Re: THE Q IN QONSPIRACY: QAnon as a Paradigm for Future Social-media-driven Conspiracism

[James Wallbank]

I echo David's enthusiasm for this subject. It may also be worth 
considering the question of the nature of belief.


Many apparent extremists (I'm aware of both Brexit super-fans and 
Q-adjacent Trump enthusiasts, who say, "Well, we know that such-and-such 
isn't literally true, but we sympathise with the spirit of it."


This sort of fluid, post-rational quasi-belief is extraordinarily 
difficult to challenge - it's not about the facts, it's about the 
"vibe". The difference between actual insurrection and playing the part 
of a fantasy insurrectionist as live action role-play is, from the 
outside, imperceptible, and it may not be a distinction made by the 
activists themselves.


Best Regards,

James
=

On 11/03/2021 13:13, d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk wrote:

Very much looking forward to this discussion...

The approach of Q's followers (along with myriad other conspiracy 
theorists) reflects
the Ninth lesson from historian Timothy Snyder’s text ‘On Tyranny: 
Twenty Lessons for the 20th Century’
which begins with the sentence: ‘Investigate. Figure things out for 
yourself.’ Worryingly that is precisely

what Q's followers feel they are doing.

The epistemology of these movements could be characterised as a 
hermeneutics of un-quenchable suspicion in
which “every official narrative and mainstream institution is suspect 
[…] and in which real knowledge is
produced by like-minded strangers working together on the internet “to 
do their own research”.”


These are potent grass roots research orientated sub-cultures who 
experience the sheer excitement of feeling that they are unmasking a 
world of lies and revealing through their own research efforts a 
network of hidden causes. This fact that makes it particularly hard 
terrain those on the left to contest.


Although not exactly an activist I find it useful to recall Roland 
Barthes's evolution thinker from the early days as an unmasker of 
'mythologies' to a later understanding that you can’t get rid of a 
mythology by telling or demonstrating that it’s a 'myth'. It can only 
ever be replaced it with a better myth. Faith in evidence and exposure 
is not enough.

#  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:

#  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: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[James Wallbank]

Hello Nettime,

I'm sorry to see that this thread has degenerated, but I wonder whether 
this was inevitable. Are the terms "left" and "right" meaningful any 
more, as an axis to distinguish political positions?


We have, apparently, established that the "right" says is favours a 
small state, with low levels of intervention, and the "left" favours 
higher levels of state intervention, and a more expansive state.


Yet these modes of behaviour don't seem to be exhibited. Traditionally 
"neoliberal" or "right" regimes seem perfectly happy to engage in 
extensive state intervention, including by force, when it pleases them, 
and regimes identifying themselves as further to the left frequently 
engage in laissez-faire policies when they're unable or unwilling to 
engage, or authoritarian suppression when they are. It has not gone 
un-noted that regimes that describe themselves as "right" may engage 
with a privileged layer of society (members of the Capitalist Party, if 
you will) in a manner that appears to be generously (even flagrantly) 
interventionist.


I propose that the whole axis of left/right is abandoned, in favour of 
an alternative axis: honest (responsive) / dishonest (authoritarian).


The honest (responsive) end will tend to include:--

Openness, accountability, transparency, democracy.

The dishonest (authoritarian) end will tend to include:--

Opacity, unaccountability, deception, manipulation.

From the point of view of the individual citizen (concerned to benefit 
from governmental competence), the lesson of COVID19 does seem to be 
that the former―honest governance―does seem to deliver benefits that the 
latter does not.


I am not an advocate of radical transparency―the world of Zamyatin's 
"We" with complete transparency and the consequent abolition of the 
individual personality, does not appeal. However, a generous degree of 
transparency, required from both government and citizens, does appear to 
deliver more effective governance. Left or right? Frankly, I don't 
really care - those terms now simply seem to be descriptions of 
window-dressing.


[Dives for cover.]

James

#  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: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[James Wallbank]

Hi Bronac,

I've always believed in the truism "ars longa, vita brevis". You only 
really see what an artwork is in time.


Lev is right that some artworks become hopelessly outdated, or just of 
interest as an experiment - a record of a moment. But some are still 
highly relevant.


Now, in 2020, I'm seeing, thanks, in part, to COVID19, propositions like 
"TTTP (Technology To the People)" and "Teledildonics" become not simply 
provocations, but actual products. The idea that the homeless should 
accept payment by contactless credit card machine is "Big Issue" policy. 
The idea that you might use devices to have remote sex over the network 
has become standard operating procedure for sex workers in lockdown!


The digital artworks of the '90s were often forward-looking. But, for 
me, the ones that still resonate were consciously backward-looking as 
well, and often had a kind of wistful, critical quality. At the time I 
railed against works that I saw as little more than "product 
demonstrations". Some of them (I'll name nobody!) were very high 
profile, and had spectacular sponsorship and hype. Those works do now 
seem laughably dated and irrelevant - but even so, they may have been 
interesting experiments at the time.


All the best,

James
=

On 21/09/2020 16:43, bronac ferran wrote:

Dear James

Fascinating, but inevitably some thoughts arise

I'd already been viewing Lev's cri de coeur as his Hamlet moment, or 
better still, his anthropophagic minute: Tupi or not Tupi, as our 
Brazilian forefathers warned us. How to breathe life into old stuff? 
To regurgitate the swallowed? To unearth the only recently buried? To 
undigest the consumed? To tikkik the contemporary back into the retro?


And why?

Oh why. The glamour of the nineties. A fin de millennial revival to 
distract us from wherever we are now: a reaping of those whirlwinds 
now that they have ceased to be gyres.


Ah-but.  Might we then tilt at digital windmills even further? Might 
certain long winded ramblings practiced so long on nettime channels 
find a place of solace in extensive articles in print about why the 
nineties mattered?

But that is only half the question.
The other bit missing is why Lev told us the truth about the matter? 
Was Hamlet mad, or simply grieving?


B

--
Bronaċ


On Mon, 21 Sep 2020 at 16:16, James Wallbank <mailto:ja...@lowtech.org>> wrote:


Hello Nettime!

This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!

I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have
loads of responses.

What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art
and art that engages with the digital?

The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the
banner "Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in
physical computers - they were installations and objects. If you
make objects (as I do), you know that they change over time.

Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the
"interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital
art doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the
moment. It isn't meant to have a presence over time.

I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the
reclamation of objects from the universal process of decay. Philip
K Dick called this "kipplization". The tendency of all things to
degenerate into trash. We used then ancient computers to make
installations, in the knowledge that we were already working with
the semi-functional, the antiquated, the obsolete. We weren't just
advocating recycling, and exploring our software skills, we were
also raging against entropy - the "accelerated decrepitude" of the
digital age.

That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was
ALWAYS AN INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.

Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital"
installations was a complete list of identified computer viruses,
painted in clear varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight
of them, I think - maybe 10!). Visitors to the gallery were
invited to spray the steel with corrosive liquid (water, salt and
vinegar) which made the piece decay, and the image appear. (The
varnish protected the virus names.) I knew that this process of
decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust into oblivion.

Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we
resisted careful packing and cleaning, so the installation
(comprising 36 25-33mHz computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!)
accumulated dents, scratches and grime. We conceded that it was
legitimate to clean the screens.

Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20
years. They have become even more antiquated. The

Re: Lev on the embarressment of digital art

[James Wallbank]

Hello Nettime!

This conversation is simply *too* *interesting*!

I'm a bit busy right now, but just want to register that I have loads of 
responses.


What is "digital art"? Where is the boundary between digital art and art 
that engages with the digital?


The artworks that I and my friends made in the mid 90s, under the banner 
"Redudant Technology Initiative" were always embodied in physical 
computers - they were installations and objects. If you make objects (as 
I do), you know that they change over time.


Sometimes I think that the "prank", the "intervention" or the 
"interactive" that characterises much of how Lev describes digital art 
doesn't quite do this - it's more performative and of the moment. It 
isn't meant to have a presence over time.


I think that the theme of RTI artworks was redemption, the reclamation 
of objects from the universal process of decay. Philip K Dick called 
this "kipplization". The tendency of all things to degenerate into 
trash. We used then ancient computers to make installations, in the 
knowledge that we were already working with the semi-functional, the 
antiquated, the obsolete. We weren't just advocating recycling, and 
exploring our software skills, we were also raging against entropy - the 
"accelerated decrepitude" of the digital age.


That feeling of sadness, or tragedy  that Lev identifies was ALWAYS AN 
INTENDED PART OF THE WORK.


Before making those artworks, one of my earliest "digital" installations 
was a complete list of identified computer viruses, painted in clear 
varnish onto 1m x 2m sheets of raw steel. (Eight of them, I think - 
maybe 10!). Visitors to the gallery were invited to spray the steel with 
corrosive liquid (water, salt and vinegar) which made the piece decay, 
and the image appear. (The varnish protected the virus names.) I knew 
that this process of decay was unstoppable. The piece would slowly rust 
into oblivion.


Similarly, each time we exhibited the "Lowtech Videowall", we resisted 
careful packing and cleaning, so the installation (comprising 36 
25-33mHz computers, and a powerful 66mHz server!) accumulated dents, 
scratches and grime. We conceded that it was legitimate to clean the 
screens.


Now here's a thing. I have stored those artworks for the last 20 years. 
They have become even more antiquated. The 486s that were, at the time, 
obsolete, have now become antique. The '80s styling of the cases has 
become fascinating in a way that it wasn't at the time. At the time, the 
Lowtech Video Wall was something of a demonstration of technical 
prowess. Should I show it again, it will be so again. The effort and 
skill required to revive 30-year-old machines will be, if anything, 
greater than it was to repair and reuse them in the first place. Perhaps 
it's impossible, and entropy has already won.


The rusting artwork I mentioned of is still in storage. Whether the list 
of virus names that was first applied to it is still legible, I don't 
know. All was predicted, and all has come to pass.


If anyone ever wants to help me break open the digital pyramid, to 
exhume and reanimate the works for exhibition, I'd love to talk.


Best regards,

James
=

On 17/09/2020 08:37, Geert Lovink wrote:
URL or not but this is too good, and too important for nettimers, not 
to read and discuss. These very personal and relevant observations 
come from a public Facebook page and have been written by Lev Manovich 
(who is “feeling thoughtful” as the page indicates).


—

https://m.facebook.com/668367315/posts/10159683846717316/?extid=fWYl63KjbcA3uqqm=n

My anti-digital art manifesto / What do we feel when we look at the 
previous generations of electronic and computer technologies? 1940s TV 
sets, 1960s mainframes, 1980s PCs, 1990s versions of Windows, or 2000s 
mobile phones? I feel "embarrassed. "Awkward." Almost "shameful." 
"Sad." And this is exactly the same feelings I have looking at 99% of 
digital art/computer art / new media art/media art created in previous 
decades. And I will feel the same when looking at the most 
cutting-edge art done today ("AI art," etc.) 5 years from now.


If consumer products have "planned obsolescence," digital art created 
with the "latest" technology has its own "built-in obsolescence." //


These feelings of sadness, disappointment,remorse, and embarrassment 
have been provoked especially this week as I am watching Ars 
Electronica programs every day. I start wondering - did I waste my 
whole life in the wrong field? It is very exciting to be at the 
"cutting edge", but the price you pay is heavy. After 30 years in this 
field, there are very few artworks I can show to my students without 
feeling embarrassed. While I remember why there were so important to 
us at the moment they were made, their low-resolution visuals and 
broken links can't inspire students. //


The same is often true for the "content" of digital art. It's about 
"issues," "impact of X on Y", "critique of A", "a parody of 

Re: Manifestos, Twitter, and Action Against The Autocrats.

[James Wallbank]

Hi Nettime,

I had a large response to the Twitter thread I posted. It does seem that 
there is a distinct appetite for analysis of how populist autocracy is 
operating, and (encouragingly) appetite to take on board tool-kits to 
form resistant responses.


The thread has been reworked into an article for ByLine Times, available 
here:


https://bylinetimes.com/2020/07/30/johnson-cummings-are-waging-war-on-the-british-state/

Whether this is the start of wider engagement, or of the de-natureing of 
resistant rhetoric into media product is to be seen. It appears to read 
well, but I have yet to analyse precisely which bits of the text have 
been excised, and what effect that may have.


Either way, again, I hope it helps!

Best Regards,

James
=

#  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: Manifestos, Twitter, and Action Against The Autocrats.

[James Wallbank]

th bio and tech, and all their intermixed 
forms).


Soviet information theory used ideas from advertising to advance its 
aims, as have many revolutionary movements (both good and ill) down 
through history.  Successful revolutions switch quickly to antiviral 
work after "winning."  Whether symmetric or asymmetric, conflict 
between systems would seem necessarily to involve both viral and 
antiviral elements -- per game theory, each "side" will learn the 
tactics of its opponent and adapt accordingly, even if they don't know 
they are! 


We know what viruses are in cell biology and in computer systems, and 
how antiviral systems work.  In the realm of human intelligence, we 
may have to think a bit more figuratively -- fear and hate as viral, 
calm and compassion as anti-viral, or any number of similar analogies 
-- but such adaptation of our mental and emotional lives, as you 
suggest, may be at least as important as medical and IT measures when 
it comes to the work of avoiding autocracy.


Therefore the antiviral aspects of system work may need to be brought 
more into focus, even in areas like meditation, art, and neuroscience, 
in order for progressive and anti-autocratic efforts to be most 
effective.


Encouragingly, viral tactics are not always necessarily "faster" or 
"better" than antiviral ones.  Viral are certainly more opportunistic 
and nihilistic, and can rapidly overwhelm weak defenses.  However, 
consequences do accumulate and people "connect dots" whether they want 
to or not; all systems learn and adapt to threats.  This latter 
process may embody the idea of "hurry slowly" or "festina lente." Who 
knows, maybe even an antiviral adaptation in art and culture has 
already occurred.


All best regards,

Max



----
*From:* nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org 
 on behalf of James Wallbank 


*Sent:* Monday, July 20, 2020 10:01 AM
*To:* nettime-l@mail.kein.org 
*Subject:*  Manifestos, Twitter, and Action Against The 
Autocrats.

Hi Nettimers,

Yesterday I published a substantial thread on Twitter, which seems to
have gained some traction. I'm sending it to you, here, because I'm
aware that Twitter, along with other many other social media spaces, is
corporate, pseudo-public space, vulnerable and temporary.

Only after I posted it did I realise that this action was a very similar
modus operandi to my publication of the 1999 "Lowtech Manifesto" - [
http://lowtech.org/projects/n5m3/ ] a very short piece of text that
precipitated more than a decade of intensive digital, cultural and
community activity.

Now, the stakes are far higher, and the field of play is not simply the
world of cultural and digital production, but the whole political
context in which we operate. I can't tell you how much I hope that this
small action helps to precipitate progressive change.

It is orientated towards a British audience, but already I've had
responses suggesting that it's far more widely applicable, to anywhere
where populist autocracy is emerging. The USA is an obvious example - as
is Brasil.

It may seem that what follows is just a couple of pages of writing. Yes
it is, but it's been informed by a decade or more of learning and
observation. It's what I can do. As I say at the end, I hope it helps.

James

===

This is not a normal time. I think we're at the early stages of an
attempt to turn the UK into an autocracy. There follows a thread about
the military methodology that I think the Johnson/Cummings Regime is
using to wage information war against you, and how you can fight back.\1

Let's resist the illusion that the Johnson/Cummings Regime is precarious
structure or a static edifice. It's part of a complex, hybrid,
shape-changing network, only part of which is visible. Defeating it will
require ceaseless, full spectrum opposition, learning & adaptation.\2

The Johnson/Cummings Regime is part of a generalised global direction,
facilitated by digital technologies and driven by the impulse of the
vastly rich (not just common-or-garden millionaires) to locate their
wealth above and beyond democratic national governance.\3

It isn't a conspiracy. Nor is it a structure like dominoes, or snow
before an avalanche, vulnerable to one intervention that'll topple the
lot. It's a worldwide tendency, with many drivers. To prevail against
this sort of diffuse opponent demands a Systems Thinking approach.\4

We can't win immediately, but we can work to change the rules, to shine
a light on the political activities of the ultra rich, & to disconnect
money from undue media & policy influence. Transnational cooperation
will be crucial, as will educating the public.\5

In Britain, the Johnson/Cummings Regime is, whether it knows it or not,
the primary tool of the ultra-rich, who are working to replace genuine,
funct

Manifestos, Twitter, and Action Against The Autocrats.

[James Wallbank]

Hi Nettimers,

Yesterday I published a substantial thread on Twitter, which seems to 
have gained some traction. I'm sending it to you, here, because I'm 
aware that Twitter, along with other many other social media spaces, is 
corporate, pseudo-public space, vulnerable and temporary.


Only after I posted it did I realise that this action was a very similar 
modus operandi to my publication of the 1999 "Lowtech Manifesto" - [ 
http://lowtech.org/projects/n5m3/ ] a very short piece of text that 
precipitated more than a decade of intensive digital, cultural and 
community activity.


Now, the stakes are far higher, and the field of play is not simply the 
world of cultural and digital production, but the whole political 
context in which we operate. I can't tell you how much I hope that this 
small action helps to precipitate progressive change.


It is orientated towards a British audience, but already I've had 
responses suggesting that it's far more widely applicable, to anywhere 
where populist autocracy is emerging. The USA is an obvious example - as 
is Brasil.


It may seem that what follows is just a couple of pages of writing. Yes 
it is, but it's been informed by a decade or more of learning and 
observation. It's what I can do. As I say at the end, I hope it helps.


James

===

This is not a normal time. I think we're at the early stages of an 
attempt to turn the UK into an autocracy. There follows a thread about 
the military methodology that I think the Johnson/Cummings Regime is 
using to wage information war against you, and how you can fight back.\1


Let's resist the illusion that the Johnson/Cummings Regime is precarious 
structure or a static edifice. It's part of a complex, hybrid, 
shape-changing network, only part of which is visible. Defeating it will 
require ceaseless, full spectrum opposition, learning & adaptation.\2


The Johnson/Cummings Regime is part of a generalised global direction, 
facilitated by digital technologies and driven by the impulse of the 
vastly rich (not just common-or-garden millionaires) to locate their 
wealth above and beyond democratic national governance.\3


It isn't a conspiracy. Nor is it a structure like dominoes, or snow 
before an avalanche, vulnerable to one intervention that'll topple the 
lot. It's a worldwide tendency, with many drivers. To prevail against 
this sort of diffuse opponent demands a Systems Thinking approach.\4


We can't win immediately, but we can work to change the rules, to shine 
a light on the political activities of the ultra rich, & to disconnect 
money from undue media & policy influence. Transnational cooperation 
will be crucial, as will educating the public.\5


In Britain, the Johnson/Cummings Regime is, whether it knows it or not, 
the primary tool of the ultra-rich, who are working to replace genuine, 
functioning democracy with opaque, managed states that amplify their 
wealth, reinforce their power and maintain their low visibility.\6


Successful opposition will involve many actions across multiple domains. 
To succeed it must be continuous, fast, agile & transformative. 
Interventions must be visible & invisible, direct & indirect, fast & 
slow, at all scales. Most of all, it must be a learning process.\7


This isn't just something dragged out of my fervid imagination—this type 
of complex conflict is a developed methodology (that originated, 
incidentally, in Russia). "Operational Art", or "Operational Mobility" 
is, essentially, Strategy and Tactics meets Systems Thinking.\8


It'll be helpful for more people who oppose the corrupt, incompetent 
Johnson/Cummings Regime and the plutocratic influences that appear to 
drive it, to get to grips with this type of conflict. It is certainly 
something that Cummings understands—I recognise its fingerprints.\9


Read Cummings online, and you can be absolutely sure that he understands 
Operational Art. That doesn't mean he knows exactly what's going on—it 
means that he acknowledges that he doesn't know what's going on, and 
operates a system to learn, adapt, reorientate and respond.\10


He has used terminology like the OODA Loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, 
Act. This is an instance of an operational method developed for aircraft 
combat. But that's just one, glamorous example (I have no doubt that 
Cummings fancies himself as "Tory Top Gun"!)\11


But Operational Art has much wider application. It was developed by the 
Russian military, at a period in which they were in a serious jam. 
They'd just had a revolution. They were weak and underdeveloped, and 
they had a strong, hostile, militarized neighbour: Germany.\12


How do you win when you're weak? Operational Art makes use of complexity 
and confusion, mixes up information flows in the battlespace, and 
prevents a more powerful opponent from bringing their forces to bear. It 
suggests continuous experimentation, learning & repositioning.\13


It can even use 

Re: Should use mobile phone data to monitor public health

[James Wallbank]

Hello Andreas,

Great questions!

I think it's interesting to see the reaction of the UK Regime (for
those of you who aren't clear, Johnson is a known deceptionist and
right-wing Trumpalike).

It seems that the challenge for conservatives is simply to maintain
society's current social hierarchies. Johnson has put forward an
extraordinary plan that subsidises 80% of all employees' wages
(notice that it leaves out people in precarious self-employment and
gig-economy work).

What the government has conspicuously NOT done is to introduce
Universal Basic Income. Instead, they have determined that the "value"
of, say, a lawyer who is not working, is much higher than the "value"
of a bricklayer who is not working. Both, in turn, are of higher
"value" than a childcare assistant who is not working.

And, shockingly, the value of a lawyer who is not working is,
apparently, greater than the value of a waste disposal worker who is
working!

So the choice has been to offer differential support to humans - to
freeze in place the inequalities of society in the perverse hope that
they'll be able to defrost it, unchanged, in a year.

Quite apart from the practical complexity of a differential subsidy
for non-workers' wages, I'm interested in the philosophy of inequity
that lies behind this. They are, quite clearly, going to some lengths
to preserve inequality as if it were a precious, vital feature of
society.

Best Regards,

James
=

On 20/03/2020 09:32, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:


Dear Sean, folks,

thanks for the useful historical references. I've already gone on
record here as being against speculations on who should die in what
way.



<>




#  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: coronavirus questions

[James Wallbank]

Thanks Felix!

I'd just started to compile a response which you've eclipsed with one 
that's far more eloquent!


Coronavirus sends a powerful message about the importance of collective 
response.


Neoliberal populists are struggling to avoid praising the value of 
collective action. They're also struggling with the evident value of 
transnational cooperation.


Dialogue about masks seems to focus the political problem for the 
individualistic right. I've seen postings saying, "Masks don't protect 
you well - so they're useless!", entirely refusing to acknowledge the 
value of protecting other people from your own infection.


I suggest that public responses across the world to the pandemic may be 
very interesting as a barometer of trust. The prevalence of panic buying 
and stockpiling measures the level of trust that a population has in its 
leadership. Less trusted leaders will tend to prompt more panic buying.


Eric's musing about Coronavirus as Gaia's response to humanity may be 
located in language, or a conceptual framework that not everyone accepts 
- but it's hard to argue that viruses like Covid-19 aren't typical, 
natural phenomena that will tend to happen when interacting, 
interbreeding populations of a single species becomes huge.


Just as an afterthought, perhaps (and I very much hope it is) Covid-19 
will become a prompt for the traditional, socialist left to start 
getting to grips with complex systems. I have posted before that I 
believe the Green movement has already made this conceptual change, but 
traditional socialist parties haven't.


Stay healthy Nettimers!

James
=



#  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: nettime: down & up and the need for long-term archiving

[James Wallbank]

Great job getting Nettime back up again!

Regarding archiving, how big is the Nettime Archive? How is it currently 
stored?


Regarding not noticing that the list was down - I did - or rather, I 
noticed that nobody was posting.


But, as is the way with the online world, any stream of interesting 
discussion or commentary that's missing is immediately replaced by 
another interesting stream of discussion or commentary that's present.


There's no such thing as a gap on the internet.

Or rather, there are many, many gaps, but they're in no way apparent - 
you have to look for them. I'm sure that if you start researching an 
area in which you are, personally, knowledgable, you'll come across them 
quickly.


It's a very tempting illusion to think that "all human knowledge exists 
on the internet". It doesn't. And without Nettime, a little piece of 
network self-awareness would be lost.


All the best,

James






#  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: Latin as revolutionary act?

[James Wallbank]

Ave Nettimers,

This thread identifies one of the key weaknesses that's proven to be a 
fatal vulnerability of the former United Kingdom. (Sorry to bring it 
back to one particular nation - but it's a rather preoccupying issue to 
be living in a failing state.)


Education relates to power. We, as artists and activists who have 
engaged with technology, work on the assumption that gaining 
technological skills and critical insights, we can better operate in the 
world, and thus add value and empower ourselves.


This embodies a very straightforward understanding of the purpose of 
education - that it has a direct bearing on what you can understand, 
what you can imagine, and thus what you can do.


There is another purpose for education, (whether self- or institutional 
education) as a signal of status. This is how Latin and obscure 
classical education is used in British politics. How does a knowledge of 
Ancient Greek, or Latin, or some obscure ancient texts help one to make 
sensible strategic decisions in an industrialised and technological 
society? It doesn't!


But what it does do is to signal that you are from a special class of 
people to be respected and deferred to.


Many members of the British public (ignorant serfs that they are) are 
suckers for this sort of snake-oil. I fully expect the international, 
and highly educated and critical audience for this list to be immune to 
such signalling, and far more prepared to examine, critically, the 
content of communications, however they are expressed.


"Latin as a revolutionary act" is simply a response of outsiders, late 
in the game (about a thousand years late) to take on the symbolic 
status-signalling of their oppressors, instead of challenging it as 
bullshit. Resist it!


Vale.

James

=

#  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: Supreme Court Rulling consequeces

[James Wallbank]

Hello Eric, Ted, David, Nettime,

I believe that Nettime is now more relevant than ever. To suggest that 
this transnational network (however insubstantial it may seem) has 
somehow lost relevance is far from the truth. A non-commercial, 
thoughtful and lightly curated list that brings together thinkers and 
doers, artists and writers from across the world is something that may 
constitute a key element of resistance in the dark days that may be ahead.


This is a moment of special relevance for Nettime. Reactionaries (of the 
of the most loathsomely undemocratic kind) have demonstrated that they 
understand complexity - they are versed in systems thinking, and they 
are building and exploiting subversive transnational networks in order 
to pursue their (at best) tawdry, or (at worst) terrifying ends.


In such a situation of cultural conflict, there is no such thing as 
irrelevance. I value Nettime because it might be a hotline to 
intellectual and cultural perspectives and support when other channels 
may be blocked or subverted. I'm certainly not minded to rely on 
commercial social media platforms as reliable means of connection and 
discussion.


Perhaps the specificity of the list as a discussion of "Network Culture" 
is less relevant - but this irrelevance is quite illusory, echoing the 
trajectory of the Media Lab - at first we were all very excited by the 
idea of a shared, creative, multimedia digital space, it moved from 
universities into offices, onto desktops, and now into citizens' 
pockets. The idea that the Media Lab is over is not at all true - the 
Media Lab has now transformed, become mobile, networked and pervasive.


In just the same way, Network Culture and an engagement with networks 
has become pervasive and more powerful than ever. Now is not the time 
for critical thinkers to abandon their networks and disconnect.


Network Cuture has, in the words of the sage, "become more powerful than 
you can possibly imagine". (I like to keep it highbrow.)


Just yesterday, 30 minutes after the Supreme Court judgement that 
confirmed that (my emphasis) THE UNITED KINGDOM IS A PARLIAMENTARY 
DEMOCRACY, NOT AN ELECTED DICTATORSHIP, a tiny company called Balcony 
Shirts received 2000 orders for its new product, developed MINUTES 
previously.


The product was a T-Shirt that depicted the Spider Brooch worn by Lady 
Justice Hale as she read the unanimous judgement.


Since then Balcony Shirts have sold 6500 shirts - their whole stock. 
They need more shirts!


Within minutes of the judgement the "Spider" Emoji spiked in popularity 
as Twitter users added the spider emoji to their Twitter profiles.


This is uncoordinated, high-speed mass action.

THIS IS INFORMATION WAR, Nettime!

Not the right moment to retire.

StopTheCoup

James
=

On 25/09/2019 15:52, Eric Kluitenberg wrote:

Hi Ted,

I appreciate that nettime should retain a focus on network-dynamics 
(in culture, politics, media, communication, art, etc.).


However, I must say that I quite enjoy the ‘nettime-take’ on global 
political events (such as the impeachment enquiry in the US, the 
climate crisis, or Brexit). I stopped using facebook actively years 
ago, never used twitter, and use some networks such as linkedin, 
academia and so on for a professional online presence.


So next to browsing around like we all do, nettime is still a good 
pointer to relevant debates.


I do welcome if we can revert a bit more to discussing what the list 
was originally set up for (net.criticism in the broadest sense).


What i miss here most is a critical discussion of how 'the network’ is 
weaving in the fine textures of the physical world (mobile, wireless, 
iot, biometrics and so on), which I have written about, organised 
events, workshops, whatever - most recent around the affect space 
concept - but it would be good to hear other takes on that and discuss 
this.To me still seems a blind spot in network theory..


anyway - keep the list going I’d say.

bests,
Eric
On 25 Sep 2019, at 16:20, tbyfield > wrote:


Felix and I have been thinking about shutting down nettime-l because 
(as I'd put it, he may well differ) the list should preserve its 
historical specificity and energy rather than devolve into yet 
another forum for debates that are easily available in other venues.



#  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:
#  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: 

Re: don't be afraid of 'project fear'

[James Wallbank]

Hi David, Hi Harv, Hi All,

The question "Why should we care?" is pertinent if you live in a 
democracy and care to show solidarity with other citizens of democracies.


I am a European Citizen, and I am facing the prospect of having my 
rights and freedoms curtailed, my freedom of movement reduced, my 
savings and assets devalued, my neighbours and friends driven out, and 
my democratic rights rendered meaningless. I am also likely to face food 
and medicine shortages, the destruction of major industrial sectors in 
my country.


It's also worth remembering that Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers appear 
to be a tentacle of an international network of authoritarian 
plutocrats, whose immediate target is to damage or destroy the European 
Union, using the UK population as the economic equivalent of suicide 
bombers. That they happen to be active in Britain right now should be a 
warning to citizens of liberal democracies everywhere - they're also 
coming for you. It may be a mistake to cede territory to them now, and 
wait until you're fighting on home soil.


Their effort is also a culture war - an attempt to replace liberal, 
open, democratic societies with something far more primitive, 
ethno-nationalist, tribal, and manipulable. This is a global information 
war.


On the subject of "England" - I have to confess that I don't care about 
it at all.


To me it's a fake nation - a confection of Empire that doesn't REALLY 
exist. It's actually Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia, Cornwall 
and more, all occupied by an entitled, postimperial elite that treat the 
regions of the composite, hybrid nation they rule over with the same 
contempt that the British empire treated its dominions. The whole thing 
is a  throwback that ought to have been reformed decades, if not 
centuries ago.


I think I've said on this forum before that there's a great national 
advantage to be gained from losing a war. It comprehensively discredits 
established elites and gives the opportunity to replace or reform 
outdated practices. It also tends to lead to a period of national 
re-evaluation, and eventual renewal. Britain has not had this advantage, 
and perhaps Brexit is the defeat that it needs. The benefits, though, 
may be confounded by the fact that its victorious antagonist is itself.


Best Regards,

James
=

On 01/09/2019 16:48, David Garcia wrote:

Hi,
just a quick question: Why should we care about Brexit and England at 
all? It just takes so much energy and resources out of all of the 
rest. ‎I think we have much more important issues in EU. Who cares 
about arrogant, failed and backward country that gets the backlash it 
deserves? Scots and Welsh should separate and stay in EU, North 
Ireland given to the Republic of Ireland - problem solved. And we have 
the third class Singapore alike creation of what's left of GB.


Hi Harv,
just a quick response to your pertinent "why should we care question”.

Let me ask who is the ‘we’ you are refering to ? EU citizens ? Do you 
include the millions of EU citizens livng in the
UK sometimes for decades who now don’t know if they are on their "arse 
or their elbows"? Or maybe you are generous enough to
include the Brits who have made their lives in the EU countries and 
whose world have been thrown into turmoil. Maybe its the 'we' who

have families with partners and children.

Sorry if me wanging on about the plight of millions of individual 
citizens who are about to lose their rights seems to you of no
consequence (and compared with the plight of refugee migrants it can 
seem like a marginal issue sure). Also the technicalities
can be quite boring and procedural I know unless you have some 
interest in the variaties of constitutional law
when it falls into crisis. Quite nerdy I know but nettime is a space 
where nerdy discussion and passionate politics can meet.. right?


More broadly there may even be something to learn from the particular 
forms of populism that spring from politicians who hijack constitutions
and claim that “speaking for the people” using it to ride roughshod 
over constitutional legal norms that have evolved over generations.
This has echoes in a number of other countries. But perhaps you are 
lucky enough not to live in one of those countries and can simply

turn your back and say why should 'we’ care. Whoever this big “we” are

Best

David Garcia


On 1 Sep 2019, at 15:36, Harv Stanic Staalman > wrote:




#  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:
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural 

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[James Wallbank]

s
=

On 12/06/2019 17:35, Richard Sewell wrote:
James - I think from my point of view the greatest value of the maker 
movement has been an explosion of people making things that don't 
entirely make sense and that are not intended as commercial ventures. 
That's not an issue, that's the point. They are learning that they can 
pull ideas out of their heads into the real world, they are learning 
to envision things and then make them and then learn from them, and 
they are making their own marvels


I'm very much in favour of startups and the kinds of enterprises that 
have sprung out of the world of makers, but only a small fraction of 
the people that want to make things actually want to make it into a 
business. It's one of the things about Make's approach that I never 
really got on with - the idea that there was a sort of admirable or 
even inevitable progression from making things for yourself to 
starting a business.


Richard

On 12/06/2019 16:19, James Wallbank wrote:

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is not 
just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to bootstrap 
their startup, and find some way to that the space benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so 
there's nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a 
startup and shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises 
take off, we make, they pay, and they take away items of greater 
value than we charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just out 
of interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't make 
economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop really 
helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, quite 
easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always lower than 
you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of sensors, logic 
and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their lives, 
and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught 
(and how we've been taught) about making: look for the common 
factors, ways to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, 
methods to scale up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the 
unique, the special, the "only works here and now". Perhaps the 
things that the new artisans will manufacture in each locality will 
be not just the hard to replicate at scale, but the pointless to 
replicate at scale.


Cheers,

James

P.S. Was talk of the death of Nettime somewhat premature?

=

On 12/06/2019 15:20, Adrian McEwen wrote:


There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone 
only out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages 
to protect itself from that.



#  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:

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com



#  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:

On 13/06/2019 03:55, Garnet Hertz wrote:
This discussion is great - I just subscribed with Chris's message to 
me - it's nice to connect with like-minded people around this topic. 
I've obviously been hanging around the wrong places online (like 
Facebook).


"maker as a disconnection to class struggle" - I could talk about this 
for YEARS - or at least thousands of words (see below if you don't 
believe me):


In my view (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here) is that the 
maker movement was primarily an attempt to standardize, spread and 
commercialize what artists and hackers were already doi

Re: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[James Wallbank]

Hi Adrian,

I'm really interested in this comment:

"There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that."


My view is that the key to wider adoption of superlocal making is not 
just to allow, but to encourage people to use your space to bootstrap 
their startup, and find some way to that the space benefits via that.


In our case at "Makers", we manufacture for others for money, so there's 
nobody we like better than people who are bootstrapping a startup and 
shifting lots of product! As peoples' micro-enterprises take off, we 
make, they pay, and they take away items of greater value than we 
charge. Everyone's winning!


The issue, it seems to me, is that many makers want to make "just out of 
interest" and manufacture fascinating things that just don't make 
economic sense. For us, having a shop in front of our workshop really 
helps - when you put something on the shelf, you can start, quite 
easily, to see what price it must have to sell (not always lower than 
you hoped, BTW). Typical maker products, chock-full of sensors, logic 
and LEDs, often cost more than people will pay for them.


Getting to grips with the reality of products, and the hard facts of 
economies of scale (a wifi enabled, music playing, colour changing 
light-bulb retails for £6!) starts people thinking about "the new 
economy". Things people are prepared to pay a sensible price for are 
ludicrously specific and particular. They're about them, their lives, 
and their particular context.


This flies in the face of just about everything we've been taught (and 
how we've been taught) about making: look for the common factors, ways 
to increase efficiency, ways to generalise solutions, methods to scale 
up. Perhaps we need to start thinking about the unique, the special, the 
"only works here and now". Perhaps the things that the new artisans will 
manufacture in each locality will be not just the hard to replicate at 
scale, but the pointless to replicate at scale.


Cheers,

James

P.S. Was talk of the death of Nettime somewhat premature?

=

On 12/06/2019 15:20, Adrian McEwen wrote:


There are people in the space who see it as a way to bootstrap their 
startup, and there is a risk that it can be exploited by someone only 
out for themselves, but the culture of the space mostly manages to 
protect itself from that.



#  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: The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel

[James Wallbank]

Fascinating to hear about personal engagement in Making, Graham!


I, too, have been personally, hands-on involved in Making since Access 
Space's turn towards digital manufacture, and the interface of the 
physical and the digital, since around 2010.



(For those of you who aren't aware of Access Space, it started as a "DIY 
Media Lab" which I and various friends who had accreted around 
"Redundant Technology Initiative" (lowtech.org) in 2000. It 
re-interpreted donated digital debris as resource, rebuilding computers, 
installing free operating systems, making them available to 
participants, and encouraging and supporting creative, self-directed 
projects.)



Part of the motivation behind Access Space was our hope that digital 
engagement and skills had the potential to empower. This proved to be 
the case in the early 2000s, and numerous time-rich participants engaged 
with Access Space, taught themselves and each other technological 
skills, and became web designers, graphic designers, technicians or even 
better-known artists. (Though whether "art" is, in the context of 
networked global capital, a viable or empowering career for a 
statistically significant proportion of its participants is, I suggest, 
in question.)



By 2010 we'd seen far less business incubation, and proportionately 
fewer participants able to self-teach to a level that it made a real 
difference to their life prospects or creative leverage. We saw that 
hardware and software skills devalued as pre-installed devices became 
cheaper, and that the digital realm was becoming dominated by global 
digital services, including social media, that, while they didn't do a 
great job, diverted the vast majority of potential digital design 
clients away from bespoke, local service providers.



In short, the window of opportunity suggested by the first phase of the 
graphical internet was closing. While, in 2000, speed-reading an HTML 
primer, combined with a little design flair, a few copywriting skills, 
and some sales confidence could make you a web designer in a month, in 
2010 this was no longer the case.



We concluded that when any new technology is introduced, there's a 
period of opportunity, before that technology has become fully adopted 
or systematised, in which the individual can get involved, and (in a 
short time, with a level of skill only one page ahead of their clients) 
can empower themselves, converting an interest into saleable skills, 
products or resources.



We've seen the same window open and close with blockchain (which I 
believe to be illusory, unproductive, and, in the end, simply gambling). 
A vanishingly few people made money though cryptocurrency trading, but 
now it's dominated by grinding Ponzi schemes, viral mining fiddles, or 
blockchain is being repurposed by multinationals. The moment of 
opportunity for the individual has passed.



At Access Space we saw Fab Lab or "Maker Technologies" as a more 
genuinely productive line of approach, and, even though many of the 
technologies had been around for a decade or more, saw that the window 
of opportunity had not yet closed. As technology requiring significant 
physical engagement and investment (you need to buy real-world machines 
and materials!) the timescale of its adoption and exploitation by 
capital would be far slower.



So at Access Space we raised money (thanks EU structural funds!) and 
bought a CNC, a Lasercutter, a 3D Printer, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, a 
digital embroidery machine... and set about a research partnership to 
explore the potentials of these technologies for creating local jobs and 
enterprises.



In the end, for those not in the highfalutin' and disconnected academic 
realm (sorry, researchers - you're my friends really!) a key element of 
whether a technology is empowering or not is "Can you get paid for using 
it?"



And "using it to engage and educate" doesn't count - actually using it 
to create product or paid-for service is key. In Access Space's 
particular case, we took the position that we didn't care about 
"industrial transformation", nor "increasing supply-chain efficiencies". 
We cared most about actual, tangible jobs in Sheffield, not abstract 
(however numerically significant) jobs in San Fransisco or Shenzen.



The research engaged with local makers, both individuals and startup 
enterprises, and concluded that the technology we looked at with most 
potential to generate local jobs and enterprise was lasercutting, and 
the one with the least potential was 3D Print. Even seven years later, 
we still agree.



This failure, it seems to me, to engage with the economics of making is 
exactly what's thus far marginalised the "Maker Movement". It's also 
true of the Fab Lab - while it's a powerful context for education, the 
economics of fabbing just don't work.



To give a simple example: one of the Fab Lab founding principals its to 
engage with a wide range of materials and processes, on a wide range of 

Re: Managing complexity?

[James Wallbank]

Felix, this is the sort of post that social media conditions me to want 
to click "Like" but also to feel that it's an inadequate response.


I'd only add (or perhaps, draw out):

* "Managing" is the wrong way to think about maximising human welfare 
(or, indeed, achieving any defined objective) when interacting with 
complex systems.


* Perhaps "Surfing" is a better concept - dynamically balancing on 
roiling, turbulent, unknowable medium to plot a course at least 
approximately intentional. Some of the time.


* Digital networking ("the internet") is a connection machine. It takes 
elements and human activities and connects them, profligately, in ways 
forseen and unforseen, visible and invisible. (Who'd have thought that a 
geeky urge to purchase contraband anonymously would become intimately 
connected with melting icecaps? Thanks, Bitcoin!)


* It's this constant and accelerating process of cross-connection that 
makes current and future society a complex system, tending towards ever 
more complexity, and ever more unknowability. Forever. (Right up until 
THE EVENT, of course.)


All the best,

James
=

On 01/04/2019 11:24, Felix Stalder wrote:


On 30.03.19 21:19, Brian Holmes wrote:

However, the surging sense of intellectual mastery brought by the
phrase, "managing complexity," declines precipitously when you try to
define either "management" or "complexity."

Complexity is relatively easy to define. As Jospeh Rabie already did,
the number of actors and the number of ways in which they can interact
with, and adapt to, one another defines the complexity of a "system".

This, of course, leads to the question how to determine the size of the
system. The first generation of cybernetics gave another answer to that
question than the second, as Ted pointed out.

Prem's suggestion that we are dealing with polycentric systems is
certainly right and makes it both easier and harder to define the number
of actors that make them up. Easier in the sense that it puts the focus
on densities and rates of interaction (higher at the center, lower at
the periphery) rather than on precise, yet elusive boundaries. Harder in
the sense that it stresses that each system contains numerous such
centers, shifting the problem from drawing boundaries to deciding the
inclusion/exclusion of centers.

Be that as it may. Let's assume that the number of actors and the ways
of interacting have increased over the last, say, last 70 years. More
important than the simple number of actors (which is hard to ascertain
anyway) is that the ways in which they are interacting has increased,
leading to an exponential, rather than linear rise on complexity.

In my view, there are a number of reasons for this.

* The chains of interactions have grown longer. Many (social and
ecological) systems used to be relatively local phenomena have become
global ones (as a consequence of the expansion of capitalism as
globalization).

* The intensity of interaction has been increasing (as a consequence of
the intensification of capitalism), taking many systems away from
"steady states" closer to the edge of "phase-transitions" (to use the
terminology from complexity theory). In this process, these systems
become more and more non-linear, increasing the need to understand their
internal dynamics (e.g who are the actors and how are they interacting)
while at the same time, making them less predictable.

* The social institutions that have traditionally limited the ways of
interaction by providing and enforcing rules and norms have weakened,
further increasing the leeway for agency (which, of course, not all bad).

Not knowing where to draw boundaries, or which centers are relevant to
the understanding of the system, is a part of the problem of not being
able to "manage" the many actors and their increasing ranges of
interaction and the predictable effects of their interactions. By
"managing" I initially simply meant the ability to track the actors that
make up the system and the ability to intervene in the system to move it
towards desired states. This is a somewhat technocratic view, I admit.

Joseph Weizenbaum argued in the 1970sthat the computer was introduced as
an answer to the social pressures which large corporations and
government agencies faced. Rather than accept social change, the new
computing infrastructure was putting central management on a new
footing. It could now keep track of many more elements and react much
faster to changes in the environment by reorganizing quickly the
relation of the elements to one another. This was, basically, the shift
from Fordism to Post-Fordism and by definition an increase in complexity
that came, as it always comes, at the price of an higher rate of
abstraction as a way of limiting that increase of complexity (a lower
number of variables per element are taken into account).

For similar reasons, I think, the shift towards markets and quantitative
signals (prices, ranking, indices etc) was so successful. It 

Re: rage against the machine

[James Wallbank]

Hi All,

This circumstance (increasing complexity introducing critical errors, 
unforseeable by any one developer) is equally true in wider human society.


Individual consumers, businesses and corporations are, effectively, 
subroutines, modules or components of a larger, complex mechanism that 
is the global polity. Dealing successfully with complex systems is just 
not what we humans collectively do.


While this is a significant concern when it comes to self-driving cars, 
self-targeting bombs, or self-crashing aeroplanes, it's considerably 
more pressing when we think about climate. Unless we can develop 
entirely new systems of governance, that don't just come to cleverer 
conclusions, but do so because they are motivated by different factors, 
then a crash is coming. But I think we all know this.


Fridays for the future.

James
=

On 15/03/2019 05:29, Morlock Elloi wrote:
This is the key. Designers do not understand impact of the complexity 
that emerges from combining relatively simple components. This is 
especially amplified in real-time processing of multiple inputs.


In a completely different field (packet switching from millions of end 
points) we had to design separate monitoring system because it was 
impossible to understand what our own system is doing in real time. 
The monitoring code was almost as complex as the switching code. We 
are talking less than 100K lines each.


Airline modules are in millions of code lines. My assessment is that 
human life should not depend on anything with more than 50K lines of 
code total, period. Anyone claiming that there are proper testing 
procedures for huge systems is either a liar on an idiot. Enterprise 
software contractors are often both. The general public has no 
slightest idea of the dismal state of the software development industry.




Sarter said, “We now have this systemic problem with complexity, and it
does not involve just one manufacturer.


#  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:

#  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: At last the brexit dividend

[James Wallbank]

Hi David,

Absolutely! But even with a slim majority, I don't believe that this 
policy could be pushed through Parliament. On current voting patterns, 
May would have lost the Meaningful Vote vote by around 50 even if she 
had 50 entirely biddable MPs at her disposal.


All the best,

James

On 13/03/2019 14:05, David Garcia wrote:


Hi James,
I agree with all your points except:


 I'm of almost exactly the opposite view to you, in that I'd say that 
this shit-storm has demonstrated that Parliament absolutely is sovereign.


The fact that the executive needs, deceptively, to propose cunningly 
ambiguous forms of wording to non-binding votes, and needs to try to 
game the Parliamentary system, rather than confidently overruling it 
(as would a genuinely unrestrained autocracy) suggests that it still 
acknowledges Parliament's power


The explanation for the necessity of the maneuvers you are describing 
is not the strength of parliament but the fact that the goverment lost 
its majority in the last election. Interestingly
even in this context it was still able to control the timetable and 
the agenda right up until the yesterday’s vote. In fact even now we 
are seeing the government STILL contemplating bringing
back the same failed deal for a third time in the hope that eventually 
parliament will be terroised into surrender.


Best

David


Hi Keith



I think the article is interesting but misses out the central 
challenge that the profound political/constitutional crisis has 
thrown up which is: at what point and how
does a theoretically sovereign parliament take control when a 
government has lost control of events but is unwilling to admit to 
the fact.


If this shit storm has done one thing it has demonstrated that 
parliamentary sovereignty is a myth. And the real power is with the 
Prime Minister. It has
revealed the comparative impotence of parliament to do anythig but 
block an oppose. The PM sets the time-table and the agenda as the 
cliche goes

"govenment proposes, parliament disposes".

What we will see in the coming days is whether there is enough 
wriggle room for some of the legal brains in the house (Letwin, 
Cooper, Reeve, Starmer) to come
up with statutory instruments that would enable them to stop the car 
going over the cliff by reversing the law which takes us out on the 
29th (or at the end of the
extension period). This is hard as usually it is only the executive 
(government) that gets to make new laws.


This experiment in actualising parliamentary sovereignty will not 
only require legal expertise but also an ability to cooperate 
accross the tribal divieds to forge a majority
for some course of action in parliament. This will have to begin 
with a series of  indicative (non-binding) votes to see what there 
is a majority for. Maybe there is no majority
for anything.. or maybe parliament can get its act together and 
build a workable process… withing 2 weeks!! Aaah


David

On 13 Mar 2019, at 10:55, Keith Hart > wrote:


On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:42 PM David Garcia 
> wrote:


A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance-
Total fucking insanity
When asked by what is actually happening my reply has become “I
know nothing!”


There are a few people who have not abandoned thinking about 
Brexit, even if the prospects are still gloomy. Take this lucid 
contribution today from Patrick Maguire, political correspondent of 
the New Statesman:


Good morning. MPs have voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal for the 
second time - by a thumping margin of 149 votes. What happens now?


Westminster's favourite refrain is that nobody has a clue where 
things will eventually end up, but we at least can say with some 
confidence what will happen today: MPs will vote against leaving 
the EU without a deal.


Or will they? As of 7am, we know now a bit more about how that 
scenario would look in practice: a "smuggler's paradise" in 
Northern Ireland, where the UK would unilaterally waive checks on 
goods crossing the border, and what the CBI calls a "sledgehammer" 
to the economy in the form of the  temporary removal of tariffs on 
87 per cent of imports.


But despite its attempt to put the screws on MPs, today's 
government motion is a curious thing. If passed, it would both 
confirm Parliament's opposition to a no-deal Brexit and note that 
it remained the legal default on 29 March. That slightly confused 
proposition reflects the feeling among many Tories that retaining 
the ability to jump over the cliff is a vital negotiating tactic. 
But with just 16 days to go, that isn't the unequivocal 
rejection that Tory Remainers and opposition MPs want and we can 
expect that coalition of the unwilling to approve an amendment from 
Labour's Jack Dromey and Tory Caroline Spelman, ruling out no-deal 
in /any /circumstances.


That, for some reason, has prompted a great deal of excitement and 
gnashing of 

Re: At last the brexit dividend

[James Wallbank]

Hello David,

The Brexit situation is indeed extraordinary, and it has thrown up deep 
deficiencies in the UK's constitutional arrangements, electoral security 
and, more widely, in its national identity.


For what it's worth, my money, should I care to bet on it, would be that 
the UK will end up in a Norway-like situation, in which something 
EEA/EFTA-ish will be re-branded by British politicians in an attempt to 
give the impression that it was all their brainchild.


Whichever way that Brexit manifests (or doesn't manifest), I'm starting 
to think that it will mark, finally, the end of empire. AT LAST the UK 
is starting to get to grips with the fact that it is not a global 
superpower, but rather a high-ranking, medium-sized country that used to 
have a great reputation for good governance.


And David, I'm of almost exactly the opposite view to you, in that I'd 
say that this shit-storm has demonstrated that Parliament absolutely is 
sovereign.


The fact that the executive needs, deceptively, to propose cunningly 
ambiguous forms of wording to non-binding votes, and needs to try to 
game the Parliamentary system, rather than confidently overruling it (as 
would a genuinely unrestrained autocracy) suggests that it still 
acknowledges Parliament's power.


On the other hand, it (Parliament) has been packed with a significant 
number of unimpressive, staggeringly ignorant, ambitious, opinionated 
and biddable members, who can argue passionately for causes that they 
abandon when instructed. This is the real threat to its sovereignty. We 
really do need better politicians, and, critically, better methods for 
selecting them.


That the executive is trying to bamboozle Parliament also confirms to us 
that the Prime Minister does indeed know what we already know. Brexit is 
an extraordinarily bad idea. She's pretty desperate to find ways to 
diffuse responsibility for what would be, should it go ahead, a course 
of action which will continue to cause incalculable damage for decades 
to come.


Best Regards,

James
=

On 13/03/2019 12:49, David Garcia wrote:

Hi Keith

I think the article is interesting but misses out the central 
challenge that the profound political/constitutional crisis has thrown 
up which is: at what point and how
does a theoretically sovereign parliament take control when a 
government has lost control of events but is unwilling to admit to the 
fact.


If this shit storm has done one thing it has demonstrated that 
parliamentary sovereignty is a myth. And the real power is with the 
Prime Minister. It has
revealed the comparative impotence of parliament to do anythig but 
block an oppose. The PM sets the time-table and the agenda as the 
cliche goes

"govenment proposes, parliament disposes".

What we will see in the coming days is whether there is enough wriggle 
room for some of the legal brains in the house (Letwin, Cooper, Reeve, 
Starmer) to come
up with statutory instruments that would enable them to stop the car 
going over the cliff by reversing the law which takes us out on the 
29th (or at the end of the
extension period). This is hard as usually it is only the executive 
(government) that gets to make new laws.


This experiment in actualising parliamentary sovereignty will not only 
require legal expertise but also an ability to cooperate accross the 
tribal divieds to forge a majority
for some course of action in parliament. This will have to begin with 
a series of  indicative (non-binding) votes to see what there is a 
majority for. Maybe there is no majority
for anything.. or maybe parliament can get its act together and build 
a workable process… withing 2 weeks!! Aaah


David

On 13 Mar 2019, at 10:55, Keith Hart > wrote:


On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:42 PM David Garcia 
> wrote:


A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance-
Total fucking insanity
When asked by what is actually happening my reply has become “I
know nothing!”


There are a few people who have not abandoned thinking about Brexit, 
even if the prospects are still gloomy. Take this lucid contribution 
today from Patrick Maguire, political correspondent of the New Statesman:


Good morning. MPs have voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal for the 
second time - by a thumping margin of 149 votes. What happens now?


Westminster's favourite refrain is that nobody has a clue where 
things will eventually end up, but we at least can say with some 
confidence what will happen today: MPs will vote against leaving the 
EU without a deal.


Or will they? As of 7am, we know now a bit more about how that 
scenario would look in practice: a "smuggler's paradise" in Northern 
Ireland, where the UK would unilaterally waive checks on goods 
crossing the border, and what the CBI calls a "sledgehammer" to the 
economy in the form of the  temporary removal of tariffs on 87 per 
cent of imports.


But despite its attempt 

Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism

[James Wallbank]

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 the same, your competitors have
   no advantage over you.
- If your business model was profoundly unethical, you go out of
   business. That is intentional.

Transition within months, mostly painless.
That's my estimate, and I'm usually good at these kind of estimates.
Just like a predicted that GDPR would not achieve anything substantial.

#  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:

#  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: notes from Brexania in limbo...

[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.


Many commentators have suggested that "The North" and "The Midlands" 
were the seat of Brexit - and they may be mathematically correct, but 
interpretationally quite wrong. I grew up in The Midlands, and I now 
live in The North, and in my view the "leave" vote was NOT driven by 
extreme nationalism, nor hostility to the EU, nor by hostility to 
immigration - core themes grasped onto by Theresa May, who insists that 
they are key. Sections of the Conservative party are preoccupied by 
these ideas.


I believe that the Leave vote was primarily driven by hostility towards 
Westminster itself. Voters listened to what the vast majority of Members 
of Parliament asserted, and decided "You people have been running 
Britain against our interests for years - so we'll vote for the opposite 
of what you recommend.". That thought was, I suspect, most usually 
suffixed by the phrase "You scumbags!"


Recently the output of BBC News has not been that of a balanced, 
reasonable or fair broadcaster. It has been incredibly (almost 
comically) influenced by Conservative Party advocates of a Hard, or No 
Deal Brexit. There are numerous examples that I won't review here. How 
this bias has been introduced is not clear, but it is noteworthy that 
key senior BBC roles are now undertaken by people who have previously 
been Conservative activists, or who are known to have extreme neoliberal 
or nationalistic views.


However, I can recommend a recent, very low-key documentary "Brexit: 
Bewitched, Bothered or Bewildered" by BBC broadcaster Adrian Chiles. 
Chiles grew up in The Midlands, and immediately after the Leave vote, 
went to his home area, Erdington, and interviewed Leave and Remain 
voters. This documentary is a return to those same interviewees, and 
other local people, two and a half years later. The interviews reveal 
surprisingly nuanced views, and I was surprised by the overall balance.


I recommend it.

There's a copy of this documentary on YouTube here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXy6IwgqZkQ


You can find the official copy of it on the BBC here: 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0001v00


This brings me to the question of "National Nervous Breakdown".

I think I've said on this channel before that I'm starting to see the 
roots of Brexit in the supercentralism of the UK - all media, politics, 
cultural amplification and state interventions are MASSIVELY centred on 
London. Centred to the extent that, despite London being the richest 
metropolitan area of the EU, and despite many of the poorest regions in 
the EU being located in the UK, governmental intervention cultural and 
infrastructure spending is massively focused on London.


Transport infrastructure PER HEAD of population is massively biased 
towards London, as is cultural spending. An order of magnitude greater 
expenditure per head is made on Transport, and the Arts Council spends 
more than ELEVEN TIMES the amount PER ARTIST on artists and activities 
in London. These are just two examples - but there are many more. The 
"anti-regional strategy" of successive UK Governments has been evident 
for several decades.


In my view, it is objection to this supercentralism, not, perversely, 
anything whatever to do with the European Union, that motivated the 
Leave vote. It is worthy of note that the British "First Past The Post" 
electoral system effectively denies most voters an audible voice, so 
when a referendum was agreed, voters seized on the opportunity to roar 
with rage.


There is no other nation like the United Kingdom.

You may imagine that this is a rhetorical flourish - but I invite you, 
as evidence, to examine the National Flags section of Emoji.


What other nation manages to claim not one, but FOUR flags?

The Union Flag, The English Flag, The Welsh Flag, The Scottish Flag.

Note that this is weird enough, but there is no Northern Irish Flag 
represented, DESPITE the UK's claim that it is an equally valid one of 
four nations that make up the UK.


What's going on here? To me, it has become clear that "The United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is SIMPLY NOT A NATION 
STATE in the modern sense. It's an atrophied, shrunken Empire in 
miniature, with the imperial capital in London. The supercentralism I 
previously identified is a remnant of imperialism, and regions outside 
London are treated as occupied dominions.


It is this weirdness, this lack of coherence, this failure to engage 
with modernity and globalism, that has caused the current breakdown, and 
until 

Re: Bad news for Brexit Junkies! - worse news for Labour and remainers

[James Wallbank]

Hi Ted,

I'd suggest that the lack of education in media literacy and critical 
literacy are the key things which have rendered the UK population 
vulnerable to the sorts of rhetoric-based exploits that you identify.


I recall in the 1980s and 1990s, educationalists persistently identified 
the need for these literacies, to enable citizens to navigate the 
electronic media environment. Persistently, these calls for education 
were marginalised, ignored, or transformed into "online safety" 
training. The component of critical analysis was entirely dumped.


To understand just how bizarre the political situation is in the UK, 
it's worth reflecting on who is a member of the Conservative Party, 
which has ruled for the majority of the last century. Apologies in 
advance for the excessive emphasis:


THE AVERAGE AGE OF A MEMBER OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IS NOW MORE THAN 
70 YEARS OLD.


Yes, you read that right. Average. 70.

To make matters even more bizarre, the Conservative Party now benefits 
more from bequests than it does from membership fees.


The nation is literally being ruled by the Party of the Dead.

Is it any wonder that it is reactionary?

Best Regards,

James
=

On 16/10/2018 17:24, tbyfield wrote:

On 16 Oct 2018, at 9:54, James Wallbank wrote:

Well, quite clearly I'm beginning to sound like a member of the 
tinfoil hat brigade - but seriously, the level of democratic failure 
and delusional thinking at the highest levels of governance are hard 
to explain in other ways.


I agree with your analysis in spirit, but all of those things were 
true when the UK joined the EU — so it doesn't do do much to explain 
why this and why now?


The nihilistic turn that many established nations are taking is 
maddening because it's hard to tell whether the driving forces are 
structural or, instead, if we're seeing the resurgence of the 'great 
man' model of history (yes, peanut gallery, I know this lot isn't very 
'great'). In theory, those two ways of thinking about society are 
radically different; in practice, they seem to be converging. A 
handful of people who fancy themselves great have fumbled and 
maneuvered their way into positions, political and discursive, that 
allow them to seize — or maybe 'surf' — structural forces. The fact 
that they're jabbering, sophistical narcissists is all the more 
frustrating, because anyone with a shred of optimism left would think 
those personal qualities would make it impossible to rise to such 
power. And yet we also know that those personal qualities are ideally 
suited to key aspects of how media works now, again ranging from the 
structural (for example, the temporal model of 24/7 constant-coverage 
media machines) to the personal (Rupert Murdoch and his ilk). So what 
we're seeing isn't just a collapse of the national regimes, we're also 
seeing the collapse of an epistemic regime that was tied to the heyday 
of — and depended on — those national regimes to establish facts. 
People like to cite that chestnut about everyone gets their own 
opinion but not their own facts, but *in fact* what we're seeing is a 
rising world in which people *do* get to have their own facts — for a 
while. The first question is for how long, and second is what comes next?


In the US the concern is that the GOP under Trump is assembling a 
one-party state at an alarming rate. Much of the basic work had 
already been done before Trump came along, and his forces are now 
mainly connecting the dots. The result may well be a governmental 
regime that's adept at manufacturing its own facts on a just-in-time 
basis — basically shoving crazy short-term noise into media pipelines 
and networks in order to dominate both *how* things are 'framed' 
(bleh) and *what* is framed — 'content' (even more bleh). In practice, 
this relies heavily on subverting the segments of the government whose 
strength has been that they moved *slowly*: the technocratic and 
procedural layers of the executive branch, fact-finding mechanisms of 
the legislative branch, and the analytical authority of the judicial 
branch. Given the right conjunction — autocratic leaders, solipsistic 
ruling parties, minority parties in thrall to institutionalism and 
good manners, and judiciaries systematically subverted over decades — 
this has been surprisingly to accomplish within individual countries.


But this turn involves several (maybe many) countries, which is where 
it gets really messy. It's hardly worth mentioning the importance of 
the community of nations to restrain individual countries' excesses, 
but what happens when these nihilists start to cooperate? We're seeing 
that all over the place: cabals meeting here, theaters of the absurd 
there, shadowy influence networks playing next-level jurisdictional 
games with data, employees, processing. Again, that's not new: for 
example, the homogenization of politicians and campaigns was clear in 
the '80s, and the rise of multinational news systems

Re: Bad news for Brexit Junkies! - worse news for Labour and remainers

[James Wallbank]

Hi David, Hi All,

I've been a continual participant in online discussion of the national 
insanity that is Brexit, and have come to a few conclusions. For those 
of you not based in the UK, the whole debate and internal conflict may 
appear utterly incomprehensible - but I believe it has brought some 
uncomfortable truths to the fore:


(1) The "United Kingdom" is not a nation state as Europe knows it. It's 
actually a shrunken, dwarf empire.


(2) Areas outside the Southeast (both the nations: Wales, Scotland and 
Northern Ireland) the Regions (The Midlands, The North, The South West) 
and the unrecognised nations (Cornwall, Mercia, Northumbria) are 
effectively colonies under occupation by London. London has total, full 
spectrum dominance over the national narrative.


(3) Britain is suffering from a kind of post-imperial psychosis.

(4) Britain is notable in being the only European nation to have failed 
to rid itself of hereditary rulers. Of the 250 or so Dukes in Britain 
(that's the highest level of the aristocracy outside royalty) around 180 
of them still own the land that their ancestors owned just after the 
Norman Conquest. That represents nearly 1000 years of occupation. They 
will stop at NOTHING to retain their hidden power.


(5) Britain's manifestly defective parliamentary system is really window 
dressing, that conceals other centres of power.


Well, quite clearly I'm beginning to sound like a member of the tinfoil 
hat brigade - but seriously, the level of democratic failure and 
delusional thinking at the highest levels of governance are hard to 
explain in other ways.


All the best,

James

P.S. I've been working on some Brexit-based art. Anyone interested?

On 16/10/2018 09:24, David Garcia wrote:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(W.B. Yates.. The Second Coming)

Its a critical juncture in a very very complex moment of a 4 dimensional
chess that the UK pretends to be playing with an opponent, but is
actually playing with itself (in every sense, including the vulgar sense of
wanking our time away).

Actually Kier Starmer -the Captain Sensible of the Brexit narrative- is
incrementally (and with some skill) inching the Labour Party’s leadership
towards a refferendum on the deal (I dislike the sterile populism of the
‘people’s vote' tag but it seems to have caught on).

In yesterday’s tragic parliamentary performance May stood isolated
and friendless trapped by her own cack-handed trail of bad decisions
and contradictory ‘red lines’. Apart from the isolation of someone whose only
piece on the chess board is the king which is being relentlessly pushed
towards the innevitable one other thing stood out. Accross parliament MPs
from all paties except the DUP were increasingly advocating the once 
unmentionable
concept of a 'referndum on the deal’ (or ratification). MPs who have not taken 
that
position before such Dominic Reeve argued for it. This fas has moved from a 
being a
very faint possibility to a distinct option as one of the only ways to resolve 
political
paralysis.

This would be not so much a ‘people’s vote’ as the equivalent of the consent 
form
the patient must sign before undergoing a highly risky piece of useless cosmetic
surgery about to be perfomed of an ageing dowager suffering from severe
delusions of grandure.

David Garcia


On 16 Oct 2018, at 07:35, Patrice Riemens  wrote:


On 2018-06-17 11:15, Patrice Riemens wrote:

BonDi!
In today's Guardian/Observer:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/europe-losing-interest-brexit-soap-it-has-bigger-worries
Cheers, p+2D!


That was then - but even earlier there was:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/brexit-six-tests-eu-starmer-corbyn

(referd to in to-day's Guardian, hence ...)

I'm afraid that's going to be the scenario. A Labour party led by an 
Eurosceptic at heart too afraid to ruffle feathers f its brexiters voters (who 
mind well have changed their minds in the meantime), and going for the 'extend 
and pretend' scenario ...

Brexit gonna be a disaster - and not only for UK, even if far worse there.

Salvini appears to have backtracked on Riace deportations

Cheers, no cheers, I dunno

p+2D!

#  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:

#  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:

Extent & mechanisms of censorship

[James Wallbank]

Hello Nettimers,

There is (or at least there was, until recently) a particular photograph 
on the internet. Black and white, cropped to an approximately square 
format. It appears to have been taken with a flash, or supplementary 
lighting, in a dark interior. The upper right quarter of the image shows 
an area of dark background and a circular table with a white tablecloth.


A central figure, in the foreground, faces left. His face, visible in 
profile, is that of a young man, his expression unreadable. His right 
hand is raised. He appears to be seated, and is wearing some kind of 
military or psuedo-military dress uniform, perhaps like the ringmaster 
of a circus.


The upper left quarter of the picture contains the most detail. In the 
upper centre left is a young man in a dark dress suit, who appears to be 
playing a supporting role. Two hands, from a figure standing behind him, 
reach over his shoulders, perhaps to tie or untie his bow tie, or to 
restrain him. The upper body of the owner of the hands is invisible, as 
the upper edge of the picture crops it off.


The upper left and centre left of the picture shows a young man, naked 
except for a bow tie. His face is clearly visible, and his expression is 
apprehensive. From the angle that the photograph was taken, his genitals 
are concealed by an object on the lap of the seated figure in the 
foreground.


The perspective of the photograph is quite unusual. The (presumably 
horizontal) back of the chair of the figure in the foreground, and the 
angle of the circular tabletop in the background (again, likely to be 
horizontal) suggest that the picture was taken from a height of 
approximately 1.5m. The eclipsing of the naked figure's genitals by the 
thing on the lap of the seated ringmaster suggests something else: that 
the naked figure and his dark suited companion are both kneeling, and 
that the incident depicted is some kind of ritual.


The naked figure is entirely recognisable as a major British public 
figure. The object in the foreground is the head of a pig.


What exercises me about this image is not the incident depicted, nor 
whether or not it is a fake.


What concerns me is the sequence of events immediately following the 
publication of a book that revealed the incident that this photograph 
appears to document.


As you may be aware, that book's publication precipitated amusement, 
scandal and argumentation online, the volume of which is hard to 
overstate. The sheer scale of the sudden outpouring of emotion in the UK 
was a newsworthy item in itself, and has been notably under-reported by 
British media.


A hashtag associated with the incident trended as number one in the UK 
for 24 hours or so, but disappeared from top trend tracks surprisingly 
quickly.


Searches using a popular search engine revealed this picture on the 
first page of search results in the day following the breaking of the 
scandal, but it quickly became invisible. Searches using other search 
engines over the following period have revealed the image less and less 
prominently. I have noted a US website which appears to have removed 
content quickly and untidily (404 not found) while cached search results 
showed that the image had been published.


Tweets including the image, that were visible in the immediate period 
following, the scandal, have been deleted. Facebook postings that 
include this image have been removed.


There appears to have been a massive, alarmingly successful attempt to 
prevent the transmission and dissemination of this image. I should note 
that the suppression of the image is some of the best evidence that it 
may indeed be genuine.


The mechanisms by which this image has been erased from the internet are 
of intense interest. They are likely to leave traces vulnerable to 
forensic investigation. That the effort to suppress this image has thus 
far itself remained invisible, suggests that deep, structural 
vulnerabilities in digital networks have been exploited. This is 
possibly the most chilling aspect of the event.


I welcome:

* Vigorous dissemination of the image in question.
* Merciless ridicule of its principal subject.
* Investigation into the mechanisms by which this image has been suppressed.
* Information about the extent of such suppression: is it limited to the UK?
* The publication of discoveries regarding what must surely be an 
extensive and coordinated campaign of internet censorship.


Best Regards,

James
=


#  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

Re: nettime Critical Intelligence in Art and Digital Media

[James Wallbank]

Konrad,

Bravo! Absolutely incisive comment. I wish I had written these words.

My only concern is that some of your sentences exceed 140 characters.

Best regards,

James
=

On 27/11/12 14:40, Konrad Becker wrote:


Loosely picking up on the thread of open letter to critics and
Collectors, artists and lawyers... (and some of you may still
remember Critical Strategies in Art and Media, a series of debates
in NY and a book published by Autonomedia...)

...


#  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