funnier, spicier, and more wrenching than stories other
people might tell about them.

All three men leave women at home ? a mother, a girlfriend, and a wife.
THE WAR TAPES ? like any true story about war ? engages the hard,
tense, passionate, always difficult and sometimes beautiful way these
relationships develop and change.

Director Deborah Scranton is a single mom with a journalism background
and a passion for the infantry (her last documentary was about WWII
vets). With Deborah?s guidance, the soldiers shot over 900 hours of
videotape during their yearlong deployment. Another 200 hours of
footage was shot back home by Deborah and her crew ? all distilled into
a 94 minute film. Deborah worked closely with Producer Robert May who
executive produced the Academy Award winning FOG OF WAR; Producer and
Editor Steve James, best known for the documentary HOOP DREAMS; and
Executive Producer Chuck Lacy.

The unseen collaborator on the film is the internet. This is a Web 2.0
outside the wire ? the intimate power of the internet exploding on the
movie screen. Without instant messaging, the soldiers could never have
become filmmakers ? without email and cheap video, they soldiers could
never have told their stories as they happened.

The soldiers? unfailing candor and honesty defines the heart of this
film. THE WAR TAPES is not afraid to show soldiers as fully complicated
human beings ?this is not reality TV, and it?s certainly not mainstream
media coverage of the war. This is real war. These soldiers got the
story the 2,700 embedded reporters never could.

--

Frequently Asked Questions

What is THE WAR TAPES (TWT)?

It?s an amazing, must-see, real, rude, rough, rip at your heart and
absolutely humbling 94 minute movie that is coming out this year.

It is the first war movie ever made by soldiers filming all the war
footage themselves.

When can I see it?

This summer. If you're in New York, come to the premiere at the Tribeca
Film Festival on April 29th!

What is this THE WAR TAPES site? Is it a movie site or something else?

It?s both a movie site and something else.

It?s a blog and a place for citizen soldier video, audio, and words. If
you have citizen-soldier video (or photo or words) that you?ve taken or
that you like, please send us a copy or a link. So long as it?s not
pornographic, we?ll put it up or link to it.

We believe that the internet can change the way we experience
everything, but especially war.

I believe in that too ? what can I do to help get it off the ground?

The most important thing you can do is sign up on our website, so we
can tell you when TWT is coming to your town.

If you are interested in doing research or collecting video, please
email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject line: I WANT TO GET
INVOLVED.

If you have video or audio, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the
subject line: VIDEO/AUDIO.

If you are a soldier or family member, and would like to guest blog,
we?d love to hear your thoughts ? email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and
introduce yourself.

If you have a blog, blogroll us ? if you have ideas, let us know!

What are the politics of TWT?

TWT believes in empowering citizens to tell their own stories ? and
believes citizen journalism can make amazing film. We are completely
committed to opening up mai

"free upload, free download" (Euro Mayday Parade 006)

[Geert Lovink]

(May 1 is approaching, nettimers in Eurostan, time to hit the streets!
Glad to see that "free upload, free download" has been included in the
colorful list of demands. Let's pray for nice weather. Enjoy. /Geert)

http://www.euromayday.org/

Party, action & protest for social equality in Europe

The first of May of queer temps, immigrant part-timers, student stagiairesm 
nomatic free-lancers, pregnant flex-workers.

On the first of May, i.e. MAYDAY, for more than a century the global holiday of 
radical workers, We, the EUROMAYDAY network, are jointly
organizing MAYDAY PARADES of temporary, part-time, contract workers and other 
precarious youth, along with militant unions and social
collectives in twenty or more major european cities.

On mayday, we will demonstrate and protest against precarity, the most crucial 
and burning social issue in Europe today, as the gigantic
demonstrations in France of a whole generation against precarity and the CPE 
are proving. Precarity is a widespread work and life condition for
millions of europeans.

We demand social equality for all, the end of labor precarization and all forms 
of flexploitation, after two decades of labor market
deregulation which have caused diffuse poverty and NOT reduced unemployment. We 
demand FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT for migrants and INCOME SECURITY FOR
ALL as fundamental steps toward a truly social europe. We fight for generalized 
access to housing and mobility, free download and free upload
for all, freely available and sharable culture and information. We practice 
freedom of expression and dissent, we participate in social and
labor conflict, we build media to unmask the corporate or state-sponsored 
version of reality.

Last year, Euromayday parades gathered more than 200 000 precarious people of 
all sorts and brought protest actions against precarity and other
forms of labor and social domination in the streets of a dozen of EU cities. 
Why did we do it?

Because we are pr=E9caires, precari, [EMAIL PROTECTED]: we are the unemployed, 
women and the young, the casualized, we are intermittent workers,
students, stagiaires, migrants, net/temp/flex workers, we are the 
contortionists of flexibility and survivors of precarity springing out of
dozens of collectives in our cities and through a transeuropean network to 
defend our collective social rights and claim new ones.

We have no trust or faith in those who, at the helm of governments, unions, 
political parties, or cultural institutions, pretend to speak in
our name and take decisions on our lives, while ignoring social demands and 
repressing practices of social transformation.

We will parade on mayday to reclaim our lives and fight against workfare or 
other authoritarian solutions to mounting inequality and welfare
crisis. We want to give flesh with our conflicts a new welfare system and a 
more horizontal, democratic society, where immaterial, service,
affective, flexible work is not subjected to pitiless exploitation, blackmail 
flexibility, and existential impossibility. Nobody wants to be
sentenced to the same job for life. But nobody wants to spend her whole day 
wondering how to pay the next bill, while juggling three jobs.

We want life-affirming social equality, not subservient, discriminative 
employment. European welfare provisions should be made independent from
either employment or citizenship so to benefit native as well as migrant 
precarious people. We are determined to severe the link between
welfare and employment, and between welfare and citizenship, as basic 
pre-conditions to create truly democratic, libertarian, and egalitarian
polities in the age of war-making globalization.

For this, and obviously a lot more, we invite you at the press conference of 
EURO MAYDAY 006, this friday, april 14th. Activists against
precarity will come from all over Europe (including France) to tell their 
struggles, projects and cross-alliances, their predicament in
securitarian and inegalitarian europe, and what they're fighting for.

At the end of the press conference: Surprise! Surprise! Easter chicks and 
rabbits will be released from their cages to participate in a great
Easter-egg treasure hunt, to free the capital of Europe from the neoliberal 
therapy inflicted upon loudly recalcitrant european populations by
the Barroso commission and its corporate-friendly policies.

By the way, how come he's still at his place, he and the ritzy others, after 
having lost two referendums?

MAYDAY WANTS:

- full+immediate adoption of EU directive on temporary workers
- european birthright of citizenship (ius soli)
- closure of detention centers for immigrants
- european basic income
- european minimum wage
- free upload, free download
- queer rights for all genders
- protection of THC consumers





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blogonomics according to carr

[Geert Lovink]

(for me nicholas carr was one of the most interesting net critics of 
the past season. carr's rough type blog is one of the best places if 
you want to look for critical google watching. below you will find his 
sobering statistics on what it means, in economic terms, to blog. 

/geert)

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/04/a_year_in_the_s.php

A year in the 'sphere
April 15, 2006

It was exactly one year ago today that I posted my first entry on Rough 
Type. Here are some official statistics:

Total number of entries: Lots

Total number of words: Don't even want to know

Out-of-pocket costs (est.): $1,650

Revenues (est.): $225

Net loss (est.): $1,425

(Welcome to the wacky world of citizen media, where journalism is an 
avocation, like fox hunting used to be.)

Opportunity cost of author's time: Less than he thinks

Number of comments and trackbacks: Thousands and thousands

Percentage of above represented by spam: At least 80%

Current Technorati rank: 689 (2,834 links from 1,085 sites)

Average daily page views at start of year: 0

Average daily page views now: 6,589

I believe that represents some kind of exponential rate of increase, 
which I'm pretty sure is a sign that the singularity is near, which I 
take as an indication that the time is right for a vacation.

Bye.






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Review of Doug Aitken's book, by Peter Lunenfeld

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-
lunenfeld16apr16,0,6075568.htmlstory?coll=cl-bookreview

The order of things
By Peter Lunenfeld

April 16, 2006

'Broken Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative: 26
Conversations With Doug Aitken'

Edited by Noel Daniel
D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers: 302 pp., $40

DOUG AITKEN is pretty far removed from the stereotype of the artist,
with its tropes of unrecognized genius, unheated garrets and the
occasional missing ear. For more than a decade, in museums, galleries
and festivals around the globe, the Los Angeles-based Aitken has
exhibited complex, multiscreen video environments that are impossible
to take in as a unitary whole. His signature installations, like 1999's
"Electric Earth," a prizewinner at the venerable Venice Biennale,
require him to function as director, designer, talent scout, space
planner and even something of a travel agent. It's no wonder, then,
that Aitken should come to see the standard modes of linear narrative
as inadequate to the task of describing the fragmented life he lives.

When you've got existential questions, the best thing to do is talk to
your friends. Luckily for Aitken ? as well as for the rest of us ? his
friends include filmmakers Robert Altman and Werner Herzog; architects
Rem Koolhaas and Greg Lynn; and such artists as painter Ed Ruscha,
Swiss video maker Pipilotti Rist and "Cremaster" auteur Matthew Barney.
In "Broken Screen: Expanding the Image, Breaking the Narrative," Aitken
curates 26 conversations with these peers and mentors, creating what he
calls "a manifesto for navigating the future of communication."
Together, the voices here explore new ways of telling stories that have
emerged in the wake of avant-garde moving image experimentation and the
relentless innovations in information technologies.

Linear stories are older than Aristotle's "Poetics" and still dominate
popular narrative forms. But as new technologies and media proliferated
in the 20th century, so too did nonlinear structures, from the
Surrealists' Exquisite Corpse games before World War II, to the
fracturing of time in Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave films, to DJ Spooky's
illbient mix tapes of a decade ago. Right now, computers make the
decidedly nonlinear functions of cutting, pasting and linking our
default modes of creativity. "Broken Screen" is a richly designed
celebration of this moment, well-illustrated with stills from the art,
film and video projects under discussion and liberally peppered with
pull quotes that distill the conversations into a series of graphic
sound bites. Running counter to naysayers on both left and right,
Aitken and his friends are unapologetically upbeat about creativity at
the dawn of the new millennium.

These are generous conversationalists, encouraging us to participate,
to join in constructing new meanings from existing work. For more than
a century, they suggest, we have been so immersed in audio-visual
narratives that linear storytelling has become at once over-familiar
and insufficient. As collagist, filmmaker and all-around West Coast
legend Bruce Conner puts it, "nonlinear perception can't be beat,"
because the better attuned you are to it, the more likely you are to
"collect various pieces of information and put them into some kind of
functional use to make sense of the world."

For Conner, nonlinearity is "about consciousness itself," a subject
many of the book's other participants expand on by talking about their
own work and what inspired them. Seminal filmmaker Altman reminisces
about the meshing narratives and overlapping dialogue in "Nashville,"
while rising young architect Lynn describes the mad sprawl of San
Jose's Winchester Mystery House and avant-garde director Robert Wilson
evokes Georges Balanchine's ballets, where "the dancers, for the most
part, dance for themselves." Aitken and company take on a vast range of
references, from Marvel comic books and psychedelic posters to
designers Charles and Ray Eames and the latest in 3D-animation
software.

It's a lot of ground to cover, but once you get into the flow, these
conversations come across as the way we (should) talk now. Thus, French
artist Pierre Huyghe strikes a universal chord when he explains that he
carves up the narratives in his video installations to escape overly
efficient, and therefore limiting, storytelling. Fragmentation enables
him to access what he calls the "exponential present," a phrase that
teeters on the edge of obscurantist art-speak until you consider the
always-on, always in-touch culture that many of us inhabit ? complete
with the Web, Wi-Fi hot spots, 500 cable channels, downloadable ring
tones, peer-to-peer file sharing and more. In such a landscape, there
is indeed an explosion of information, which makes Huyghe's notion of
an exponential present not so much pretentious as accurate.

Dialogues have historically served as venues for artists, filmmakers
and architects to get their ideas out without havin

let's go negative and join snubster

[geert lovink]

(snubster is a unique social network for all those who acknowledge and
foster the power of negativity. come on you closet adornians, this your
chance. always hated orkut, myspace and friendster? there you go,
/geert)

http://www.snubster.com/

New Anti-Social Networking Site

April 5, 2006 11:25 a.m. EST

Mary K. Brunskill - All Headline News Contributor

(AHN) -- Online social networking sites like Friendster and the
extraordinarily popular Myspace typically ask their users to list stuff
they like -- their favorite bands, movies, books, etc. -- so they can
forge a connection with like-minded prospective friends. A new online
social networking site launched last month, Snubster, is turning this
idea on its head. Snubster can more accurately be described as an
anti-social networking site -- its goal is to bring people together
through their hates.

Members of Snubster focus on what irks them. Their lists are composed
of people or things that invoke their anger or distaste. Popular
targets of their disapproval: President Bush, guys who talk at urinals,
and bologna.

Snubster also allows its users to snub via e-mail. The site has a tool
for sending an e-mail to people newly added to the list to tell them
why they're being snubbed.

Software engineer Bryant Choung started Snubster as a satire of online
social discovery services. However, it is bringing people together --
Snubster users surf each others' hate lists and sometimes get in
contact.

"It has developed into a sort of community atmosphere," Choung says.
"It seems as though people find entertainment and connections in
finding other people that hate the same things as them."




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Citizen Lab releases Psiphon

[Geert Lovink]

Hi, has anyone tried this one out yet? I wonder how many nettimers keep 
track what Citizenlab is doing and if you are, like me, also promoting 
things like www.ngoinabox.org. /geert

---

OLIVER MOORE
Toronto Globe & Mail
Monday, February 13, 2006

TORONTO -- More than fifteen years after the Berlin Wall was shattered 
with hammers and bulldozers, a Canadian-designed computer program is 
preparing to break through what activists call the great firewall of 
China.

The program, in the late stages of development in a University of 
Toronto office, is designed to help those trapped behind the blocking 
and filtering systems set up by restrictive governments. If successful, 
it will equip volunteers in more open countries to help those on the 
other side of digital barriers, allowing a free flow of information and 
news into and out of even the most closed societies.

The program is part of a quiet war over freedom of information. Even as 
countries considered repressive, such as China, North Korea, Iran and 
Saudi Arabia, pour money into stopping the free exchange of data, small 
groups of activists keep looking for ways around the technological 
barriers.

At the University of Toronto, in the small basement office of Citizen 
Lab, researchers are getting ready for the release of Psiphon, the 
latest weapon in the fight.

"I was always interested in the idea of using computers for social and 
political change," said Nart Villeneuve, who has been dabbling with the 
project for about two years. "It was a matter of creating a program for 
really non-technical people that was easy and effective."

Psiphon is designed to eliminate a drawback of anti-filter programs: 
incriminating the users behind the firewall. If found by authorities, 
that anti-filter software can lead to coercive interrogation, a bid to 
uncover the suspect's Internet travel secrets using a tactic known to 
insiders as "rubber-hose cryptoanalysis."

Mr. Villeneuve built a system that won't leave dangerous footprints on 
computers. In simple terms, it works by giving monitored computer users 
a way to send an encrypted request for information to a computer 
located in a secure country. That computer finds the information and 
sends it back, also encrypted.

An elegant wrinkle is that the data will enter users' machines through 
computer port 443. Relied on for the secure transfer of data, this port 
is the one through whichreams of financial data stream constantly 
around the world.
"Unless a country wanted to cut off all connections for any financial 
transactions they wouldn't be able to cut off these transmissions," 
said Professor Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab.

A drawback to Psiphon is that the person behind the firewall has to be 
given a user name and password by the person offering up the computer. 
With this kind of setup, Mr. Villeneuve said, activists may end up 
working with specific dissidents and people in repressive countries may 
rely on relatives abroad to help them get connected. Canadians, with 
ties to every country in the world, are in a particularly good position 
to use such a system.

Although this reduces the program's reach, a relationship-based system 
could also minimize improper use. People who know the owner of their 
proxy computer are less likely to abuse their system, the logic goes.

"The big novel thing here is that you have a one-to-one connection," 
said Danny O'Brien, activism co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, a San Francisco-based group. "That's a great innovation, 
because so many people have computers that are always on, and this lets 
you deal with someone you can trust."

If the remote user begins to view illegal material, their access can be 
limited in several ways, such as allowing access to text only. In 
extreme cases, Mr. Villeneuve said, people found with evidence of 
illegal activity on their computer would be able to prove through 
forensic analysis that it had been done by the remote user.

The team at Citizen Lab is now racing to put the final touches on the 
program in time for its public debut at the international congress of 
the free-speech group PEN in May. Billed as a uniquely Canadian 
approach to "hactivism," the first generation of Psiphon will then be 
made publicly available.

Its release is set to come against a backdrop of ever-diminishing free 
access to the Internet. Just last month the popular search engine 
Google agreed to self-censor, restricting access to certain content and 
websites in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China, an 
international NGO, said the country has managed to create "a culture of 
fear and self-censorship." They are helped, she added, by Western 
countries willing to sell Internet-monitoring equipment to Beijing and 
bend to its terms.

Mr. O'Brien noted that public knowledge of monitoring can have as major 
an effect as the surveillance itself.

"You don't

First Monday Special Issue on Urban Screens

[Geert Lovink]

http://firstmonday.org/issues/special11_2/

Urban Screens: Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban 
society

By Pieter Boeder and Mirjam Struppek

Introduction to First Monday, Special Issue #4: Urban Screens: 
Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban society 
(February 2006)

Welcome, gentle reader, to this First Monday Urban Screens special 
issue, the first publication of its kind. With the advent of digital 
media, the global communication environment has changed dramatically. 
In the context of the rapidly evolving commercial information sphere of 
our cities, especially since the 1990s, a number of novel digital 
display technologies have been introduced into the urban landscape. 
This transformation has intersected with other major transformations of 
media technology and culture over the last two decades: the formation 
of distributed global networks and the emergence of mobile media 
platforms such as mobile phones. Their cumulative and synergistic 
impact has been profound. Convergence of screen technologies with 
digital communication technologies such as GSM, RFID, Internet and 
database technologies has lead to the emergence of a new, interactive 
and increasingly pervasive medium: Urban Screens.

Urban Screens can be defined as interactive, dynamic digital 
information displays in urban environments. Their genesis is the 
consequence of two parallel technological developments: evolution and 
subsequent growth in magnitude of the traditional display screen, and 
its subsequent convergence with other digital media technologies. Forms 
and appearances range from large daylight compatible LED billboards, 
plasma or SED screens, information displays in public transportation 
systems and electronic city information terminals to dynamic, 
intelligent surfaces that may be fully integrated into architectural 
fa?ade structures. Their introduction in the urban environment poses 
new, unparalleled challenges and opportunities, which we will explore 
and document in this issue.

Currently, the primary purpose of this new infrastructure appears to be 
the management and control of consumer behaviour through advertising. 
Commercial companies are starting to realise that digital billboards 
are a powerful medium to communicate their goals and missions, in line 
with the new paradigms of the digital economy. Interconnected Urban 
Screens have tremendous potential to serve as a platform for 
information exchange. Such large networks are already being developed 
Russia, China, USA and South America, where Urban Screens are rapidly 
becoming a key element in commercial and government informational 
infrastructure. The implications for the public sphere are profound. 
Information density per square metre is increasing, yet at the same 
time individuals have less control than ever over the actual format and 
content of that information.

Public space has always been a place for human interaction, a unique 
arena for the exchange of rituals and communication. Its architecture, 
being a storytelling medium itself, plays an important role in 
providing a stage for this interaction. The ways in which public space 
is inhabited can be read as a participatory process of its audience. 
Its (vanishing) role as a space for social and symbolic discourse has 
often been discussed in urban sociology. Modernisation, the growing 
independence of place and time and individualisation seem to devastate 
traditional city life and its social rhythm. The Urban Screens project 
explores the opportunities for opening this steadily growing 
infrastructure of digital screens, currently dominated by market 
forces, for cultural content, along with its potential for revitalising 
of the public sphere.

Urban Screens 2005 was the first international conference that was 
solely dedicated to the emerging Urban Screens phenomenon. 
Presentations covered a broad spectrum of topics and issues, ranging 
from critical theory to project experiences by researchers and 
practitioners in the field of art, architecture, urban studies and 
digital culture. It addressed the growing infrastructure of large 
digital moving displays, which increasingly influence and structure the 
visual sphere of our public spaces. Urban Screens 2005 investigated how 
the currently dominating commercial use of these screens can be 
broadened and culturally curated: can these screens become a tool to 
contribute to a lively urban society, involving its audience 
interactively?

A new medium that is digital, interactive and pervasive

What we are seeing is the emergence of a new medium that is digital, 
global and local, interactive and pervasive at the same time. What 
happens if the convergence of new technologies such as Internet, 
database and mobile technologies suddenly enable interactive access to 
the visual streaming of these digital surfaces? Can it revitalise the 
public sphere by creating an information-dense urban environment or is

Re: Frank Rieger: We lost the War--Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

[Geert Lovink]

On 9 Jan 2006, at 6:37 AM, Florian Cramer wrote:

> I admire the perfect Carl Schmitt-ian (and by implication, Leo
> Straussian) rhetoric of this manifesto: The rhetoric of the emergency
> state, political friend-vs.-enemy antagonism, and its view of the 
> status
> quo of democracy.

You mean admire like in Oscar Wilde's:

"I admire Japanese chairs because they have not been made to sit upon."

You like the text because it's so odd? So untimely? So not like the way 
journalists and theorists like you and me write? I doubt if Frank and 
Rop have read Schmitt and Strauss or have even heard of them and would 
understand the reference you make here.

What I liked about it was that it reported about a war that I had no 
idea about that it was going on. Only at the moment it was over I heard 
about it. On the cover of the German magazine in which the article was 
published, Die Datenschleuder, it says "Declaration of Capitulation." 
That's heavy rethoric, no?

It is imho an important text that Frank wrote, as it tells us something 
how the hackers community at large is discussing problems in society 
(even on planetary scale). We should have a debate about it, as is 
happening right now on nettime, and not presume that people have read 
this or that book, in the same way as I do not know Linux details (you 
might, Florian, but I don't). When I read the text I thought it was 
significant as it goes beyond discussing some technical problems and 
solutions and creates a common ground, beyond the hackers communities.

We could look into strategies and tactics. I am still inspired by the 
campaign(s) to prevent European software patents. The Big Brother 
Awards appeal to me. The struggle over RFID is not yet lost, or hasn't 
even begun yet. Privacy in general may not exist anymore, but then, as 
Karin indicates, isn't that a nostalgic position?

Geert






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Frank Rieger: We lost the War--Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

[Geert Lovink]

(Between Xmas and New Year, Rop Grongrijp (NL) and Frank Riegel (DE) 
held two impressive but surpringly depressive speeches at the 22nd 
Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin. Below you'll find Frank 
contribution. Forwarded to nettime with the permission of the author. 
/geert)

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

A forum to debate this text can be found at the authors weblog at 
http://frank.geekheim.de/?page_id=128
Conference program: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/

We lost the war. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.
By: Frank Rieger

Losing a war is never a pretty situation. So it is no wonder that most 
people do not like to acknowledge that we have lost. We had a 
reasonable chance to tame the wild beast of universal surveillance 
technology, approximately until september 10th, 2001. One day later, we 
had lost. All the hopes we had, to keep the big corporations and 
"security forces" at bay and develop interesting alternative concepts 
in the virtual world, evaporated with the smoke clouds of the World 
Trade Center.

Just right before, everything looked not too bad. We had survived Y2K 
with barely a scratch. The world's outlook was mildly optimistic after 
all. The "New Economy" bubble gave most of us fun things to do and the 
fleeting hope of plenty of cash not so far down the road. We had won 
the Clipper-Chip battle, and crypto-regulation as we knew it was a 
thing of the past. The waves of technology development seemed to work 
in favor of freedom, most of the time. The future looked like a yellow 
brick road to a nirvana of endless bandwith, the rule of ideas over 
matter and dissolving nation states. The big corporations were at our 
mercy because we knew what the future would look like and we had the 
technology to built it. Those were the days. Remember them for your 
grandchildren's bedtime stories. They will never come back again.

We are now deep inside the other kind of future, the future that we 
speculated about as a worst case scenario, back then. This is the ugly 
future, the one we never wanted, the one that we fought to prevent. We 
failed. Probably it was not even our fault. But we are forced to live 
in it now.

Democracy is already over

By its very nature the western democracies have become a playground for 
lobbyists, industry interests and conspiracies that have absolutely no 
interest in real democracy. The "democracy show" must go on 
nonetheless. Conveniently, the show consumes the energy of those that 
might otherwise become dangerous to the status quo. The show provides 
the necessary excuse when things go wrong and keeps up the illusion of 
participation. Also, the system provides organized and regulated 
battleground rules to find out which interest groups and conspiracies 
have the upper hand for a while. Most of the time it prevents open and 
violent power struggles that could destabilize everything. So it is in 
the best interest of most players to keep at least certain elements of 
the current "democracy show" alive. Even for the more evil conspiracies 
around, the system is useful as it is. Certainly, the features that 
could provide unpleasant surprises like direct popular votes on key 
issues are the least likely to survive in the long run.

Of course, those in power want to minimize the influence of random 
chaotic outbursts of popular will as much as possible. The real 
decisions in government are not made by ministers or the parliament. 
The real power of government rests with the undersecretaries and other 
high-level, non-elected civil servants who stay while the politicians 
come and go. Especially in the bureaucracies of the intelligence 
agencies, the ministry of interior, the military, and other key nodes 
of power the long-term planning and decision-making is not left to the 
incompetent mediocre political actors that get elected more or less at 
random. Long term stability is a highly valued thing in power 
relations. So even if the politicians of states suddenly start to be 
hostile to each other, their intelligence agencies will often continue 
to cooperate and trade telecommunication interception results as if 
nothing has happened.

Let's try for a minute to look at the world from the perspective of 
such an 60-year-old bureaucrat that has access to the key data, the 
privilege to be paid to think ahead, and the task to prepare the policy 
for the next decades. What he would see, could look like this:

First, paid manual labor will be eaten away further by technology, even 
more rapidly than today. Robotics will evolve far enough to kill a 
sizeable chunk of the remaining low-end manual jobs. Of course, there 
will be new jobs, servicing the robots, biotech, designing stuff, 
working on the nanotech developments etc. But these will be few, 
compared with today, and require higher education. Globalization 
continues its merciless course and will also export a lot of jobs of 
the brain-labor type to India and China, as soon as education levels 
there

Joost Smiers: Abandoning Copyright: A Blessing for Artists, Art, and Society [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

(posted to nettime with the permission of the author. /geert)

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Abandoning Copyright: A Blessing for Artists, Art, and Society
By Joost Smiers
de Volkskrant, 26 November 2005

http://www.culturelink.org/news/members/2005/members2005-011.html
(English translation of original article published in Dutch)

Several weeks ago, Carlos Guiterrez, the US Secretary of Commerce, 
announced a series of initiatives to stamp out the rampant piracy of, 
among other things, music. Damages resulting from counterfeiting and 
piracy is estimated to amount to 250 billion dollars annually, in the 
United States alone. In a press release, he stated, "The protection of 
intellectual property is vital to our economic growth and global 
competitiveness and it has major consequences in our ongoing effort to 
promote security and stability around the world,"

Now I must admit that it never occurred to me that copyright could 
contribute to global security and stability. This is quite an 
intriguing message ? and from a US Secretary, at that! Another aspect 
addressed by Carlos Guiterrez is, however, more obvious. Copyright has 
increasingly become an instrument for securing huge investments. In the 
past decade, it has become one of the major driving forces of western 
economy, and US economy in particular. This development, however, has a 
major downside: companies owning massive amounts of copyrighted works 
can, at their whim, ban weaker cultural activities ? not only from the 
marketplace, but also from the general audience's attention. This is 
happening under our very eyes. It is nigh impossible to ignore the 
blockbuster movies, bestselling books and top-chart records presented 
to us by these cultural molochs, who, incidentally, own almost every 
imaginable right to these works. As a result, the most people are 
completely unaware of all those other, less commercialized activities 
taking place in music, literature, cinema, theater and other arts. This 
is a tremendous loss to society, because our democratic world can only 
truly thrive on a large diversity of freely expressed and discussed 
cultural expressions.

The common perception is that copyright first and foremost protects the 
well-being and interests of artists. However, history shows that the 
first political act somewhat resembling our modern copyright laws 
already had quite a different objective than safeguarding the artist's 
income. The first initiative for protecting the intellectual property 
of artistic expression was made by Queen Anne in England, who, in 1557, 
granted the Stationer's guild a monopoly on printing and publishing 
books; a monopoly which conveniently banned all competition from 
printers in other parts, such as other counties, or rival Scotland. In 
fact, the term "copyright" says it all: it is the exclusive right to 
copy any particular work; nowhere in early copyright was any mention 
made of the author or artist who produced the work. Queen Anne had her 
reasons for installing this copyright. She was not overly fond of the 
concept of "the free word", and granting the Stationer's guild the 
exclusive right to publishing books gave her full control over which 
books could be published and which were banned from the market. After 
all, those who can grant rights, can deny them as well.

This act by Queen Anne is the specter by which copyright is haunted up 
to this day, and perhaps even more than ever before. Ever smaller 
numbers of increasingly large and powerful entities own the exclusive 
rights to ever more works in the fields of literature, cinema, music 
and graphic arts. For example Bill Gates, widely known as the founder 
of Microsoft, also owns a rather less known company by the name of 
Corbis, which collects vast amounts of images from all over the world; 
together with Getty, Corbis is developing into an oligopolist in the 
field of photographs and reproductions of paintings ? in other words: 
an entity which has a large amount of control over the market, just as 
the Stationer's guild had in the sixteenth century. The oligopolist has 
control over which artistic works we may use for which purposes, and 
under which conditions, in much the same way Queen Anne had control 
over printed works.

In most cultures around the world, this state of affairs was, and is, 
highly undesirable, even unthinkable. Artists have always used and 
built upon other artists' work to create new works of art. It is hard 
to imagine indeed that the works of Shakespeare, Bach, and countless 
others cultural heavyweights could have come into existence without 
this principle of freely building on the work of predecessors. Yet what 
do we see happening now? Take, for example, documentary makers, who 
nowadays face almost insurmountable obstacles, as their work almost 
inevitably contains fragments of copyrighted pictorial or musical 
content, the use of which requires both consent from the copyright 
owner and a fee to be paid. 

are you creative? [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

From: "Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

The ?Campaign for Creativity? (C4C) is the undisputed winner of the
Worst EU Lobbying Award 2005! No less than 85% of the over 8000 people
that took part in the online voting identified C4C as the most
deceptive corporate lobby campaign of the year. C4C presents itself as
a grass roots campaign for software patents but is in fact run by
public affairs consultancy Campbell Gentry in London, with undisclosed
financial support from Microsoft and other software multinationals.

In a fax to CEO, C4C coordinator Simon Gentry explained he regretted
not to be able to attend the award ceremony in Brussels Wednesday
evening. Mr. Gentry argued that his busy schedule forces him to
concentrate on paying clients, repeating the claim that his work for
C4C is voluntary and unpaid. Also runner-up European Partners for
Energy and the Environment (EPEE) declined the invitation to attend
the award ceremony. ExxonMobil never replied. Both ExxonMobil and EPEE
have been nominated for their use of deceptive tactics to undermine EU
efforts to halt climate change.

The final voting figures, Mr. Gentry?s response as well as photos and
video from the award ceremony will be available soon on
http://www.eulobbyaward.org  The website also includes extensive
information on each of the ten nominees.

The 'Worst EU Lobbying' Awards are organised by Corporate Europe
Observatory in association with Friends of the Earth Europe, Lobby
Control and Spinwatch; four organisations campaigning for an end to
secrecy around lobbying in Brussels.




Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), is a European-based research and
campaign group targeting the threats to democracy, equity, social
justice and the environment posed by the economic and political power
of corporations and their lobby groups.

Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)
De Wittenstraat 25
1052 AK Amsterdam
Netherlands
tel/fax: +31-20-612-7023
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.corporateeurope.org
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Re: Paris Burning [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

may i add this interview with alain finkelkraut and a response by canadian 
writer
edna paris? i found them on the just-watch list. i really like this debate on
nettime, however the (relative) absence of french postings slightly worries me.
maybe i am wrong. i understood there was and still is debate on the nettime-fr
list. is that correct?  /geert

--

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/646938.html

Alain Finkielkraut. "When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion.  When a 
white
guy does it, it's fascism. I'm 'color blind.' Evil is evil, no matter what color
it is. And this evil, for the Jew that I am, is completely intolerable."
(Hannah/Opale)

What sort of Frenchmen are they?

By Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez

PARIS - The first thing the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said to
us when we met one evening at Paris' elegant Le Rostand cafe, where the interior
is decorated with Oriental-style pictures and the terrace faces the Luxembourg
Gardens, was "I heard that even Haaretz published an article identifying with 
the
riots."

This remark, uttered with some vehemence, pretty much sums up the feelings of
Finkielkraut - one of the most prominent philosophers in France in the past 30
years - ever since the violent riots began on October 27 in the impoverished
neighborhoods that surround Paris and spread with surprising speed to similar
suburbs throughout the country. He has been following the events through the
media, keeping up with all the news reports and commentary, and has been 
appalled
at every article that shows understanding for or identification with "the 
rebels"
(and in the French press, there are plenty). He has a lot to say, but it appears
that France isn't ready to listen - that his France has already surrendered to a
blinding, "false discourse" that conceals the stark truth of its situation. The
things he is saying to us in the course of our conversation, he repeatedly
emphasizes, are not things he can say in France anymore.  It's impossible, 
perhaps
even dangerous, to say these things in France now.

Indeed, in the lively intellectual debate that has been taking place on the 
pages
of the French newspapers ever since the rioting started, a debate in which
France's most illustrious minds are taking part, Finkielkraut's is a deviant, 
even
very deviant, voice. Primarily because it is not emanating from the throat of a
member of Jean Marie Le Pen's National Front, but from that of a philosopher
formerly considered to be one of the most eminent spokesmen of the French left -
one of the generation of philosophers who emerged at the time of the May 1968
student revolt.

In the French press, the riots in the suburbs are perceived mainly as an 
economic
problem, as a violent reaction to severe economic hardship and discrimination. 
In
Israel, by comparison, there is sometimes a tendency to view them as violence
whose origins are religious or at least ethnic - that is, to see them as part of
an Islamic struggle. Where would you situate yourself in respect to these
positions?

Finkielkraut: "In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to 
their
social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against 
their
situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the 
unemployment.
The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim
identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is
difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the
riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious
character.

"What is its origin? Is this the response of the Arabs and blacks to the racism 
of
which they are victims? I don't believe so, because this violence had very
troubling precursors, which cannot be reduced to an unalloyed reaction to French
racism.

"Let's take, for example, the incidents at the soccer match between France and
Algeria that was held a few years ago. The match took place in Paris, at the 
Stade
de France. People say the French national team is admired by all because it is
black-blanc-beur ["black-white-Arab" - a reference to the colors on France's
tricolor flag and a symbol of the multiculturalism of French society - D.M.].
Actually, the national team today is black-black-black, which arouses ridicule
throughout Europe. If you point this out in France, they'll put you in jail, but
it's interesting nevertheless that the French national soccer team is composed
almost exclusively of black players.

"Anyway, this team is perceived as a symbol of an open, multiethnic society and 
so
on. The crowd in the stadium, young people of Algerian descent, booed this team
throughout the whole game! They also booed during the playing of the national
anthem, the `Marseillaise,' and the match was halted when the youths broke onto
the field with Algerian flags.

"And then there are the lyrics of the rap songs. Very troubling lyrics.  A real
call to revo

Interview with Lisa Parks [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  Interview with Lisa Parks
Date: 1 November 2005 2:49:46 PM
To:   nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Cc:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Out There: Exploring Satellite Awareness
Interview with Lisa Parks
By Geert Lovink

http://www.networkcultures.org/weblog/archives/2005/11/out_there_explo.html

In her book Cultures in Orbit (2005), media theorist Lisa Parks describes
satellite technology as a 'structuring absence'. Satellites play a key role in
today's global news industry and its "spotlighting of the apparatus" 
(Elsaesser).
However, the key ingredient of the global live connection remains invisible. 
This
is reflected in most of the studies of 'the televisual', as Parks calls the
infrastructure behind the channels we watch. With Cultures in Orbit, Parks
established herself as probably one the first 'satellite theorists' who analyses
this technology from a critical, cultural perspective.

The book opens with a chapter on the 1967 global TV show called Our World, that
explicitly featured the satellite and promoted the idea of 'global presence'. 
Even
though the event was neither live nor global, according to today's standards,
debates around the early satellite days remind of the current Internet 
Governance
discussions, which take place around the World Summit on the Information 
Society.
In the same year, 1967, UN members signed the Outer Space Treaty, prohibiting
national appropriation of outer space, while discussing the role of third world
countries, which, at the time, did not possess satellites at all. A chapter 
about
the Australian Imparja TV and aboriginal TV initiatives is also included. A
different use Parks found in Alexandria, Egypt, where satellite pictures were 
used
in the excavation of Cleopatra's place.

The most interesting piece of Cultures in Orbit forms a reconstruction of the 
role
that satellite 'witnessing' pictures played in the immediate aftermath of the 
1995
Srebrenica mass killings in Bosnia.  Remote sensing evidence of mass graves,
broadcast on the US networks, contributed greatly to US military involvement and
the following Dayton agreements. In 2001 Lisa Parks went to Bosnia, to shift her
position, "to move my eyes from the orbit to the ground," experiencing a 
"fantasy
of proximity." The story illustrates how easy it is to visit a historical 
location
and yet how difficult is it is to bring together techno proximity with the
materiality of the actual location, symbolized by a shoe she finds in the 
fields.
Parks' case studies show the potential of thinking through certain technologies,
instead of merely watching the final products that we, media consumers, are 
being
offered. Without a trace of techno-determinism, Cultures in Orbit proves that it
is possible to tell stories and develop new media concepts.

Lisa Parks, PhD, is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the
University of California at Santa Barbara. She is co-editor of Planet TV: A 
Global
Television Studies Reader (NYU Press 2002) and has published essays in several
book collections and in such journals as Screen, Television and New Media, 
Social
Identities, and Ecumene. She has taught as a visiting professor in the School of
Cinema-TV at USC and at the Institute for Graduate Study in the Humanities in
Ljubljana, Slovenia. Parks teaches courses such as global media, television
history, new media theory, video art and activism, war and media, advanced film
analysis, and feminist media criticism. She is also co-producer of "Experiments 
in
Satellite Media Arts" with Ursula Biemann at the Makrolab (2002) and "Loom" with
Miha Vipotnik (2004), and has been a co-investigator in international funded
projects including the Missing Links Research Project (UCSB-Utrecht) and the
Transcultural Geography Project (Zurich-Cologne-Ljubljana). She has just started
to direct the Global Cultures in Transition research initiative at UCSB's Center
for Information Technology and Society and is currently a research fellow at the
UC Humanities Research Institute.

GL: So far, the satellite has barely existed as an object of interest, not even
within television studies or media theory. Though widely used, the apparatus
remains invisible, in the background. As a consequence we don't know much about
its inner architecture. You've been engaged for years with satellites. Did you 
get
to know them?

LP: I have always been interested in the insides of machines because they 
confound
me. I?m much more of a media and cultural analyst than a historian of 
technology,
though, so the knowledge I have about the engineering and design of satellites 
is
somewhat limited. Each satellite has its own technical and socio-cultural 
history
and it is difficult to make generalizations, but I think of them as floating 
balls
made up of combina

A conversation between Jos? Luis Barrios and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

>From: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: 28 October 2005 5:24:23 PM

(Dear Nettime, here is an interview I did with Mexican critic Jos? Luis 
Barrios. It recycles a bunch of ideas but also discusses recent 
interactive works and public art pieces. Issues covered by this text 
include surveillance art, tedium with randomness, and the concept of 
"subsculptures" and "antimodularity". If you are in Geneva, please stop 
by the exhibition at Galerie Guy Bartschi to see seven new pieces, the 
show runs from Nov 5 to mid-January. Best, rafael at lozano-hemmer.com)

A conversation between Jos? Luis Barrios and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

* This is the edited transcription of a teleconference which took place 
in the Sala de Arte P?blico Siquieros (SAPS), Mexico City, on the 20th 
of April 2005, and which was moderated by the director of SAPS, Itala 
Schmelz. Translation from the Spanish original by Rebecca MacSween.

JLB: The distinguishing factor that defines modernity has to do with 
self-awareness, or the ability of the subject to both represent and 
represent self-reflexively his activities and relationships with the 
world. An important aspect of this is expressed in the Foucaultian 
concept technologies of the gaze. Throughout the history of art and 
visual culture various strategies of the gaze have existed. How do you 
distinguish and conceptualize those strategies that belong to the 
present and how are they manifested in your work?

RLH: New visual experiments have always been aided, or even initiated, 
by technological advancements. For example, perspective during the 
Renaissance, anamorphosis as part of Mannerism, or Eug?ne Chevreul's 
color theory for the Impressionists. In this context my contribution is 
the following: Walter Benjamin spoke with great clarity about the birth 
of modernism. For him the image is that which can be reproduced 
mechanically, a condition that eliminates the aural quality from a work 
of art. Mechanical reproduction democratizes art, popularizes it, and 
takes away that privileged point of view born of singularity. However, 
with digital technologies I believe that the aura has returned, and 
with a vengeance, because what digital technology emphasizes, through 
interactivity, is the multiple reading, the idea that a piece of art is 
created by the participation of the user. The idea that a work is not 
hermetic but something that requires exposure in order to exist is 
fundamental to understand this "vengeance of the aura".

Today digital art, -actually all art-, has awareness. This has always 
been true, but we have now become aware of art's awareness. Pieces 
listen to us, they see us, they sense our presence and wait for us to 
inspire them, and not the other way around. It is no coincidence that 
post-modern art emphasizes the audience. In linguistic theory Saussure 
would say that it is impossible to have a dialogue without being aware 
of your interlocutor. Exactly the same thing was said, almost 100 years 
ago in the art world by Duchamp, for example, when he said, "le regard 
fait le tableau" (the look makes the painting). What we see happening 
is that this concept of dependency is reinforced by digital technology. 
Pieces of art are in a constant state of becoming. It's not that they 
"are" but that they are "changing into". I think the artist no longer 
has a monopoly over their work, or an exhaustive or total position over 
its interpretation or representation. Today, it is a more common 
idea-an idea that I defend-that the work itself has a life. The work is 
a platform and yes the platform has an authorship, but it also has its 
points of entry, its loose ends, its tangents, its empty spaces and its 
eccentricities. In this sense, artworks tend to be eclectic which for 
me signifies the liberation of art, the freedom to reaffirm its 
meaning.

In contrast to the idea of creation through the gaze of the public, the 
other side of the coin should also be mentioned; the panoptic 
computerized gaze. Artistic interest in criticizing the predatory gaze 
of the surveillance camera is nothing new; there is for example the 
work of Dan Graham, Bruce Nauman or Julia Scher, to mention a few. What 
is new is the degree of computerization that the new surveillance 
systems, which invade our public and private spaces, possess. Stemming 
directly from the American "Patriot Act" is a wide variety of 
computer-vision techniques that, for example, are intended for 
identifying suspicious individuals or classifying them based on ethnic 
traits. It is literally about technologies designed to discriminate 
based on a series of innate prejudices. This new intensification of 
surveillance is extremely problematic because, in the words of Manuel 
DeLanda "it endows the computer with the power of executive decision 
making". What is also new is the amount of memory that these systems 
have thanks to ever-smaller storage units and increasingly efficient 
compression-decompre

call to nettime moderators to change email address/systems [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

Dear all, over the past months or longer each time my postings to 
nettime-l@bbs.thing.net ended up somewhere in a spam filter. Each time 
I have been waiting for days to see if something would happen. Then I 
have to send the posting to one of the moderators, Felix Stalder, who 
then puts my contribution onto the list. Am I the only one? It makes me 
wonder if there isn't a better, faster, easier system possible. Has 
email/list culture indeed become that complicated these days? In the 
end you start thinking, why bother... Geert



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Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter: Dawn of the Organised Networks [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

[from Fibreculture Journal - issue 5,
http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/index.html - special issue:
"Multitudes, Creative Organisation and the Precarious Condition of New
Media Labour"]

"Dawn of the Organised Networks"

Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter

At first glance the concept of "organised networks" appears oxymoronic. In
technical terms, all networks are organised. There are founders, administrators,
moderators and active members who all take up roles. Think also back to the 
early
work on cybernetics and the "second order" cybernetics of Bateson and others.
Networks consist of mobile relations whose arrangement at any particular time is
shaped by the "constitutive outside" of feedback or noise.[1] The order of
networks is made up of a continuum of relations governed by interests, passions,
affects and pragmatic necessities of different actors. The network of relations 
is
never static, but this is not to be mistaken for some kind of perpetual 
fluidity.
Ephemerality is not a condition to celebrate for those wishing to function as
political agents.

Why should networks get organised? Isn't their chaotic, disorganised nature a 
good
thing that needs to be preserved? Why should the informal atmosphere of a 
network
be disturbed? Don't worry. Organised networks do not yet exist. The concept
presented here is to be read as a proposal, a draft, in the process of becoming
that needs active steering through disagreement and collective elaboration.[2]
What it doesn't require is instant deconstruction. Everyone can do that. 
Needless
to say, organised networks have existed for centuries. Just think of the 
Jesuits.
The history of organised networks can and will be written, but that doesn't
advance our inquiry for now. The networks we are talking about here are specific
in that they are situated within digital media. They can be characterised by 
their
advanced irrelevance and invisibility for old media and p-in-p (people in 
power).
General network theory might be useful for enlightenment purposes, but it won't
answer the issues that new media based social networks face. Does it satisfy you
to know that molecules and DNA patterns also network?

There are no networks outside of society. Like all human-techno entities, they 
are
infected by power. Networks are ideal Foucault machines. They undermine power as
they produce it. Their diagram of power may operate on a range of scales,
traversing intra-local networks and overlapping with trans-national 
insurgencies.
No matter how harmless they seem, networks ignite differences. Foucault's 
dictum:
power produces. Translate this over to organised networks and you get the force 
of
invention.  Indeed, translation is the condition of invention. Mediology, as
defined by R?gis Debray (1996), is the practice of invention within the
social-technical system of networks. As a collaborative method of immanent
critique, mediology assembles a multitude of components upon a network of
relations as they coalesce around situated problems and unleashed passions. In
this sense, the network constantly escapes attempts of command and control. Such
is the entropic variability of networks.

The opposite of organised networks is not chaos. Organised networks routinely
intervene into the radical temporality of today's mediasphere. Short-termism is
the prevailing condition that inflicts governments, corporations, and everyday
life. Psycho-pharmacology is the bio-technical management of this condition 
(Bifo,
2005). Organised networks offer another possibility - the possibility of
creativity, invention and purpose that is not determined in the first instance 
by
the creaking, frequently bewildered grasps at maintaining control, as witnessed
across a range of institutions that emerged during the era of the modern state 
and
persist to this day within the complex of the corporate-state, which continues 
to
maintain a monopoly on legitimate violence.

Network users do not see their circle of peers as a sect. Users are not 
political
party members. Quite the opposite. Ties are loose, up to the point of breaking 
up.
Thus the ontology of the user, in so many ways, mirrors the logic of capital.
Indeed, the "user" is the identity par excellence of capital that seeks to 
extract
itself from rigid systems of regulation and control. Increasingly the user has
become a term that corresponds with the auto-configuration of self-invention. 
Some
would say the user is just a consumer: silent and satisfied, until hell breaks
lose.  The user is the identity of control by other means. In this respect, the
user is the empty vessel awaiting the spectral allure of digital commodity
cultures and their promise of "mobility" and "openness". Let us harbour no
fantasies: sociality is intimately bound within the dynamic array of technics
exerted by the force of capital. Networks are everywhere. T

(CRIS): WSIS and Human Rights in Tunisia (Modified by Geert Lovink) [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

(Interesting report from the communication rights campaign coordinator  
Se?n ? Siochr? who recently visited Tunisia, the host country for the  
second world summit on the information society (wsis) that will take  
place in Tunis, mid November. Next week a third and last preparatory  
meeting takes place in Geneva. This text was fwd. from the  
Incommunicado list. /geert)

From: Se?n ? Siochr?, CRIS Campaign

Human Rights in Tunisia: The Grip Tightens in the Lead up to The WSIS.

I am of the generation that on hearing that someone has been on a  
?mission?, immediately thinks either of ?Mission Impossible? or of the  
many Irish missionaries that plied the world with Christian ideology,  
mostly well-intentioned, in the name of helping poor people. I am just  
back from a human rights mission to Tunisia. This is my report. I  
cannot say which of the above it more closely approximates, if any, but  
my firm intention is to add another voice to those who argue that civil  
society must take strong action at the upcoming WSIS PrepCom 3 and  
Tunis Summit on the human rights situation in Tunisia.

--

I travelled to Tunis last week on behalf of the CRIS Campaign as part  
of an international group of human rights related NGOs. We were to  
participate in a planning meeting about the WSIS and the human rights  
situation in Tunisia hosted by the Ligue Tunisienne des Droits de  
l?Homme (LTDH) ? Tunisian League for Human Rights ? and I personally  
was eager to assess the situation for myself. The schedule included a  
session on the 8th of September with LTDH members to discuss the  
situation and options, meetings with government officials to listen to  
their positions, followed by attendance as observers at the Sixth  
Congress of the League.

Human rights advocates under siege?

The deterioration of the situation in Tunisia was evident even before  
we set off. On the Monday before travelling a court order was issued  
prohibiting the LTDH from holding its Congress, and indeed from even  
discussing and planning the event at a later date. On arrival on  
Wednesday evening, we went straight to the League?s office to find the  
street at both ends cluttered with plain clothes police, presumably  
intended to deter visitors and intimidate those inside. The atmosphere  
in the office was siege-like, non stop convening of meetings and  
huddled discussions. But messages of support from the German  
ambassador, the Canadian Attach? and EU diplomats were encouraging; and  
the news that the President of the European Parliament had issued a  
strong statement in their favour, drawing attention also to the WSIS,  
was greeted with some appreciation. [1]

There is strong evidence that the human rights situation in Tunisia is  
deteriorating in many respects, including in relation to the internet.  
The first assembly of the Tunisian Journalists Association, scheduled  
for the Wednesday the 7th of September, was also cancelled by the  
authorities. And the imprisonment in April of lawyer Mohamed Abbou to  
three and a half years for a website article comparing torture in  
Tunisian prisons to Abu Graib [2] is still fresh in everyone?s minds?  
as is the sad death of the young Zouhair Yahyaoui, editor of TuneZine,  
who had been imprisoned and tortured for publishing his critical Web  
journal [3]. All this in the country that will soon host the  
Information Society Summit. E-mails of suspect individuals are  
systematically monitored ? a joke here is that faxes usually arrive the  
next day! The LTDH is itself infiltrated by many government agents, who  
barely conceal their efforts to hamper its activities and undermine its  
credibility (the suspended Congress being a case in point).

Many in Tunis and outside had hoped the security-obsessed President Ben  
Ali might concede to pressures to improve the human rights situation in  
the run up to the WSIS in November. On the contrary: Systematic and  
orchestrated efforts appear to be ongoing to prevent the LTDH and  
independent non-governmental organisations from casting a spotlight on  
the ugly reality of human rights in Tunisia when the heads of state,  
ministers, intergovernmental organisations and NGOs converge on the  
Summit in November.

Apart from words of comfort from some governments, offered mostly by  
local diplomats who can appreciate the facts with their own eyes, there  
is scant evidence that the rest of the international community is at  
all concerned where it matters most ? in the context of the WSIS  
itself. International relations being what they are, it seems none  
amongst them is as yet willing to spoil the party, even those who  
privately believe that the party itself ? the WSIS - will achieve  
little.

Thursday: Meetings commence

In a tense but defiant atmosphere, the meeting between the  
international NGO observers and the LTDH went ahead on the 8th in their  
offices ? they had been unable to find hotel willing

Hernani Dimantas: Linkania--the Hyperconected Multitude [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

From: Hernani Dimantas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

(posted to nettime with the permission of the author. /geert)

Linkania - The Hyperconected Multitude
By  Hernani Dimantas

"I link therefore I'm." Edward Wilson 1

Thinking of citizenship in the web society is increasingly complex.

How do chaos and order fit together in a concept that puts the individual in 
possession
of the civil and politic of a State. Individual is an eroded word. A human 
being cannot
be seen as indivisible. In a modern society people are multifaceted and are 
able to
live many lives in a single one. Schizophreny blooms in this society mediated 
by the
digital.

Heidegger asks: What is this -- philosophy?, and says:

"We talk about philosophy. Questioning this way we remain somewhere over 
philosophy,
and this means outside it. However, the point of our question is to get inside
philosophy, to remain there, to submit our behaviour to its laws, that means 
,"to
philosophize". The course of our discussion must therefore have not only a well
defined direction, but this direction has to, at the same time, assure to us 
that we
are moving in the realm of philosophy, and not outside and around it. The 
course of our
discussion must therefore be of that kind and direction so that what philosophy 
handles
touches our responsibility, touches us, exactly in our being." 2

In the same manner as to philosophize we have to take part, to live in the web 
we have
to "brush up the bits" 3 from the inside outwards. In the same manner that
people, mass or State are empty and excluding words, citizenship is a term that 
assumes
a look from the outside. Our goal is to enter citizenship. The idea is to take 
part, or
"citizenize". I want, however, to go a little beyond this concept.

My reference is linkania. A movement of self-organization of chaos. Linkania is 
an
idea, an insertion in the world of ideas and things. Marcelo Estraviz says:

"...I'm getting tired of the empty speech about this citizenship. Empty because 
it
does mean almost nothing, but it's pretty to say. Citizenship, in its essence, 
is
entailed (linked?) to rights and obligations. Instead of talking and fully 
exercise
this, discuss, spread, we talk of the vague terminology of citizenship." 4

The concept of citizenship is being emptied in the critic. Many activists 
against mass
media sit at night on their couches and enjoy the colourfull screen pluged on 
Rede
Globo. Soap operas of the idle life pass in front of their eyes. We must aim 
beyond
tactics. Activism has to go beyond criticism and constitute itself as a thought 
action,
starting from a deep understanding of linkania and from a new model of relation 
among
people and between people and technologies.

Because linkania has to do with people. I mean people in a more encompassing 
form. With
the digital technologies we are perceiving feelings that were not present in our
standard metaphysics. We are probing our singularities (and our 
schizophrenias). We
have a crowd inside each person. Linkania makes the bonds for auto-organization.
Therefore, linkania is opposed to the Hegelian idea of citizenship. Linkania is
immanent. It is connected to people.

Toni Negri gives an interesting insight:

"Against all avatars of the transcendence of the sovereign power (and nominally 
that of
the "sovereign people"), the concept of the = mutitude is one of immanence: a
revolutionary monster of the non-representable singularities, it begins with 
the idea
that any body is a crowd in itself, and consequently, the expression and 
cooperation.
It's in the same manner a class concept, subject of the production and subject 
to
exploration, this being defined as exploration of the cooperation of 
singularities, a
materialistic dispositive of the multitude can only start from a prioritary 
taking of
the body and from the struggle against its exploration." 5

In this sense the internet brings novelty. It lets us perceive these 
singularities and
understand that this monstrous multitude potencializes the debate. It lets us
understand that power tends to decentralization. The catalysis of collaboration 
is not
a case under development. It is a virtual reality. Collaboration is a process 
that
wasn't born with the computer. It's in people's mouth, rounding the dusty 
asphalt of
the outskirts.

Linux was born, has grown up, ripened and, now, reaches the technological 
orgasm.
Breaking the logic of "market share" is the apex of pleasure for the hacker
communities. But I don't want to restrain myself to Linux. I've been saying 
that Linux
is only the tip of the iceberg in this knowledge revolution. The free software
communities are the model for a possible collaboration society. It was the 
developers
that broke the barrier and superposed themselves over the dogmas of the 
industrial era.
But software is only a tool. In a collaboration society a digital ecology must 
prevail.

Collaboration demands generosity.

There is no collaboration without generosity. Colla

Richard Rogers and Anat Ben-David on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and transnational issue networks (Modified by Geert Lovink) [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

The Palestinian-Israeli peace process and transnational issue networks: 
The complicated place of the Israeli NGO.

By Richard Rogers and Anat Ben-David

The study investigates the potential consequences of the predominance of the 
human rights frame in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The human rights framing of issues is 
increasingly prevalent amongst
actors working in transnational advocacy networks, often collaborating or 
aligned with Palestinian
groups. Indeed, especially on the Internet, official Palestinian bodies have 
assumed a style of
communication of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), blurring the 
Palestinian official positioning
(and its styling, or "formatting") with that of the transnational advocacy 
stance (and its look).

On the Israeli side, there is little blurring of the line between the official 
and the unofficial,
albeit with a pitched terminological (and policy-related) battle underway 
between the left and the
right to frame the purpose of particular measures, such as the "security fence" 
(to the
right-of-center actors) and the "separation fence" (to the left-of-center). 
Whether it is for security
or for separation (a distinction that is crucial), the term "fence," it is 
argued, stands in for a
regional approach to conflict mitigation, where the connotation could be 
'neighborly.' To use the term
"wall" is to frame the conflict in the language of human rights.

There are a few Israeli groups that use the term "wall," in solidarity with the 
Palestinian cause. No
Palestinian groups term it a "fence."  Thus, in an important respect, one may 
monitor the state of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict - its intractability, its openings - through 
watching language use over
time. The analysis opens inroads in the study of the Palestinian-Israeli 
conflict, preparing the
ground for such a media monitoring practice.

Reflecting the main title of the paper, "the Palestinian-Israeli peace process 
and trans-national
issue networks," the study maps the network of actors working on the conflict, 
using special
Internet-based tools.  We found not only the predominance of the human rights 
frame in the
Palestinian-international networks, but also the absence of linkages from 
Palestinian and
transnational network actors to Israeli groups. In fact, as the subtitle of the 
paper indicates, "the
complicated place of the (left-leaning) Israeli NGO" lies in its isolation, 
despite its solidarity
with the Palestinians. The isolation of the Israeli left-leaning groups by 
Palestinian and
transnational network actors is attributed to its choice of a regional over an 
international approach,
and, in the study, is elaborated by its distinct use of language to describe 
the "fence." The Israeli
groups find themselves in an issue space and conflict approach of their own 
making, distinct from the
human rights frame that dominates the transnational networks aligned with the 
Palestinian.

The implications of the work are three-fold, apart from the methodological 
conflict monitoring
practice (with the Internet), addressed in greater length in an accompanying 
work (in preparation). 
First, we make a plea for care to be taken in the consideration of the human 
rights frame by focusing
on the question of its expanding reach into issue areas. We make a further plea 
for the study of local
NGOs in conflict situations, especially when the local groups do not readily 
assimilate their approach
to that of the transnational advocacy networks. Finally, the work suggests a 
means to assess conflict
work between peace-seeking groups from both sides of any "fence."

Download the study.

Richard Rogers and Anat Ben-David, "The Palestinian-Israeli peace 
process and trans-national issue networks: The complicated place of the 
Israeli NGO," 2005, 
http://www.govcom.org/publications/full_list/rogers_ben-david_1.pdf

--

About the authors

Dr. Richard Rogers is Director of the Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam, 
and University Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of 
Amsterdam. He is author of Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 
2004).

Anat Ben-David holds an M.A. in Media Studies at the University of 
Amsterdam.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Advanced 
Network Research Group, Cambridge Security Programme, University of 
Cambridge, U.K.

In Preparation

Anat Ben-David and Richard Rogers, "Conflict Indications in Media. An 
analysis of the usage, in official and unofficial sources, of the 
?security fence,? ?apartheid wall,? and other terms for the structure 
between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory." To appear, in 
early form, on http://www.govcom.org/publications/full_list/ (September 
2005).



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Hacking Public Spaces in Vilnius, an interview [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

Hacking Public Spaces in Vilnius
Politics of a new media space inside the Lietuva (soviet) cinema

Interview with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
By Geert Lovink

Ever since I met Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas in 1999, two contemporary artists
from Lithuania, they have been in search for an art space where they could
establish a media lab, host talks and exhibit new media related art works. In
August 2004 their organization, Vilma, hosted the RAM 6 workshop in Vilnius--yet
another example which showed how well organized they were, and how desperate in
need of their own infrastructure to do critical and innovative projects. This
spring, Nomeda and Gediminas suddenly saw a chance--and grabbed it. They 
occupied
the huge voyer of the privatized Lietuva cinema, over which a controversy had
arisen. In May 2005 Nomeda and Gediminas were in Amsterdam briefly for the 
opening
of the Populism show at the Stedelijk Museum, a moment we used to catch up and
prepare for the following interview, which was done through email over the past 
few
weeks. The situation of their exciting projects is changing on a daily basis and
we'll hope to keep you informed. In the meanwhile, if you would like to support
them, for instance by sending them taping which they could screen, please 
contact
them. Email plus URLs can be found below.

GL:Hi, how are you? It's been an exciting few months for you. Tell us all about 
the
space. How does it look inside? And what's happening inside, for instance last
week?

NU & GU:To tell all about the space, we should make a short story long and
introduce you to the context. Since independence in 1991 Lithuani a has been 
caught
in an insane period of privatization, property development and demolition. Like 
a
Wild West land-grab or a gold rush, speculators and real estate tycoons have 
joined
forces with corrupt municipal bureaucrats to redevelop the country at a mad 
pace.
Profit has been their only motive. Public space, landmark buildings, cultural 
life,
and public opinion have been the principal victims. Their method is simple: tell
the population that economic development is good for everyone. Convince them 
that
Capital is King. Remind the public that making Lithuania look like the pale 
shade
of a Western European city is the best way to scrub the Soviet past: and make 
the
country attractive to even more investment and development.

During Soviet times, cinema played an important role in public cultural life. 
Large
movie theatres were built in central locations around Lithuanian cities. The
theatres filled a crucial role as places for public meetings and gatherings. 
After
independence, as Soviet structures rapidly crumbled in a wholesale fashion, the
cinemas caught the attention of the real estate market. In a short time, private
enterprise managed to take over and destroy almost every cinema in Vilnius, 
turning
them into apartments and supermarkets.

More than 15 cinema theatres disappeared including such urban landmarks as Ausra
(Dawn), Zvaigzde (Star), Spalis (October), Pionierius (Pioneer), Pergale 
(Victory),
Tevyne (Motherland), Kronika (Newsreel), Aidas (Echo), Planeta (Planet), Neris,
Vingis, Lazdynai, Vilnius, Maskva (Moscow), and LIETUVA (Lithuania). In poor
replacement, andmirroring the tragedy of cities all over the world, two 2
multiplexcinema monsters were constructed: the suburban Coca Cola Plaza 
andexurban
Akropolis Cinemas. The latter, that is part of Lithuania's largest shopping 
mall,
is representative of the 'mallification' ofLithuania. With the multiplexes came
multiplex Hollywood movies: so the demolition of cinematic space encoded a
demolition of independent film programming. Now, in 2005, there is only one 
cinema
standing: LIETUVA. And a battle has emerged to save it. Cinema Lietuva was 
built in
1965 and, significantly, is the largest cinema in Lithuania with over 1000 seats
and a screen size of 200 square meters, offering an ideal image size.It is the 
home
of the Vilnius Film Festival and as such has played animportant role in the
imaginative life of a whole generation of Vilnius people. The title of the
enterprise "Lietuva" (Lithuania) is alsoan important signifier of national
identity, as its name never bore anySoviet overtones (i.e. it wasn't called the
Cinema of the SovietRepublic of Lithuania). To say to somebody "let's meet at
Lietuva" really meant something during Soviet occupation. In 2002, the Vilnius
Municipal authorities quietly sold the cinema toprivate property developers; 
with a
caveat that it had to operate as a cinema for a three-year period. That term is
ending on 1 July 2005 and a protest to save the cinema has begun. In March 2005 
we
infiltrated the former ticket office of the countrylargest cinema, staging the
'pro-test lab', which is the embodiment of VILMA =96 Vilnius Interdisciplinary 
Lab
for Media Arts. Pro-test lab is constructed as a spatial device to reg

GIEP HAGOORT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A EUROPE BOTTOM UP [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

(this is the big debate, wherever you go in europe, creative industries yes or
no... so, are you creative yet? /geert)

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A EUROPE BOTTOM UP

mentality and method

INTERVIEW WITH GIEP HAGOORT

Professor Art & Economics

Chairman Research group Art & Economics/Cultural Entrepreneurship Utrecht 
School of
the Arts

1 Entrepreneurial Style

"Entrepreneurial style in the cultural sector means: take your own cultural 
mission
as a starting point to look for new chances in your environment. You can do 
this on
your own but my advice is to develop partnerships with other initiatives and
existing art organisations. As we know the cultural sector is a low or no budget
sector. In my own city, Utrecht, entrepreneurial artists start new initiatives
without money in their pocket but with original ideas in the field of art and
economics. We call this: doing cultural business with the 'bank-without-money'. 
I
have been working in Central and East Europe for many years and I have seen a 
lot
of examples like in Utrecht. And= I know it is important to have a strong
endurance. A complaining attitude is a dangerous pitfall.

2 Cultural entrepreneurship is based on history

"Cultural entrepreneurship, as explained in my books and papers, is not a West
European or an American approach. It is a real cultural quality with a strong
cultural history. Five centuries before Christ there were large-scale Greek
festivals based on an entrepreneurial method with a strong managerial structure
about artistic judging, sponsoring and audience management. All famous 
Renaissance
artists and cultural managers were entrepreneurs too. Suger developed innovation
workshops for renewing churches in Gothic style. Theatre maker Shakespeare, and
painters Rubens and Rembrandt had there own private firms. It is not needed to
concentrate on general American management concepts which ignore real cultural
values. On the contrary: do investigate your own cultural history and art
management values. Cultural entrepreneurship is a mentality and a method. It 
can be
used by individual artists and large cultural organisations like museums, 
theatres,
etc.

3 Central and East Europe

"Based on my work experiences in Central and East Europe I see a lack of what I
mention 'Concepting'. Concepting means: design your artistic dreams in 
interaction
with your environment and develop a long-term plan. Even in the case that you 
just
have an individual project it is important to create a cultural infrastructure
around you and to elaborate your ideas into concrete plans. Mainly during the
collective drinks after my sessions I emphasize again and again: stop 
complaining,
professionalize your art organisation and make attractive but realistic plans. 
And
stop saying: my town is different. Of course your town is different: deal with
that!

4 Creativity is a unique strength

"The cultural sector has one unique strength: creativity. In the post communist
countries and the old, tired EU-nations only creativity can innovate 
communities,
cities and industries. If the creative sector can re organize itself on the
principle of networking, the business world, the bureaucrats and the traditional
world of universities know that the answers will come from creativity. But 
there is
one fundamental condition for this success: a flexible and meaningful cultural
policy on city, province and national level. It is important that the government
takes its own responsibility, in financing, in creating an infrastructure, in
taking care of art education and in supporting people to enjoy own art and 
culture.
To plead for a total free market in the cultural sector is based on a big and
dangerous misunderstanding about art and its history. In the history of Europe 
and
its rulers there was always a general interest approach for culture. The most
important arguments were: quality of live, the status of the residence, the
education of the people. I cannot see that these arguments are outdated. Only in
the USA the government is denying this responsibility en leaves it to the
multimillionaires. But in Europe we do appreciate a more civilized system.

5 Reorientation in Europe

"Because of the NON of the French and the NEE of the Dutch against the new EU
constitution we will get a fundamental re orientation on the position of the EU 
in
Europe. Together with the Council of Europe with its 46 members, the cultural
sector in Europe has to create new strategies. To my opinion the issue of 
Creative
Cities with cultural entrepreneurship and social inclusion will play a key role 
in
those strategies. The growing EU-bureaucracy has to be killed. More and more the
artists based practices will colour the discussion about Europe and culture. 
Europe
from bottom up is the motto, top down Europe is dead.

6 Cultural values

"If you combine your artistic activities with interesting social, spacial and
economic developments in your city of region, cultural values will be 
appreciated
as an imp

from the browser front [u]

[Geert Lovink [c]]

(after mobile phone, art & design and open source browsers, here the 
anti-terror broswer. /geert)

UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS DEVELOPING BROWSER TO FIGHT TERRORISM

Researchers at the University of Buffalo (UB) are developing browser
technology that endeavors to identify hidden connections in vast
collections of documents. Rather than simply looking for matches to
specified query terms, which is what typical search engines do, the UB
technology seeks to uncover connections between ideas. According to
John McCarthy, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford
University, a tool that successfully links concepts could be an
important breakthrough. A number of federal agencies, including the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), are investing in the research,
which they hope can be used to find the sorts of connections that will
aid efforts to fight terrorism. The project has been used to search the
report from the 9/11 Commission as well as public Web pages, looking
for connections regarding the hijackers. The tool searches for concepts
such as names, dates, and places and maps the connections it finds,
potentially resulting in trails of evidence useful to investigators or
other authorities.

CNET, 2 June 2005
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5730176.html


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NL: Municipality wants to ban hacker gathering

[Geert Lovink]

http://www.whatthehack.org/

Municipality wants to ban hacker gathering

The organisers of 'What the Hack', the 2005 edition of a series of
famous Dutch outdoor hacker conferences, were told that their conference
will not receive the municipal permit needed for the event to happen.
'What the Hack" is planned to take place on a large event-campground in
Liempde=20 (The Netherlands), between the 28th and 31st of July 2005.
About 3.000 participants from all over the world are expected. 'What The
Hack' is appealing the decision.

What The Hack is scheduled to take place near Boxtel, a village near Den
Bosch in the south of The Netherlands. The mayor of Boxtel, J.A.M. van
Homelen, cites "fear of disturbances of law and order and danger to
public safety". This is noteworthy because the previous editions of the
event saw no incidents of any kind -- neither at the event itself nor 
on the
Internet.

Organiser Rop Gonggrijp, co-founder of the first Dutch Internet provider
XS4ALL and former editor-in-chief of the 1980's hacker magazine
'Hack-Tic' assumes the problem boils down to a misunderstanding: "The
mayor seems to have a bit of an awkward perception of what we, the
hackers, are going to be doing there. Yes, we think it's important that
bad computer security is exposed. But computer break-ins are such a side
issue for us. These are grown-up hackers: The participants that do deal
with computer security issues have been working in the computer security
industry for years."

During their 16-year tradition, the events have been turning points for
Internet culture. In 1989, the notion of 'computer networking for the
people' was introduced into Europe, laying the foundation for an
ideology which sprouted one of Europe's first ISPs: XS4ALL. 'De Digitale
Stad', the famous Amsterdam Digital City project, was conceived at the
1993 edition of the event. In 1997, visitors at the event used a legal
loophole to distribute an exported copy of the PGP encryption program,
forcing the US government to change its policies regarding the export of
strong encryption algorithms. The events have inspired a series of
similar events in Germany, the USA and many other countries.

What The Hack will feature lectures on the fight against software
patents in Europe, discussions on how to use wireless technologies to
get Internet into the hands of more people in developing countries,
presentations that demonstrate various problems regarding biometric
identification, news from the world of Open Source software and more.



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media activism a la century 21

[Geert Lovink]

http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/

Sunday, May 22, 7/6c

"Piestewa Family" - SEASON FINALE

In a two-hour special, the design team builds a new home for the family 
of a fallen Native American heroine killed in Iraq -- PFC Lori Piestewa 
-- and constructs a center for Native American military veterans.

Former POW Jessica Lynch -- Lori's best friend and roommate in Iraq -- 
will be on board for the build. 


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Rachel Konrad: For Some Techies, an Interminable Workday

[Geert Lovink]

(welcome to the flat world, techies and geeks. no fun, no choice? worth
reading! /geert)

For Some Techies, an Interminable Workday
By Rachel Konrad (AP)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - The traffic jam ended hours ago, the parking lot
is nearly empty and fluorescent lights are dimmed at PortalPlayer Inc.,
where the nightly brainstorming session is about to begin.

Instead of gathering the few remaining souls from their cubicles, three
managers move into a conference room to dial India, where engineers 12
1/2 time zones ahead are just arriving in Hyderabad.

As colleagues on opposite sides of the globe discuss circuit board
configurations and debugging strategies for a project code-named
"Doppelganger," it's just the start of another endless day for the
company. Within twelve hours, Indian workers will end their day with
calls and e-mails to California, where managers in the Santa Clara
headquarters will just be waking up.

"We keep passing the baton between California and India, and that way we
can cram a lot more work into a 24-hour period," said Jeff Hawkey, vice
president of hardware engineering, who conducts evening meetings from
the office or on his laptop at home. "A lot of nights, I go home, tuck
the kids into bed and then get on the conference call."

Executives at PortalPlayer, which makes chips and software for portable
music devices such as the iPod, say having 90 employees in Hyderabad
nearly doubles the amount of engineering work that gets done in 24
hours. That shrinks production cycles and lets the 6-year-old company
stay ahead of bigger semiconductor rivals.

Thousands of other tech companies have similar baton-passing rituals.
"Offshoring" -- the migration of jobs to lower-cost countries such a
India, China and Russia -- remains politically sensitive because of the
tepid U.S. job market. But executives insist that cheaper labor and
faster work flow have made offshoring a fact of life for everyone in the
industry.

Even the most unapologetic globalization proponents nevertheless
acknowledge that offshoring has resulted in longer, stranger hours for
white-collar workers in the United States. Some business experts worry
that the trend could result in massive burnout if offshoring isn't
properly managed.

Silicon Valley workers grumble that communicating with colleagues
overseas requires midnight teleconferences, 6 a.m. video meetings and
the annoying "pling" of instant messages and twittering cell phones all
night long. Although many techies swapped social lives for 80-hour weeks
during the ephemeral dot-com boom, the 24-hour business cycle seems even
more stressful than the caffeinated '90s: Today's long hours are less
likely to result in windfall bonuses or stock options, and there's no
end in sight.

"It's definitely a case of work creep -- everyone in this industry is
working harder right now because of e-mail, wireless access and
globalization," said Christopher Lochhead, chief marketing officer of
Mercury Interactive Inc., a Mountain View-based consulting firm in 35
countries, including Israel, where Sunday is a normal working day.  "You
can't even get a rest on the weekend," Lochhead said from his cell phone
in the Dallas airport after sales meetings in Mexico. "The reality is
that when you do business globally, somebody working for you is always
on the clock."

Some executives who ask workers to burn the midnight oil offer
flexibility -- longer lunch breaks, telecommuting privileges and
complimentary dinner if you work past 6 p.m. Others dismiss complainers
as spoiled or provincial -- after all, customer service representatives
in Asia have worked on U.S. schedules for more than a decade, so
why shouldn't Americans deal with time-zone challenges as the
industry globalizes?

The staunchest advocates say whiners should find new professions.
Richard Spitz, who leads the technology division of the recruiting fi
rm Korn/Ferry International, says corporate clients want employees who
embrace a 24-hour business cycle.

"If you want to play in the A league, you have to take on some
additional challenges," Spitz said. "It might not mean that you have 
to work around the clock for your entire career -- at some point, you
can step off the treadmill. But if you want to be in the business,
then you have to commit to this schedule for some period of time."

At what cost, however?

Some worry that the extra hours and unrelenting pace could have dire
consequences -- namely, widespread fatigue and brain drain in the
technology and financial services industries, the most aggressive
exporters of white-collar jobs. Steep turnover among sleep-deprived
managers could eventually lead senior executives to re-evaluate the
benefits of offshoring, said Peter Morici, an international business
professor at Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of
Maryland.

"You simply can't keep working a full day, put the kids to bed, take a
call from Malaysia, then go back fresh the next morning -- it's one
thing to do it for

Statement by Toni Negri re: Windschuttle article in The Australian

[Geert Lovink]

(fwd. on request of the conference organizers to nettime-l. more on 
this case can be found on the www.fibreculture.org list. /geert)

The following is a statement written by Toni Negri in refutation of the 
allegations made against him by Keith Windschuttle in _The Australian_ 
(16 March 2005):

http://theaustralian.com.au/common/story_page/
0,5744,12556881%255E7583,00.html

Negri isolates nine points in Windschuttle's article that he claims are
totally false. He is angered by the need to rebut a series of scandalous
accusations that contradict the truths established by Italian judges who
convicted him of some crimes but found him totally innocent--and
therefore definitively absolved--of another series of charges.

The nine points are as follows:

1. I never had anything to do with the Red Brigades, neither as leader, 
member, nor sympathiser. These charges were dropped after some months 
(in late 1979/early 1980). Even Cossiga, who put me in jail at the 
time, has now repeatedly rejected these allegations. I have been 
totally absolved of these charges. As a matter of fact, when I was in 
prison the Red Brigades even condemned me to death for disassociating 
myself from 'armed struggle,' along with many other friends in Rebibbia 
prison.

2. I never had anything to do with the kidnapping and murder of the Hon.
Moro by the Red Brigades. The court records hold me completely innocent
of this accusation.

3. The murders for which I was initially accused were all revealed to be
false accusations. I was absolved of all 17! I was convicted for 'crimes
of association' and never for 'crimes of blood.'

4. I was initially accused of being the person who telephoned the Moro
family. The first expert declared my voice to be 80% compatible with the
voice of the caller. Another expert demonstrated the contrary, since the
voice of the caller had an accent from Marche. Subsequent trials--and
the role of the penitents from the Red Brigades--revealed the truth; it
was Mario Moretti who made the call (he is in fact from Marche). I was
completely absolved because I had nothing to do with this. When Espresso
published the disk about which _The Australian_ article speaks (with my
voice from a lesson, and the voice of the caller during the days of the
kidnapping-a way of inviting public opinion to judge by itself), I
should have taken them to court for defamation. Unfortunately I was in a
high security prison. But I was absolved nonetheless.

5. I was elected a member of parliament of the Radical Party of Marco
Pannella, which, contrary to what _The Australian_ article says, is not
a an extremist neo-marxist party but a party that has become ever more
liberal. It was already liberal in those days (although more in the
'libertarian' mode) and today tends almost to the position of Bush. In
any case, the party fought for civil liberties and due process in an era
of emergency laws, which is nothing to be ashamed about either yesterday
or today.

6. I did not use my liberty as a member of parliament to escape to
France. I escaped only when they decided to remove my parliamentary
immunity (by a majority of only 4 votes in the lower house ... the votes
of the Radical Party). I had already served four and a half years in a
maximum security prison. My conviction of 30 years (1983) was reduced by
appeal to 13.5 years (1986), only for 'crimes of association.' The
judges removed the charge of insurrection against the state, contrary to
what The Australian article affirms. When I returned to Italy in 1997, I
did in no way bargain for a reduction of the sentence. In fact, after my
return to Rebibbia, a sentence of 3 years and 4 months was added for
'fatti di piazza' (protests in Milan during the 1970s). The total
sentence was 17 years and I served it all.

7. The publication of _Empire_ in the USA does not seem to me a
phenomenon of 'radical glamour' and the mention of my imprisonment in
Rebibbia on the book cover was simply the truth. _Empire_ was published
by Harvard University Press and cited among the seven 'next big ideas'
by _Time_. Neither Harvard nor _Time_ seem to me suspects of 'radical
glamour' or to have sympathies for political extremism.

8. I am not in my sixties. I am 71-almost 72-years old. I was 64 when I
returned to prison in 1997. I was not put under house arrest. I did one
year of full imprisonment (with common inmates), two years of 'external
work' (permission to exit only for work, with interdictions against
change of plans and not respecting the required hours, constant
surveillance, and return to jail after work); two years of semi-liberty
(nights in jail, days at home for studying with interdictions against
leaving the vicinity of the house and constant surveillance); and one
year of 'guarded liberty' (days and nights at home with interdictions
against leaving the vicinity and going out between 10pm and 7am, with
regular surveillance). I was definitively released-after having served
all of my sentence-on 25 April 20

American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for "restoring trust in American business"

[Geert Lovink]

(comments below on 'corporate responsabilty' report is somewhat 
predictable as Mokhiber and Weissman have been calling for conviction 
for corporate crime for years, without success as of yet, but 
interesting nonetheless. see link for press release and table of 
content. /geert)

http://www.amacad.org/publications/corpResp.aspx

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:[corp-focus] Crush Corporate Crime
Date:   30 March 2005 5:17:25 AM

Crush Corporate Crime
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Last week, we attended a press conference.

It was held by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which
identifies itself as "an international learned society composed of the
world's leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people, and
public leaders."

The Academy held the press conference to draw attention to a new study
it was releasing: "Restoring Trust in American Business."

The idea for the study came from three corporate insiders -- securities
lawyer powerbrokers Martin Lipton and Larry Sonsini, and Harvard
Business School Professor and Computer Associates board member Jay
Lorsch -- the same Computer Associates that was recently criminally
charged in a massive corporate fraud, and was granted a deferred
prosecution agreement, which let the company off the hook for the
consequences of the crime.

These corporate insiders said that they found a "disturbing breakdown of
values in corporate America."

But search as we would through the 184 pages of "Restoring Trust in
American Business," we found nary a suggestion that one way to restore
trust and deter corporate criminal wrongdoing would be to criminally
prosecute felonious corporations or their executives.

No, in their book, the power brokers talk on and on about ethics, and
gatekeepers, and stronger professional standards, lack of judgment, and
independence -- but nothing about prosecuting corporate crime.

And so at the press conference, we asked -- why didn't you address this
issue in your study?

Damon Silvers, a lawyer at the AFL-CIO, and a friend of ours, rose to
answer.

Silvers says that he attended business school.

And he said that on his first day at business school, he attended a
mandatory ethics class.

The question addressed on the first day of class was -- do you take a
factory overseas where you are certain to benefit from child labor?

Half the class, mostly Americans said -- if it is value maximizing in
the short term, do it.

The other half of the class, mostly non-Americans said -- of course not,
that is dangerous, bad things will happen to your corporation in the
long run if you do it.

Nobody in the class -- no student, nor the teacher -- suggested that
there might be things that would be value maximizing but would be wrong
to do, short term or long term.

"There are a lot of bad apples," Silvers said. "Maybe there are some
sociopaths out there. But when you have a culture where people who are
given control of most of the resources of our society believe there are
in fact no moral limits, none, that every moral question can be answered
on a spreadsheet, then what we have essentially seen in the last few
years is doomed to repeat itself. But the solution to that cannot be
putting sociopaths in jail. Because that is not the problem. The problem
is systemic structures that encourage people to behavior in really
destructive ways. It is not about good people and bad people, which is
how President Bush framed it. It is about how we channel ordinary
people. That's why I think the criminal issue, while important, is
necessarily and unavoidably a limited solution."

Well, if the people who are "given control of most of the resources of
our society believe there are in fact no moral limits, none," as Silvers
puts it, then we have a nation of corporate sociopaths.

And all the informed business ethics courses and codes of professional
responsibility are not going to make a dent in corporate crime.

But criminal prosecution might actually do the trick.

Criminal prosecution is not just about catching and holding accountable
a few bad apples. It is about society drawing clear lines of right and
wrong, and then enforcing those social norms seriously.

Had the academy added even one or two citizen activists, or one or two
academics who have studied corporate and white-collar crime, they might
have added this to their list of remedies.

Just to name one, they might have talked with University of Tennessee
criminologist Neal Shover, who has written a book titled Choosing White
Collar Crime.

It will be published by Cambridge University Press in September 2005.

Shover argues that the choice to commit corporate and white-collar crime
is a far more careful, prudent and protracted process than it is for
street crime.

Therefore, criminal prosecution will have a greater deterrent impact
with white collar crime than with street crime.

Translated: Shover wants to crack down hard on corporate crime.

We were thinking about all of this the o

icannist & venture capitalist joi ito meets italian squatters (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[Geert Lovink]

http://joi.ito.com/

18:00 JST =BB  Joi's Diary  -  Media and Journalism  -  Sharing Economy

Yesterday, I had a meeting with some of the Italian Indymedia community
at a squat. In most countries squatters are considered criminals and
local law has very little tolerance for them. In Italy, the squat scene
is the center of a lot of the sub-culture and alternative media. After
years of resistance, many of the squats on property which was owned by
the local government have been officially recognized by the government
in various degrees. The squats have events including debates and
parties. They have kitchens, living quarters, and in the case of the
squat I went to last night, a computer lab (called "bugs") that teaches
people how to switch from Microsoft to Linux and allows free Internet
access to anyone who wants to drop by.

After the chat in the bugs computer room, we went to dinner at a
centrosociale. It was similar to a squat in that it was also originally
illegally occupied, but the place we went to was on the upscale end.
The food was excellent and they had lots of posters and pamphlets
describing the organic farming methods they used to grow their produce.

Internet penetration in Italy is quite low and the Berlusconi media
machine controls most of what people see. On the other hand, the left
wing are fighting hand and fist (literally) with the right wing
radicals. Free speech was something that people were fighting for, in
many cases outside of the law. At a tactical level, my discussion about
freedom of expression and our "Infrastructure of Democracy" idea of
fighting bad speech with more good speech sounded a bit idealistic.
What was interesting to me was the power and the energy of the
alternative media movement. It reminds me of my theory on good
alternative music. When there is a huge force pressing down on
freedoms, sub-cultures with more creativity and power are likely to
form.


#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#   is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net

computer use in iraq (from slashdot)

[Geert Lovink]

(Dear nettimers, this might be of interest for you. It certainly was 
for those of us involved in the www.streamtime.org campaign. This Adam 
gives an amazing inside view on what's happening on the ground, beyond 
what mainstream media report about Iraq. Best, Geert BTW. LUG stands 
for Linux Users Group).

--
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/1415224

Adam Davidson is an American reporter who has been in Baghdad for many 
months, and in his 'spare time' helped start Iraq's first LUG. We sent 
him your questions last week, and he's replied in great detail, not 
only about the LUG itself but also with a rare 'geek's eye view' of 
daily life in Baghdad, and comments about how the Iraqi IT 
infrastructure (and laws controlling it) are being (re)built.

1) Computer density in Iraq - by MajorDick

  What is the density per capita of PC type computers in Iraq ? I mean 
how many people even own computers ? What is the average computer 
available for use in Iraq ?

  Adam:

  It's impossible to get accurate statistics for pretty much anything in 
Iraq. But I've found that most middle-class families do have a 
computer. Middle-class in Iraq means the senior bread-winner makes 
anywhere from $100 to $600 per month. Many businesses have computers. 
And there are Internet cafes that have sprung up all over the country 
and are wildly popular. So, most people who want to are able to use a 
computer as often as they'd like. The computers available are 
surprisingly up-to-date. Sana'a Street, the main computer shopping 
area, has dozens and dozens of computer shops where you'll find almost 
everything you'd need: late-model P4 or AMD CPUs. Decent motherboards, 
even raid, good hard-drives, some decent soundcards, etc. Good printers 
from HP, etc. There are a lot of low-end brands as well as the 
well-known ones. You can get most of the gadgets you'd like: USB memory 
keys, digital cameras, portable harddrives, flat screens, whatever. And 
anything you want that's not in stock can be shipped in from Dubai in a 
week or so. The prices are far cheaper than in any other Arab country 
I've been to.

  Most Iraqis have their desktop or tower computers assembled locally, 
from imported parts, of course. But you can buy full HP systems and a 
few other brands. It's also easy to buy pretty current laptops. A basic 
system--AMD, 256MB RAM, 40gig HD, is around $400. I just bought a fully 
loaded system for less than $1500.

  I go to Sana'a street pretty often and it is always completely packed 
with people buying computer systems and parts. There is so much pent-up 
demand for so many things. Under the previous regime, import tariffs 
were so high that everything cost twice what it would elsewhere. Now, 
it's so cheap. And while many Iraqis are miserably poor, many others 
are benefiting from the current situation and are buying not only 
computers but their first washing machines, satellite TV systems, 
microwave ovens, and on and on.

  2) Encryption - by onyxruby

  For years strict encryption rules were an issue for Iraq. Has the US 
now stopped it's encryption restrictions for Iraq or do you simply get 
your crypto from elsewhere?

  Adam:

  I don't know too much about this. I'd check out Don Marti's coverage 
of the issue at LinuxJournal. But there is no regulation of software in 
Iraq now. There are tons of shops that burn you anything you want for 
about a buck a CD. I downloaded US-crypto here, because I'm a US 
citizen working for a US-based radio show and I figure I'm entitled. 
But I don't think Iraqis would even know what restrictions exist or 
have any idea how to follow them. That being said, security and crypto 
issues are not big concerns here. Most Iraqis just don't know much 
about them, since they're less than a year into using the internet 
freely. Under Saddam, of course, there was massive government 
restriction on what could be accessed and what crypto could be used.

  3) What will the Iraqi government use? - by rueger

  I'm presuming that any government computer infrastructure has been 
destroyed, and that they will be more or less starting from scratch.

  Am I correct in assuming that Microsoft is in there big time locking 
down contracts to rebuild government computing sytems?

  Adam:

  In the massive looting after the war, pretty much the entire computer 
infrastructure of the government was stolen. I'm friends with the head 
of IT for the Ministry of Trade (one of the biggest users of computers 
in Iraq) and he told me that he had recently purchased 30,000 desktop 
workstations. Every single one was looted. So, yes, they're starting 
from scratch. My friend, the MoT IT guy, says he wants to deploy Linux. 
 From what he knows, he thinks it's a much better fit for Iraq. It's 
cheap, adaptable, has good Arabic support. But he just doesn't know 
enough about Linux, since it was all but unknown in Iraq during 
Saddam's regime. I find that is typical--when I explain Linux to just 

Information War Intensifies as Unrest in Kyrgyzstan Continues (ONI)

[Geert Lovink]

(the same people in toronto recently launched the www.civiblog.org
service. /geert)

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Information War Intensifies as Unrest in Kyrgyzstan Continues

Special Coverage: Information War Intensifies as Unrest in Kyrgyzstan
Continues
- Motives Remain Unclear as Disruptions Increase

Bishkek, 5 March February 2005 (ONI). The Kyrgyz Internet is becoming a
battleground as unrest triggered by last week's inconclusive
parliamentary vote spreads. Two leading Internet Service providers are
embattled from an alleged hacker attack and pressure to remove
information about growing unrest in the country. A series of e-mails
from a hacker(s) calling himself "Shadow Team" posted to Elcat and Asia
Info and obtained by ONI, claimed responsibility for the attacks and
demanded that the service providers remove the websites of two Kyrgyz
newspapers  and < www.respublica.kg>. "Shadow Team" also
sent e-mail to a popular regional news site < www.centralasia.ru>,
demanding that it stop publishing all information about the situation
in Kyrgyzstan. Respublica's ISP, Elcat, complied with the hackers'
demands and temporarily suspended publishing the newspapers website.
The decision to suspend the website appears to have been agreed to by
Elcat and the publishers of the newspaper, as Elcat also hosts many
Kyrgyz NGOs, international organizations and other civil society
groups.

The attacks claimed by "shadow team" have proven disruptive to the
Kyrgyz Internet at a critical time for political authorities. The
identity of the hacker(s) remains unknown, and "shadow team" may itself
be taking credit for others' work, or in at least one case, for the
operation of a more general computer worm (variants of the
W32/Bagle.dldr). Ongoing investigations by ONI researchers suggest that
there are two simultaneous DDOS events occurring. The first is a result
of a computer worm that is affecting Elcat servers but may not have any
link to the elections. The second smaller attack maybe a DDOS caused by
"shadow team". ONI research suggests that "shadow team" may be an
independent CIS-based hacker working without any clear political
motive.

The lack of a clearly defined motive for the attacks, or clarity if it
is indeed an attack, opens the question of whose interest the hackers
are ultimately serving - if anyone=FFs. The attacks have not affected
the ability of the Kyrgyz newspaper to publish or distribute paper
copies of their newspapers. Likewise, sites like centralasia.ru can
easily circumvent DDOS attacks by mirroring on multiple IP addresses.
The specific tool and vulnerability used in the attacks appears to be
well known, so it is only a matter of time before the attack loses
effectiveness.

Some opposition leaders have seized on the attacks claiming that the
Kyrgyz government is launching an on-line censorship campaign.
According to unconfirmed reports , government officials appear nervous
about the perception that they are seen to be responsible for putting
pressure on ISPs to close the newspaper sites. Sources claim that they
have requested that Elcat reinstate the sites.

The denial of service attacks appear to be adding to the political
unrest in Kyrgyzstan. The seriousness with which the ISPs, the
government and the opposition are treating this matter suggests that
the Internet is an increasingly important new battleground. An
estimated 300,000 out of a total population of around 5 million in this
post-Soviet republic have access to the Internet, and information
obtained from the Internet is circulated widely to those without direct
access. The rising concern among the government, ISPs and the
opposition suggests that everyone has a stake in keeping the Internet
open, while deflecting blame to "third parties" for circumstances
leading to its closure.

The ONI will release a detailed report covering Internet access during
the Kyrgyz election in the weeks following the second round of voting
scheduled for 13 March.

* * *

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) is a partnership between the Advanced
Network Research Group, Cambridge Security Programme at Cambridge
University, and the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International
Studies, University of Toronto, and the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School. In the CIS region, the ONI works in
partnership with the Eurasian i-Policy Network. ONI reports and
bulletins covering the CIS are published in English and Russian at
www.opennetinitiative.net and www.internetpolicy.kg. A blog of data
collected by ONI researchers can be found on Civiblog.org
kg.civiblog.org

Note: Media inquiries, please contact:

Rafal Rohozinski, Advanced Network Research Group,Cambridge Security
Programme: rar20 at cus.cam.ac.uk

Further background information about Kyrgyzstan can be found at the
following sites:

http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/kyrgyzstan/index.shtml
http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/countryprofiles/217261.htm


#  distributed via : no commercial use without 

manifesto by thierry chervel (launch of signandsight)

[Geert Lovink]

Dear nettimers,

since yesterday an english version of the German 'perlentaucher' site
(www.perlentaucher.de) is online. It was Janos Sugar would pointed me
to this great online resource a couple of years ago. It's daily updated

site/e-newsletter that summarizes the 'cultural pages' of German and
also non-German newspapers and weekly magazines. In German that genre
is called 'feuilleton' but that concept doesn't really exist elsewhere

or let's say, it's a bit hard to translate. Now you can read
signandsight and get an idea what the German speaking world is
discussing.

Regards, Geert

http://www.signandsight.com/

--

Manifesto

By Thierry Chervel

Un ange passe, say the French when everybody in the room suddenly stops

talking. The angel is Europe. Recently it passed over the grave of
Pierre Bourdieu.

It's not much of a story - slightly sad, slightly ridiculous, not
really of great relevance. But it does say something about the state of

public debate in Europe. Shortly before he died, the great French
sociologist turned one last time to a subject at once suspect and dear

to him: himself. A farmer's son from the Bearn, Bourdieu had scaled the

cultural cliffs of the Ecole Normale Superieure to emerge a god of
sociology. His own success stood in brazen contradiction to his life's

work, which aimed to explain everything in terms of background and
habitus. Bourdieu died having just finished his "Esquisse pour une
auto-analyse".

Shortly after Bourdieu's death, the Nouvel Observateur caused a huge
sensation by publishing an excerpt from the work. Bourdieu was the last

of the great intellectuals capable of stirring up such fervour in the
French media, which he hated for precisely this reason. Of course, the

Nouvel Observateur had not asked Bourdieu's heirs for permission to
publish the excerpt. Bourdieu had tricked the French press by
stipulating that his text only be published in France after it had been

published in Germany. Bourdieu's intention was to avoid a frenzied
media hype around his controversial, self-reflexive book, and to
provoke a composed and serious debate. But did he want what actually
happened?

What happened was nothing. Several months after Bourdieu's death,
Suhrkamp published "Esquisse pour une auto-analyse" as a slim volume.
Utter silence. The German media failed to understand this as a scoop, a

text that was awaited elsewhere, a gift from Bourdieu to what he
considered a qualified German public. Months later the press published

a few obligatory reviews. The French didn't bat an eyelid. While a
small excerpt had provoked a scandal only a few months before, the full

text went unnoticed. No one in the French media reads the German papers

thoroughly, and no scouts are keeping track of cultural trends in
Germany. Only when the volume was published in France did the usual
brouhaha begin.

Is there a Europe beyond the milk quotas?

If so, then only in the form of an angel passing, creating a pause in
the conversation, a gap in communication. The Bourdieu effect is not
uncommon. When Juergen Habermas launched his "Core Europe" initiative,

no one joined the debate. Who outside the Netherlands had heard of Theo

van Gogh before he was murdered? And when everybody in Paris was
celebrating the 60th anniversary of the city's liberation in August
last year, no one was aware of what was happening in Warsaw at the same

time. While a few streets in Paris were being named after members of
the communist resistance, whose valour is indisputable, Warsaw was
fixated on the enduing memory of Stalin's icy smile as he watched
Hitler bomb the Polish resistance into the ground. The end of
liberation.

The ignorance is greatest in large Western European countries whose
publics twiddle their thumbs in idle self-contentment. Talk is of
national issues - political leaders, late night comedy stars and
football scandals. The intellectuals might as well be sitting in the
cinema, all staring spellbound in the same direction, ignoring their
neighbours and gasping in outrage at the latest evil deed of bad boy
Bush. The phantom pain inflicted by the fall of the Berlin Wall - the
loss of Utopia - is cured with a good dose of globalisation critique.
But it is precisely these opponents of globalisation who spawned the
morbid fixation with America. They relegate evil to a distant place to

avoid having to look around, at Chechnya for example. Or at their
neighbours. It is really the fault of Bill Gates or Steven Spielberg
that the French are learning less German, and the Germans less French?

The French edition of Le Monde diplomatique, the central organ of the
anti-globalisation movement, recently published Bernard Cassen's
proposal of a new foreign language policy. Cassen wants to quell the
influence of English which he considers a vehicle of neo-liberalism.
"The imperial power of the USA is not only based on material factors
(military clout, scientific expertise, the production of goods and
services and control 

Henk Oosterling: Radical medi@crity (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[Geert Lovink]

(posted to nettime with the permission of the author. henk oosterling
recently gave a talk in berlin with similar ideas at transmediale 05.
the text also appeared in the german magazine babel. /geert)

From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED])

Radical [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Xs4all
By Henk Oosterling

Automobility: subject becoming traject

One late Friday afternoon in mid-December a traveler is returning to
Amsterdam from a business meeting on Long Island, New York State.
Trains coming into Penn Station are late because of a sudden flurry of
snowstorms. Connections are missed. Even though the ethereal voices
echoing around the rarefied transit space of Newark departure lounge
attempt to put the passengers in hopeful mood, the gate numbers and
departure times on the screens keep falling behind. Planes have to be
de-iced. Arrangements threaten to fall through. The traveler's mobile
phone has insufficient range, and he has no telephone card to hand. As
finally the aeroplane glides into the night, the traveler is able to
call from the satellite phone sunk into the armrest using his credit
card. He sends a few e-mails from his pocket PC with its expandable
keyboard and completes some notes. Meanwhile, the aircraft speeds onward
- though seemingly suspended immobile - at more than 900 km/hour
towards the other side of the ocean. The traveler follows the
intercontinental route still to be covered, step-by-step, on a
screenin front of him.

On arriving at Schiphol, the information screens for train arrivals and
departures announce that frozen power lines are causing delays on the
Amsterdam-Schiphol route. Jetlagged passengers grasp their mobile
phones, holding dozy conversations. Most of them are gossiping about
sweet nothing while staring blankly in front of them; others are
already fully alert and busy relaying the latest state of affairs via
their headphones.

At Rotterdam's Central Station the traveler withdraws some euros from
the ATM and steps into a waiting taxi. The intercontinental and
interlocal congestion acquires a couleure locale: they head out into
the grips of urban gridlock. Three chock-a-block lanes of cars are
being squeezed out of the centre past six sets of traffic lights.
Despite the dangerous but well-intended manoeuvres by the Rotterdam
chauffeur of Moroccan origin it takes more than a quarter of an hour to
get past the main square only 500 metres further on.

Their conversation about the practical paradox of 'automobility' --
namely the immobilization caused by the excesses of motorized road
travel -- is repeatedly interrupted by a voice from the taxi firm's
dispatch office. But the chauffeur interweaves his hands-free responses
with the conversation, and pointing to a little screen at the bottom of
his windscreen he turns the banter to fast and distant journeys: with
the Global Positioning System (GPS) it is possible to trace the route to
any given street in Helsinki, Moscow or Casablanca. Not only is the car
vectorally equipped for the entire globe, it is also a system that
adapts to its driver like a made-to-measure suit: to the left under the
dashboard there is a button with three encoded settings, one for each of
the taxi's chauffeurs. When one of them keys in his code the equipment
downloads his personal data and thedriver's seat adjusts automatically
to the most comfortable position for him.

Once out of the centre the journey proceeds smoothly. At the front door,
the traveler taps in his access code, walks down the hallway to the
waiting lift and whizzes upward. In the bedroom he switches the TVon
and zaps through the channels. The adverts urge him to purchase a mobile
phone with a built-in camera so he can use MMS, the 'multimedia
messaging service'. At any given moment, the owner can telematically
share his surroundings with his friends. Exhausted by high-speed stasis
and hyperactive observation, the traveler finally falls into a profound
slumber.

Dividual [EMAIL PROTECTED]

How mediocre has life of Western individuals become? Are there no more
heroes anymore? Way back a working class hero was something to be, but
nowadays this is an anachronism. And if we could be heroes than just for
one day or only for a Warholian fifteen television minutes. The
predicate 'mediocre' does not exclude mediamatic heroism. Once we take
the notion 'mediocre' as literal as possible, it ishard to ignore
thefact that third millennium man has become radically mediocre. I
realizethat the suggestion that we live an average life full of boring
routines is counterbalanced by the indisputable observation that in
visual and global culture, where entertainment, infotainment and
politainment are the key targets for maximizing ratings, the senses of
the average TV viewer and festival onlooker are continuously triggered,
stimulated and enhanced. Even when there is no time to enjoy it real
time and live, one can participate interpassively, as Slavoj Zizek
acknowledges: our recorder enjoys the late night TV movie. The only
thing tha

what would be nettime's reading list?

[geert lovink]

(Would it include Empire, Crowds and Power, Male Fantasies, a Foucault,
Ahrendt or even Deleuze? How much history (of science)? How much would
politically correct and which titles would really be useful? Geert)

http://www.techcentralstation.com/022704C.html

The Problem with Dead White Males
 By Arnold Kling  Published 02/27/2004

"It's a pretty good zoo,"
Said young Gerald McGrew
"And the fellow who runs it
Seems proud of it, too."
-- Dr. Seuss, If I Ran the Zoo

University presidents seem pretty proud of their undergraduate colleges.
However, their answers to a recent poll suggest an alarming gap in their
knowledge: the past two hundred years. Asked by Michael Adams, President
of Fairleigh Dickinson University, to name the books "you believe every
undergraduate university student should read and study in order to engage
in the intellectual discourse, commerce, and public duties of the 21st
century," the academic leaders came up with a list that pretty much
excluded anything written after 1800.

Overall, the top ten were:

1) The Bible
2) The Odyssey
3) The Republic
4) Democracy in America
5) The Iliad
6) Hamlet
7) The Koran
8) The Wealth of Nations
9) The Prince
10) The Federalist Papers

The most recent of these books, Democracy in America, is from the first
half of the nineteenth century. Even though the question specifically
tilted the academics to look toward the future, they chose to bury
themselves deeply in the past. Further down the list of about 70 books
that received mention from at least two university presidents are only
about two dozen written since 1950. Given that these include such dubious
intellectual choices as What Color is Your Parachute? and The Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People, the modern portion of the university
presidents' reading list appears to be as thin in quality as it is in
quantity.

As biology professor Marion McClary and blogger Randall Parker pointed
out, the academic leaders' choices are highly deficient in science. Most
university presidents would have their students face the 21st century with
no knowledge of experimental science, the theory of evolution, or
technological change.

My List

If I were asked to select five books that every college student must read
in order to be prepared to engage in discourse in the 21st century, my
list would be as follows:

The Blank Slate, by Stephen Pinker
The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil
The Transparent Society, by David Brin
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
Eastward to Tartary, by Robert Kaplan

The Blank Slate compares the belief systems of evolutionary psychologists
with those of many humanities scholars. In that sense, it compares the
best of modern thinking with the worst. It offers an excellent survey of
modern philosophical and scientific issues concerning human behavior and
development.

The Age of Spiritual Machines extrapolates trends in the capabilities of
computers, tracing out the implications of Moore's Law for the
co-evolution of humans and machines. Of necessity, Kurzweil branches into
other fields, including biology and economics, with profound, provocative
assertions.

The Transparent Society addresses what is certain to be one of the most
fundamental issues of our time: the implications of the communications
revolution for our concepts of privacy and power. If 18th-century
political philosophy, with the theory of checks and balances, was the
blueprint for solving the problem of designing a constitutional democracy,
then Brin's work may be the blueprint for designing an approach for the
modern age.

 The Diamond Age is a work of science fiction. My view is that Stephenson
provides a better introduction to the potential of nanotechnology than any
nonfiction work on the subject.

 Eastward to Tartary delves into some of the most politically backward
societies on our planet. It is a powerful antidote to naive theories of
economics and politics. Unlike modern technocrats who confer in four-star
hotels when they visit the underdeveloped world, Kaplan ventures into the
countryside, where bandits and police can be indistinguishable.

Extending the List

College students have time to read more than just five books in four
years, even taking into account the need to select a major and to take
"practical" courses. Here are some more books that I believe could benefit
any undergraduate.

The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg, combines ecology with
statistics and economics. It is a fine example of the scientific approach
to a complex subject.

The first two volumes of Robert Skidelsky's biography of John Maynard
Keynes are remarkable intellectual studies. Keynes is a very difficult
mind to penetrate, and Skidelsky's success is remarkable.

Great stories help to illuminate human psychology and social context. Tom
Wolfe is an outstanding writer, combining keen human insight with colorful
prose. His first fiction work, Bonfire of the Vanities, is what I would
recommend the most, although it i

The State of Networking (with Florian Schneider)

[geert lovink]

Notes on the State of Networking

By Geert Lovink and Florian Schneider

February 2004

(Written for the free theory paper Make World #4, printed in 10,000 copies
and distributed at the Neuro-Networking in Europe-festival in Munich. URL:
www.makeworlds.org).


No longer the society, the political party or even the movement, networks
are the emerging form of organization of our time. By marching through the
institutions the idea of networking has lost its mysterious and subversive
character. Sandpapered by legions of consultants, supervisors, and
sociologists, as a buzzword networking superseded the latest fashions of
sustainability, outsourcing, and lean organization.

The hype of networks reveals a conceptual crisis of collaboration and
cooperation. Yet, the confusing aspect of networking is the fact that
large formations of power apparently defy networks. Business and other
large institutions are still in the process of opening up. The
introduction of computer networks within organizations over the past
decade has changed work flows but hasn't reached the level of decision
making. In this period of transition and consolidation we get confusing
answers to the question whether 'new media' are part of mainstream pop
culture. Whereas it is easy to see that networks have become the dominant
mode of power, this is still not the case for 'power' in the narrow sense.
This is why the call for openness, transparency and democracy, on both
micro and macro-levels, still potentially contains progressive elements
and should be seen as a counterpart to popular conspiracy theories.

A radical critique of the information society implies analyzing the
passages from the state of territory and the state of population to the
state of a networked globality or: Info-Empire. It is not adequate to
analyse this with Debord's Society of the Spectacle. The networking
paradigm escapes the centrality of the icon to visual culture and its
critics and instead focuses on more abstract, invisible, subtle processes
and feedback loops. There is nothing spectacular about networking. And
this is exactly why most of the leading theorists are not aware of the
current power transformations. They still sit in front of the television
and watch the news or a rental VHS-perhaps they have even bought a DVD
player by now.

The networking paradigm marks the threshold of postmodernity and
characterizes the global governance scenarios of Info-Empire. This
threshold was crossed when digital communications appeared in the
political scene and created a notion of the global that is essentially
different from the predominant values of 'solidarity' in internationalism
or 'multiplicity' in trans-national corporations. Without referring to
inferior sentiments or noble feeling, a nuclear strike force or massive
drug abuse it was suddenly possible, to think global in absolutely
un-pathetic ways.

Rather than a simple application to improve life or increase efficiency
life becomes intrinsically networking and networking comes alive as
unconditional attribute of social existence.

The ultimate goal of networking has been, and still is, to free the user
from the bonds of locality and identity. Power responds to the pressure of
increasing mobility and communications of the multitudes with attempts to
regulate them in the framework of traditional regimes that cannot be
abandoned, but need to be reconfigured from scratch and recompiled against
the networking paradigm: borders and property, labour and recreation,
education and entertainment industries undergo radical transformations.
Although the promise of liberation still lures, and works at times,
shifting geographies and social layers, an identity backflip has occurred.
Its pretty hard these days to be a dog on the Internet. There never was
something like privacy on the Net, but after 9.11 things definitely
reached a new level. And once again, theory runs behind the facts or it is
satisfied with great gestures that occupy the moral high ground but reveal
nothing but powerlessness.

When within the nation state techniques of localization and
identification, communication surveillance and motion control have been
temporarily suspended it was the direct result of the social struggles of
a mass of individuals against the corruption of state sovereignty. Within
the 'state of networking' these techniques and technologies tend to become
redundant. Furthermore Info-Empire is constituted by including and
simultaneously excluding the tracks of localized and identifiable life.

Internet research, now having reached its ethnographic phase, has great
difficulties in catching up conceptually, let alone provide us with
speculative visions that capture the permanent flux of global immaterial
labour.

The classical dichotomies of public/private, global/local, etc. become
useless and even obsolete. These binaries are replaced by flexible
attitudes of managing singul

tomorrow: grey tuesday

[geert lovink]

"Grey Tuesday" Civil Disobedience Planned February 24th Against Copyright
Cartel

DOWNHILL BATTLE (February 18, 2004) -- A coalition of websites will join
in an online protest to offer free downloads of a critically acclaimed
album that is being censored by a lawsuit threat from EMI Records. The
action is an act of civil disobedience against a copyright regime that
routinely suppresses musical innovation. The Grey Album, which remixes
Jay-Z's Black Album and the Beatles' White Album, has been hailed as a
innovative hip-hop triumph, but EMI sent cease-and-desist letters to any
record store that stocked it. This Tuesday ("Grey Tuesday") the coalition
of sites will offer free downloads of the Grey Album, and turn their pages
grey, to take a stand against a copyright regime that serves neither
musicians nor the public interest.

Any site can get information on how to join the action at
www.greytuesday.org

"Grey Tuesday will be the first protest of its kind," said Downhill Battle
co-founder Holmes Wilson, "The major record labels have turned copyright
law into a weapon, but participants in this action will be ignoring EMI's
threats and insisting on the public's right to hear innovative new music."

"EMI isn't looking for compensation, they're trying to ban a work of art,"
said Downhill Battle's Rebecca Laurie. "The record industry has become a
huge drag on creativity and it's only getting worse--it's time to take a
stand."

The Grey Album has been widely shared on filesharing networks such as
Kazaa and Soulseek, and has garnered critical acclaim in Rolling Stone
(which called it "the ultimate remix record" and "an ingenious hip-hop
record that sounds oddly ahead of its time"), the New Yorker, the Boston
Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the
year), and other major news outlets.

"It's clear that this work devalues neither of the originals. There is no
legitimate artistic or economic reason to ban this recordâ?"this is just
arbitrary exertion of control," said Nicholas Reville, Downhill Battle
co-founder. "The framers of the constitution created copyright to promote
innovation and creativity. A handful of corporations have radically
perverted that purpose for their own narrow self interest, and now the
public is fighting back."

The reporters and news outlets that reviewed the Grey Album have obtained
it illegally from filesharing networks. "If music reviewers have to break
the law to hear new, innovative music, then something has gone wrong with
the law," said Laurie.

"Remixes and pastiche are a defining aesthetic of our era. How will
artists continue to work if corporations can outlaw what they do?" said
Reville. "Artists, writers, and musicians have always borrowed and built
upon each other's workâ?" now they have to answer to corporate legal
teams."

College and noncommercial radio stations will also be participating in
Tuesday's action by playing the Grey Album in its entirety (possibly along
with the Jay-Z and Beatles sources).

Contact:


Holmes Wilson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nicholas Reville - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Downhill Battle (www.dowhillbattle.org)
Grey Tuesday (www.greytuesday.org)
Phone: 508-963-7832 / Fax: 775-878-0379


---

Historic Online Protest : It's time for music fans to stand up and demand
change from the music industry's copyright cartel.

Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience:
websites will post Danger Mouse's Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in
protest of EMI's attempts to censor this work.

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z's the Black Album and the Beatles
White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z's record label,
Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically
to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and
major media outlets like Rolling Stone ("an ingenious hip-hop record that
sounds oddly ahead of its time") and the Boston Globe (which called it the
"most creatively captivating" album of the year), EMI has sent cease and
desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and
websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the
Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse's album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably
positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet
the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a
glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work. And without
a clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing), the five
major record labels will continue to use copyright in a reactionary and
narrowly self-interested manner that limits and erodes creativity. Their
actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that
people want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with hoarding
their copyrights that they are literally turning customers away.

This first-of-its-kind protest signals a refusal to let maj

Euro Manifesto to Support Minority Community Media

[geert lovink]

From: "eslube" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.multicultural.net/manifesto/index.htm

A EUROPEAN MANIFESTO
to support and to underline the importance of minority community media

In the member states of the European Union there are thousands of minority
community media initiatives, involving tens of thousands of people. These
media groups use mainly magazines, newspapers, Internet/web-based media,
radio and television stations as well as programmes produced by, for and
about immigrants and ethnic minorities. Minority community media are often
local, sometimes regional or national initiatives, if appropriate using the
language of their audiences and providing them with information about
participation and education in their country of residence. They provide a
platform for discussion and exchange within the immigrant and other ethnic
minority communities as well as between the minority and the
indigenous/majority communities.

The minority community media groups reach out potentially to an audience of
millions of citizens in the Member States, as evidenced in France and the
UK, with the aim to provide them with essential information to help them to
participate as full citizens of their country of residence. Although working
under different national, regional and local conditions, minority community
media groups throughout Europe encounter similar obstacles on both national
and local levels in executing their activities.

In order to improve their situation a range of minority community media
groups decided to work together and to join their efforts on the European
level in asking for attention and support to improve their situation. To do
so a European Manifesto was drafted. The Draft has been discussed
nationally, regionally and locally across Europe. Based on these discussions
the Manifesto was amended and approved by all involved groups.

In the Manifesto minority community media call upon the European Parliament,
the European Commission and the Governments of the member states

· to recognise the important role that minority community media play
in Europe as actors to implement social inclusion policies.

·  to see the minority media being recognised as a public community
service and that, as such, they will be contained in all European and
national media legislation and will obtain a "must carry" status on all
relevant broadcast platforms.

· to ensure that freedom of speech, the right to receive information
and to the right to communicate for all, including the right for minorities
to receive media in their own language, are recognised as basic human rights
for all citizens. These rights should be included as part of the concept of
civic citizenship and they should be enshrined in all media policies,
legislation and social inclusion policies of the European Union and national
member states.

The Manifesto will be presented during the European elections in 2004 to the
President of the European Parliament, after all minority community media and
supporting organisations have signed the Manifesto. For more information on
how to joint the initiative you can call or email:

United Kingdom:
Community Media Association (CMA)
The Workstation
15 Paternoster Row
Sheffield S1 2BX
Tel.  0114 279 5219
Fax. 0114 279 8976
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.commedia.org.uk

Irleand:
The Media Co-op
Alan Braddish
Northside Civic Centre
Bunratty Road
Dublin 17
Fax: (+353) 01 848 5211
Phone: (+353) 01 867 101 6
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.mediacoop.ie

Secretariat: On Line/ More Colour in the Media (OLMCM)
Website: http://www.multicultural.net/manifesto/index.htm

--

The European Manifesto

Minority community media initiatives and organisations from member
states of the European Union, are committed to contribute to the full
participation of immigrants and ethnic minority communities in their country
of residence, aware of their potential to support their immigrant and ethnic
minority audiences and determined to develop their own media as an effective
means of communication within their communities and as platform to inform
the mainstream society, discussed and approved the following text in their
local, national and trans-national meetings:

Taking into account

- that the new European Union intends to constitute an area of
freedom, security and justice, in which its shared values are developed and
the richness of its cultural diversity is respected.

- that member states of the European Union include a great number
of citizens belonging to immigrant and ethnic minorities of which a growing
number originate from countries outside the European Union and who
contribute in a large part to the richness of the cultural diversity and the
economy of the new European Union.

- that the European Commission introduced a concept of civic
citizenship, guaranteeing certain core rights and obligations to immigrants
so that they are treated in the same way as nationals in their country of
residence.

- that immigra

wsis digest no. 6

[geert lovink]

World Summit on Information Society
Nettime Digest, no. 6 February 14, 2004

1. Global Forum on Internet Governance (March 25-26, NYC)
2. Experts' Round at ITU
3. ICC Paper on Clearing Up Confusion Over Internet Governance
4. re: ITU Internet Governance Workshop
5. ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee on WSIS

--

1. NEW YORK, 5 February (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs)-- A
Global Forum on Internet Governance will be held on 25-26 March 2004 at
United Nations Headquarters in New York, to bring together leading actors
and all relevant stakeholders, including Member States,civil society and the
private sector, interested in Internet governance issues. Organized under
the auspices of the United Nations Informationand Communication Technologies
(ICT) Task Force, the Global Forum will be an opportunity to engage in an
open discussion on all aspects of Internet governance.

The views expressed from around the world in on-line discussions to be
organized with other partners in the weeks ahead will contribute to the
Forum to ensure as broad and comprehensive a reflection of perspectives and
ideas on the issues to be addressed. The Global Forum will contribute to the
world-wide consultation process to be organized by the Secretary-General.
(For future announcements, please visit:
www.unicttaskforce.org/sixthmeeting, http://www.wsis-online.net/.

The Plan of Action adopted at the Geneva phase of the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003, requested the United Nations
Secretary-General "to set up a working group on Internet governance, in an
open and inclusive process that ensures a mechanism for the full and active
participation of governments, the private sector and civil society from both
developing and developed countries, involving relevant intergovernmental and
international organizationsand forums, to investigate and make proposals for
action, as appropriate, on the governance of Internet by 2005".

Among the principal issues that the group will address are a working
definition of Internet governance, identification of relevant public policy
issues, and the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders. While
the Secretary-General has yet to make a final decision on how to organize a
Working Group on Internet Governance, he expressed his view that this Global
Forum "will be of great utility"for any future consultation process.

The Task Force is a multi-stakeholder initiative launched by the
Secretary-General in 2001. In supporting the first phase of the WSIS, the
Task Force successfully helped in placing the United Nations development
objectives at the heart of the Summit and mobilized the participation of the
multi-stakeholder networks, organized a series of side events and launched
new initiatives, including on education. The Task Force intends to
contribute actively to the preparations for the second phase of the WSIS
leading up to the Tunis Summit in November 2005.

The Secretary-General has decided to extend the initial three-year term
ofthe Task Force until the end of 2005. In his letter of 29 January 2004 to
the Chairperson of the Task Force, Mr. José-María FigueresOlsen, the
Secretary-General stated: "I have followed the work of the Task Force with
keen interest and wish to express my appreciation to you and the other
members for your successful efforts in helping to place ICT at the service
of development, making this a central theme of the WSIS".

--

2. 26-27 February 2004, ITU: Background and Objectives
The workshop objective is to contribute to the ITU's process that will
prepare its inputs and position vis-à-vis the United Nations working group
to be established on Internet governance, resulting from the Declaration of
Principles and Action Plan adopted on 12 December 2003 at the first phase of
the World Summit on the Information Society.

The workshop will provide a forum for invited experts to exchange views and
make analytical studies on definitions, viewpoints and visions on Internet
governance from several aspects, including legal, technological,
administration and commercial issues.

The format is one of the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit's New Initiatives
workshops held since 1999 in line with ITU Council Decision 496. These
workshops have limited space availability and are intended to foster
efficient and effective discussion among experts on specific topics. To this
purpose, individual experts in Internet governance have been invited from a
wide spectrum of backgrounds and views, including from the ITU's Membership.

Keeping in mind that the event is an experts workshop, with limited space
availability, ITU Members with an interest in participation should contact
the  ITU Strategy and Policy Unit at [EMAIL PROTECTED], with specific
reference to their individual background in Internet governance issues.

All discussions and results from the workshop will be compiled into a report
and communicated to the entire ITU Membership and submitted to the

have you also missed the Internet-Free Day?

[geert lovink]

  http://www.globalideasbank.org/internet-free-day/html/index.html

  (thanx to Mieke Gerritzen for fwd.)

  The Global Ideas Bank, the primary website for new ideas to improve
society (what we call social inventions), is promoting Sunday January 25th
2004 as the fourth International Internet-Free Day - a day for doing and
being out in the real world.

  "It makes a lot of sense to use the web to tempt people away from
the web", say the Internet-Free Day crew, "It's a matter of reclaiming the
web, using it for a different message, returning to its origins. The
Internet did not start off as a vehicle for social isolation and damaged
eyesight. That is what big business has done with it. It began as a medium
for communication between researchers, a quick and simple way of
exchanging information."

  "But it's so easy nowadays to get addicted to a half life in a
virtual world, and to lose touch with your family, friends and neighbours.
Yet we're creatures evolved from a tribal past and an annual Internet-Free
Day on the fourth Sunday in January is a recognition of our needs for
contacts out in the real world. Email and the Internet are just not
enough."

  Get off your pad, dump your mouse and your electronic attachments
for the day: the real world is open all day every day and would welcome a
visit. It also offers perspective, insight and the chance to feel human
again. Internet-Free day demands you go cold turkey with the best of them
and create a storm of activity and a real life - one thing that might be
worth saving.



So what will the Internet-Free Day crew be doing? Here are some of our
ideas ... See the details of last year's London event: a free tour of
London sights, sounds, exhibitions and events in the real world. Or try:

(1) A Dice Sunday, as in a watered-down version of Luke Reinhart's Diceman
novel. You write down half a dozen unusual or creative or challenging real
world things your small group could do on the day, number these options
from 1 to 6, then throw the dice, accepting a commitment to do whichever
option the dice chooses.

(2) If that sounds too risky for you, there are countless other
opportunities in YOUR home town today; or come up with your own: there are
many real world activities that small groups can organise, ranging from
country walks and dancing to writing groups and discussion salons - ie any
group activity that involves more than just passively consuming, watching
or listening.

By all means use e-mail and the Internet in advance to arrange real world
participatory events for January 25th 2004, but then turn off the computer
for 24 hours.

Afterwards, please send us an email describing how the day went for you -
such stories will be an encouragement for Internet Free Day participants
in future years.

World Internet-Free Day will happen every year on the last Sunday in
January.





#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#   is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Media Philosophy: An Email Exchange with Frank Hartmann

[geert lovink]

Discipline Design: The Rise of Media Philosophy
An Email Exchange with Frank Hartmann (Vienna)
By Geert Lovink

Lately, in German speaking countries a 'media philosophy' debate has
unfolded. If you fear you missed something, don't worry. Unfortunately,
there is not much at stake. At least, the antagonists have so far failed
to make clear what the controversy over this concept is all about -
presuming there is one. From the outside it looks a failed cockfight over
non-existing institutional arrangements, in a time of rising student
numbers and shrinking education budgets. Like all academic disciplines,
philosophy is also confronted with the rise of the computer. This has been
the case for half a century, but it is only now that the knowledge itself
is being produced and stored in networks and databases. Technology is no
longer an object of study for some, but alters studying in general.

Some of you might be familiar with the work of the Vienna-based
philosopher Frank Hartmann. In 2000 I posted an online interview to
nettime with Frank (reprinted in Uncanny Networks), in which he talked
about media philosophy and how this emerging discipline relates to
Kittler's media theory and the dirty little practice of 'net criticism'.
Recently Frank Hartmann published Mediologie (also in German). Like his
previous Medienphilosophie, it is written as a general introduction to
current topics. Unlike most of his continental colleagues, Frank
Hartmann's style is free of hermeneutic exercises. In the following email
dialogue Frank summarizes his latest work and contextualizes the debate.
For some, media and networks are the latest fads that will fade, thereby
not affecting the 'eternal' philosophical questions, whereas others
believe that the philosophical practice will indeed be fundamentally
transformed after the introduction of new media is well and truly over.

In the Anglo-Saxon world the term 'media philosophy' has been compromised
from the start - Imagologies, the cyber-hype book from Mark C. Taylor and
Esa Saarinen, contributed substantially to the derogation of the term. The
tragic superficiality of Imagologies proved once and for all that it is
not enough to link up students and scholars via email and satellite. As
the Canadian communications theorist and political economist Harold Innis
realized, one's technics of practice - or 'appraisal' of technology - is
peculiar to the medium of communication, and will change according to the
type of medium adopted. Human action, after all, is an extension of media
forms; for a critical, reflexive practice to emerge, it is essential to go
beyond the excitement and hubris of being early adaptors. Praise of
Technology is not enough: readers expect philosophers to negate, to
circumvent society and its PR phrases, and not just to celebrate the
latest. Only radical futurism, such as the transhumanism, has been worth
debating. Speculative philosophies need to transcend the present and
explore unlikely futures and reject the temptation to extrapolate the cool
present. It is also not sufficient either to retreat to the safe Gutenberg
galaxies of critical theory. Media philosophy has to take risks and cut
across disciplinary borders. The 'iconic turn' debate as summarized by
Hartmann can only be one of many beginnings and proves just how difficult
- and immature - 'pictorial thinking' is.

Hartmann's new media analysis is free of fear and disdain. Without
becoming affirmative, he is keen to avoid 'totalising' concepts that try
to explain all and exclude next to everything that doesn't fit into the
newly carved-out discursive cave. One neither has to be subjected to the
Empire of Images, nor does one has to flee it. Every day there are fresh
challenges, from blogs, games and wireless to ip-telephony, all set within
Big Brother, SARS and the Iraqi War. New media do not stop to surprise us
researchers. Tired critics are free to leave the stage and pursue other
interests, but that doesn't mean the Media Question has been resolved. It
is all too human to take a break, switch profession and take up parallel
passions. Hartmann's way is to stick around and describe the media reality
on its own merits. Philosophy can provide us with outside references, but
the outcome is little more than the reproduction of the same. And even
that is about to come to an end, as we discuss below with reference to the
current situation of the university in Germany and the EU's efforts to
enter the game of higher education as a transnational commodity of
interchange.

Deep incursions of real-time global media into everyday life continue.
There seems to be no end to the technology boom, despite the latest bust.
Media enter the realms of imagination and 'reality' from all sides, as Big
Brother and similar reality TV programs demonstrate. Infotainment has
elements of both war an

esther dyson: "let the people rule" (aspen vs. geneva)

[geert lovink]

http://www.edventure.com/conversation/article.cfm?Counter=367986

The Accountable Net
by Esther Dyson


Talk of Internet governance is in the air. The recent United
Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva,
issued a statement saying that "authority for Internet-related public policy
issues is the sovereign right of States." It concludes by calling for a
study that will make recommendations -- at the end of 2005.

For some of us, that's a rather long time. And government authority is the
wrong conclusion.

Taking place at the same time as the WSIS was a smaller and more productive
meeting of the Internet-policy working group at the Aspen Institute, a
nonprofit leadership organization. Through the miracles of modern
transportation (and despite a couple of snowstorms), I managed to take part
in both.

A CIVIL SOLUTION

In Aspen, our small group of government, business and nonprofit folks
started with a more practical and urgent approach, considering three big
Internet problems (eschewing domain names, for once): spam, privacy and
overall security against viruses and other intrusions.

The approach we came up with is "the accountable Net" -- an Internet of
people, companies and services that are accountable to one another rather
than to some omniscient central authority. Many of the states contemplated
by the WSIS document are not completely democratic. And even if governments
were all as benign as we could wish, they cannot provide the kind of
flexible, responsive feedback to foster good behavior that we can provide
for ourselves.

The idea is simple: People on the Internet should be accountable to one
another, and they are free to decide whom to interact with. The goal is not
a free-for-all, anarchic Net, but one where good behavior is fostered
effectively -- and locally.

In the real world, good behavior is fostered by a combination of government
regulations and society standards. But the Internet is no longer the
community it once was. It has become too large for people to really know one
another.

The solution is not necessarily more government, but rather more visibility
of the kind we used to have: People need to know one another, and they need
to be able to decide whom they want to know. (The new social networking
tools are one manifestation of this desire, but we also need to be able to
communicate safely with people we may not consider friends or business
partners, but whom we wouldn't shy away from on the street.)

The default anonymity of the Internet makes it easy for individuals to do
bad things -- send spam, invade people's privacy and send data around the
Net, launch viruses and other attacks. And that same anonymity makes it hard
to enforce laws against those actions, even as it preserves our freedom.

But the Internet's technology also makes it easier for individuals to
protect themselves: They can take their safety and privacy into their own
hands with tools such as firewalls and spam blockers. And, of course, on the
Internet, it's easier for people to get up and move to a virtual
neighborhood that they like better.

LET THE PEOPLE RULE

Sounds great, but how does it really work? What I'm proposing is not a
rule-free society, but one in which rules come from the bottom up: generally
enforced by peers, with governments in the background.

Nor is this a world of individuals only. There are other players: Internet
service providers, for example, who collect money from their customers, then
vouch for their behavior and deal with the more technical aspects of
Internet security and spam deterrence. Vendors of software also play a role.
They need to make their products more secure from such threats as viruses
and spam.

The basic rule is transparency: You need to know whom you are dealing with,
or be able to take proper measures to protect yourself. The accountable Net
is a complex system of interacting parts, where users answer not just to
some central authority, but to the people and organizations whom they
affect.

That keeps each person's Internet small enough to allow for individual
choice, but at the same time part of a whole large enough to sustain regimes
for various tastes. To the extent that one community's actions affect
another, each community can decide whether to interact.

To make this work, we need government at the back end, ready to prosecute
extreme cases of fraud and misrepresentation (as well as crimes such as
identity theft, antitrust violations and other traditionally offline
crimes). We also need a robust technical architecture, with effective means
for authentication of users where necessary, strong security for keeping
data and communications safe and effective systems for keeping track of
what's going on.

Note that the right to anonymity and freedom of speech can and must be
preserved, along with other people's freedom to ignore those speakers (and
the government's obligation to go after criminals). The default is to keep
out anyone or an

Steven Clift's WSIS speech: Democratic Evolution or Virtual Civil War?

[geert lovink]

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steven Clift)

Happy New Year.

Below is my speech from Geneva where I shared a panel at the WSIS
with the Foreign Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, Nicholas
Negroponte, and Stephen Coleman from Oxford among others.

As the media hype wagon continues to roar on the use of the Internet
in the U.S. presidential primary, I can't help but reflect on the
collapse of media interest in e-politics after the 2000 presidential
party conventions.

The reality is that many of the emerging "politics as usual" trends
in e-politics may be actually be detrimental to democracy.  I expect
the media to savage the Internet's democratic potential once the two
main candidates are known and their partisans come into conflict
online.

The problem is much worse than Cass Sunstein's "echo chambers" -
instead we will see the echo chambers of the right and left come into
conflict and "leak" into the online lives of normal people.
With very very little invested in positive forms of online civic
engagement by most governments (with only a few exceptions) and
foundations, the demonstrated democratic benefits of the effective
use of information and communication technologies will lose what ever
public appeal existed before those who brought us negative attack
television ads figured out the Internet.

The negative uses of technology in politics will tarnish all attempts
to use the Internet to do good in politics and community.  Everyday
citizen feelings about negative politics will become cemented in the
new medium because the positive experiences so many of you have
worked hard to create haven't been supported at a level required to
go mainstream.

We can't let this get us down. We must act now to save democracy
_from_ the natural course of the information age by making what is
democratically _possible_ with information and communication
technologies _probable_.

Feel free to pass the speech below on to others. I normally take a
very positive approach.  However, as I enter my second decade with "e-
democracy," it is time to make things happen with confidence and a
sense of determination. The stakes couldn't be any bigger - democracy
as we know it is in the balance.

Steven Clift
http://www.publicus.net
Democracies Online Newswire
http://www.e-democracy.org/do <- Join 2500+ members from 75+
countries

--

http://www.publicus.net/articles/democraticevolution.html
Links to event video from UNITAR available here as well.

Democratic Evolution or Virtual Civil War?

Remarks as prepared by Steven Clift for the Promise of
E-Democracy WSIS Event, Geneva, Switzerland, December 2003 (Released
online, January 2004)

Join the revolution?

I don't believe the Internet is inherently democratic. To me, most
people and organizations are fundamentally anti-democratic by nature.
Many of those in power and those clamoring for power are self-
centered actors. They operate within the miracle we call
representative democracy. Most accept the idea that democracy is
good, but these actors do little to ensure its strength.

After a decade working directly with e-democracy issues, I've
concluded that "politics as usual" online may be the tipping point
that finishes off what television started - the extinction of
democracy and democratic spirit.

Those hoping for an almost accidental democratic transformation
fostered by the information technology will watch in shock from the
sidelines as their favorite new medium becomes the arsenal of virtual
civil war - virtual civil wars among partisans at all levels.

When I open e-mail from all sorts of American political parties and
activist groups, I see conflict. I see unwillingness to compromise.

Let's be optimists and suggest that the Net is doubling the activist
population from five percent to ten percent. The harsh reality is
that we are doubling the virtual soldiers, an expendable slash and
burn online force, available to established political interests.

As the excessive and bitter partisanship of the increased activist
population leaks into the e-mail boxes of everyday people, I predict
abhorrence of Net-era politics among the general citizenry. I fear
the extreme erosion of public trust not just in government, but also
in most things public and political.

Instead of encouraging networked citizen participation that improves
the public results delivered in our democracies, left to its natural
path, the Internet will be used to eliminate forms of constructive
civic engagement by the other 90 percent of citizens. A 10 percent
democracy of warring partisan is no democracy at all.

Compounding the problem, the billions of Euros in e-government focus
almost exclusively on one-way services and efficiency. Government
makes it easy to pay your taxes online - while doing little to give
you a virtual - anytime, anywhere - say in how those taxes are spent.
Many elected officials are turning off their e-mail for citizens,
leaving it on for lobbyists to reach their staff directly, and
building wha

Wolfgang Schirmacher on Net Culture

[geert lovink]

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/schirmacher/netculture.html
Wolfgang Schirmacher: Net Culture, in: Poiesis 3. EGS Press. Toronto, 2001.

Culture Between Conformity and Resistance

The human individual is a cultural being that with the aid of linguistic
symbols creates a world not provided for by nature. We are 'artificial by
nature,' as the philosophical anthropologist Hellmuth Plessner emphasized,
and our cultural achievement consists in technological ingenuity, in the
constructs of institutions; it reveals itself ideally in media and art. With
culture we create a human sphere and establish realms of private and public
encounter. In the last few years a cultural phenomenon has developed with
the Internet which seeks its equal in history in its intellectual
consequence and incomparable power to generate and foster communal
belonging. Not even in their golden ages did the world religions possess
such global force of attraction, allowing a world culture to hold sway and
rendering regional differences obsolete. In the Internet, cultural
imagination meets with the material conditions of many varied societies and
transcends these. The long dominant difference between public and private
sphere has been suspended, and the Internet has become the universal venue
of encounter. The functioning of society at a very basic level is affected
here, one which usually escapes our attention. The cultural change effected
through the new media cannot be overestimated, but it is yet uncertain where
it will lead.


European reaction to the Internet fluctuates between euphoria and rejection,
and for a long time it was the more educated among those scornful of the net
who most dramatically conjured up the digital devil. But Internet use in
Europe has in the meantime caught up with that in the United States, and it
is conceivable that in the near future no one under 80 will be without
Internet access. Being a netizen is not a matter of age, merely a question
of becoming accustomed. The net culture has to be learned - like any new way
of life. At first this doesn't even appear difficult, as the Internet
increasingly offers a doubling of our familiar reality. For one, it meets
our habitual needs in its capacity as gigantic department store and
well-stocked, diverse flea market, fulfilling our expectations. Shopping
online is designed to be convenient and save time, but its virtuality ends
as soon as you give your credit card number. The real world does the rest,
since all purchases still need to be delivered. Even where illusion is for
sale, as with interactive Cybersex, the customer must be satisfied in the
end with self-service. In short, with regard to its materiality, Internet
culture offers very little that is truly new, if one discounts the lack of
hierarchical structure by virtue of which the familiar and the little known
exist side by side (for a fee, of course, search machines will list one's
website among the first 50).


If the Internet culture is not defined by new products, then we're left with
the lifestyle to which the net clearly beckons. Popular and high culture
blend together in the net to become a media culture which seems to follow
only one's personal tastes. Nevertheless, it cannot be overlooked that
Nietzsche's appraisal of the herd mentality in humans retains its validity
even under present conditions in the Internet. Internet critics Geert Lovink
and Pit Schulz [www.fiveminutes.net] see in it the workings of a
"multi-cultural mass conformity, full of micro-practices and management of
the self." And in view of the perpetual stream of information, how is it
even possible to form a standpoint? Paul Virilio calls for us to slow down -
a provocation in a culture committed to speed. But the "will to connection"
(Lovink/Schulz) is probably divided from the start: we want to belong but
not at the price of self-abandonment. The me-generation learned its lesson
well, words of advice from the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm: You have to love
yourself before you can love another. But this cannot be reversed; Richard
Sennett's versatile human is incapable of adaptation in this one sense: the
autopoietic self is as essential as the Other. Life would be intolerably
boring otherwise.


Net People Like You and Me


Isolated monad or receptive net citizen - what type peoples the Internet
today? It is clear that the era of the anarchic net is past, and the hacker
ethos figures chiefly in films nowadays. The World Wide Web with its simple
use has insured that one needn't possess specialized knowledge to be able to
play the game. And with the affordable flat rates being offered, no one has
to tap into another's telephone line to take full advantage of the netlife.
More and more real women are turning up in chat rooms so that the virtual
"Marilyns" of the early years have become rare. For the first time, in the
spring of 2000, more women than men were onlin

world social forum digest

[geert lovink]

(official homepage of the World Social Forum (Mumbia, January 16-21):
http://www.wsfindia.org/. I wonder who from nettime will be attending the
wsf in Mumbia (I am not...) and if someone would like to a report or diary
from there and if others perhaps would like to co-compile this nettime
digest with me. I am in particular interested in discussion papers, such as
the one from Peter Waterman. /geert)

1. New Digitised System for Translation
2. Dialogues on the Knowledge Society Workshop
3. Democratization of Information with a Focus on Libraries
4. Networking the Free Media (Ciranda)
5. Archaich Left Challenges WSF (PeterWaterman)
6. Sarai @ WSF

1. MUMBAI WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
A NEW DIGITALISED SYSTEM FOR TRANSLATION

During the next World Social Forum, which will be held
in Mumbai, India, 16-21 January 2004, a new
translation system will be used. The interpreters are
volunteers: Babels guarantees this service, as it did
with success during the last European Social Forum.
For the first time, we will not have to rent equipment
at exorbitant rates thanks to the combined use of FM
transmitters (for Indian languages) and a computer
based system that will digitalise the translation.
This system, called Nomad Interpreting Free Tools
(NIFT) uses a simple computer which is able to make an
interface between the speakers, the translators and
the audience. NIFT is a joint effort of several
groups, including APO33 and Babels, together with
free-software actors in various countries. This is an
ongoing process needing support from a wider variety
of actors and groups.
NIFT reduces the costs, enables the debates and
conferences to be broadcast via audio streaming in all
the languages translated, and to archive and index, by
speaker, the contents of these debates and conferences
through different media, such as DVD, CD and websites.

Today, we have three different propositions to make.

The first is to offer the possibility to diffuse, by
Internet, languages that will not be officially
translated in Mumbai. The second is a request to make
your website available as a mirror site to broadcast
the conferences and debates during the WSF. And third,
we are inviting you to join the NIFT project that will
be developed using free software and GNU licence.

This is a proposal for those who want to translate the
debates of the WSF into languages that will not be
officially translated in Mumbai. (The official
languages are Hindi, English, Marathi, Castillian,
French, Japanese, Thai and Korean.) For this to
happen, the interested organisations or institutions
need to provide one or more translators and to help
share the costs. The cost is probably about $200 to
rent a computer for one conference room and to
contribute to the costs of the internet connections,
but the cost will be much less if the translators has
his/her own laptop able to work with linux.

If you are interested, please let us know very soon to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with:
The language you want to translate
The number of ?channels? you want to use. A ?channel?
is a conference room where translations is in place,
but it is possible to change the ?channel? from room
to room with minimal delay at no additional cost.
The number of translators you will have for the job.

2. This is a request to set up mirror sites to stream
and to archive the translated conferences. As you
know, streaming uses a lot of band space and by
sharing we can resolve this problem. Each site that
wants to be part of this mirroring system can do it in
one or several languages and will take the stream
directly from the provider installed for the WSF in
Mumbai.

The mirror sites will be linked to www.wsf.india.org.

If you are interested, please send the following
information to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organsiation
Country
Languages you want to broadcast
Are you in India for the WSF?
Name of the technical contact
Email
Telephone
Url of your site:
Does your provider allow streaming?
Have you done it before?
What is your available bandwidth?

3. Third is an invitation to join the NIFT project.
This software will be available on 2 January at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/targ/. We welcome any
comments, suggestions of new functions or help to get
rid of the bugs

In solidarity

NIFT

--

2. From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Dear Friends,

The Dialogues on the Knowledge Society workshop has been allotted two
sessions:

January 17- 1P.M. to 4.P.M.
January 19--5P.M. to 8.P.M.

You can get more details at  http://www.wsfindia.org/event2004/search.htm
Search by typing in the text box .

There will be presentations by

Krishna Gandhi, Jhansi
Tenzin Gigzin, Pune
Ananya Vajpeyi, Bangalore
Sunil Sahasrabudhey, Varanasi
Krishnarajulu Naidu, Hyderabad
Jinan K.B., Aruvacode
Amit Basole , Durham
Avinash Jha, Delhi

WSF2004 is being held at NESCO grounds in Goregaon East, Mumbai. You can see
the
map at http://www.mumbainet.com/cityinfo/citymap.htm

Please send mail for 

Vittorio Bertola: WSIS: What Is It 'Really' All About?

[geert lovink]

Vittorio Bertola: WSIS: What Is It 'Really' All About?


Until a few weeks ago, almost everyone in the Internet governance circus
seemed to ignore the very existence of WSIS. After it popped up on
international newspapers, however, things have been changing; and suddenly,
I have started noticing plenty of negative reactions, on the lines of "we
don't need WSIS, we don't need the UN, we don't need governments, we don't
need internationalization - just go away from our network". However, I often
find that these reactions are based on fundamental misunderstandings of the
issues at stake; so please let me offer a different perspective.

First of all, WSIS is an eminently political process, talking about
political problems. The issue here is not how to make the Internet work
best - forget about that. The issue mostly is how to redistribute power and
control about what is done with the Internet and how, without breaking its
technical functionality too much.

To technical people, this of course seems like a useless nonsense; this is
possibly one of the reasons behind the span of negative reactions.

Personally speaking, my opinion is quite the opposite; I think that the
problems that were raised in WSIS are real, and also, extremely important.
The failure by many to understand or even accept them is, in my opinion,
quite worrying.

Let me make examples. In a previous post on CircleID, I have seen another
commenter ask a number of questions, including this one: "4. The Plan of
Action also calls for regional root servers. What is the advantage of
promoting regional root servers, what benefits will they provide to Internet
users?"

I guess that the person making the question does not see any advantage for
such thing - and in fact, there is not a credible advantage for such a
change in technical terms. However, regional root servers have a clear and
compelling motivation in political terms; to put it simply and directly, if
a war (military or commercial) breaks up between your country and the United
States of America, you won't risk your economy collapsing and your
communications dying off because all Internet domain names suddenly stop to
resolve or point somewhere else as desired by your enemy.

And of course, this is a problem you can't even figure out if your country
is the United States of America, which explains why so many people in the
Internet industry fail to understand what WSIS is about. (Or, sometimes,
pretend to do so.)

So, let's take another fundamental question that was previously posed: "What
benefits does the United Nations offer over ICANN?"

Now, this question again shows a fundamental misunderstanding. We're not
talking about a frequent flyer program, where you choose the one that gives
you the biggest rewards; we're talking about control of a strategic
resource, which is fundamental to each country for internal economical
growth and for the circulation of ideas, news, know-how.

If we believe that the Internet is really for everyone, then it must be
under the control of everyone - not just under the control of a few
enlightened people from a few developed countries. And, like it or not, the
citizens of the world - including those who can't afford a computer yet -
are, and can only be, represented by their governments.

So, I'm not denying the practical objections that are being made to a direct
governmental administration of the Internet, and in fact I do support them;
an intergovernmental administration of the Internet would likely to be a
tragedy for everyone; and anyway, the most effective "Internet governance"
action for me in 2003 was installing SpamAssassin on my mail server - which
reminds me that, in practical terms, Internet governance is the sum of a
huge number of distributed collective actions. However, you have to
understand and solve the political problem, before you can propose any
practical solution that can work happily and globally in the long term.

And by the way, if you look at the past history of ICANN, you will see that
its actual openness, transparency, and support for the general public
interest has often been questionable; the lack of direct involvement by
governments has mostly meant that control has been left in the hands of a
few powerful lobbies. While I doubt that, in an UN/governmental system,
average Internet users would have more power than they have now, I also
doubt that they could have much less.

This is why I think that just saying "governmental administration won't work
in practice" is not an answer to the real problem being raised at WSIS; and
that ICANN itself should be the first and foremost promoter of yet another
reform period, where its initial idea - a partnership between governments,
industry, and users - can be upheld and evolved into a truly international
structure, independent from any single country or interest group,
multilingual, and immensely more diverse than ICANN is now.

--

(Vittorio Bertol

how was the summit? a helpful list in case your friends ask you

[geert lovink]

http://www.worldsummit2003.org/

How was the summit? A helpful list in case your friends (or any reporters)
ask you

Geneva/Berlin, 16 December 2003. Compiled by Rik Panganiban and Ralf
Bendrath.

The Good

ICT4D Exhibitions
It was quite inspiring seeing the hundreds and hundreds of great
exhibitions and stands in the ICT4D. Comparing this fair to the Geneva
Telecom 2003 last month, one can see how colorful and vibrant are the many
activities being engaged in by civil society, governments, international
institutions and businesses. It makes you think that we need more frequent
gatherings where people and groups developing ICT applications to meet
real human needs can assemble and celebrate each others work.

Civil Society Declaration
Great work all around assembling such an ambitious document, representing
a diverse assemblage of views and vision of hundreds of groups of civil
society. Kudos to Sally Burch and Bill McIver for guiding the process, all
the drafting committee folks, and caucus and working groups for their
input and refinements.

Parallel Civil Society Events
It was incredibly frustrating knowing that there were at any time several
interesting meetings going on that you wanted to attend. We hope that groups
will make reports, powerpoints, videos and other materials available, so we
can see a flavor of what we missed. We went to lots of great events,
including the CPSR meeting on ICT governance, the AMARC community media
forum, the TRP meeting on "democracy, freedom and digital divide", the World
Forum on Communication Rights, and the UBUNTU meeting on global governance
and WSIS. Congrats to all the organizers for their great work.

Helping Hands
An whole number of people - especially from but not limited to civil
society - were extremely helpful during the whole week. Be it the geeks who
set up the free wireless hotspot around the civil society offices, the
people who coordinated the press conferences and plenary sessions, the ones
who spent nights in smoke-filled hotel rooms finalizing joint press releases
and other documents, or the volunteer translators - thanks to all of you!

The Bad

Overpasses
Turns out there was plenty of room in the plenary hall, hundreds of
available seats. So making us come up with these complex distribution
systems, fight with each other, and put poor Robert Guerra (who helped
getting it structured) through the wringer, was all for nothing.

WiFi / Internet Access
This was abyssmal how substandard our internet access was. We confess to
being guilty of assuming that at the information society summit that we
would have in place adequate information technology. WiFi barely worked,
even after having to pay exhorbitant amounts for it. SMTP never worked, so
sending email was impossible for most of us. The biggest scandal, though,
was the fact that we had no free wireless access, as this had been the case
at all the PrepComs.

Noise
The noise factor was a significant and constant nuisance the entire week,
with no soundproofing of any meeting spaces and frequent loud music, booming
noises, and the overall buzz of a thousand conversations. Many people
commented that they had never been at a meeting of this stature where the
noise level was so bad.

Official Roundtables
We understand that the roundtable speakers only got 3 minutes to make their
interventions. What exactly was the point of bringing all this expertise
together if no actual dialogue was going to happen? A number of speakers who
had taken the effort of coming to Geneva from distant continents for these
roundtables told us they had never felt so useless at any other conference.

The Ugly

Civil Society Speaker Selection
We had selected our speakers in a fairly transparent and democratic manner
before the summit. Then somebody in the ITU just took the list and
arbitrarily picked and dropped people. We neither know who took this
decision, nor why. But it denied civil society its right to choose who
speaks on its behalf and brings its points across. This was especially clear
in the opening ceremony. The selected speaker from the World Blind Union was
nice, but had not participated actively in overall civil society discussions
and therefore did not make our points. She even had been under pressure from
the ITU secretariat to include specific sentences in her speech. Oh, and by
the way: This was even against the rules of procedure.

Tunisian Influence Efforts
According to several reports, the Tunisian government had sent a whole
number of people to the summit and accredited them as "civil society"
members. Many of them tried to mess up civil society discussions related to
the second phase of the summit and especially to the bad human rights record
of Tunisia. Some of them were even caught red handed in attempts to steal
hundreds to thousands of copies of the critical summit newspaper Terra Viva.
This is not only a violation of human rights such as free speech, but it is
also very stupid and backfires if you get caught

wsis digest no. 5

[geert lovink]

World Summit on Information Society
Nettime Digest, no. 5 December 18, 2003

1.   Allan Liska: More Questions Than Answers
2.   WSIS Report by Jo van der Spek
3.   Richard Stallman on WSIS
4.   OurMedia Clemencia Rodriguez reports
5.   Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Telepolis, in German)
6.   World Summit of Cities and Local Authorities
7.   Official WSIS Press Release
8.   Civil Society Representatives Present Declaration
9.   WISIS-Award.Org
10.  NTK on WSIS

--

1. WSIS Leaving More Questions Than Answers
By Allan Liska

http://www.circleid.com/article/397_0_1_0_C/

An amazing thing has happened over the last month: People all over the
Internet are saying nice things about ICANN. It is difficult to imagine
something that would make so many people stand up and defend ICANN, and yet
they are. What brought about this sudden change? The change in attitude
reflects the idea that an organization even more derided than ICANN might
take over the governance of the Internet.

That organization, of course, is the United Nations, under the banner of the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The WSIS is an attempt by
the United Nations to extend the reach of information technology throughout
the world and to use the power of information technology to allow people to
reach their full potential and improve their quality of life. One of the
ways the United Nations proposes to encourage this development is to take
the control of the Internet from ICANN and instead place it under control of
the United Nations.

The WSIS is organized around two different documents, A Declaration of
Principles and A Plan of Action. The two documents discuss a broad range of
technology issues, but the area that has created the most controversy are
the few paragraphs discussing Internet governance.

Two things are important to stress. First, nothing was decided in this
meeting, and no actions will be taken until the next meeting in 2005.
Secondly, and more importantly, as with anything the devil is in the
details. Given the vagueness of the documents available, there are few
reliable conclusions that can be drawn from the summit. Those who wish to
see bad things will see them, those who want to see good things will find
them as well.

The fact that the documents are so vague actually generates more questions
than answers, especially in the area of DNS control.

Management of ccTLDs:

The final Plan of Action produced by preparatory committee (the December
12th version) encourages governments to "manage or supervise, as
appropriate, their respective country code top level domain name (ccTLD)."

This implies that the United Nations would take over the management of the
ccTLD DNS infrastructure. At one level this is not a bad idea. ICANN is not
a political organization -- political in the sense of dealing with the
structure or affairs of government -- the United Nations is entirely a
political organization. One of the problems Jon Postel, and his staff, ran
into when initially setting up country code domains is determining what
constituted a country. Rather than make that decision, the DNS forefathers
decided to use the country code list from the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO 3166).

Over time, the original list of ccTLDs has become outdated, which results in
oddities like the ccTLD .su still being in use, even though the Soviet Union
no longer exists. It can also be difficult, not to mention outside the scope
of their responsibility, for members of a non-political body to determine
who the rightful owner of a ccTLD is.

The downside is that precisely because the United Nations is a political
organization the delegation of ccTLD authority may not be handled in an
equitable fashion. It is possible that one country will unduly influence the
delegation of the ccTLD for another country. There is no indication, within
the Plan of Action, that safeguards should be put in place to ensure the
ccTLD process is not politicized.

Management of gTLDs:

An obvious omission in both the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of
Action is discussion of generic top level domains (gTLDs). GTLDs account for
more than 90% of all registered domains. These domains are not political in
nature, and therefore require a different level of scrutiny than ccTLDs.
Conspicuous because of their absence, does the United Nations intend to
leave the gTLDs under the control of ICANN, or do they intend to take those
over as well. If the United Nations intends to take control of gTLDs, what
is the justification for that?

Also not mentioned in the Plan for Action is what would become of ARIN,
RIPE, and APNIC (as well as the smaller registries). Currently, IP Address
assignments fall under the control of ICANN, would those move to the control
of the United Nations, or would ICANN maintain control? IP Address
assignment is currently decided based on need, if the United Nations assumes
control, would that remain the same, or would they choose another criterion

wsis digest no. 4

[geert lovink]

World Summit on Information Society
Nettime Digest, no. 4 December 11, 2003

(I arrived in Geneva today. In between all activities I made this quick
digest. It also contains some 'old' info. Over the weekend I hope to
compile more actual information. For more 'live' information please visit
the http://www.dailysummit.net/ blog and www.geneva03.org for counter
summit updates. Geert)

- Reports from We Seize! by Stefan Merten (Oekonux)
- Report of Hans Klein/Georgia Tech
- Global media struggle to define 'freedom'
- Radio Non Grata forced off the air
- Nations Chafe at U.S. Influence Over the Internet
- Human Right Causus Concerned about Outcome
- Mapping Geneva Project (Bureau d'Etudes)
- Assuming the GCNP position
- Migration, labour, media and organizing
- Alles nicht so schlimm (Florian Rötzer)
- WSIS text by Garth Graham

--

From: "Stefan Merten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [ox-en] Report from "We Seize!"

Hi!

While being here in Geneva I also can try to report on what is
happening here at the "We Seize!" events. I don't know, however,
whether this is possible on the other days.

Monday has been the second day of preparation of the "We Seize!"
(after a year of online preparation). It started with a press
conference in the morning.

Press conference
- 

* Jamie King who is one of the main organizers made a declaration you
  can find under

http://www.geneva03.net/moin.cgi/PressCommunique

  (At the moment this page is truncated :-( .)

  One of the key points is that at "We Seize!" people who kind of live
  the information society already are gathering instead of some
  political leaders.

* The "We Seize!" event has not been planned to be a big event.
  Instead people from all over the world can participate online.

* The program has been outlined. Please check

http://www.geneva03.net/

  for an up-to-date snapshot.

* The streaming during the conference is made possible for "zero cost"
  by Free Software.

* Besides freedom of communication mentioned in the declaration
  freedom of knowledge was highlighted.

* The "Digital Divide" is never digital. Instead it is monetary.

* When accessing the Internet it is important to know how you can use
  it. This differs much from people getting connected to some business
  channels. Free Software is at the very base of this know how.

* If software is the basis of the information society putting
  copyrights on software is like putting a copyright on language. Also
  proprietary software sets the terms which people have to use to
  communicate. Free Software frees people to choose these terms
  individually.

* It is important to prevent technological fetishism as it can be seen
  in the official WSIS to some degree (e-everything). Instead the
  people should be the most important thing.

* Free Software and its importance has been mentioned in many
  contributions.

* "We Seize!" has been named to make clear that we just take what we
  need instead of waiting what "they" give us.

* Besides Internet streaming other media is used by re-broadcasting
  the digital streams (radio, television). Also the "We Seize!" uses
  these type of media itself (particularly in the Polymedia Lab).

* Internet is a cheaper media than other regulated media.

* Program of Strategic Conference has been settled now. [Which changed
  since the press conference.] There are even printed versions.

* The key concept of "We Seize!" is to show autonomy, demonstrating
  networking, sharing of knowledge, and so on. Demonstrations on the
  street are not seen as a good way to show this autonomy.

* The wanted outcome of "We Seize!" is to have some substantial
  discussions, to learn something, check out practical solutions, show
  autonomy, connect groups which are subject to the same issues.

* There are attempts to organize self-organized networks independent
  from e.g. ICANN. This sort of networks becomes more important as the
  commercial networks prevent free flow of information. This is
  parallel to the success of Free Software.

* The commercial factions have more disagreement between themselves
  than to the Free Movement (e.g. IBM/HP vs. M$). The Free movement
  can grow in the cracks between these factions.

* CRIS published "We Seize!" in the official program. "We Seize!"
  itself has no relationship to the official process. CRIS has a foot
  in both areas.

In the afternoon the second part of the preparation took place. It was
mainly concerned with laying out the Strategic Conference
(http://www.geneva03.net/moin.cgi/StrategicConference). Actually the
first two sessions have been merged and the rest stayed as it was.

Tuesday was planned as the first day of the Strategic Conference.
However, it has not started yet. The reason is that the police is at
the location where the Polymedia Lab takes place. I don't know about
the details yet but I understood that the police lets people out of
the location only when they take all the equipment with them. Of
course th

ICANN or UN? (Declan)

[geert lovink]

This posting of Politech Declan seems to representative of the U.S.
libertarains and academics' postion towards WSIS--at least I have not yet
heard other voices. This position seems to mix up national governments with
UN, as if they are one and the same. But even more remarkable is their
defense of ICANN. Even the most prominent ICANN critics such as Milton
Mueller is openly defending the status quo (see my interview with him lately
on nettime). This could be explained in cultural terms like Americans being
traditionally distrustful of goverments in general, but I do not quite buy
into that explanation. It could be a late 911 effect (like... the world is
conspiring against us, etc.). Anyway, I find it interesting to see that,
instead of going into the offensive and using WSIS as a platform to
formulate global alternatives to ICANN, a lot of these Americans start to
openly defend ICANN. Interesting politics. Ciao, Geert (on the train to
Geneva)

--

From: "Declan McCullagh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 2:13 AM
Subject: [Politech] U.N./ITU convenes world Internet summit this week in
Geneva [fs]

The aptly-named "Digital Solidarity Agenda" for this week's United
Nations/ITU summit on the Internet and information society is mostly
duplicative and predictable. Documents posted Saturday call for more taxes
and spending by governments on politically-favored information technology
programs, the protection of "indigenous peoples'" cultural heritage,
outlawing so-called hate speech ("I think the Irish suck!"), and so on.
There's the obligatory crypto-censorial suggestion that governments must
take "appropriate measures" to combat "combat illegal and harmful content
in media content," whatever that means.

Then there's section D2, which says the U.S. government should take
"concrete efforts" toward expropriating $97 billion a year from American
taxpayers in grants to third-world nations. I'm not sure how much
non-military foreign aid the U.S. hands out today, but in 1997 we gave
around $7 billion. (If we have perhaps 150 million U.S. taxpayers, without
adjusting for income disparities, the extra $90 billion amounts to an
average tax increase of $600 per taxpayer per year. A bargain!)

Of course the U.N. bureaucrats will insist on seeing that extra $90 billion
goes to the rightful recipients -- after they take their cut off the top.
See a report from a former U.S. State Department official titled "A Miasma
of Corruption: The United Nations at 50":
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-253.html

In light of the Geneva U.N. conference this week, an excerpt from that
report is telling: 'One of the most egregious abuses is the United Nations'
penchant for holding international conferences of dubious worth. A splendid
example was last year's $2.5 million Summit for Social Development held in
Copenhagen, Denmark. Featuring 100 world leaders, the summit (and its dozen
preparatory meetings) fuzzily focused on poverty, job creation, and
"solidarity." The outcome was roughly divisible into two categories:
bromides that few could quarrel with or find of practical use and proposals
for yet more government intervention to promote societal betterment.'

The same is true with this week's meeting. About the only concrete
proposal, as you can see in the links below, is a naked power grab to wrest
control of Internet governance (domain names, addresses) from ICANN. As
flawed as ICANN may be, it's probably a heck of a lot better than letting
the U.N. take over.

News coverage:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3300071.stm
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=UN%20Tech%20Summit

-Declan

---

http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/pc3/declaration-principles.pdf

2. Our challenge is to harness the potential of information and
communication technology to promote the development goals of the
Millennium Declaration, namely the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger; achievement of universal primary education; promotion of gender
equality and empowerment of women; reduction of child mortality;
improvement of maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and development of global
partnerships for development for the attainment of a more peaceful, just
and prosperous world.

15. In the evolution of the Information Society, particular attention must
be given to the special situation of indigenous peoples, as well as to the
preservation of their heritage and their cultural legacy.

33. To achieve a sustainable development of the Information Society,
national capability in ICT research and development should be enhanced.
Furthermore, partnerships, in particular between and among developed and
developing countries, including countries with economies in transition, in
research and development, technology transfer, manufacturing and
utilisation of ICT products and services are crucial for promoting
capacity building 

Interview with Stephen Marshall (Guerrilla News Network)

[geert lovink]

Interview with Stephen Marshall
Guerrilla News Network's Digital Documentaries

By Geert Lovink

The political videos of Guerrilla News Network are a challenging affair,
both in terms of its content, aesthetics and distribution. Deeply hybrid,
GNN is crossing boundaries in such a professional­and easy­manner that it
almost seems, we have landed in the perfect, tactical media future. On GNN
it is Trance meets Chomsky. Without leaving behind the tradition of
political documentary video and investigative journalism, it is GNN's
unique quality to frame classic footage in an innovative television
format. Edited as high pulse videoclips the works are designed as
interactive art works and distributed simultaneously on VHS, DVD, as
television signal and last but not least streaming video content on the
web. In fact, the website is the centrepiece of the GNN operation and not
only works as a video portal but also serves as a platform for daily
written NewsWires. GNN topics range from environment, the War on Terror
and intelligence.  My favorite is S-11 Redux, a scratch video masterpiece
that jams American news footage; a delightful deconstruction of the late
2001 hysteria, leading up to the invasion of Aghanistan.

Canadian writer and video director Stephen Marshall has been involved in
desktop video and the handy-cam revolution since 1995 when he ran Channel
Zero, an 'underground' video magazine, which had wide distribution through
stores such as HMV, Tower and Virgin. After Channel Zero fell apart
Stephen worked as a DJ in New York and Toronto. In early 2000 he got
together with MTV's Josh Shore and together they created GNN. At the
height of the dotcom boom Guerrilla News Network was launched as a hot,
content-rich multimedia site. After having produced two videos, one on
diamond trade in Sierra Leone and one on CIA's involvement in drug
traffic, GNN merged with another alt-news web venture and attracted a few
other professionals. I met Stephen Marshall at Chicago's exciting Version
new media festival in March 2003, where we decided to keep track of each
other's movements. Exactly because of GNN's political overtone I kicked
off the interview about camcorder technologies and digital video
aesthetics. All the rest you can see and judge for yourself: www.gnn.tv.

GL: Could you tell us something about your editing technique? You seem to
edit on the rhythm of the music, that's the feel you get, but perhaps the
content is not always ready to follow that logic. How do you solve that
tension?

SM: It is important to know that, besides being a video director, I am
also a progressive trance DJ. And I have always been deeply interested in
the alchemy of sound and live 'editing' of beats that happens in the
clubland culture of Djing. And so when I cut videos, it is really just an
extension of that process. The visuals are just another layer of meaning
but not necessarily a more important one.

I think that anyone who is seriously dedicated to the creation of
transformative media - and by that I mean media, which has, as its core
goal, the (sub) conscious evolution of its audience the study of human
perception is critical. You simply cannot attempt to produce relevant
socio-political media and ignore the avenues of receptivity that are
innate to your audience. And we know that, in that respect, sound precedes
image. Human beings hear before they see. Before there was light, there
was 'the sound'. You know? It's just fundamental. And what I learned from
Djing is that there is a whole array of reactions and responses that can
be triggered in people through the purposeful architecture of sonic
frequencies. At least in the way that they move their bodies. And so much
of the art of Djing is about building a narrative with the music, one that
is inclusive and impactful enough that people never leave the dance floor.

Applying this to GNN, my intention has always been to merge the subliminal
elements of the electronic music culture with the overt and traditionally
barren transmission of socio-political data. And not just because of my
own artistic fetishes. There has been such a huge dropping off in the
relevance and popularity of the documentary genre, and all news
programming for that matter, which is really quite alarming. If young
people are not engaged in the gathering and trading of data that directly
informs their perception of the society, the potential for a widespread
tactical overthrow of the system is threatened. And if activist content
producers are not willing to use all the means at their disposal to
compete with the mainstream broadcast spectacle, then they are not serious
about building a movement to silence it. So, in my approach to the editing
and design of the GNN NewsVideos, the primary focus is always on building
synergetic media that is driven by a musical narrative. Because that is
what the younger generation responds to. Nike knows

Jonathan Peizer: The Quiet Revolution In Non-Profit Capacity Support

[geert lovink]

From: "Jonathan Peizer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Satisfying Donor and Non-Profit Objectives: The Quiet Revolution In
Non-Profit Capacity Support

By Jonathan Peizer

The economic downturn of the last three years once again served
to highlight the tenuous institutional capacity most non-profits are forced
to rely upon to survive in good times and bad. Many non-profits with
exceptional programs had to consider closing because funding dried up and
they had limited ability to support themselves. While the business
environment is cyclical, capacity issues are a chronic problem for the lion'
s share of non-profits globally. This will continue to be the case until the
dynamics of traditional donor support and its detrimental impact on capacity
funding is dealt with realistically. It's time for the sector to embrace new
paradigms that have evolved naturally and quietly over the last few years
with the help of new technologies and a few visionary institutions.
Non-profits willing to provide capacity support to their peer organizations
and the progressive donors that support them are creating the new strategic
paradigm of non-profit capacity support. Non-profits with appropriate
organizational capacity deliver on their mission more effectively and are
far more effective devising ways to support themselves and limit donor
subsidies.

While a subset of non-profits rely on generated income to
support their activities, most rely primarily on donor subsidies. These
subsidies come from a variety of sources but there is one characteristic
typically consistent among all donor groups whether it comes from private
foundations, individual donors, governments or membership. Donors are
interested in supporting program activities and not accountants,
technicians, administrators and organizational infrastructure. Individuals
who manage non-profits are often more interested in focusing on the
organization's compelling mission than they are on building, managing and
subsidizing these organizational support structures as well.

The irony is that most donors and grantees aspire to the same
state of civil society Zen mythically referred to as - sustainability. In
this karmic state, the donor withdraws support gradually while the
non-profit takes on more responsibility for supporting its own operational
activities. Ying and Yang are achieved when the non-profit generates enough
income to support its operational budget and only approaches donors for
underwriting its more attractive programmatic activities. As in most things
Zen, it's all about knowing your positions. A non-profit cannot be expected
to assume the position of ever supporting itself if:

1) The organization doesn't place the importance on capacity that this issue
deserves.
2) Donors don't support capacity.

In the traditional funding paradigm, the reason support is
provided for program over administration can be logically rationalized from
the donor's perspective. All donors are faced with the same issue: how can a
single donor demonstrate noticeable effect in the area it perceives
important to solve a problem of social value? Noticeable effect is important
to donors because their constituents, board members or living donors expect
the money they expend to demonstrate tangible results. The vast majority of
donors answer the "how to achieve noticeable effect" question by creating
well defined niches and funding criteria based on geography, sector and
sub-issues within the sectors they choose to support. Donors purposefully
try to define a unique niche for themselves, so their first instinct is not
necessarily to partner with others and leverage their funding.  If that were
the case, spreading the burden of capacity support among donors would be
more easily accomplished.

Mission focused grantees are often viewed by donors as the tools
used to turn dollars into action on the ground - they are intermediaries
that assist in solving the problem. A donor supporting a portfolio of
organizations does not necessarily view any individual non-profit as the
solution to the social problem that it defines as its objective, even if the
individual non-profit sees itself that way. Institutional support can change
from year to year if another organization comes up with a new or creative
way to solve an issue, or if the criteria a donor uses to direct its support
changes. Since the donor's primary objective is to solve a social ill, most
funding is earmarked for programmatic activity and not on the capacity needs
of the intermediary it uses to achieve this objective. In fact, most
traditional donor funding criteria is heavily weighted against capacity
support. Funding a computer or accountant creates a hard case for
demonstrating noticeable effect on the ground -- the primary donor
objective. So while supporting capacity is a rational investment, it is one
step removed from the limited amount of funding a donor has to meet its
goals. Aside from that, it's not sexy, doesn't read very well in the a

Info on HighNoon--remote online project during WSIS

[geert lovink]

High | Noon call by geneva03 initiative!

1 Towards HIGHNOON
In recent years media activism has evolved globally from local pirate
radios, video activist groups and paper zines into complex networks of
alliances that use ICT to bridge the physical gap in txt, visual and sonic
media, as well as those of distance and feasibility. Some of these networks
(like Indymedia) have showed the way for others how to structure the
information agregation and desemination process.

Recently a diverse group of media activists, artists and programers
initiated project HighNoon which is set out to develop a new model that
would suite better for moving image. Agregation of video has already been
experimentaly established in recent months by v2v project
(http://www.v2v.cc), using free software, open formats and standards to
encode, store and syndicate production quality video in sustainable and
managable way.

Further along this road we wanna develop methods and models to fill these
archives with quality content and make it available for others to engage
within this social, media and technical development. By using free
technologies, working on models of inclusion and adressing social issues
within so called "information society" we are initiating HighNoon platform
for delivery of this media through networks to all connected. Being early
in development stage we need your support in submiting content, testing
technology, commiting resources and adopting standards we agree on. Join us
as we build HighNoon for its first incarnation in counter program to World
Summit of Information Society!

2 WHAT IS HIGHNOON
High Noon is an audiovisual protest over three days (Dec 10-12) that
gathers objections against the WSIS in Geneva in order to assert our claims
to the so called "information society".

Since we are reluctant to report from yet another useless global summit to
the rest of the world, we want to engage international participation in
this media event that inverts the centralistic self-referential structure
set-up by WSIS in order to distribute media presence equally between
time-zones. High Noon works as an interface for confronting and exposing
rhetorics of the WSIS by the variety of media contributions and
interventions uploaded by media activists and artists from around the
globe. We will be following the revolution of the sun using its light as a
scanner to raise up local experiences and stories to tell. For three days
it will be always midday in HighNoon. For each midday you are invited to
participate rather than be represented!

3 CREATING AN ARCHIVEArchive will be assembled, from which HighNoon stream
will be programmed, out of copylefted audiovisual media with all
authors/producers credited acordingly.

This effort will not end after the WSIS. One of the main goals of this
effort is to create a stable media archive for further collaborations and
to test technical endurance and efficiency of independent infrastructures
(video archive, database of metadata, streaming servers), as well as new
models of procreative media expression and translocal networking.

4 CALL FOR CONTENT
Proposed topics are:

digital divide and access - community media and media activism
borders and migration - immaterial labor - hardware manufacturing
open source development - copyright and intellectual property
war and infowar - media monopolies and privatization - censorship and
freedom of expression

5 HOW TO ENGAGE
a) SUBMIT A VIDEO: We call for videos to upload in the archive. We will
then compress for streaming (to stream is to broadcast on the net).

b) ORGANIZE A LIVE STREAM:
We call for actions and events to broadcast live using the net. We will
screen in WSIS arena and in remote locations.

c) ORGANIZE A PUBLIC SCREENING:
We call for public screenings of the stream from Geneva. We will open local
inputs through IRC channels, webboards, streams to We Seize!

Every local initiative will be free to organize its own schedule for the
streamings, picking up videos from the archive. At the same time the
geneva03 collective will provide a default streaming of all the materials
in scheduled program.

6 CONTACTS AND TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT
If you have media to upload or to send, actions to stream live or wanna
join in development process please write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

For additional info please follow progress at
http://www.geneva03.org/highnoon

For further information on the - WSIS? We Seize! - check
http://www.geneva03.org/


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Interview with Milton Mueller

[geert lovink]

Trail and Error in Internet Governance
ICANN, WSIS and the making of a global civil society.

Interview with Milton Mueller
By Geert Lovink

In 2002 MIT Press published Milton Mueller's Ruling the Root, one of the
first detailed investigations into the Internet domain name policies. In
it Mueller describes the history of the Internet address and name space
and the root zone file and root name servers, without which the Internet
would not be able to function. Ever since the birth of ICANN (Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in 1998, the private company
that oversees 'name space', issues are becoming less technical and more
political. Governments seek more influence in a world that is
traditionally run by a select group of engineers and corporate managers.
Milton Mueller is professor at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse
University (NY) and director of the Convergence Center. He has widely
published about regulatory issues in the global telecommunications
industry. Milton Mueller is also editor and regular contributor to the
ICANNwatch website.

GL: In Ruling the Root you mention the Internet's technical cadre's
'allergy to democratic methods and public accountability.' You mention
that Internet pioneers, such as Jon Postel, refused to run for office in
any electoral system. Those who ran the Internet in the early days were
supposed to be selected with the consensus of the 'community'. Would you
say that this mentality, being a mixture of male engineering and hippie
culture, is lying at the heart of the ICANN controversies? Would a
cultural geneology help us to understand the current situation?

MM: The "community consensus" idea of the early days of the Internet (1986
- 1996) was indeed part of a specific culture that developed among the
(mostly male) engineers. Like all social groupings, that culture developed
its own pecking order and ruling elite, but it also had communitarian,
democratic and liberal elements. Democratic in the sense in which the
Magna Carta was democratic - peers demanding that their prerogatives not
be impinged on by the King. Liberal in that they supported open systems
and resisted the state. Communitarian in that there was a strong sense of
collective identity and responsibility and because one of the key issues
for them was whether you were inside or outside their community. Among
these types of homogeneous cultures with shared norms, you can develop a
rough community consensus.

You do need to understand this culture and history if you want to delve
deeply into the politics of DNS and the Internet (not just ICANN). By that
I mean if you want to engage in Internet politics at the level of meeting
and persuading individual people, then you need to know who are the
anointed elders of this culture and what kind of norms exist among this
community. But I would not say that this culture is any longer at the
HEART of the controversies. It was from 1995-97, but gTLD-MoU and the
creation of ICANN was basically the process by which this community came
to terms with other political, social and business interests. "Community
consensus" after that became a ridiculous and hypocritical notion.

As the theorists of institutional development have demonstrated, the
process of forging new institutions is all about fighting over
distributional effects-who is favored and who is disadvantaged when rules
are defined and governance structures are erected. Of course there could
be no consensus at that point. For example, any policy or rule that was
favored by Network Solutions could not be agreed by the IAB-IETF elders,
and any policy or rule favored by the trademark interests could not be
agreed by the civil libertarians. So the invocation of this notion after
1998 shows that either the person is ignorant of what is going on or was
trying to appropriate the legitimacy and the norms of the engineering
community in a fundamentally dishonest way.

GL: Would it make sense to analyse ICANN (and its predecessors) as a test
model for some sort of secretive 'world government' that is run by self
appointed experts? Could you explain why governments are seen as incapable
of running the Internet? This all comes close to a conspiracy theory. I am
not at all a fan of such reductionist easy-to-understand explanations.
However, the discontent with 'global governance' discourse is widespread
and it seems that the International Relations experts have little
understanding how the Internet is actually run. Where do you think
theorization of Internet governance should start?

MM: ICANN is a test model for a global governance structure based on
contract rather than territorial jurisdiction. That is an experiment worth
having. The problem with ICANN is not that it is secretive. It is far less
so than most international intergovernmental organizations. ICANN is in
fact very political. It poses governance problem

about Cicrle ID

[geert lovink]

Insight through Connected Intelligence

http://www.circleid.com/

CircleID: collaborative intelligence hub for the Internet's core
infrastructure & policies

CircleID Network is a unique collaborative hub that shares the control of
its content with the community it serves. Matters discussed here are
related to Internet's core infrastructure and they affect every
organization and individual who has come to rely on the Internet --
commercially or otherwise.

CircleID is a connected intellectual medium for the awareness and
improvement of policies, regulations, and technological developments that
concern the Domain Name System, Internet Protocol Addresses, Domain Names
and all other Internet naming and addressing issues essential to the
fundamental functionality of the Internet.

The net result achieved through the collective participation of CircleID
community is an up-to-date resource, rich with insights, comments,
articles, and interviews that have an immediate and direct benefit for all
participants as well as the overall progress of the Internet. It is this
collective participation that gives the Internet its magnificent power;
this phenomenon must be understood and respected in order to truly benefit
from the full potential of the Internet. CircleID is here to improve with
its community; it's here to unite; it's a spotlight for constructive
insights and innovative ideas; it's unbiased; it's here to benefit the
Internet's core infrastructure.




#  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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Wim Nijenhuis: A Cloud of Dark Knowledge (thesis summary)

[geert lovink]

Dear Nettimers,

below you will find the English summary of the long awaited thesis of the
architecture critic and Virilio expert Wim Nijenhuis. The original text is
in Dutch, but at least there is this text to give you an idea about the
range of topics and ideas in this magnus opus. For those who read Dutch: I
will post the table of contents and how to order the book to nettime-nl.

Geert

PS. There are two texts by Wim Nijenhuis (in English) in the nettime-l
archive:

Dwelling in Cyberspace
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9909/msg5.html

Eating Brasil
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0003/msg5.html

--

A Cloud of Dark Knowledge
Writings about Urban Design and (the History of) Urbanism

Thesis by Wim Nijenhuis

In three relatively independent 'Books', this study explores the potential
of the Foucauldian 'genealogy' and 'aesthetics of existence', in relation
with the 'dromology' of Paul Virilio for the critical writing on current
affairs in urban design and the history of urbanism.

BOOK I
An Archaeological Invention (an essay)

The actual 'dispositive' of modern urbanism with its ethical code, its
emphasis on the normative dimension of the design, the importance of civic
survey and its focus on urban public space, is put in the light of its
provenance: the practice of urban management in the nineteenth century
city of Rotterdam, where politics of the population correlated with
politics of the street and where the civic engineer with his unique type
of knowledge emerged out of the military predecessor. It is shown that his
position relied on the formation of the street into an institution.

The provenances of the rational streetplan and the sense of order of
modern urbanism are searched for in the so-called 'Mauritsdiagram' in the
seventeenth century. This 'diagram' denotes a historical formation of
knowledge in which the classical 'mathesis' merged with neostoic
philosophy and military science. This amalgamation sheds a new light on
the thesis of regular urban history; that the grid like rational
streetplan originates from the tradition of the ideal city in the
renaissance. It turns out that the thesis of regular urban history relies
upon the continuity of formal characteristics in urbanism like the circle,
the square and the rectangle.

These confrontations are complicated with several reflections: on the
genealogy of Foucault, its origin in Nietzschean philosophy and its
implications for the writing of history; on the philosophy of Kant and its
implication for modern ethics and the structure of the modern subject; on
the importance of the neostoic philosophy regarding the constitution of
the modern subject and its discipline and the proposals of Foucault to
constitute our own subjectivity in 'practices of the self'.

BOOK I Chapter I
The engineer and the street

The Coolpolderplan, a grid-shaped city expansion plan, presented to the
municipal council of Rotterdam in 1858 is discussed As stated in its
explanatory notes, the plan aimed to improve public order and public
health, but its main concern was the traffic system and the performance of
the city as a space of trade and labour.

Urbanism in that time, it is argued, takes the street as its main locus of
intervention. Comparisons are made with proposals for Amsterdam at that
time and the ideas of Cerdá for Barcelona and Haussmann for Paris.
Following and enriching the thesis of Giedion in Space Time and
Architecture (1941) about the origins of modern urbanism and the
centrality of the street in the project of Haussmann, the relationship
between street and politics is investigated. Apparently the street in the
first half of the nineteenth century was not so much a public space where
'democratic' political actions took place, as an political object in the
sense that parties struggled for the power to shape its form and to
control its space.

The politics of the street between 1740 and 1850 is analysed as this
struggle for the legal authority. The main effect of this struggle has
been to cast a new light over existing situations. The street turns out to
be part of a gradual transformation from a feudal and particularistic view
to the instrumental and collective view of modernity. The public bodies,
not to forget the engineer, thus create the notion of 'public space', and
at the same time, they increase their scope to act within it.

The emergence of the engineer and his type of knowledge (concerning the
street) is seen as a historical event. In the light of Foucault's
thinking, it is argued that the change of meaning of the street should be
approached as the result of a micro-cellular transformation within a
social balance of powers in the Nietzschean meaning of the word. This
event can be made visible by an 'archaeology' that addresses differences
and that affirms a polygon of origins.

The Coolpolderplan (1858) in Rotterdam is considered in its
operationality. With their plans, the engineers have influenced the s

wsis digest no. 2

[geert lovink]

World Summit on Information Society
Nettime Digest, no. 2, October 24, 2003

(alternative counter activities gather at http://www.geneva03.net)

0.   Tough issues face Information Society summit
1.   World Web Summit Worries Journalists
2.   Unions Want Employment Issues on Agenda
3.   Temporary Cyber Bus project
4.   WSIS events and information
5.   GEMEINSAME VISION IN WEITER FERNE (Berlin event)
6.   More hypocrisy as Tunisia hosts international congress on digital
divide
7.   Swiss cultural project during WSIS
8.   Statement of Bellagio Symposium on Media, Freedom and Poverty
9.   "Vision Informationsgesellschaft" (Tutzing)
10. FSF/Richard Stallman @ WSIS

--

0. Tough issues face Information Society summit
Major clash expected

By John Blau, IDG News Service October 01, 2003

Delegates attending the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS)in Geneva in December can look forward to another major clash
overseveral contentious issues that blocked agreement of two key
documents during a critical round of negotiations in the Alpine city
last month.

WSIS is an attempt to bridge what many governments view as a widening
gap between people who have access to modern communication services and
information, and thus knowledge, and those who don't, according
to Yoshio Utsumi, secretary general of the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. agency responsible for the
summit. The importance of communications and access to networks "is
no longer just a technical matter, but a fundamental policy goal for
every nation," Utsumi said in a statement.

At September's Prepcom-3, the final preparatory conference before the
summit, government representatives and members of the private and civil
sectors, including the media, met to agree on final drafts of two core
documents, the Declaration of Principles and the Action
Plan. Despite some progress, they failed to produce documents ready
for signing at the world's first Information Society summit.

Now the ITU is hastily trying to organize at least one "intersessional"
meeting, if not two, in an effort to build a consensus before heads of
state from at least 50 countries -- both developed and developing --
meet at the summit from Dec. 10-12, said Gary Fowlie, an ITU spokesman.
The first intersessional meeting is planned for Nov. 11-14, "pending
resources," he said. The second, depending on the outcome of the first,
could take place directly before the summit from Dec. 7-9.

The expectations of the summit are high if the Declaration of Principles
is any indication. The document seeks "a commitment to build an
inclusive Information Society where everyone can create, access, utilize
and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals and
communities to achieve their full potential and improve their quality of
life in a sustainable manner."

The document, representing a framework of fundamental principles, is
intrinsically linked with the second, the Action Plan, which contains
more than 140 items to achieve them. Copies of the draft documents
are available on the ITU-sponsored WSIS Web site: www.itu.int/wsis.

Both, however, are riddled with contentious issues, such as who will
finance the development of the Information Society and govern the
Internet, not to mention intellectual property rights, open-source
software and freedom of expression.

"This is the first time that issues like financing, Internet
governance and security and even spam have ever been discussed at a
global level," Fowlie said. "Because they're so broad and some of
them so new, it's definitely a challenge to address them all."

For sure, money is one of the biggest sticking points, according to the
spokesman. Demands by several developing countries to create a "digital
solidarity fund" have met strong resistance by developed countries,
which argue that existing financing mechanisms could be better
leveraged, he said.

Another prickly subject, almost on par with financing, is Internet
governance, Fowlie said. China and Brazil are among several countries
calling for one or more global bodies to manage Internet resources, such
as domain names, root servers and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses -- an
area heavily controlled by the U.S. Hardly a
surprise, the idea has fallen upon deaf ears in the U.S. delegation,
which continues to back ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers). Delegates from the European Union (EU) likewise
support a private model, along the line of the U.S.-backed ICANN,
preferring not to see the ITU become involved.

Also, the role of different software models in ensuring access to
information and knowledge has raised heated debate, according to the ITU
spokesman. Many countries, and not just developing ones, feel
that proprietary software, like that developed and marketed by
Microsoft Corp., doesn't meet all users' needs optimally in terms of
cost and usage.

Earlier language in the August draft of the Action Plan, advocating wide
use of open-source s

open source software--a comparative study

[geert lovink]

The Open Society Institute  has
released A Guide to Institutional Repository Software
 , by Raym Crow. The guide
compares five programs, all OAI-compliant and all open-source. It includes
a detailed comparison
 of features that should help an institution decide which package
best fits its needs and estimate how much support time it will require for
installation and maintenance. OSI offers the guide under the auspices of
the Budapest Open Access Initiative
 , and promises to update it
as the software evolves. 

(PS: This is badly needed. Let's hope that many more institutions can now
make a decision and start archiving.) (10/17/2003 7:55:55 AM)


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While Californians vote... Arnold Unplugged (Greg Palast)

[geert lovink]

Arnold Unplugged
Greg Palast, October 4, 2003 - GNN.

It's hasta la vista to $9 billion if the Governator is selected

It's not what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to the girls a decade back that
should raise an eyebrow. According to a series of memoranda our office
obtained today, it's his dalliance with the boys in a hotel room just two
years ago that's the real scandal.

The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula
Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron
chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted
stock swindler Mike Milken.

Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through
this reporter's fax machine tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband
and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined
the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante
plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back
the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Here's the story Arnold doesn't want you to hear. The biggest single threat
to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year
under California's unique Civil Code provision 17200, the "Unfair Business
Practices Act." This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would
make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California
electricity and gas customers.

It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who's the plaintiff taking on
the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading
candidate against Schwarzenegger.

Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron's Lay calls
an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including
Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and "solve"
the energy crisis -- that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away. How
can that be done? Follow the trail with me.

While Bustamante's kicking Enron butt in court, the Davis Administration is
simultaneously demanding that George Bush's energy regulators order the $9
billion refund. Don't hold your breath: Bush's Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission is headed by a guy proposed by S Ken Lay.

But Bush's boys on the commission have a problem. The evidence against the
electricity barons is rock solid: fraudulent reporting of sales
transactions, megawatt "laundering," fake power delivery scheduling and
straight out conspiracy (including meetings in hotel rooms).

So the Bush commissioners cook up a terrific scheme: charge the companies
with conspiracy but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they
have to pay only two cents on each dollar they filched.

Problem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won't sail if the Governor of
California won't play along. Solution: Re-call the Governor.

New Problem: the guy most likely to replace Davis is not Mr. Musclehead, but
Cruz Bustamante, even a bigger threat to the power companies than Davis.
Solution: smear Cruz because -- heaven forbid! he took donations from Injuns
(instead of Ken Lay).

The pay-off? Once Arnold is Governor, he blesses the sweetheart settlements
with the power companies. When that happens, Bustamante's court cases are
probably lost. There aren't many judges who will let a case go to trial to
protect a state if that a governor has already allowed the matter to be
"settled" by a regulatory agency.

So think about this. The state of California is in the hole by $8 billion
for the coming year. That's chump change next to the $8 TRILLION in deficits
and surplus losses planned and incurred by George Bush. Nevertheless, the $8
billion deficit is the hanging rope California's right wing is using to
lynch Governor Davis.

Yet only Davis and Bustamante are taking direct against to get back the $9
billion that was vacuumed out of the state by Enron, Reliant, Dynegy,
Williams Company and the other Texas bandits who squeezed the state by the
bulbs.

But if Arnold is selected, it's 'hasta la vista' to the $9 billion. When the
electricity emperors whistle, Arnold comes -- to the Peninsula Hotel or the
Governor's mansion. The he-man turns pussycat and curls up in their lap.

I asked Mr. Muscle's PR people to comment on the new Enron memos -- and his
strange silence on Bustamante's suit or Davis' petition. But Arnold was too
busy shaving off his Hitlerian mustache to respond.

To receive more of Greg's investigative reports click here.
http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

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Negroponte: not crazy enough

[geert lovink]

Negroponte: Tough times? Go crazy - Wired News

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and Ireland's Media Lab
Europe, dismisses any notion that R&D labs should focus on conservative
ideas with short-term payoffs. In fact, Negroponte notes that the biggest
criticism from backers is that "You're not crazy enough -- the lab should
be nuttier'". Despite a funding shortfall and questions about the future
direction of R&D labs, Negroponte is pushing his researchers to stray out
on the "lunatic fringe." Included: a look at new ideas emerging from
recent research initiatives in Europe (e.g. manhole covers as nodes of a
citywide Wi-Fi network).
http://www.corante.com/venture/redir/30542.html

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wsis digest no.1

[geert lovink]

World Summit on Information Society
Nettime Digest, no. 1, October 1, 2003

0. BBC: Sharp Divisions at Preperation Meeting
1. ITU press release
2. AMARC: Community media groups call for empowerment agenda at WSIS
3. Mosaic newsletter
4. Tunisia and WSIS
5. Monika Ermert: Dog fight over World Summit of The Information Society
6. Cusco Declaration
7. APC/CRIS Book on WSIS
8. HRIC Excluded From World Summit On the Information Society

--

0. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3148356.stm

Sharp divisions over how to bridge the digital divide between rich and poor
have emerged ahead of a UN summit on the issue in December. Delegates were
unable to settle their differences after two weeks of talks in Geneva. Many
of the poorer countries want the richer nations to provide extra money to
help more people get on the net. Delegates are now due to meet again in
Geneva in mid-November to try to iron out their differences. The UN sees
technology as a must for developing nations to help them educate citizens,
make them healthier and escape poverty.

It has organised the World Summit on the Information Society, (WSIS), to
come up with a global plan to ensure everyone has access to information and
communications technologies. But talks designed to come up with a plan of
action have revealed big differences between the rich and poor countries.
One of the main sticking points was over who should pay for technology
projects in the developing world. The other stumbling blocks that emerged
are over the place of human rights in the final declaration and how the
internet itself should be governed.

Western countries such as the US see freedom of expression as a key part of
an information society. But this is a sensitive subject in many countries
such as China, which has a different idea of what a free media means.
Concerns about human rights are shared by non-government groups, represented
under the banner of Civil Society. The grouping brings together a variety of
trade unions, social movements and other lobby groups. "If governments
continue to exclude our principles, we will not lend legitimacy to the final
official WSIS documents," said the Civil Society group in a statement.

--

1. WSIS e-card: World Summit on Information Society (WSIS): "Connecting the
World"

The Summit breaks new ground with a multi-stakeholder approach. PrepCom3
introduced a format for the Summit that provides for unprecedented
stakeholder participation. Representatives of stakeholder groups will
participate with Head of States and Governments at roundtable sessions and
will have an opportunity to report directly to the Plenary about their
Summit-related activities.

"The importance of communications and access to networks is no longer just a
technical matter, but a fundamental policy goal for every nation", said Mr
Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of ITU.

Adama Samassékou, President of the Preparatory Committee, asked the
participants to move from "input to impact" in working towards the
construction of a real "world summit of solidarity".

Some 1,600 delegates from UN Member States, intergovernmental organizations,
civil society, the private sector and media attended PrepCom3.

For "Highlights" of PrepCom3, please click here
http://www.itu.int/wsis/newsroom/highlights/pc3/index.html
For an overview of the results of PrepCom3, please click here
www.itu.int/wsis/newsroom/press_releases/itu/2003/prepcom3closure.html

Best Regards;

http://www.itu.int/wsis/

--

2. AMARC-World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters

NEWS RELEASE
26 September 2003

Community media groups call for empowerment agenda at WSIS

Community media and other civil society organisations have called on
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to ensure the World Summit
on the Information Society gives priority to empowerment of the poorest
people and communities in the world including support for traditional
and community-based communications media.

The outcome of the Third Preparatory Committee meeting for the World
Summit on the Information Society has been deeply dissatisfying for many
NGOs and civil society organisations involved in community-based media
and communications.

The low profile of traditional communications media in the draft
documents and the absence of clear linkages between the proposed ICT
infrastructure targets and internationally agreed development goals is
leading many civil society groups to question the real commitment to
development at the forthcoming UN World Summit.

The present draft Declaration and Action Plan gives priority to the
infrastructure for Internet connectivity whilst failing to address the
fundamental barriers of electricity supply, literacy and equipment costs
which will exclude the world's poorest people.

Much is promised by the information society but the world's poorest
communities face the danger of being left out by a vastly unequal access
to the global communications environment. Access to basic education and
electric

review of George Monbiot - The Age of Consent

[geert lovink]

Do we know what we want?

Review of George Monbiot, The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World
Order, London: Flamingo, 2003 (published in the US by The New Press, early
2004).

By Geert Lovink

No doubt the times they're a-changing when internal strategic debates of the
'anti globalisation movement' make it into mainstream publishing. According
to Amazon "Naomi Klein's No Logo told us what was wrong. George Monbiot's
The Age of Consent shows us how to put it right." Its publisher, Rupert
Murdoch's HarperCollins sells Monbiot's manifesto as "authoritative and
persuasive de facto figurehead for the contrarian movements in the UK."
Environmental activist Monbiot is columnist for the Guardian and author of a
bestseller about UK's privatisation disasters. Thanks to Rupert's
distribution network The Age of Consent made it into a newsagent at Sydney
airport where I purchased a copy.

The change George Monbiot has in mind falls nothing short of a 'metaphysical
mutation,' a concept he took from Michel Houllebecq. Or rather an
epistemological mutation, a revolutionary process somewhat similar to Thomas
Kuhn's 'paradigm shift.' Monbiot sees a 'global civil society' emerging out
of protest movements against the WTO, WEF and the G8 and counter summits
such as the World Social Forum. He calls for these movements to seize the
moment  "and become the catalyst for the new mutation." It has been often
said: global problems need global solutions, beyond the interaction between
nations. Unlike critics of global corporations such as David Korten, Monbiot
is not a 'localizer' who believes that self-sufficient small enterprises are
the solution. Empire with its global corporations can only be matched with
global democracy. For many of these activists there is no way back to the
nation state. It is time to collectively dream up new global entities and
construct them bottom up, from below. Small is Beautiful may be worthy but
ultimately disadvantages the poor. It's a waste of time to demand 'global
governance' and wait till the current political class voluntarily implements
such models.

Monbiot makes a case for democracy as the "least worst system." And as there
is nothing better, we may as well work within its premises. What activists
often push aside is the question 'who guards the guards.' Inside movements,
but also within Internet culture, Democracy is being preached but not
practiced. This was a problem of the Left in the past and 'accountability'
is again an issue in relation to NGOs that get invited to participate in
global summits. But whom do they represent? Conservative astroturf campaigns
such as www.ngowatch.org raise this issue-but there is no answer. The only
things activists do is come with a conspiracy theory who is behind NGO
Watch. Despite its own weak democratic tradition, Monbiot calls for a
"global democratic revolution" that will push aside "hopeless realism."
Monbiot believes in the power of momentary happening or slightly more
abstract 'the event,' as it is called in philosophical circles. He writes:
"What is realistic is what happens. The moment we make it happen. It becomes
realistic. A global democratic revolution is the only option we have. It is
the only strategy which could deliver us from the global dictatorship of
vested interests." After the Age of Dissent "it is time to invoke the Age of
Consent."

Most part of the manifesto is dedicated to three proposed global
institutions: a world parliament, an International Clearing Union and a Fair
Trade Organization. The idea of a world parliament stems from the complaint
that NGOs lack transparency and accountability. Monbiot believes that the
ultimate solution for this would be a global forum that is a directly
representative one. His world parliament would not be legislative body, at
least not from the start, but would hold global players into account. At the
same time we should get rid of the Security Council, where only five
countries hold veto right and rethink the one nation one vote system of the
UN General Assembly, as the pacific Island of Vanuatu now holds the same
rights as India or China.

Despite my initial reservation about the News Corp affiliation, I got to
admire Monbiot's spirit. This manifesto is an example of brave, strategic
thinking, free of the usual New Age mumbo jumbo that often accompanies
'positive' literature. Organized positivism has apparently moved away from
dotcom business circles to the translocal messengers of hope. Monbiot's
rhetorical fire is yet another example how wrong the Blairist idea doctor
Charles Leadbeater was in his Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global
Pessimists are Wrong. Movements such as ATTAC operate like distributed think
tanks that have taken up the task to 

Gordana Novakovic: Electronic Cruelty

[geert lovink]

From: "gordana.novakovic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

'Electronic Cruelty'
Gordana Novakovic

(presented at: 'user_mode' Symposium: Tate Modern, London; 2003;
'Consciousness Reframed 2003' Conference: CaiiA, University of Newport,
Newport; 2003; [EMAIL PROTECTED] U.K. Academic List; 2003)

Is it the form of interactive work that separates it from and opposes it to
the tech-spectacle of massive pop-concerts, VJ clubbing and 'shoot 'em up'
online games despite the similarity in terms of the technology employed? Is
interactive work another immersive narcotic or is it potentially a form
through which ritual can re-incarnate?

The ambiguity between fascination and consternation in experiencing
interactive work might be inherent in this art's very nature - a hybrid of
art and science. However, the influence of the installation's body onto the
bodies of participants remains enigmatic.

The world is divided into a complex caste system defined in direct
proportion with the level of technological development. The flux of
financial and information data exchange within a network of interconnected
cities forms the Global City: the a-locus of superpower. The transparent
hyper-real world of the obsolete horizon shaped by new technologies defines
the contemporary aesthetics of abstraction and obsolete bodies. The citizen
of the Global City is bombarded with the obscene pornographic banality of
the mass-media spectacle. Perception fractures and disperses suffocating in
noise. The body and mind are permanently overwhelmed with a kaleidoscope of
noise: street noise, media-noise, electromagnetic noise, genetic noise.

Immersed in the borderless ocean of the city, the contemporary citizen has
the confidence that technological development has harnessed natural forces.
Nature is a trophy, an ornament, an abstraction. The archaic fear of natural
forces is replaced by the fear of technology and eternal progress. The force
that sustains us is also that which destroys us. The network that forms the
blood-circulating system of the Global City is spreading fear like a virus.
Lulled by noise, bewitched by the specatcle of fear, in the
screen-luminescent eternal twilight, global citizens are daydreaming
artificial daydreams.

Interactive aesthetics has arisen in these conditions and unless it strikes
out its own path, it is in danger of turning into another form of
tech-spectacle. Interactive installation, with its paradox of simultaneous
repulsion and fear from the impersonal automatised process on the one hand
and the acceptance of the oneiric immersion on the other is the ultimate
battleground between art and science and between the living body and
technology. The symbolic conflict between man and machine takes on a ritual
form. Instead of attempting to implant or reconstruct primordial ritual
embedded in tribal society, interactive installation can be seen as a
symbolic act of resolving contemporary tensions. Parallels are dangerous but
useful, both where they fail and where they succeed. Consequently, I do not
attempt to equate interactive installation with ritual but merely to use
certain parallels that can shed light onto some specifics of interactive
installation.

The definition of interactivity and spectacularity significantly changes
with the hypothesis that interactive installation can take a ritual form.
The root of the word spectacle is in latin specatculum or spectare: to
watch. It is related to the art of theatre that originated in and gradually
replaced the ancient rituals in Western culture. It refers nowadays to the
blend of mass-media and the entertainment industry, reflected in all
segments of contemporary life to the extent that it has become a paradigm
for contemporary social relations. However it can be applied to a certain
extent to ritual and interactive installation, this term is in opposition
with the essence of both: the active participation of the audience is the
conditio sine qua non, either in ritual or in interactive installation.

Spectacularity in interactive installation is of an entirely different
nature than mass-spectacles. It is the fluid, changeable form of interactive
installation that separates it from and opposes it to the uniform immersive
anaesthetic of tech-spectacle. From the screen and virtual space of a
particular personal computer, through endless spatial and dimensional
diversities, interactive work merges virtual and real space each time in a
unique manner. Custom-designed software and hardware architecture forms the
basis of the contrast with typified entertainment industry production. The
technology employed is to a large extent conspicuous as a constituent of the
aesthetic. Non-linearity of segmented and unstable modules, consisting of
loops in permanent change, is entirely circumstantial: intervals of
participation replace continuous duration. It is the fusion of participant
and technology in interaction that defines it and brings it into existence.
In interactive work the process of int

STUDY FOREWARNS ESCALATION OF INTERNET RESTRICTIONS

[geert lovink]

(usual outcome but shoking anyway. did anyone in geneva go to that
presentation of this report? geert)

PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL
MEDIA RELEASE

INTERNATIONAL CENSORSHIP STUDY FOREWARNS ESCALATION
OF INTERNET RESTRICTIONS

Corporations are now vying with governments to gag free speech and impede
Internet access

19th September 2003

For immediate release

A new global study of Internet censorship in over fifty countries and
regions has found that Internet restrictions, government secrecy and
communications surveillance have reached an unprecedented level across the
world. The twelve-month study has found that a sharp escalation in control
of the Internet since September 2001 may have outstripped the traditional
ability of the medium to repel attempts at restriction.

The report fires a broadside at the United States and the United Kingdom
for creating initiatives hostile to Internet freedom. Those countries have
led a global attack on free speech on the Internet. They have set a
technological and regulatory standard for mass surveillance and control of
the Internet.

The report, Silenced, will be launched today (Friday) at the preparatory
meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva. The
70,000 word report - the largest and most comprehensive of its kind ever
produced - was compiled and edited by the London-based Privacy
International and the GreenNet Educational Trust.

This study has found that censorship of the Internet is commonplace in most
regions of the world.  The report warns: "It is clear that in most
countries over the past two years there has been an acceleration of efforts
to either close down or inhibit the Internet. In some countries, for
example in China and Burma, the level of control is such that the Internet
has relatively little value as a medium for organised free speech, and its
used could well create additional dangers at a personal level for
activists".

"The September 11, 2001 attacks have given numerous governments the
opportunity to promulgate restrictive policies that their citizens had
previously opposed. There has been an acceleration of legal authority for
additional snooping, from increased email monitoring to the retention of
Web logs and communications data. Simultaneously, governments have become
more secretive about their own activities, reducing information that was
previously available and refusing to adhere to policies on freedom of
information".

In finding a substantial level of censorship in many countries, the report
condemns the complicity of Western nations. "Governments of developing
nations rely on Western countries to supply them with the necessary
technologies of surveillance and control, such as digital wiretapping
equipment, deciphering equipment, scanners, bugs, tracking equipment and
computer intercept systems. The transfer of surveillance technology from
first to third world is now a lucrative sideline for the arms industry.
Without the aid of this technology transfer, it is unlikely that
non-democratic regimes could impose the current levels of control over
Internet activity."

One of the most important trends in recent years is the growth of
multinational corporate censors.  The report says: "It is arguable that in
the first decade of the 21st century, corporations will rival governments
in threatening Internet freedoms. Aggressive protection of corporate
intellectual property has resulted in substantial legal action against
users, and a corresponding deterioration in trust across the Internet".

The report notes numerous instances where Internet users have been jailed
by authorities for posting or hosting political material. Such countries
include Egypt, China and a number of Middle Eastern countries. The Internet
is tightly controlled and heavily monitored in regions such as these.

The Internet is a fragile and easily controlled medium. In Africa,
governments in such countries as Kenya and Zimbabwe have at times literally
shut it down. The Saudi government over a period of just three months
blocked access to more than 400,000 websites that were regarded as immoral.
A wide variety of methods are used to restrict and/or regulate Internet
access. These include: applying draconian laws and licenses, content
filtering, tapping and surveillance, pricing and taxation policies,
telecommunication markets manipulation, hardware and software manipulation
and self censorship

The study does however report that there are some positive developments.  "Countries 
have established protections, companies have fought for the rights of privacy of 
individuals, technologies have sustained the ability of dissident groups to speak 
freely and access content privately. Differences in national laws have sheltered the 
speech of the oppressed. Technological developments are being implemented to protect a 
free Internet, but the knowledge gap between radical innovators and restrictive 
institutions appears to be closing".

One of the report's editors, Simon 

WSIS? WE SEIZE!

[geert lovink]

(thanks to diplomatic efforts of deedee halleck and others there is a new
wsis declaration drafted by the groups that will organize parallel
counter-activities during the world summit on the information society in
geneva. the text--a compromise after lengthy debates--was written and
discussed during the next five minutes conference last week in amsterdam.
there is a lot more to said about this. the main stumbling block was how to
frame the free-of-communication-freedom-of-movement demand into the larger
picture. anyone who would like to say more about this? geert)

WSIS? WE SEIZE!

Over the past months, activists and artists with different backgrounds
ranging from indymedia centers to the noborder-networks, from the Free
Software movement to community media, from grassroots campaigns to hacker
collectives, have been discussing how to intervene in, outside of, counter
to, or as an alternative to the agenda and organisation of the World Summit
on the Information Society (WSIS) from December 10th to 12th in Geneva,
Switzerland.

WHAT IS WSIS?

WSIS is the first of two global summits dealing with information and
communications to be held by the United Nations in Geneva. But the Summit is
a smokescreen. Although it talks about the digital divide, knowledge
dissemination, social interaction, political engagement, media, education,
and health, this language is used to mystify the continuing use of
information to protect and advance the interests of global capital.

GENEVA-03

Geneva-03 is an open, loose and temporary association of groups and
individuals who are currently preparing a series of events around the WSIS.
Its common goal is to create autonomous physical and network spaces for
diverse tactical, grassroots, activist and community media actions and
discussions in and around the WSIS meetings.

The issues at hand are many:

* Shaping and subverting the information technologies that are now part of
everyday life.

* Refusing both war and infowar.

* Countering the exploitation of immaterial work and informalized labor.

* Resisting border management and digital rights management.

* Defending our commons of ideas, including indigenous knowledge, scientific
data, free software, educational systems and creative expression against the
immense pressures of privatization.

* Fighting for freedom of movement and freedom of communication for all
people, not just those who promote and benefit from capital. The actions
taking place at WSIS? WE SEIZE! will seek to promote new ways of
communicating, what is communicated, by who and for whom: to create new
social formations that can address the systems of domination that surround
and inform our world.

The struggle takes place from the local, regional and global infrastructure
(radio and TV spectrum, wireless frequencies, cable rights of way, satellite
orbital paths) to the content that traverses those structures. These
networks should be for the benefit of and use by all the world's people,
organised to nurture and sustain social cooperation.

WSIS? WE SEIZE!

The event will work around these areas:

* A strategic convention before the UN summit in Geneva, comprising
discussions, panels and presentations.

* A polymedia lab to share tools, skills, experiences, and knowledge.

* A three day netcast which will follow the revolution of the earth,
streaming independent media activism and community media projects from
across the globe.

Geneva-03 is asking all interested people to get involved with this
initiative. We are working to establish venues and schedules, as well as
options for accomodation and general survival in the expensive city of
Geneva.

There will be a further preparation meeting at the European Social Forum in
Paris in November. For all people interested in the Geneva-03 project, this
is the open working  list: http://lists.emdash.org/mailman/listinfo/prep-l
and the website: http://www.geneva03.org/. The Geneva03.org website is an
open publishing forum where you can post your proposals, ideas and
contributions.

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HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH FOR THE INTERNET? (Oxford Internet Institute)

[geert lovink]

From: "Enquiries" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH FOR THE INTERNET?

  'While the battle for digital access is being won in Britain, government
and business now face a struggle to convince everyone that the Internet is
worth using,' concludes Professor Richard Rose of the Oxford Internet
Institute from the new Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS). The survey was
designed to learn who does and does not use the Internet and why. A
nationally representative random sample of 2,030 persons age 14 and up was
interviewed face to face between 23 May and 28 June 2003.

  The OxIS survey found that the average person has access to the Internet
in at least two out of four places: home, work, school or at a public
library. Only four percent of the British population lacks ready access to a
place where they could sign on to the Internet. The lack of a computer at
home is not a major obstacle, since the average Internet user goes on line
away from home as well as at home. Nor is having a computer at home a
sufficient reason for using the Internet.

  Among Britons age 14 and over, 59% currently use the Internet. The biggest
difference between users and non-users is age. Among those still in school,
98% are Internet users and among people of working age, 67%. By contrast,
only 22% of retirees use the Internet. Educational differences are less
important. All youngsters, whether or not they are numerate or literate,
appear able to click on the Internet, and a majority of working age people
without any O-level or GCSE qualifications now use the Internet.

  Once on line, the average person finds multiple uses for the Internet. The
most popular are to get information, browse the WorldWideWeb, email, and
shopping and youths tend to make more use of the web for studies than for
music or entertainment. Between a tenth and a fifth of users employ the net
to get news, banking or public services.

  The OxIS survey shows that among the two-fifths who don't sign on the
Internet there is no fear or dislike of using electronic technology. For
example, more prefer using a bank card machine than dealing with a bank
teller. 'People who don't use the Internet don't see how it will help them
in their everyday affairs', states Rose. 'For example, older people have
been educated, earned a living, shopped and paid bills for most of their
lives before the Internet came along.'

  Among the two-fifths who do not use the Internet, half are informed but
indifferent; they know someone who could send an email or get information
for them but have not bothered to ask for this to be done. An additional 7
percent are proxy users, who have asked for a friend to sign on the Internet
on their behalf. One in seven are excluded because they do not know anyone
who could send get on the Internet on their behalf, and this group divides
equally into those who are anti-technology and those who are apathetic.

  'Government and commerce will have to wait a generation or more before
nine-tenths of Britons regularly use the Internet', declares Professor Rose.
If all the people who told the Oxford Internet Survey that they were
definitely or likely to go on line in the next year did so, this would still
leave 34% off line.

  'Growth in Internet use can continue in Britain', notes Professor William
Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute. 'As individuals learn how
to use the Internet over the years, they become more confident in this new
medium and spend more time on a wider variety of activities'. Eleven percent
of the population now has Internet access to broadband at home. The
diffusion of broadband Internet services will increase the versatility of
the Internet while also opening the prospect of a new digital divide between
those who are on broadband and those who are not.

For detailed figures and tables click here
  if your internet connection
is Internet Explorer 5.0 or above or to download pdf files click here
 .

 

FOR FURTHER DETAILS, contact Professor Richard Rose
 , who directed the survey ([EMAIL PROTECTED] or
phone 01436-672164) or Professor William Dutton
 , director of the Oxford Internet
Institute, at 01865-287210.

--

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR RESULTS

OXFORD INTERNET SURVEY (OxIS) 2003

 Tables and graphics are laid out as below.

A1.  Where Britons could access the Internet.

   2.  Where Britons do access the Internet.

B1.  Internet use by age

   2.  Internet use by age and education

   3.  Internet use by age and social class

   4.  Internet use by age and gender

   5.  Left and right--on and off line

 C1.   How users use the Internet

   2.  Frequency of checking email

   3.  The Internet at work

   4.  Contacting public services

 D1.  Britons and the Internet

   2.  Non-users: Indifferent, negative and excluded

   3.  No percei

call for a campaign to save amsterdams free media

[geert lovink]

(posted to nettime-l with the permission of the authors. there are efforts
under way to get this campaign up and running. a lot of the communication
will in the first instance be coordinated via nettime-nl. more information
such as email addresses, lists and  blogs will be available next week during
the next five minutes festival. /geert)

From: "David Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

"Help Amsterdam Free Media" campaign.

Over recent months there have been many discussions, naturally in Dutch, of
the progressive destruction of Amsterdam's unique legacy of community
access and independent media networks. This hatchet job has been achieved
by a combination of ruthless corporate greed, the lack of knowledge and
(frankly) incompetence of local politicians, (supposedly the guardians of
the uniquely local democratic freedoms of expression) and the (almost
total) apathetic cultural, social and political media makers and artists
that have used Amsterdam's media but seem unwilling to put up a real fight
when it is threatened. To demonstrate the dimension of what is being lost
here let me make a direct comparison. In London at Hyde Park Corner there
is something called Speaker's Corner. It is known around the world that any
one can turn up and stand on a soap box and say what they like. If Speakers
Corner were to be snuffed out by a powerful real-estate developer, and
simply re-located without warning to a suburb (it is situated in a prime
piece of London Real estate worth millions) with the icompetence or worse
connivence of local politicians, it would warrent more than an indifferent
shrug it would cause a national (and maybe international) outcry. But the
equivelent decimation in the common space of the media landscape so far
illicits bearly a ripple of public indignation.

There are a few voices raised in anger notably of media artist and activist
Mauz who for more than a year has been a Jeremiah warning (with an astute
technical analasys of the weapons being mobilised against our local media
culture) there have been a few others.

Next 5 Minutes began a decade ago as an event which was built around
"Tactical Television". N5M would not have happened without a uniquely local
media culture generating certain forms of media freedom and energy that
made Amsterdam briefly "a pirate utopia for tactical media". This week the
final embers of those freedoms were snuffed out as the company managing the
cable networks UPC changed -with little or no warning- the frequencies by
which Amsterdam TVs are tuned to the community access channels. At a stroke
the carefully nurtured viewing publics of Amsterdam's community media
makers were instantly decimated as few people know how to (or are willing)
to re-tune their TV sets. And meanwhile the organisation SALTO which is the
appointed guardian of the community access dimension continues to sail on
with its ambitious projects as though nothing has happened. community
access TV makers will continue to beaver away but public has left the
building forgetting only to turn off the lights.

The current edition of Next 5 Minutes, Amsterdam's festival of Tactical
Media has coincided with these developments. Of all the editors of N5M only
Menno Grootveldt has fully embraced the implications of these developments
he has been the only one of us editors who fought hard for a debate on the
crisis (well the crisis was probably years ago, we are far to late) of
Amsterdam tactical media.

Time to admit that Menno and Mauz should have been heeded long ago and that
we must use the festival to (at least try) to reverse the tide of
indifference. Time for a campaign. Time for important programs and
long-time users of Amsterdam's media including PARK, Belisma but above all
Hoeksteen (including all the politicians of all parties that have benefited
from that platform and social network) to stand up for Amsterdam's media
freedoms.

Although little valued at home, Amsterdam's tactical and community media
projects has a significance way beyond the boarders of the city. Next 5
Minutes is one of the events that made people outside of the Netherlands
aware of our the city's remarkable media structure as a unique laboratory
for cultural experimentation. A campaign against the its summary extinction
by corporate greed must be launched at the Next 5 Minutes and if possible
be internationalised.

Our enemy may not be an obvious tyrant like Milosovic shutting down a local
radio station like B92. it is a less obvious, faceless and even more
dangerous enemy a - winner takes all capitalist fundementalism- ruthlessly
crushing oppositional media. After the Help B92 campaign we now desperately
need a "Help Amsterdam's Free Media" campaign.

David Garcia

--

Hi David,

I love your story & phrasing so far, I will have a more indepth look in it
later.

But also I would request you also mention the reperession on the Free
radios.
Not just in Amsterdam/ The Netherlands, because i see many simularities with
the capitalist globil

for those who attend n5m4: swap meet

[geert lovink]

From: "Renee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 
CLAIM YOUR BLANKET WHILE SUPPLIES LAST:

SWAP MEET

For the Next 5 Minutes 4, De Geuzen is organizing a swap meet where 
tactical traditions, such as buttons, flyers, T-shirts, pie throwing, 
stencils and stickers can be displayed and generally talked about. 
For the event we are designing around 25 blankets that will operate 
as a  tactical interface.  Made to be viewed vertically as a banner, 
or horizontally as a surface, or from above as a shelter, our 
blankets are a kind of nomadic, carry-all, platform for attending 
participants.

For the first days of the conference the blankets will circulate both 
inside and outside various venues of the Next 5 Minutes.  Owners will 
quite literally unfold them and squat or occupy any space they see 
fit to air their wares and promote their cause.  At a time and 
location to be announced, the blankets and their owners will converge 
in a single place for a turbo exchange of tactical traditions. 
Audiences/participants will be able to peruse a variety of goods on 
view or participate in a series of "show and tell"/how-to lessons 
held at the same location.  The space will be a cross between a junk 
sale and a DIY center where computers converge with ironing boards 
and the dilettante is valued as the expert. 

In preparation for the Swap Meet we have set-up a weblog for people 
to get to know each other and exchange ideas, resources, and know-how 
in advance of the event. We will also use the site for documentation 
and hopefully continue the debate around tactical traditions long 
after the event is over.

see: http://www.geuzen.org/swap/

If you want to register for a blanket and/or you would like to post 
on the blog please send your name and email address to: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: possible nettime model

[geert lovink]

One solution would be a seperate announcement list. Fibreculture, the
Australian network of new media researchers and artists, has its own
announcement list. It works quite well. On the main list, which is still
open, there are around 750 subscribers. The announcement list is closed (in
order to really focus that channel) and moderated once a day and has around
520 subscribers. It's interesting to see how many people actually appreciate
such announcements. I agree here with what Andreas Broeckmann wrote earlier.
Announcements concerning festivals, publications and projects give a network
the substance it needs. They are a necessary nuisance. Otherwise things
might drift into completely Platonic spheres. Online dialogues need to be
framed. If not, sooner or later people will ask themselves: why all this
debate? And why debate only? Is there perhaps something special about having
an argument? Why is hitting the reply button and writing something back seen
as the epiphany of online communication?

Ciao, Geert

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#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Proposal: World Forum on Communication Rights during WSIS

[geert lovink]

From: "Sean O Siochru" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

One day "World Forum on Communication Rights" during WSIS

This introduces a proposal to hold a one-day World Forum on Communication
Rights alongside the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in
December 2003. The CRIS campaign (Communication Rights in the Information
Society: www.crisinfo.org) is launching the initiative as a collaborative
event, and is actively building a broader partnership.

1. The Rationale
The purpose of the Forum is specific. In the context of human rights in
general, it focuses on information and communication rights issues that
surround the emergence of an information society. These are not limited to
concerns regarding the 'digital divide' and access to ICTs; but draw on a
more profound understanding of the role of information and communication in
society and current dynamics and trends. They encompass areas such as the
public domain and intellectual property rights, the public sphere and media
and communication, and the commercialisation and closure of the Internet.

The WSIS itself is constrained in the manner and depth to which such issues
can be addressed. Some countries and corporate interests have already
demonstrated their determination to prevent certain matters from reaching
the agenda. And many issues are the domain of existing international
organisations and entities, and these are reluctant to cede territory to the
WSIS. Yet it is essential that communication rights in the information
society be considered as a coherent, and interrelated, set of concerns.
Indeed, in all likelihood it is the extent to which rights are implanted and
firmly fixed within the process of creating an information society that will
determine which kind of information society emerges, how the benefits will
be realised, and who will reap them.

The event comprises a forum to explore these and to do something about them.
It traces its lineage (as does the CRIS campaign itself) not through the
WSIS process per se, but in the mobilisation of civil society in recent
years around global human rights, communication and development issues.

2. Goals
The outcomes of the Forum are expected to be threefold:

A. A Portrayal of Communication Rights Globally: To explore and define
the dimensions of information and communication rights that must underpin
any claim of an information society to enrich the lives of all people, by
portraying the denial of these rights in different contexts using concrete
examples and analyses, and demonstrating novel examples of such rights being
secured.

B. A 'Declaration on Communication Rights in the Information Society':
To formulate together and agree a succinct statement, in comprehensible
language, that:

o Notes existing human rights relating to information and
communication;

o Sets down the conditions and environment necessary for people to
exercise these, in practice;

o Explores obstacles to achieving such an environment, identifying
priority areas for intervention.

C. A Set of Actions: To engage multi-partner participation in a set of
voluntary collaborative actions to implement such rights in a manner
meaningful to people in their everyday lives, and to define appropriate
follow-up. These will comprise targeted actions, each contributing to
communication rights in the context of the information society, and that in
practice are beyond the scope of the WSIS Summit. They might include for
instance alternatives to intellectual property rights, promotion of open
source software, innovation in governance and regulation, grass-roots
technologies, or new fund-raising mechanisms.

3. Modalities
The Forum is an open event. It welcomes those among civil society,
activists, NGOs, agencies, governments, intergovernmental organisations and
the private sector who accept the need to address communication rights in
the information society and who want to work together to achieve these
goals. It will have a duration of one day, and will take place alongside the
first WSIS Summit in December 2003 in Palexpo. The provisional date is
December the 11th, mid way through the three day Summit.

Link to Other Events
Links will be established with other events surrounding the WSIS, held
within Palexpo as well as externally bringing together grass-roots and
community activists and organisations. An important aspect of the Forum will
be to build bridges between these and others within the WSIS as a whole
seeking to cooperate on rights issues, and to bring forward radical but
realistic proposals for action.

CRIS will also work  with others to organise workshops, seminars or other
events around the WSIS Summit, aimed at feeding into the Forum, and may
establish live interactive links globally.

Preparatory Process
Preparations for all three objectives will be extensive and are underway.

A. The portrayal of the situation and needs of communication rights in
different regions will be primed through a series of national and regional
Workshops