Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
I'm astounded. Nay, dismayed. There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. New patterns of social control? Check. See them emerging long the axis of service/empowerment (Google) and surveillance/repression (NSA). Changing social patterns? Check. See the deepening and hardening of inequality in Western Societies (99% vs 1%). New spatial patterns? Check. See the gentrification and privatization of cities spaces, eradicating histories of civic uses of the city and all traces of anything that does not conform to market forces. None of this is fundamentally new, but the everyday contradictions this engenders -- particularly in centers of Western progress -- are more visible today under conditions of economic crises that they were during boom times. OK, we all know that. What astounds and dismays me now is that all we -- lefty artist/intellectuals on this list -- manage to produce is a cynicism and bickering. Don't get me wrong, I'm personally very susceptible to the kind of in-jokery that cynicism represents, but as an analysis, it's really poor and asserts that it pretends to criticize. So, all this talk along the line a corporation cannot be evil because it simply does what capitalism is set up to do is really sophomoric. And then the bickering. Even worse. We all know the line: there is always a problem that is worse and that one REALLY should focus on, rather than betraying one's own privilege/ignorance/collusion by focusing on the supposedly superficial problem at hand. So gentrification is SF is bad? What what about Istanbul, or, Bejing? I wonder what that represents. Is this simply the endless jockeying for difference typical of the attention economy? An exhaustion of the project of cultural critique on favor of endless self-reaffirming micro discourses? A situation to complex to comprehend? The decline of the West in the face of changing global lines of force? Perhaps all of that, or none of that. Whatever it is, it makes these discussions stale, to say the least. Felix | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # 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 Gentrification - or a focus on income and wealth?
Contemporary urban strategies and development doctrine are built upon the notions of competitiveness and attractiveness. Competitiveness places the city in an inexorable, permanent state of vying against other cities in order to attract wealth and resources to ensure its own development. And of course this means means brute economic development, whatever the cost to the environment, the bottom line being financial aggrandizement for the rich (super)minority. The result is that the city has itself become a business-entity of sorts, and its local government balances ambiguously between the roles of democratic representation of the citizenry and that of board of directors. In order to succeed, the city must be attractive - this might seem self evident, living in decent surroundings is (or should be) a right - but it is much more pernicious. Attractiveness implies creating the conditions that will woo the creative classes, those well educated people who have the necessary skills for the service industries that have high added value and constitute the grail for most cities : people who are good at communication, media, finances, marketing, commerce, business administration, technology, design, etc. Manufacturing is done in China (but is moving on as China becomes more expensive). To be attractive, a city offers museums, good schools, lovely parks, great places to shop and star architecture by the likes of Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano or Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and of course green tech, just to make it seem to be environment friendly (image is everything). What this means of course is that gentrification is not in any way uniquely a question of real estate prices and natural market forces, but is intimately tied to dividing the city up into value zones according to the function and usefulness (for capital generation) of the populations being spatially allotted through the urban area. Thus the charming inner city areas (which thirty years ago were blighted and being fled from, not everywhere of course, a more North American than European process) are now being done over to receive dynamic young urban professionals with the buying power that goes with marketable training and creative talent. Those ancillary populations necessary to keep all this working but who generate little added value, in teaching, trades, office jobs, logistics, etc. are pushed into the urban periphery. And while enormous resources are given to the development and embellishment of the inner city, to attract that workforce which might be tempted by a condo on the riverfront in a competing city, strictly limited resources are allotted to those outlying areas. Here, one resorts to strictly rational, cost-efficient and repetitive urban forms: housing estates, malls, highway grid and industrial zones. The capitalistic city has always accompanied the division of labour with a division of space. What we are seeing now is being exacerbated by a concentration of wealth in the hands of a plutocracy and the pauperization of the rest, that is reminiscent of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. A bit hard to believe that one needs to spell this out, but thanks for doing so. ... # 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 Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part Two The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics Section 3: Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible rise of anarcho-capitalism.) (Thiel) often displays his profound disappointment in Silly Valley's entrepreneurs, far too much concerned about profits, and unable to do anything to save the world. For Thiel, capitalism is a truly revolutionary tool that, thanks to technology, will liberate the human species (if only the best of it). But if capitalism has already triumphed, what then remains to be saved?) [rerun from previous installment] Simple: invent a better capitalism! At the moment, it's all talk about 'green capitalism' - everything must be 'green', or at least 'clean'. Okay, we all know that 'green capitalism' is a scam with has as sole purpose maintaining current consumption and pollution levels while pursuing increasingly unsustainable growth. But official environmentalism - which has very little to do with a real protection of the environment - is probably preferable to upfront contempt towards the ecosystem. When it comes to predatory capitalism, the former Paypal Mafia boss' ideas are crystal clear: the anarcho-capitalist revolution requires faithful, enthusiastic consumers on one hand, and priests, bishops, and popes with deep pockets on the other. And the merchandise must be allowed to circulate between the two at top speed, without friction, and always be in stock. Limits to the availability of natural resources cannot be tolerated within a win-win free market scenario. In which case a transfer to the cyberspaces might be a better option than to try to manage all the material problems ensuing from a frenzied form of development (in the real world). At which stage a third keyword pops up, besides 'speed' and 'abundance': wastage! Thiel ferociously opposes any form of effort at energy efficiency - and that is not fortuitous. According to him, no venture capitalist worth his (her?) salt should invest in projects closely or remotely associated with 'clean' technologies - an euphemism that has supplanted 'appropriate' and 'sustainable' in official discourse [25]. Wastage, in his turbo-capitalist vision, means nothing less than to make a stand against all talks about (natural) limits - the fig leaf of impotence. Wastage is also connected to the (need for) clear and defined, /owned/ identities - and to the deep angst for corporality and physical contact. This represents the exact opposite to a conscientious, autonomous, and self-managed use of technology, meant to satisfy individual and collective needs and desires. The throw away attitude as a source of physical and psychical waste is not only a consequence of 'abundance capitalism'; it is also a structural requirement of the paradigm of unlimited growth and of the unbounded economic expansion of the anarcho-capitalist individual's liberty to act. Wastage is all-pervasive within the 'world domination' delirium of the big technological companies, as can be seen in the never ending string of functionalities changes and new applications development. Wastage slots seamlessly into a long-term process of distancing from and denial of the physical body, about which we wrote in the first part of the book. We will elaborate more on this later on. So, yes, it is quite easy to analyze the way Facebook operates, yet nonetheless one sees a number of culture-related issues appear in the background, and they require closure as well. Which is then an uphill task, as a close monitoring of Peter Thiel's multifarious activities is wellnigh 'mission impossible'. Also the message he conveys through the work of his foundation may be off-putting - just as is the bulk of the anarcho-capitalist discourse. We read in it that the Thiel foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. [26]. Projects receiving the foundation's funding are about 'frontier technologies', 'anti-violence', freedom. Let's (therefore) ask the question once again: what sort of freedom?. What type of society are anarcho-capitalist supporting with their funds? Social networks as seen through the anarcho-capitalist lens - or the management of sociality through Big Data. (section 4) (Strange as it may sound,) Social networks predate the Internet. Living beings in general, human beings in particular need relationships among each other. Few things indeed are worse than loneliness. Even violent criminals, hardened by the prisons' inhuman conditions of detention, shudder at the prospect of solitary confinement. Former POWs (prisoners of war) have testified that they'd rather be tortured than put in solitary lock-up, since at least there remained a bond of sorts - with their torturer. (Scientific) Experiments conducted on sensory deprivation have showed that a
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Oh, Felix, the pinheads are becoming ever tinier and hotter as the stems ares heated by national guardians laser-searching for needles in global haystacks of data. Dancers on the pinheads, veteran data guardian angels, high step as hot-foot Mercuries seeking perks inspired by oligarchic pay for uni ceos, catastrophic student debts, vanishing tenures, actuarial death risers of boomers doomed by Gitane-ravaged lungs of yute excessive Francoisme, by synapse- destroying wursts of Germanismiches, by Espana-garroting neckerchiefs and labial gorings, by gut-sclerosis of Anglo-bloody pudding at groan tables of pudders. Whatsayye to the blubber rubber-tires girdling the prancers bendng the pin heads asunder, tipping Shirl Jackson sacrificials out of the haystacks into the hoovers of natsec sucker. Whatsayye to the MF reearchers eager to sign up for fat contracts with the spies to gather, sort and corral pinhead terrorists among the tuition-penurious yute, implant yute spies among the disaffected addicted youtubers? I say to ye, mine hairless, who you working for, fronting for, uncovering for, whining for, disturbing the dying boomerless snoozers for, soliciting Magic Mountain stenching hospice for. YouTubercular brain disease of our youbiquitous my-selfie-spy time has come. Oh, Manno o Manno, whither self-erasure existenitialisme. At 03:42 AM 5/19/2014, you wrote: I'm astounded. Nay, dismayed. There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. ... # 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 Anonymous LabourLeaks Project is launched, please help and spread the
Independant and anonymous labourleaks project is launched and calling for content from workers, labour, social justice and free knowledge activists alike. Below text is taken from the website of the project: Welcome to LabourLeaks.org OK. You know about press leaks: they are as old as the press. You know about the famous/notorious online Wikileaks, this is only seven years old and is one part of the subversive/emancipatory capacity of the web. There are increasing numbers of such leaks, produced by particular groups for particular purposes, for different kinds of public. Well, we are labour activists, long active both on the shopfloor and online. And we have ourselves had bad experience with company secrecy and ‘managerial prerogatives’: some of us have been disciplined or sacked for exposing information that is essential for ourselves or our fellow workers. This is why we have created LabourLeaks https://www.labourleaks.org/; Please help out and spread the word, in solidarity. # 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 tensions within the digest [x5: geer, riemens, carvalho, mcgee, bard]
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites d...@geer.org Patrice Riemens patr...@xs4all.nl Alexandre Carvalho tudof...@gmail.com Re: nettime Gentrification - or a focus on income and wealth? Art McGee amc...@gmail.com Gentrification - or a focus on income and wealth? Alexander Bard bardiss...@gmail.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: d...@geer.org Subject: Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 08:19:31 -0400 Patrice Riemens writes: | I wish we were talking about governmental bureaucracies rather | than corporations when discussing the id of institutionalized | evil. | | --dan | | Save for the trifling detail that corporations, the big multinational | ones, are our new ruling institutions. Governmental bureaucracies merely | function as their flunkies, though, like all bureaucracies, they do watch | their own interests. Gov'l bureaucracies are immortal, with a monopoly on the use of force. We now return you to your program already in progress, --dan - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 15:15:16 +0200 Subject: Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites From: Patrice Riemens patr...@xs4all.nl Patrice Riemens writes: | | I wish we were talking about governmental bureaucracies rather | than corporations when discussing the id of institutionalized | evil. | | --dan | | Save for the trifling detail that corporations, the big | multinational | ones, are our new ruling institutions. Governmental | bureaucracies merely | function as their flunkies, though, like all | bureaucracies, they do watch | their own interests. Gov'l bureaucracies are immortal, with a monopoly on the use of force. I'd be curious to hear how Haliburton/BlackWater fits in this 'monopoly' model. Cheerio, p+5D! We now return you to your program already in progress, --dan - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Subject: Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites From: Alexandre Carvalho tudof...@gmail.com Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 11:50:18 -0300 the answer is not that difficult:: Praxis, praxis, PRAXIS! ???ommuna! meaning,, get your body on the frontlines and stand by the invisible people; the ones that shouldn't exist according to capital. make their voices and struggle known. we who calls ourselves left ought to reconnect with the urgency of misery. the pain of not existing is loud. the undesirables of society are there for everybody to see. they are not human debris to be pushed away by reals estate. it is a matter of intention. words have power but without praxis their insurrectionary force is weakened. we must become invisible ourselves ~ ??? Atchu Sent from my subjectivity On May 19, 2014, at 4:42 AM, Felix Stalder fe...@openflows.com wrote: I'm astounded. Nay, dismayed. There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Art McGee amc...@gmail.com Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 10:04:40 -0700 Subject: Re: nettime Gentrification - or a focus on income and wealth? And if gentrification is a particularly bad problem in the Bay Area, have you guys even heard of Mumbai, Shanghai or Istanbul? Doesn't seem so, or have I missed something here at Nettime? What you missed is that nettime is not a generic political or cultural discussion list, but one historically focused on cyberculture and technology. The reason the California Bay Area was brought up is because of it's geographic proximity to so much contemporary technology development, e.g., Silicon Valley. It doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't in even deeper crisis, this was just a jumping off point to talk about companies like Google and Facebook and their impact on the region where they're headquartered. The average nettimer earns 3x more than the average SF evictee, and we like it that way. Now back to the noble cause of helping the poor ... You know, there are actual working class and relatively poor people on this mailing list. Not all of us are tenured academics or corporate drones. Some us aren't even white. Hard to believe, I know. All sarcasm aside, I do often find the discussions in environments like this to be fascinating, because it is mostly groups of semi-elites trying to theorize about the actual lived experience of those who they know little about. Meanwhile, on platforms like Twitter, you have a huge critical mass of working people, the majority of whom are marginalized in multiple ways, yet their presence is often invisible to the theorists who try to make sense of how technology impacts our world. Art McGee - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 13:48:46 +0200 Subject: Gentrification - or a focus
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
HI Felix and nettime, Bringing together again the two threads, Bay Area and gentrification There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. None of this is fundamentally new, but the everyday contradictions this engenders -- particularly in centers of Western progress -- are more visible today under conditions of economic crises that they were during boom times. All true. Chris says this was in progress when he moved to San Francisco 20 yrs ago. Well, try this one: What happened in the Haight echoed earlier scenes in North Beach and The Village, among othersand it proved, once again, the basic futility of seizing turf you can't control. The pattern never varies: a low-rent area suddenly blooms new and loose and human and then fashionable, which attracts the press and the cops at about the same time. Cop problems attract more publicity, which then attracts fad-salesmen and hustlers which means money, and that attracts junkies and jack-rollers. Their bad action causes more publicity and for some perverse reason an influx of bored upward-mobile types who dig the menace of white ghetto life and whose expense-account tastes drive local rents and street-prices up and out of reach of the original settlerswho are forced, once again, to move on. This passage is from a letter Hunter S. Thompson wrote to David Wilcock of the Los Angeles Free Press dated December of 1969. With some minor changes in terminology and a couple of flourishes alluding to globalization and the New Economy, it might have been written yesterday. HST's observation was made in the context of outlining the Freak Power strategy he was then implementing in preparation for his run for office in Aspen, Colorado. He'd decamped to the mountains from the cities for the very reason of having been pushed out by the rising rents of the consumer bohemia, only to witness the same dynamic take hold yet again in Aspen. At the time his best answer to the creep of the land hustlers was to run for office himself, and to do it in a way that would present the clearest of choices. He lost, but not by much and that was for the office of Sheriff, ie quaint on its surface but in those days the real muscle in the county, the on-the-ground enforcer (of evictions, among other things). There was real power at stake, which meant the established concentrations of power were forced to defend what they had. For once, the developers and their political cronies were made to fight, sink resources into something other than land grabs, and in the process expose themselves further. That is still the lesson. OK, we all know that. What astounds and dismays me now is that all we -- lefty artist/intellectuals on this list -- manage to produce is a cynicism and bickering. I wonder what that represents. Is this simply the endless jockeying for difference typical of the attention economy? An exhaustion of the project of cultural critique on favor of endless self-reaffirming micro discourses? A situation to complex to comprehend? The decline of the West in the face of changing global lines of force? Perhaps all of that, or none of that. Whatever it is, it makes these discussions stale, to say the least. What it is, is the unwillingness for the usual thousand good reasons of the leftist intellectuals to engage themselves (ourselves!) in the actual workings of raw power: making legislation, lobbying, running for office. I believe there is a profound link between the limits to our ideas (as expressed collectively in the endless bickering) and the limits of our political engagement, whether that is expressed in the staleness of protest tactics, the way pressure group demands are articulated, or the unwillingness to take political offices that might be had relatively easily (school boards, local offices of all kind that are not so dependent on party organization). I'm all for the negative critique, but for that critique to advance a liberation agenda ultimately a positive turn in the society, and in ourselves people must produce new situations that then necessitate the critique. To take the example right in front of me, the Wisconsin Uprising surely merits full critical analysis in order to evolve as a movement. But it was the early events of Feb 14-17, 2011, during which mass collective actions moved with the speed of rumor and not the slowness of deliberative, reflective analysis and argument, that created the new situation and that temporarily destabilized power. The rearrangement devolved into retrenchment (as it usually does), but the rearrangement itself opened whole new channels for thinking through the role of union leadership, the possibility of cross-sectoral strikes and coordinated actions, even new perspectives on media politics and tactical communications. The old bickering (for which Madison, Wisconsin, lefties are famous) was put to rest by the fresh situation. With the piecemeal aggression of gentrification, a mass
