nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part One, Section 5,
Part One, Section 5,1. The Performance Society To sum up: opening an account with/on Facebook means sharing digital 'materials' which make up virtual identities. I am what my behavior on-line is. But spending time creating an on-line image of the self does bear consequences for (one's) life off-line. The virtual identities one is able to construct with the help of Facebook's tools are generally 'flat': they lack the depth characteristic of real identities, which are rich in shades and nuances. In real life, before commituing to utter what one 'really thinks', one takes time to think and weight in the fors and contras. One doesn't storm into the street to shout out that one has just been dumped - by way of a SMS - and is available again on the meat market. Facebook demands unfiltered action - and this maximum 'sincerity' often amounts to crass stupidity and guile. But human feelings are far more complex, not to say fd up. Literature, the arts, and creativity in general all show the extraordinary capicity of human beings to create shared worlds that enable to feel in harmony with others. The risk is very high that massive partaking in life on social network won't lead to 'collective authorship', but to a buzz-swarm of totally superficial interactions. As Michel de Certeau has convincigly argued [15] it is time, and time only, which makes it possible to shape the everyday world 'below'. When one does not have a place of one's own, one acts on someone else's territory; if one is unable to put a strategy in practice, one can resort to tactics. In theory, personal time can therefore be used to build up significant relationships, also within heteronymous contexts as are social networks, whose rules are not established by users themselves. But even when they attain a high degree of sophistication, subversive tactics in the use of the tools provided very rarely result in genuine zones of experimentation. The living time is next to always reapropriated by the digital spaces and diverted towards profit generation. Hence, an increasing number of people, and that include technolphiles, are beginning to understand that there is something badly amiss with the system. As artist Richard Foreman has phrased it: we've been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole Gödel-to-Google net.[16a] For sure, speed is a two-sided sword. The illusion of immediate search results on request (Google) and of immediate sociality on demand (Facebook) reduce the depth of book culture and also the possibility to build up a signification-rich shared world. Richard Foreman again: But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the instantly available. A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritanceas we all become pancake peoplespread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button. [16b] Individual interiority empties itself here in order to completely pour itself again into the vessel of digital exteriority. This process is related to external stress, that is the permanent pursuit of significant responses (in terms of knowledge) and worthwhile contacts (in terms of affect) seeked by individuals. The networks' responses, as they are given by mechanical appliances (computers, cables, infrastructures) and content devices (software programs), belong to the scientific domain. But as Feyerabend noted before, where science wants to impose a single truth, it displays the quality of the religious [17]. As the mother of technical thought and technological objects, it operates like a vapor saturating all discursive space, by imposing itself by way of the proselyting methods which have been invented and perfected by the world's most ancient and most effective universal hierarchy: the Catholic Church. Just as a good shepperd takes good care of his flock, so does the modern technocrat cater for all the needs of his sheep, provided they are docile and transparent, are sincerely declaring all their concerns, and welcome with fervor the (Holy) Gospel of the Digital Society. What is new is that the sheep now need to actively self-define themselves acording to the criteria that have been put at their disposal (#*). They do not constitute an indistinct mass, yet their identities differ only minimally, and these variations are defined by very clearly specified criteria. That is the only way digital technologies can offer a personalised and immediate truth satisfying all the users' wishes at the same time. Google, Facebook and the other small deities of the economy of search and attention, are hence all minor hypostases (underlying substances) with the help of which one celebrates the High Mass of Superior and Liberating Technology.
nettime MoneyLab material #2: Robin Hood Minor Asset Management
From the reviews: Robin Hood is the first commonist investment fund based on the principles of Deleuze and Guattari. It takes off where George Soros and his anti-cyclical theories stopped thinking. Instead of further colonizing tiny time segments, as quants continue to do, Robin Hood mobilzes the global critical intelligence of the multitudes is thus able to forsee the next financial meltdown ages ahead. This is what's to be done. Pull out all your macro and micro assets out of your green-liberal do-good projects and join the wild collective of Robin Hood in order to beat Wall Street! Johan Sjerpstra What is Robin Hood Minor Asset Management? Our cooperative was established in 2012 based on detailed analysis and understanding of the imitative nature of the financial market and to challange the big banks and their elite asset management business. After the economic collapse there seems to be nothing that holds Europe together anymore -- except our opportunism, cynicism and indifference, which seems to have become the means of our survival. Or like the president of Finland (Sauli Niinistö) defined an old concept anew during his election campaign in the beginning of this year: “Solidarity means that everybody takes care of his own business and does not let himself to be supported by others or leave problems of his existence to others.” Robin Hood is a figure of this new solidarity. We are no rise of outcasts; there are no promises here for a better world in the future, to be ruled by the “good”. Robin Hood emerges from our depressing now, the lack of hope, and from the fact that we have only the precarious present to share. How can something new emerge when the possibilties at our disposal are exhausted? Robin Hood is a real experiment in this. Robin Hood is a counter investment cooperative of the precariat. Our business is minor asset management. The cooperative was established in 2012 based on a detailed analysis and understanding of the imitative nature of the financial market, to challenge the big banks and their elite asset management business. Financialisation of economy is a fact. This is the second breeding ground of Robin Hood. It is not the cause of our problems, but the consequence of the change in the nature of value production and of the need of capital to detach itself from the risks and miserable prospects related to industrial economy. Yet the number of banks in the world has been reduced in the last 30 years by 40% (from about 12000 to 7000). Only 10 big investment banks control over 90% of the entire derivative market... ...whose size is estimated to be around 1200-1400 trillion dollars (20-23x the entire world's GNP). During the first three months of 2012 alone, the profit of Goldman Sachs was over 2,1 billion dollars; HSBC 6,8 billion dollars (of which investment banking was 3,1 billion dollars of it); JP Morgan 5,4 billion dollars. Their own employees and leaders have confessed to the manipulation and exploitation of clients for pure profit. The power to create money is in the hands of the financial market, but we have no access to it. Our money is obliged to take part in the market, but we never profit from it. We simply carry the risks. Could we bend the financialization of capital to the advantage of precarious workers? Could we think of how to transform private profits into shared resources? Could we think of expropriating the means of creating money whichfinancial capital has in its use, and of sharing them, of putting them to work for us? Could we think of a relation to money that is not binding us with debt and capitalism as a historical form of production, but as a means of freedom, escape, and increasing our independence? Could we think of the profanation of finance, of returning its space to common use and play? We think we can. Robin Hood is a counter-investment bank: a cooperatively owned tactical investment fund for the precarious workers which addresses the asymmetrical division between those who are able to create money by transforming it into financial capital (to earn money as income without work) and those whose only access to money is to work (possibly at any cost) – or to first take debt, and then work. Robin Hood is developed as a strategic means to challenge this debt mechanism of control and the limited options the precariat has for financing its living (debt, work and destructive competition of it, wishful thinking, marginal communities who are “outside money”, revolution and taking over government, hoping that the state will take care of you...). It is a very concrete reopening of the field of the possible. Robin Hood Asset Management Cooperative is a Finnish cooperative (“osuuskunta”) having members from over 10 countries. Robin Hood Asset Management Cooperative is governed by the board of five members selected according to the rules of the cooperative. The members of the board are
nettime mass social mini-digest [x2: schmidt, senalp]
Re: nettime Mass Social Network Strike Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de Orsan Senalp orsan1...@gmail.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:15:30 +0100 From: Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de Subject: Re: nettime Mass Social Network Strike Hi Oersan, where is the so called greed and where is the stolen work, where is the union that negotiates the price for intelligent labor and where is this global collective intelligence that deems itself as the intelligence of the global? Who are these workers, hackers, makers, farmers, artists, indignant and outraged? You suggest them as the 99% and trigger rehabilitation and integration and distribution of this sold thing -- value? The moral non-catgorie _greed_ is nothing but the outcome in mindness of mechanisms/structures of the surplus work of surplus value. Otherwise it'd be easy to end the bad moral and start the better, to end the evil lust of fascism, you may consider as something resting in itself. It appears to be the traditional 'role' of unions or unions in spe to state we are all cheated and operationalized instead of stating the violent processes. An peaceful ideas will make their way, no violence please dear fascist. M We are the workers whose free labour and privacy has been stolen, and sold for greed! We have been abused, spied on and betrayed constantly. Before this massive exploitation and survelliance machine turns into a global apparatus in the hands of fascism, being operationalized for direct oppression, we have to unite our fists and strike back! This May Day is the time... How and what is not decided yet, there are initial ideas but much is needed to put the global collective intelligence at work to defend our and our cahilden's rights and dignity! Join us this Sunday and bring your most free, creative, powerful and peaceful ideas and dreams along... We did beat Freons, Caesars, Barons, Kings, Emperors, Merchants, Industrial Capitalists and Nazis in the past, we can beat the TNCs, CEOs and 1% as well! We call all the workers, hackers, makers, farmers, artists, indignant and outraged to GNUnite all their constructive capacity around the most spectacular free libre and open sourced swarm to fight back and win! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:58:58 +0100 Subject: Re: nettime Mass Social Network Strike From: =?UTF-8?B?w5Zyc2FuIMWeZW5hbHA=?= orsan1...@gmail.com Dear Mitze, the fact that there are powerfu structural forces of capitalism at work does not mean that there is a no moral problem at the same time. Unethical, bad and patalogic behevior, triggered by animal instinct and greed has always been behind or in the exploitative, oppressive destructive power over act. They have always gone very well together right, and people are not yet machines they do and will respond when the assoult on them is publicly recognised; for instance would you fight for your dignity or for the analysis in your mind in a stronger manner? Would you fight for good or is it irrelevant in a struggle? Would you feel like abused or insulted by your boss, by German politics or PRISM, or it wouln't make sense since it should be like that structurally? Peaceful ideas are much powerful and smart to get in the painful thoughts hidden in human mind, and action upon them would enable to gain much wider (self-)recognition of the current situation in society. If you think it is possible to do this with agressive and violent plans, call, you might try to network and oganise around those of course. Probably in certain time and space coordinations they would work as well, but the situation might turn like as it is in Syria now, within short time. Greece for instance is another living case near center West, so they have to fight back GoldenDawn fascism with force of course, yet still it will trigger state-armed response targeting the weakest at a larger scale, then people will have to fight or war back stronger... Other option is linkup wider and stronger to be smarter before the war zone expand.. at least when it expands we would already have gained the legitimacy for the war back. Last 3 years have been full of lessons in my opinion. On 14 February 2014 12:15, Matze Schmidt matze.schm...@n0name.de wrote: Hi Oersan, where is the so called greed and where is the stolen work, where is the union that negotiates the price for intelligent labor and where is this global collective intelligence that deems itself as the intelligence of the global? ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and
Re: nettime MoneyLab material #2: Robin Hood Minor Asset
Re: What is Robin Hood Minor Asset Management? Our cooperative was established in 2012 based on detailed analysis and understanding of the imitative nature of the financial market and to challange the big banks and their elite asset management business. ... Here for a slightly less fuzzy explanation of the above ( its snipped remainder): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/student-reporter/21st-century-robin-hood-i_b_3639926.html And as they say in the trade leaflets: past performance provides no guarantee about future returns. aka 'Caveat Emptor' ... Cheerio, p+2D! # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Attack on homoentropy [Re: Ippolita Collective, In the
One of the hardest things with machines is to generate sufficient unpredictability, to create good encryption keys or quality simulations. Randomness is hard to come by, for computers. Usually this is done by listening to the supposed outside world, network interrupts, A/D noise, disk seek times, keyboard and mouse input. If you are lucky you'll get 5-10 high entropy bits per second. And then there are successful attacks by flooding the machine with the input which is known to the attacker and not random at all. The computer then becomes predictable, the simulations take the same sequence, and keys can be guessed. The intended analogy is, of course, the quality time alone, where one can tap into thermal noise of synapses, or that flu virus screwing with your immune system, to generate new snippets of thoughts that the outside world simply cannot predict. Lowering the entropy of humans will have interesting consequences. Perhaps the class division in the future will be more accurately described by the person's entropy than by income numbers. There will be gigabyters on one side and two-bitters on the other. Guess which will you be able to outguess. others. The risk is very high that massive partaking in life on social network won't lead to 'collective authorship', but to a buzz-swarm of totally superficial interactions. As Michel de Certeau has convincigly argued [15] it is time, and time only, which makes it possible to shape the everyday world 'below'. When one does not have a place of one's own, one acts on someone else's territory; if one is unable to put a strategy in practice, one can resort to tactics. In theory, personal time can therefore be used to build up significant relationships, also within heteronymous contexts as are social networks, whose rules are not # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime conjunctural analysis
On 19/Feb/14 21:38, d...@geer.org wrote: Tangentially related, this is a rundown of student economics as measured by lifetime ROI for the price of tuition (in the US): Hi Dan -- thanks for bringing this data up tangentially... but these numbers are verging on fantasy -- I know for my alma mater(s) the actual/(even potential) salary data for alumni 10-20-30 years out is extremely scarce -- to the point of being statistically very suspect. Those few who are actually tracked as alumni (who participate in alumni associations and such) are likely to be a more conservative, stable, and perhaps a more 'standard' population group. The kind of people who do their (socially proscribed) job to get the social rewards of that conservatism. And there is no hint of the other market forces (like the rapid contraction of the aerospace sector that liquidated tens of thousands of mid-to-late career engineers in the 1970s, and in the case of my engineering sector, the extractives industry, which has seen huge fluctuations in employment scenarios over the last 30+ years since I graduated with my degree). And who knows what the future holds? (College kids *DO* know -- unemployment!) Of course, some very very general fuzzy trends might be picked up from the data table, but I would say that in reality one standard deviation in the numbers could easily +/- 75% of these median values. Experientially accumulated knowledge-sets -- including learning that is socially or personally relevant (itself a hugely subjective question), learning that increases the survivability of the individual (or the survivability of the species or of the planet), learning that brings personal satisfaction -- are certainly sets that seldom fully coincide. I'm convinced that this statistics set is yet another belated and desperate effort to convince a population that a certain (college) knowledge set is relevant. I know that many of us who have experience inside this knowledge-generation system have come to the sad conclusion that large swaths of it are completely irrelevant. It also stands as yet another chunk of data that, in the end, emphasizes the complete poverty of ideas that has overcome the contemporary techno-social system -- where the market is the sole remaining metric of ... everything ... I have had this discussion with my college-aged son, I must admit, telling him he should get a degree (even using the economic argument!), but for his generation, data-sets like this represent perhaps just another lie being foisted on them by a system in near complete moral and fiscal exhaustion. Cheers, jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
