Googlejugend meet death

[Morlock Elloi]

While this topic was beaten to death (pun intended), it always elicits 
some surprise (maybe it's a good sign, the surprise.)


Reactions on a tech forum

https://archive.is/Fyte7
(original at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15654125)

about an article in LA Times

http://graphics.latimes.com/retirement-nomads/

A sample:


Leave USA...$1000 a month goes a long way in a lot of countries, in USA you'll 
starve. https://www.kiplinger.com/article/retirement/T037-C000-S002-...




Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning


And so again we are expected to pay for the mistakes of others. What incentive 
is there to save if you know you have a social net to save you anyway?

Yes, I understand, it is a terrifying way to live, I wouldn't wish it on 
anyone, but if we deincentivize personal responsibility, what stops this from 
becoming a larger problem? How can this be sustainable?




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Re: Brexit democracy

[Sean Cubitt]

I came late to Brown’s writing, and was deeply impressed: the diagnosis of 
individualism seems even more astute living for a few months in the States. I’d 
throw into the mix some thoughts from Laclau’s On Populist Reason: that the 
unit of social action is neithe rindividuals nor groups, and certainly not 
society: it is demands. Demand for somehting impossible in the current polity 
such as “Bring Down Washington” or “The EU is a machine for corporate capital: 
let’s get out”. Neither Washington nor Brussels can answer that demand: which 
is why it is truly political. The Left problem has been that it ends up 
defending the indefensible.

In the Brexit case, widespread disillusionment with a decreasingly democratic, 
increasingly neoliberal central pseudo-state only found voice from those who 
have other reasons to attack it: those who want to deregulate food, 
pharmceuticals, pollution etcetra, and those who want to increase their own 
power bases (though the jury is out on whether UKIP tok Russian money it was 
certianly invested in many other right-wing anti-EU populist movements).

Both major parties were torn: a Tory party defending itself against the 
equivalent of Bannonism by assimilating UKIP policies, while the 
agriculture-and-business traditional Tories wanted to keep the financial 
benefits of the status quo; the right wing of Labour believing pretty much the 
same, and the Left only too aware that speaking out against the EU for Left 
reasons would lose them votes from well-intentioned greens, workers-rights 
activists and many more constituencies.

As a result and not for the first time the Left missed the opportunity to give 
direction and political efficacy to the popular demands for a new Europe that 
is not entirely devoted to stripping the assets of Mediterranean and Eastern 
Europe. The Right has a hundred years of practice at doing exactly that.

Vox populi vox dei: but the voice of the people is still not being heard. Rust 
belt America and the abandoned North of England will not get better because of 
new right policies. They will continue to believe that this is because their 
guys have been betrayed. Unless it becomes possible to re-articulate the 
popular voice. Taking back control is a pretty good slogan: its only problem is 
that “we” don’t take back control, “they” do.  What happens if we present 
taking back control as a mission of the Left - if, instead of believing that it 
lacks reason or authenticity, we listen to and act on the popular voice?

regards

sean

On 8 Nov 2017, at 19:47, 
nettime-l-requ...@mail.kein.org wrote:nd

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2017 19:47:15 -0500
From: Ian Alan Paul >
To: Brian Holmes 
>
Cc: nettime-l@mail.kein.org
Subject: Re:  Brexit democracy
Message-ID:

Re: Brexit democracy

[Ian Alan Paul]

...in hopes of pushing the conversation a bit forward, we have this helpful
passage from the end of Brown's most recent book "Undoing the Demos" which
I think quite accurately and concisely sums up the present conjuncture we
find ourselves within:

"The Euro-Atlantic Left today is often depicted, from within and without,
as beset by a predicament without precedent: we know what is wrong with
this world, but cannot articulate a road out or a viable global
alternative. Lacking a vision to replace those that foundered on the shoals
of repression and corruption in the twentieth century, we are reduced to
reform and resistance - the latter being a favored term today in part
because it permits action as reaction, rather than as crafting an
alternative. While the Left opposes an order animated by profit instead of
the thriving of the earth and its inhabitants, it is not clear today how
such thriving could be obtained and organized. Capitalist globalization,
which Marx imagined would yield a class that would universalize itself by
inverting its denigration into shared power and freedom, has yielded
instead paralyzing conundrum: What alternative planetary economic and
political order(s) could foster freedom, equality, community, and earthly
sustainability and also avoid domination by massive administrative
apparatuses, complex markets, and the historically powerful peoples and
parts of the globe? What alternative global economic system and political
arrangements would honor regional historical, cultural, and religious
differences? With in such arrangements, what or who would make and enforce
decisions about production, distribution, consumption, and resource
utilization, about population thresholds, species coexistence, and earthly
finitude? How to use the local knowledges and achieve the local control
essential to human thriving and ecological stewardship in the context of
any worldwide economic system? How to prevent rogue subversions without
military repression or prevent corruption and graft without surveillance
and policing? Whither the nation-state or international law?
.
The task of the Left today is compounded by this generalized collapse of
faith in the powers of knowledge, reason, and will for the deliberate
making and tending of our common existence. Insistence that 'another world
is possible' runs opposite to this tide of general despair, this abandoned
belief in human capacities to gestate and guide a decent and sustainable
order, this capitulation to being playthings of powers that escaped from
the bottle in which humans germinated them. The Left alone persists in a
belief (or in a polemic, absent a belief) that all could live well, live
free, and live together - a dream whose abandonment is expressed in the
ascendency of neoliberal reason and is why this form of reason could so
easily take hold.
.
Tasked with the already difficult project of puncturing common neoliberal
sense and with developing a viable and compelling alternative to capitalist
globalization, the Left must also counter this civilizational despair. Our
work on all three fronts is incalculably difficult, bears no immediate
reward, and carries no guarantee of success. Yet what, apart from this
work, could afford the slightest hope for a just, sustainable, and
habitable future?" (pp. 220-222)

I would largely agree with the problems she articulates and the challenge
she proposes here for anyone who still considers themselves part of "The
Left." I've already articulated my thoughts on NetTime concerning where I
believe this "other" world becomes possible: in powerful, diverse,
contagious, collective refusals which create the conditions within which
something otherwise can take hold.

I'd be very interested to hear others' responses to Brown's prognoses!

~i


On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 2:20 PM, Brian Holmes 
wrote:

> Wendy Brown was a crucial writer for all those who wanted to understand
> neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s. I subsequently lost track of her,
> mainly because you can't follow everything but also because I began to
> perceive her work as an endless critique of the adversary, with no positive
> content beyond the appeal to an idealized social-democratic order. I hope
> to be wrong in that assessment, but there are some reasons for it.
>
> For example, the fourth chapter of the "Walled States" book has a very
> penetrating read of material walls as supports for a fantasy of individual
> sovereignty, and I think the psychosocial analysis there is profound. But I
> do not detect either any treatment of the fundamental problem, which is how
> you build a social democracy that can protect people from the present
> dangers of economic and ecological existence, while at the same time
> maintaining the openness of liberal societies. I want to submit this is a
> real problem.
>
> The Clintonian neoliberalism of the 1990s turned entirely away from the
> question, on the premise that the unleashing 

Re: Introducing Unnon: The Network of the Unknowns

[Felipe Fonseca]

No mention of the software license... :P

Em 8 de nov de 2017 5:26 AM, "Geert Lovink"  escreveu:

> Dear nettimers,
>
> I'm contacting you all to say that Unnon, the network of unknowns, is
> becoming a reality. Unnon is now available in its first version, for
> iPhone users, at Apples's App Store. Android and Web versions should come
> in January or February.
>
> A few days ago, we were the subject of a story by Folha de S.Paulo, the
> biggest Brazilian newspaper, which meant Unnon became officially launched
> in Beta. The response so far has been very good, with many people praising
> Unnon for finally creating an environment with no filter bubbles.
>
> We've achieved that by developing the first ever social network with
> temporary connections. That means that not only does Unnon connect people,
> but it also disconnects them. That is why Unnon is the network of unknowns:
> it connects people who do not know each other, for up to 30 days only, and
> after that they can never be reconnected. So filter bubbles are never
> formed, barriers between people are naturally broken, and users' networks
> change all the time. Also: there's no private messaging on Unnon, every
> conversation is public, which makes personal attacks, trolling and criminal
> activity much less likely; and all content disappears after one month, for
> Unnon is about what people think at a particular moment, not what they did
> in the past.
>
> This is our revamped website: www.unnon.com
>
> And our page on the App Store: https://itunes.apple.co
> m/gb/app/unnon/id1219482455?mt=8
>
> The Folha de S.Paulo article, which is also attached in this email (in
> Portuguese): http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2017/11/
> 1932361-brasileiros-criam-rede-social-que-promete-ser-a-prov
> a-de-bolhas.shtml
>
> Over the next few months I will showcase Unnon at universities, and have
> conversations and debates in Europe. I would love to take the concept of
> the network of unknowns to internet and tech-related communities and hope
> that Unnon will be capable of bringing a new perspective to the social
> media landscape, with less divisions, less extremism and more dialogue.
>
> If you want to contact us, drop me an email (simoes.roge...@gmail.com)
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Rogerio
>
>
>
>
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