Re: notes from Brexania in limbo...
On 2019-01-28 03:39, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
Am 18/01/19 um 16:48 schrieb James Wallbank:
Thanks for this summary David, I'd suggest that it's broadly accurate.
Some of you may have noticed that Brexit has pretty much incinerated
my social media presence (which used to focus on the impacts of
digital engagement and transformation on the arts, culture, and
locality,(plus a smattering of green issues). Now its focus is almost
exclusively the madness of Brexit, which I can only interpret as the
national equivalent of a nervous breakdown.
For me the basic problem is direct democracy as in referendum. And
second referendum. It may be unpopular because direct democracy looks
like the non plus ultra of democracy but Brexit shows that the non plus
ultra of democracy is the sovereignty of parliament. Also as far as a
second referendum is concerned. All that is necessary for "remain" is a
decision by a simple majority of MPs.
"Direct democracy", is this a fashion of politicians without
responbibility or a principle of constitutional law of the UK? Like the
sovereignty of parliament. Maybe we should rethink democracy once more.
Is direct democracy good in all cases? Obviously not.
Best, H.
Heiko's remarks completely bypasses the fact (sorry, it's a fact) that
the British 'Brexit' referendum was a clusterfaktap of major magnitude
(& probably 'deliberate by default') in terms of how a real, valid
referendum should be prepared and organised, even if you don't have the
Swiss experience in running one.
These two opinion pieces, highlighting the differences between the Irish
abortion referendum ('in the end the people knew what they were voting
for') and the British one (obfuscation central) should settle the score:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/29/brexit-ireland-referendum-experiment-trusting-people
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/26/brexiters-never-had-a-real-exit-plan-no-wonder-they-avoided-the-issue
True democracy is direct democracy, difficult to handle as it is.
Representative democracy, unless representatives are kept at a short
leash by their constituents - never mind how representative a first pass
the post system is - is a snapshot at best, and an elected dictatorship
at worst.
Cheers to all, p+2D!
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Re: notes from Brexania in limbo...
Am 18/01/19 um 16:48 schrieb James Wallbank: > > Thanks for this summary David, I'd suggest that it's broadly accurate. > > Some of you may have noticed that Brexit has pretty much incinerated > my social media presence (which used to focus on the impacts of > digital engagement and transformation on the arts, culture, and > locality,(plus a smattering of green issues). Now its focus is almost > exclusively the madness of Brexit, which I can only interpret as the > national equivalent of a nervous breakdown. > For me the basic problem is direct democracy as in referendum. And second referendum. It may be unpopular because direct democracy looks like the non plus ultra of democracy but Brexit shows that the non plus ultra of democracy is the sovereignty of parliament. Also as far as a second referendum is concerned. All that is necessary for "remain" is a decision by a simple majority of MPs. "Direct democracy", is this a fashion of politicians without responbibility or a principle of constitutional law of the UK? Like the sovereignty of parliament. Maybe we should rethink democracy once more. Is direct democracy good in all cases? Obviously not. Best, H. # 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: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
Thanks for articulating your doubts, this is going to be interesting to dig into. On 01/27/19 09:48, Patrice Riemens wrote: > James is right, I think, in believing Carlo's argument does not account > for the rapid, 'liquid' change advertising, and the current economic > dispensation in general has undergone at an ever increasing speed over > the last decade. Well I think a prohibition of individualised advertising would decelerate this speed. On 2019-01-27 08:31, James Wallbank wrote: >> I'd suggest that your response doesn't acknowledge the fluidity and >> adaptability of capitalism, which is just one framework to manifest a >> desire to gain advantage and control. If you ban targeted advertising, >> that doesn't mean that advertisers will go back to "regular" >> advertising. What else should they do if what they were doing is illegal? >> It means that advertising will morph into a different and almost >> unidentifiable practice. Remember that I don't promote forbidding something. I promote re-engineering the Net in such a way that it is no longer technically possible to do this. This includes considering measures like abolishing HTTP or at least relevant parts of it. So what you describe would not only be criminal in the future, it would also not work most of the time. >> In fact, it already is. We see that >> advertisers mobilise social media "influencers", and we may sense (I Social media bots aren't technically possible in the new scenario I am promoting. You need to know real people to be able to enter their social network and you put your own reputation at risk if you try to abuse their trust or introduce bots. >> certainly do) that supposedly "public service broadcasting" has been >> subverted. Imagine a circumstance in which the people who were >> advertisers are invisibly infiltrating every part of life, with >> techniques that may be impossible to distinguish from other cultural >> activity. Neither would it be legal, nor technically easy - so I consider it a theoretical scenario which is a lot less evil than the current situation by which the Net is progressing towards being more harm than good for human society. >> An advertiser can intervene at any part of the communication process. >> For example: >> >> * If they're blocked from putting product placements into films, they >> can write films themselves. That is not within the debate as it is not about targeted manipulation. Product placement is "mostly harmless" since there can be a public debate about it. >> * If they can't get media channels to feature their planted messages, >> they can produce their own channels. As they have always done, with the mixed results they get, and under scrutiny of public debate. Thus, this is also not a scenario that I am addressing. It's not a new problem. >> * New foods, new fashions, new music, new rumours, new words, all can >> be engineered to render recipients (who become participants) more >> suggestible and more aligned with a particular way of thinking. Nothing new unless these messages are not aimed at specific individuals in the knowledge of their specific mental weaknesses. >> Some global producers are now so pervasive that they don't really need >> to advertise ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCT. The message "Got a problem? Buy >> something!" is enough to be to their advantage. Yes, I am not a fan of brand marketing either, but it is a wholly different issue and it has been around for a century or so. >> The key resistant mechanisms are education and critical thinking. In >> other words, for each individual to get smarter, to be more able to >> evaluate influences, and to gain greater agency over their own life. No, that is a very popular fallacy. Education CAN NOT COMPENSATE for targeted scanning of psychological limitations. Humans will always be imperfect and as soon as somebody is allowed to leverage that, there is no education on earth that can compensate. So this is a recipe guaranteed for failure. >> Of course, the mechanism of education itself is under >> information-attack - education is replaced by training, information >> replaced by disinformation, history is replaced with propaganda, truth >> is replaced by faith. True, but it is orthogonal to the issue of powning individuals psychologically. A friend of mine made this comparison: Attacking the brains of individuals is like doing a celebral DDoS on each and every susceptible individual in society, independently, without any evidence, without any public control. It can in no way be compared to any mechanism of manipulation seen in the past of human society. >> Resisting the mechanisms of surveillance capitalism on an individual >> level is completely feasible. There are numerous tactics to generate >> digital disinformation that disguises an individual's tracks. However, >> these may be pointless - not only do they expend energy, they also >> don't intervene at the contextual scale. Also you're clutching at straws here. Just
Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
James is right, I think, in believing Carlo's argument does not account for the rapid, 'liquid' change advertising, and the current economic dispensation in general has undergone at an ever increasing speed over the last decade. But what I liked most in his post is that it provides a splendid plea for what in French is called 'la decroissance', de-growth. And de-growth, save massive, and generally very unwelcome political intervention (Maduro's Venezuela anyone?), can only be achieved at the individual level. Think of 'there is war, but nobody goes there'. Along and aside James' (imminent?) collapse-based view that things will change anyway I would add the observation that a still minute, but ever increasing number of people are switching to a different lifestyle, often in communities of sorts, within and outside cities. Society as a whole is still a very long way of weaning itself from manipulated consumerism, and the collapse-as-a-process has already started for real, yet there is a chance that something good will come about if, again, manipulated, unnatural individualism can be reverted into solidarity, mutual aid, and peer support. Yet another French concept/discipline we might well embrace: the 'entraidologie' (the theory of mutual assistance). And of course, more DIYT (Do It Yourself, Together) instead of relying on outside, big business sources! On 2019-01-27 08:31, James Wallbank wrote: Hi Carlo, I'd suggest that your response doesn't acknowledge the fluidity and adaptability of capitalism, which is just one framework to manifest a desire to gain advantage and control. If you ban targeted advertising, that doesn't mean that advertisers will go back to "regular" advertising. It means that advertising will morph into a different and almost unidentifiable practice. In fact, it already is. We see that advertisers mobilise social media "influencers", and we may sense (I certainly do) that supposedly "public service broadcasting" has been subverted. Imagine a circumstance in which the people who were advertisers are invisibly infiltrating every part of life, with techniques that may be impossible to distinguish from other cultural activity. An advertiser can intervene at any part of the communication process. For example: * If they're blocked from putting product placements into films, they can write films themselves. * If they can't get media channels to feature their planted messages, they can produce their own channels. * New foods, new fashions, new music, new rumours, new words, all can be engineered to render recipients (who become participants) more suggestible and more aligned with a particular way of thinking. Some global producers are now so pervasive that they don't really need to advertise ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCT. The message "Got a problem? Buy something!" is enough to be to their advantage. The key resistant mechanisms are education and critical thinking. In other words, for each individual to get smarter, to be more able to evaluate influences, and to gain greater agency over their own life. Of course, the mechanism of education itself is under information-attack - education is replaced by training, information replaced by disinformation, history is replaced with propaganda, truth is replaced by faith. Resisting the mechanisms of surveillance capitalism on an individual level is completely feasible. There are numerous tactics to generate digital disinformation that disguises an individual's tracks. However, these may be pointless - not only do they expend energy, they also don't intervene at the contextual scale. I have to say, I'm hopeful, but not optimistic. Unless a critical mass of individuals do manage to get smarter, we may be living in an age in which the very notion of individual, autonomous human consciousness is coming to an end. Each of us may be increasingly absorbed into a collective cultural/media matrix in which independent thought is simply not a thing. Welcome to the hive. I shouldn't worry that much, though - because (fortunately) sea-level rise, energy crisis, ultra-nationalist revolution, soil degradation, pandemic, accident, fire, flood and famine will obliterate the group-mind and save independent thinking... at the cost of a few hundred million lives. Happy days! James = On 25/01/2019 20:14, carlo von lynX wrote: On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 09:00:33PM +0100, Patrice Riemens wrote: Well, as I understood Shoshana Z, the pb is that you cannot, in the current dispensation, legislate something that would destroy the very basis on which today's version of capitalism is based. Making data gathering illegal is not a tweak, it's system(ic) change. That's an interesting "fatalistic" perspective. Let's discuss it. I don't see a reason why it should be so difficult to go back to where we were 15 years ago: - Booking targeted advertising becomes illegal/impossible, so you go back to do regular advertising. - Since the whole industry does
