Re: The Dawn of Everything (very short review)
Felix, I haven't read the book, but I would posit that the analysis would be seriously flawed if it did not take into account that whatever the architecture of the human system, it was fully embedded in the wider ecosystem of energy flows. Because of that embeddedness, all forms of human relation would definitely be affected by environmental variables: availability of energy being the most obvious. A hierarchic system, for example (speaking very generally), relies on a consistent flow/accumulation of energy sources from the periphery to the center. A militaristic autocracy, the same ... The structure of the human system is predicated on the particular flows of energy that are available, and, in the case of very early social forms, the most proximal flows (ultimately driven by solar flux to supply local autotrophic and heterotrophic energy sources). Energy factors were/are always far more than a concern, they *drove/drive* the most formative characteristics of the entire human/organismic eco-system. Without exception and across time. I find these intellectual/academic forays of very limited usefulness when they make no consideration of these most fundamental factors... Cheers, John On 2021/12/06 04:28, Felix Stalder wrote: While the book is great, it has a glaring hole in it. What is almost entirely missing is the discussion of how this "carnival parade" of social forms structured the relation to the environment, or, more generally, how they were embedded in, and impacted on, the metabolic system. While for much of the historical period they cover, this might not have been too much of a concern, it is clearly one for us now and if we are to remake our social relations, then this will be a key dimension to transform. But it would probably be too much to ask from one single book, already long enough, to cover everything, even with this title. -- +++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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: Covid and the crisis of neo-liberalism
in the ascendant, the chances of a system reliant on for-profit corporations – that failed utterly to make Luisiana sustainable after Katrina – being able to resolve planetary catastrophe are minimal. -- +++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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: deep humanities initiative
Hey Keith - Planetary survival? How about the temporary (fleeting!) dominance of a messy species with brains that allow it to apprehend what it is doing, but seemingly w/o the ability to overcome evolutionary mandates to stop its consumption of available energies. With a (solar) system life-time of perhaps an additional 10 billion years, there is ample time to have many more tectonic cycles that will wipe the slate clean and provide all new hydrocarbon resources for the next big-brained species to consume at some point. Though it seems overwhelming to us in our anthropocentric hubris -- that which humans have wrought -- Gaia is a far, far more deep and wide phenomena than those tiny short-term fluctuations. Our understanding of deep time requires science, which is only one way of mapping the nature of reality, but one could accept that the metaphor is based in scientific facts that require deep study and imagination to comprehend the scales of the geophysical realities that rule us. In the sense that stratigraphy is the accumulation and lithification of crustal detritus, but that is driven by the forces of gravity and Light about which we know very little, and is only one minor mechanism in the cycling of energy and matter in the cosmos, yes, that would put 'our' history in it's proper minor place in a schema that is clearly and profoundly beyond our comprehension: we are detritus, earth to earth, ashes to ashes. etc. JH On 25/Apr/21 09:53, Keith Sanborn wrote:> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy, analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal stratigraphy? -- +++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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: what does monetary value indicate?
And real CO2 being generated to fuel the fucking 'mining' processors ... Can we kill this beast yet? We've got coal on the run in much of the US, but what a hopeless idea, that processor cycles is related to value and wealth... On 12/Mar/21 12:57, Heidrun Allert (sie/she) wrote: The hierarchie you present is a valuable framework. Interestingly enough, Bitcoin advocates claim that mining Bitcoin is real labor, real machines, real workers there. -- +++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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
On 20/Sep/20 14:12, Molly Hankwitz wrote: Dear Geert, Lev, nettime...ok, I take the bait...!!! thanks Molly, et al... Important point -- that the use of networked/digital communications tools was the core (or at least peripheral) for some 'digital' works -- most of them forgotten -- except in their power to facilitate human encounter and possibly sustained connection, and thus, life-change. But then again, communications, for a human, always begins and ends up analog. Items/events/encounters/projects that jump to mind with unequal, though demonstrated life-changing effect for participants (self being one of those): waterwheel; Polar Circuit; ReLab; MUUMedia; radiostadt1; RAM; the NICE network; nettime; Open-X; aural degustation; SiTO/OTiS; soundcamp; world listening day; pixelache; beauty & the East; ADA; Bed-in for peace NZ; bricolabs; cafe9.net; radiophrenia; digitalchaos; dkfrf; world-wide-simultaneous-dance; what-are-we-eating; Port MIT; audioblast; ethernity; di-fusion 1&2; expand; gimokud; keyworx; kidsconnect; SolarCurcuit; various kunstradio projects; locussonus; meet-to-delete; microsound; migrating art academies; mute sounds; net.sauna; netarts machida; netbase; nomusic; placard; ANAT; overgaden sound festival; PNEK; TEKs; Atelier Nord; remote-tv; RIXC; send shareNY, et al; aporee::maps; superfactory; techno-shamanism; telejam; anatomix; telakka; thebox; virtualteams; visitorstudio; ... I could go on ... Those folks in it (mostly) for personal gain, 'influence', and notoriety missed this potential for sustained human connection, and at career's end find themselves lonely -- "friended" but w/o any real friends -- all the folks tread-upon in the climb to 'fame' (what's a name?). And, Lev, really, at least you were able to convert whatever it was into tenure, and a robust pension, unlike most folks! Good unless the state completely fails! JH -- +++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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: WTF happened In 1971?
Yes, far more interesting would be confirmed stats like that for China, for the last 4,000 years ... jh On 18/Sep/20 00:20, lizvlx wrote: Based on the page content everything is always USA. This graph is not valid in other places and we should stop referring to the USA at all times. It is boring, 20th century and produces false conclusions. Liz -- +++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD subscribe to the neoscenes blog:: http://neoscenes.net/blog/87903-subscribe-to-neoscenes +++ # 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: And there must be no bowing down - Today's Eleven
Cecile -- plz avoid editorializing on some of these links -- the following "now used against covid19" really is a huge mis-statement. There is a tiny bit of anecdotal information that chloroquine mitigates the virus' symptoms/effects... it is *not* being 'used against'. There has been no clinical testing on chloroquine/Covid19 that would meet minimum requirements from any health/medical agency for safe use. *There is no 'cure' or vaccine and will not be for many months!* Statements that support a misplaced belief that there is a 'cure' available (such as Trump has repeatedly made) are irresponsible. jh On 23/Mar/20 12:55, Cecile Landman wrote: 10. Director ACE Pharmaceuticals in Dutch Zeewolde threatened by what can possibly be described as gangsters. The industry produces chloroquine, old malaria medication, now used against covid19. (Dutch) https://www.parool.nl/nederland/directeur-medicijnbedrijf-bedreigd-door-vage-types-die-hoge-bedragen-voor-coronamedicijn-bieden~bfe539c9/ -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: FWD: re: switching to teaching online
On 18/Mar/20 06:56, Hoofd, I.M. (Ingrid) wrote: Teachers online doing their care work for their students everywhere in the world now: respect. Totally concur, Ingrid, as a learning facilitator, yes, I understand the alienation connected with highly-mediated human connection very well. But what Andreas' repost seems to suggest, is a relinquishing of relation with those young people in a very tough moment. The comm channels that are there for 'online delivery' may be developed and used to promote awareness, action, learning about precisely what we all are going through if nothing else, as Heidrun suggests. And if I can help my interns out using those tools and those venues, I say go for it (because I am self-isolating atm, much to the displeasure of my stupid boss, invoking a university protocol that says over-60s can work from home 5 days a week). Now, I do agree with the fact that propagation of traditional push-oriented online indoctrination in bullshit, yeah, I've never been a traditional learning facilitator who supports that in any instance, but using the Master's tools at this moment may very well aid in a positive, and interim restructuring of the future! If there is a future that any of us will recognize or that a majority will survive to experience... A re-read of "pedagogy of the oppressed" might be in order ... IMHO, how we (at least the older nettime demographic) respond to this crisis will dictate, in the widest view, if nettime had/has and lasting/persistent value (re: the archive issue just discussed last week) ... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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
On 16/Mar/20 08:25, Carsten Agger wrote: biological and social levels: the damage to the body is mostly due to the overreaction of the immune system, and the damage to the economy This body-response that you speak of was true for the SARS event -- that's why mortality rates for younger people were significantly higher in that epidemic, they had/have stronger immune systems. Those systems were triggered to the extreme, causing death from that over-reaction. This, so far, is not the case with CoVid-19, that's one of the reasons mortality is skewed more to older and immune-compromised folks. Everyone else's immune system is reacting 'properly'... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: DiEM25 Green Paper on Technological Sovereignty
Aside from the deep irony of using the term 'Gaia', and 'ecosystem' in any relation to the CO2-generating/privacy-devouring Cloud, seems to be more of the same geopolitical wrangling for territories of control ... On 24/Jan/20 12:19, Luke Munn wrote: In terms of alternatives, there is the Gaia-X initiative, "the new European data infrastructure project that aims to grow a sovereign and self-determined digital ecosystem in Europe." -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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?
https://areena.yle.fi/1-1931339 missed it by 5 months ... it was a fun program ... after suffering through five years of Latin in JR & HS... ipse dixit ... jh Perdidi unum in mediis soccus lauandi, et iam sentire perfecta! -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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 Watershed in Your Head
As an addenda to Brian's work -- w/ kudos to him -- I would highly recommend the work of The Center for Land Use Interpretation in the US (West, and elsewhere). Founded by Matt Coolidge in 1994, they have focused on precisely this issue of the spatial manifestations (not only of capitalism) but with an early focus on (the military-industrial complex in the western US as well as moving through many many other 'systems'). "The Lay of the Land" is their publication http://clui.org/newsletter/archive%20 worth reading, all 33 volumes, for a deeper understanding of, to most people, the invisible infrastructures that bring you your entire 'lifestyle'. My formal work currently includes being the archivist for, among many other items, the maps of now-abandoned coal and metal mines in the state of Colorado. The state is literally riddled with holes -- somewhere around 25,000 abandoned mines alone, not to mention huundreds of thousands of hydrocarbon and water wells. Brian's pipeline mapping project only scratches the surface of such manifestations, they are practically fractal, given that anyone using natural gas has a pipeline right to their house, and so on. Historical coal mining in the 'Front Range' of Colorado is present under many of the modern suburbs, causing all kinds of problems in the grand scale of things. Thankfully, there is only one or two operational coal mines left in the state, at least most of the power stations have shifted to natural gas. And, yes, the hydrocarbon infrastructure is ... everywhere. Many local, state, and federal agencies engage in conflicting impulses to both hide information about such infrastructures in the name of state security, while much of it is available online (if you know where to look) via the movement to GIS mapping that is then shunted to the cloud for network consumption. And with 90% of that controlled by esri.com, a privately-held corporation driving the mapping of these 'territories'. While these historical resources and current-use maps are of import to understanding what kind of fragile existence we have on the planet, there are many more worrying developments -- for example, with groundwater issues -- I am preparing, with colleagues, a deep survey of Colorado groundwater. The only word I can use to characterize it is "grim". And Colorado is relatively well-off compared to many other locations on the planet where groundwater supplies (as the *only* local source of water) are being overdrawn by 4-500%. We are making this information available to the public, though at the cost of participating in 'cloud computing' which should be an anathema, given its energy cost. (see, for example http://neoscenes.net/blog/77439-the-energy-of-archive-re-membering-the-cloud) These kinds of conundrums are evidence that we yet have not fully understood where we stand as a species, thinking that we stand separate from everything else. The fight to 'deal' with how we live, how we overdraw our most critical resources, is something that the wider earth system will set the conditions on, as we are mostly *not* dealing with it, despite our best efforts. Brian's work begins to reveal the complexity of what we have 'achieved' as a species, but also that all those achievements are predicated on access to hydrocarbons. One crucial point, though, is that 'other world' is not 'other' in any sense except within the space of our own ignorance -- it is inextricably *ours*. Our ignorance of what Brian labels 'political ecology' is monumental. And when he proposes the 'banality of economics' as a impediment to understanding, it is only a proxy for what I would propose: that a deep look at how one perceives their own usage of energy (in *all* forms - food, transport, housing, lighting, water, thought, embodied action) will begin to reveal our dependencies, and thus will also mandate a political pathway where the paradigm "the most efficient use of energy is energy *not* used" will ground all actions. (And those 'actions', which themselves use energy to express, will reflect and be consequent at all levels of our participation in all levels of the planetary system.) And esthetics -- languages and methods of making this other world visible -- are an important aspect in this struggle that can only succeed if it finds a language that informs action, a language to express multiplicity (of actors, and of cultures) and belonging (that is, a kind of care for the place in which one finds oneself) at the same time. JH -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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/listi
Re: Call for submissions: Artist Commissions for Fusion Expo
When the list arrives at 1:1 ratio of money-and-attention-raising advertising to commentary, it is already dead ... JH On 23/Oct/19 01:58, Julian Weaver wrote: Fusion Expo Commissions The Fusion Expo Commission is now open for applications, with three awards of up to £4,000 available for the commission fee and production. Application Fee: €30 for applicants in full-time employment. No fee for others. Experience required: emerging to experienced. Students eligible: depends on experience. Location: EU Who: EU resident artists working with related sciences, future energies and imaginaries When: Activity taking place between 1 December 2019 – 28 February 2020. Payments: Commission of up £4,000 (25% commission and 75% production). Deadline: 22.00 CET Thursday 31 October 2019. Details: Finetuned is offering 3 commissions for EU resident artists of up £4,000 to create work for EUROfusion's Fusion Expo, a touring exhibition representing the major outreach activity of the European fusion research consortium*. The exhibition will tour prominent museums among the member countries over the next five to ten years. We seek to commission new works that directly engage with Nuclear Fusion in the context of future energy. These will be exhibited with a number of pre-existing works and one pre-selected commission. Submitted proposals will be selected by a panel comprised of curators, artists and EUROfusion stakeholders. To ensure gender balance across commissions, we particularly invite applications from women artists. How To Apply See the Commission Brief PDF for full details. Commission Brief: https://www.finetuned.org/eurofusion-expo-commissions.html <https://www.finetuned.org/eurofusion-expo-commissions.html> Employer: Finetuned Limited Contact: expo_commissi...@finetuned.org <mailto:expo_commissi...@finetuned.org> Deadline: 22.00 CET, 31 Oct 2019 *EUROfusion supports and funds fusion research activities on behalf of the European Commission’s Euratom programme. It is funded through Horizon 2020 and the member organisations. More information is available at https://www.eurofusion.org <https://www.eurofusion.org/> # 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: -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Social robotics, cognitive bomb
Olivier -- For a model of what our down-side-of-the-Hubbert-curve global situation might look like, and practices that might well be embraced for this inevitable de-industrialization process that cannot be stopped by any technological implementations, only slightly slowed through radical human behavior shifts: Greer, John Michael. The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2008. If anyone would like a pdf, ping me off list... It, as you can see, was published in 2008, but the premise, the draining of the very finite reserves of hydrocarbons, globally, and social trajectories that it imposes are the same as now, except we are a bit further along on the way down. The arrival of intensive fracking for natural gas only slowed the drain slightly, and as fracked gas resources are depleted on average far faster than conventional wells, this slow-down of the demise will be short-lived... It will be the lack of available energy that will more-or-less slowly constrict our lives from the present of excess to lives of far less in every way. Greer argues against the apocalyptic collapse that is envisioned; but also against any technological 'silver bullet' that might, against all thermodynamic laws, generate infinite energy for all to consume at will. It's a good read for understanding where/how things will likely happen (and are already happening) -- especially in terms of your transforming 'social profile' idea. Because the structure and operation of the social is deeply intertwined with the availability of usable energy sources... JH On 14/Oct/19 05:47, olivier auber wrote: Thanks César As you have understood, I am speaking from a perspective borrowed from the cognitive sciences, particularly the social signal theory. Other aspects are also developed in my book. - Executives who fly for a yes or no, do so to send social signals. - People locked in their homes and stuck on social networks do it to send social signals. - Eating beef is a social signal. - Have children too! My hypothesis is that the social profile of our species is likely to change. We will certainly not stop sending social signals, otherwise we would turn into stones. It is the shape of the profile that could evolve. It could move from the S-shaped comprising two non-competitive classes C1 and C3 and a single competitive class C2, to a z-shaped where C1 and C3 would become competitive while C2 would become less so. In my book I put forward some arguments that suggest that this transformation is underway and why we should encourage it. The consequences are enormous, including in terms of energy and the environment, because signal production is extremely energy-consuming. -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Managing complexity?
Hi Felix -- The 'size' of the system is an externally applied abstraction in that, unless one is speaking theoretically, a 'system' is always a subset of wider system: a subset conveniently defined via limits (of interaction with that wider system) and so-called boundary conditions. If one makes a basic assumption that the nature of reality is manifest as a continuity of flows, there is always 'more to consider' with any assumptions one makes about any human-defined system. In the case of a continuity of reality, there are no boundary conditions except in the abstract. Within a techni-social system, complexity is a metric reflecting the granularity of the maintenance of control over that system. The level of control is a metric correlated to the amount of energy available to the system, as the finer 'grain' the control, the greater energy expended in maintaining that control over time. There is a direct relationship beween available energy and the potential of a system to maintain or increase complexity. Pilots, when training on a new aircraft (or new system) have only a certain (life-limited) amount of time/energy to acquire the knowledge to control the system. Because that time/energy factor is deeply embedded in/limited by the fiscal calculation of profit, pilots weren't given the necessary knowledge tools (even the proper complete flight manuals for the 737 that do describe the cause of the fatal issue and solution). And the typical airline company outside US jurisdiction did not understand (and was not properly apprised of) the increased need for pilot training, a factor that would cost the company... jh On 01/Apr/19 04:24, Felix Stalder wrote: 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. -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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:
FYI -- Chinese sytems -- Qian Xuesen
Some of you may be interested in this profile of Qian Xuesen and his influence/leadership in the Chinese military-industrial complex: a bit of Chinese systems thinking: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/revered-rocket-scientist-set-motion-china-s-mass-surveillance-its-citizens JH -- ++ Please support Jules Laurita in her cancer fight: http://neoscenes.net/blog/archives/84640 ++ ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Zach Blas: Metric Mysticism
. Historically, the necessary high-temperature fires or furnaces consumed tremendous amounts of wood and charcoal. Only a techno-social system (TSS) that had an excess of these energy sources, initially in the form of forests, was well-situated to produce glass. Europe, after the Middle Ages, had optimal conditions for both the stable accumulation of knowledge and the energy (re-)sources to drive an innovation cycle. The production of lenses and mirrors was intertwined with contemporaneous developments in optics, geometry, and perspective. It was optics that moved the TSS firmly into the mediated — where ‘real’ simulations of what was ‘out there’ could be presented or re-presented on 2-dimensional surfaces. Photography, as a further convergence of early chemistry (utilizing glass containers extensively) and optics, made these virtual re-creations ubiquitous. Winding still further forward in time, we come to incandescent Light bulbs that overcame the limitations of darkness; other evacuated glass tubes including the cathode ray tube made possible both radio and television. Radio was completely dependent on the principle of thermionic emissions which, via glass vacuum tubes or valves, formed the electrical circuits of early amplifiers. These glass tubes were subsequently replaced by solid-state devices, most of which were constructed on amorphous silicon substrates, the same primary element in glass. Every single digital device has — as a crucial and absolutely irreplaceable element — an integrated circuit whose primary material is the amorphous silicon substrate that the circuitry sits upon. It is no coincidence that we speak of complex cumulative protocols such as Microsoft Windows as a window on the world: one looked ‘through’ that we might see what is ‘outside’ without actually venturing out into the rök. In view of where we have come from and where we have arrived in relation to this particular form of energized matter, it is no coincidence that our deep dependence on silicon dioxide is a means to attenuate the threatening flows that surround us. It also forms our relation to all frequencies of Light: energy that is crucial to Life. This is not to say that the dependencies on glass were any more important than, say, on the development of efficient delivery of energy in the form of agriculture, animal husbandry, charcoal, coal, oil (whale and others), and electricity. These flows are not separable from each other. They are all deeply intertwined where we find ourselves in the present moment, and also, who we are: we are always affected by altered and changing flows. A singular conclusion of this short look at glass (through a pair of glasses on a glass screen!) brings me to define the “virtual” as being the situation where one is experiencing an attenuation of energy flows (via some ‘blocking’ or ‘diverting’ technology) that otherwise would be impinging directly on the body-system. This suggests that any discussion of the virtual not be limited to material ‘delivery’ mechanisms or mediatory (digital!) devices. Rather, a broad consideration of the character of flows between the Self and the Other, the Self and the cosmos, is needed: especially the relation between those flows and embodied sensory presence. The dialectic of reality/virtuality is fundamentally about the ‘allowance’ or attenuation of potential energy flows as they effect change in the energized body. —– [1] Knapping is the process of impacting two stones (liths) together to chip one into a usable tool or weapon—arrowhead, scraper, ax head, etc. The stones most employed in this process were of microcrystalline silicon dioxide, that is, naturally occurring glass. [2] Icelandic, as in Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of Norsk mythology as laid out in Icelander Snorri Sturlsson’s “Prose Edda” where the earth is submerged in the ocean, to arise, transformed, and re-populated. -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Speculative Intergalactic Network
Keith - you beat me to it -- There is much room for expanding ones communicative system in the immediate surrounds of this very planet -- there is an abundance of communicative energy flows all around us. Most of these we are -- by choice and by social convention -- completely ignoring. Yet we possess the faculties to tap into them 'merely' by paying attention ... both to our body-system and to the rest of the systems we are but a small part of... If only as a mental exercise, it can be cleansing of the mind to move into some environment, preferably one with some shred of 'naturalness' remaining, and 'unknow' what you observe in it. You will see alien worlds at your fingertips. Indeed, if you consider communication to be the directed/organized flow of energy, the concepts of primitive or advanced need to be considered both in end effect on the transmitter and receiver, as well as the overall effect of the communicative act on everything around it. I suspect that primitive/advanced have no meaning in that regard! DNA signaling or pheromones being just as profound as Kant ... and ultimately far more potent ... JH On 11/Jan/18 09:00, christineT wrote: I very much like the idea of a communication network expanded to aliens (us included) and the question of imperialistic subordination of ones by others. It would probably not be called internet, require a better understanding and use of our "other senses and sensors". Maybe it exists and we dumbs don't perceive it... or we don't know that certain waves effects are signs of it... or we produce too much electromagnetic pollution to be able to catch it, or... -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Never Mind the Bitcoin?
Hi Molly -- plz examine http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42265728 for example, calculating the energy (and thus carbon cost) of BitCoin... it is not insignificant. It's a bit like this problem: https://tinyurl.com/yar8svhe -- climate scientists as frequent flyers... So it goes... JH Mom’s “still reading about it” when the quiet “so...what about that LightCoin” question came through to her ear at breakfast. You are better “ financial advisors”—a curious professional role that only exists for last three decades to sell “products” to hapless potential investors. You have torn a hole in my bubble! -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Locating ArtScience
on Processing; from Molecules to Global Systems.,” October 22, 2012. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.5908.pdf. Fuchs, Christian, and Wolfgang Hofkirchner. “Autopoiesis and Critical Social Systems Theory.” In Autopoiesis in Organization Theory and Practice, edited by Rodrigo Magalhães. Bingley,: Emerald, 2009. Gonella, Francesco. “Systems Thinking and the Narrative of Climate Change – A Prosperous Way Down.” Blog. A Prosperous Way Down, July 23, 2017. http://prosperouswaydown.com/gonella-systems-climate/. Meadows, Donella H. Thinking In Systems: A Primer. Edited by Diana Wright. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008. Miller, James G. “Living Systems: *17 Articles Together*.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 4 (October 1, 1965). ———. “Living Systems: Basic Concepts.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 3 (July 1, 1965): 193–237. ———. “Living Systems: Cross-Level Hypotheses.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 4 (October 1, 1965): 380–411. ———. “Living Systems: Structure and Process.” Behavioral Science 10, no. 4 (October 1, 1965): 337–79. Mulej, Matjaz, Zdenka Zenko, Vojko Potocan, Stefan Kajzer, and Stuart Umpleby. “(The System Of) Seven Basic Groups Of Systems Thinking Principles And Eight Basic Assumptions Of A General Theory Of Systems.” Journal of Sociocybernetics 4, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2003): 23–37. “Systems, Controls, and Information.” In Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design. New York ; London: Routledge, 2012. Viskovatoff, A. “Foundations of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, no. 4 (December 1, 1999): 481–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/004839319902900402. Wenger, Win. “A General Theory of Systems: One Man’s View WIthin Our Universe,” 1996. -- ++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Return to feudalism
Whomever, whatever controls the protocols, controls the device and reaps the rewards that the device brings. This is because the protocol is a proxy for the actualized projection of energy or the pathway that energy is mandated to follow. A protocol determines the characteristics of the energy flow: where power accumulates, where it is sourced -- at the scale of electronic circuits up to the widest expression of the techno-social system. An electronic circuit is simply a set of parameters/protocols to confine and direct the flow of electrons. Allowing them to temporarily persist before being shunted along by the 'force' of electric current. Did you ever consider that electrical generation is a 'push' service? When we 'pay' attention to the dominant flows -- of what is labeled, for the Marxist to understand, 'social capital**', but is actualized as 'social energy' -- we give our personal energy to those dominant flows: we are paying with our invaluable and limited life-time. The accumulation of power and energy in the socio-political sphere ultimately rests on the ability of protocols within that system to accumulate and direct the energies of the human lives of those 'participating' in that system. The statement "Kim Jong-Un would have less power if the population of North Korea were 250,000 instead of 25 million" may seem obvious, but to generate a nuclear weapon requires a certain minimal 'infrastructure' which, again, ultimately rests on human shoulders to create and maintain. For generating the same weapon system, the population size will differ somewhat from nation-state to nation-state, based on other energy sources available to the system (in whatever form: relative ease of access to hydrocarbons, intellectual development, etc), but there is a certain minimum cumulate energy level necessary to 'build a (nuclear) bomb'. The bomb, with its purpose to direct concentrated destructive energy to the 'enemy' is a cumulative expression of many interlocking protocols that actually 'gather' energies together for that energized expression. That minimum energy level is also necessary to control the process to the high degree of precision necessary to materialize the technologies necessary to construct a bomb. This is why there is a difference between simply building a bomb (where size doesn't matter), and fabricating one that fits in the nose-cone of an ICBM: smaller size equilibrates with higher degree of precision which means greater energy consumption per unit device: therefore more difficult to do unless you tap more energy from the given population base, or you have a larger population base... If you starve 23 of the 25 million North Koreans to near-death you might make a dent in the energy procurement system necessary to construct a bomb, though perhaps not. The elites drive the process, though they need to eat as well. We in the west exist in a different energy-harvesting regime, but one that concentrates our attentions with impressive thoroughness. It has many tentacles, many of them screen-related, though as pointed out, IoT quickly insinuates itself into tampons, medicine, wine bottles, toilets, ... everything ... IoT represents another dimension of the acquisition and control of power flows: regulation via feedback. Regulation saps energy from a system by forcing it into rigid flow patterns. Regulation exists on a sliding scale that spans anarchism to state-sponsored sclerosis. Regulate what is 'necessary' to reach the goals of the system, let the rest go. Regulation demands constant feedback to ensure the sweet spot, feedback costs energy. Big data is regulation run amok, and one [energy] price is CO2-generating, hydrocarbon-burning server farms. When everything is known about every living consumer, then the planet will be covered with server farms. **capital is far too mechanistic/materialist word to be using anymore (or should have ever been!), rooted as it is in Newtonian relations -- capital is an expression that reifies what is a temporal concentration of energy (gold in Ft. Knox, bbl of petroleum reserves, well-fed human slaves, explosives, buildings, anything human-constructed, human-compiled, etc, etc...). These concentrations of energized matter persist only for a time, they are transitory and cannot be maintained except through the addition of energy to the system to maintain their order (ever own a house?). jh On 17/Sep/17 12:39, Morlock Elloi wrote: This meme cannot be repeated often enough (even if one starts to resemble RMS). While esoteric discourses about consequences can be amusing, we really need to get back to the root causes. They are not novel, just often forgotten. -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distr
Re: [spectre] the EU's first rogue state
On 10/Aug/17 06:32, heath bunting wrote: i support any nation state that attempts to dis-engage from use empire eg hungary, as the empire is the greatest law breaker and threat to global peace But, really, Heath, does the altogether expected and ongoing collapse of the Amurikan Empire signal the demise of the concept or actuality of "Empire"? Smaller and less materially extensive nation-states only decrease the scale that hegemonic and conflictive events occur within (if, indeed it does that, they have a habit of causing wider conflagrations). There is an increasing Void surrounding the collapse, and, guess what, something is filling it: China. And they have the population base to extend politico-cultural hegemonies at a granular human-to-human level globally in a way that is less obsessed with appearances (US) and more with actual changes on the ground that more directly benefit the 'Middle Kingdom'. They have unlimited funding for the military: (see, for example, the choreography of https://t.co/NgMTeTnSup, as a signal of merely 12K of 2 million troops, on a remote base: the US could hardly mount such a display, despite the 'size/strength' of their military)... The ideology pedalled (and 'enforced'!) by the US is/was not nearly as compelling as Confucian State Capitalism! There will be many laws broken in the future by the next Imperial masters ... and peace, in the face of asymptotically increasing resource competition will exist as only a dream for another world ... Where Europe sits in all this whether fragmented or whole will depend on the actual ebbs and flows of power between all players at all scales. JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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 Five Minutes App
One of the reasons that the Internet quickly took off in the US was the existence of toll/charge-free local phone calling unlike in most/all of Europe in the late 80s early 90s. That and the concept of the '800' number whichcould be called from anywhere in the US with no charge. This made constant internet connectivity easily affordable and standard for most locations. Local telephone connections were so cheap that it wasn't hard to afford a complete second telecom line to be used exclusively for a dial-up modem connection to the'net. I recall in Europe before the wide-spread divestiture of the national telecoms that any calling, local or long-distance had a per-minute charge that was frustrating and stressful. When I was based in Iceland, calls to the US cost upwards of U$D 6.50 *per minute*! One had to plan calls accordingly. 'Free' fax access of any kind was coveted! These two very different initial conditions made for divergent practices early on. Amurikans had the luxury of constant connectivity, the Euro crowd were on an expensive meter. I don't remember the year that the first free local telecom connections started up in Europe -- I think Berlin was the initial city in Germany in perhaps 1996-7? -- where local calling came free with the 'regular' monthly service fee. That was a revolution! I suppose there are others here who could comment in more detail on that wave. (Udo Noll, are you here on nettime? I remember the first time we met in Köln in 1996 at your company Digital Online Media, a local internet access company -- I was so thankful for a 'normal' connection inyour offices there, what I was used to in the US, at least.) Back then, I was based in the Nordic countries mostly, although I did a lot of guest teaching in central Europe at the time, along with random time in the US. When doing a month-long residency at the Muthesium Kunst Hochschule in Kiel, in 1996- or 7, running a workshop 'networking and creativity' or such, the building with the computer lab did *not* have an internet connection -- so when inquiries were made of Deutsche Telekom to activate the connection (almost literally flicking a switch in the main building, the cabling was already installedfrom the main building to the lab building). DT wanted something like 15K Dmarks for the 'service' -- such was their monopoly position! cheers, John On 01/Aug/17 18:03, Yvette Johnson wrote: Check e-mail -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Bioregions
o wants, feel free to contact me with your projects and inventions and tales... BH On 07/12/2017 12:45 AM, jan hendrik brueggemeier wrote: dear nettimers - i am very curious about and would very much appreciate to hear some views on the concept of the "bioregion" in the context of this thread about "outernationalism" (Frédéric). this is not meant as "the solution" to the humanitarian crisis we are in (including finding the much needed rallying cry) but more like as a productive concept to work through... i guess one way to look at it would be my immediate environment as the extension of my body and the bioregion as the extension of the local environment, inter-bioregions > ... > global > interplanetary etc it is, of course, at this stage more of a scientific concept than a cultural one. cheers, jan On 12/7/17 12:18, Brian Holmes wrote: On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 5:49 AM, Frederic Neyrat <fney...@gmail.com <mailto:fney...@gmail.com>> wrote: the question is: how to refuse simultaneously the authoritarian Euroland and any sort of nationalism? The only answer is: with a new form of internationalism. On which basis? The fact that a human (I continue here another nettime conversation) is always more than a mere human, that a local place is fortunately more than itself, that a political fight contains an "ideological" surplus that connects it to other places, etc. We need a narrative able to give a face to this surplus, this "more than", and we also - more than anything else - need a people of tellers able to produce this Great Narrative. This is true common sense, the great missing rallying cry from which everything else can spring. I see it exactly as you do, Frederic. Everything that inspires me to go on working and loving and striving in the national context comes from outside it, whether that "outside" is an inner core of resistant otherness or a distant solidarity borne on language's wings. The nation is an irrevocable problem, which I accept as such, because the others exist and call me beyond it. What does the tale tell? That someone came from a far-distant place, maybe just down the road, maybe here in our midst, and said "Your land is a trash heap and a sorrow and a blight on the face of humanity, like mine. But we could do better, if we ourselves were otherwise." I've been hearing that tale, always different and new, for decades. It continues to make me into whom I was not the day before. Thanks for that, Brian # 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: # 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: -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Can the Left Meme?
Of course, individual and mass conditioning occurs on a pinishment *and* reward basis -- you get access to more 'optimal' partners for reproduction ... when you buy this automobile... Optimized pairing (for the good of the species) is at least as powerful a motivator as the baseball bat. Because it is directly impelled by the 'need' for Life to continue itself into the future. The traditional view is that a person can rationally process the information and make choices, as opposed to being subjected to bodily harm. This is completely false, as the money spent in advertizing, propaganda and info giants proves. With the modern technology, speech is a cheaper and more reliable way to unconditionally condition people. However, this does require technology, usually outside individual's reach. For most people, violence is more effective way for their influence on the world than speech. People are generally rational creatures. The word/action question is complex, and each w/o the other is only a theoretical condition as Vygotsky suggested: "Speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand." Rationality somehow has to fit into the sleeve (shall we say) of evolutionary necessity. It cannot exist outside of that unless it is a temporary evolutionary perturbation that will dead-end when the human species destroys itself through its far-from-equilibrium dominance of the physical environment. I'm pretty certain that rationality can't supersede evolutionary 'needs' in the long run. It could be that in this time of energy glut and technological development, individual speech exacts a minimal overall 'cost' on the (collective, species-wide) evolutionary process. But in the end, word (rationality) and action (violence, reward), as a social/evolutionary process cannot be separated or maintain a separation as you suggest with the left/right dialectic... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Armin Medosch talks Technopolitics (2010)
On 26/Feb/17 10:13, Patrice Riemens wrote: Armin Medosch - Technopolitics Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010 Brian Holmes symposium - The Artistic Device Saturday 27 November 2010" Sharing the experiences of many of you, I can recall numerous encounters with Armin in Helsink, Riga, Vilnius, Berlin, London, Linz, Hasselt, Amsterdam, and possibly elsewhere, back into the mid-90s. Some good partying, dancing, and dialogue. Yes, a challenging and idiosyncratic personality, but his extremely wry, dry, and funny humor, his presence, his voice (powerful both sonically and intellectually), and his generosity was a beautiful addition to the many conclaves. Indeed, he was everywhere. Thanks to the RIXC crew for being a perfect platform in the series of Acoustic Space / Wave editions and exhibitions/meetings that have Armin's fingerprints all over them. I can't pin-point the last time I spent time with him f2f, I guess in 2008 or so, in Netherlands or maybe in London. A raucous dinner somewhere. He was always to be counted on to turn in a well-considered and passionate commentary when things on brico, spectre, nice, nettime, new-media-curating, idc, and certainly other listservs turned sour or so. In my email archive, I see 495 emails, and smile reading some of them... As a teacher, he had an instinctual gift to understand the degrees of freedom necessary for learning to proceed. We shared our strategies on how to deal with the institutional frameworks that tended to dull true learning. Back in 2013 he sent me a packet of his (formal) class descriptions (unfortunately, no notes, or other items). I'd be very interested to hear any reminiscences from his former students. Clearly we all learned from him. I was looking around at items I have in my archive of correspandence with Armin, links and materials he had sent me, and I am wondering if anyone is attempting to collect any written/media traces that are in danger of being lost -- I was reading his review of Pixelache from 2007 and there were several interviews he did, but those mp3 links were dead... :-( I do hope, along with the Stubnitz tapes that there will fall together some of those network fragments. I'd be happy to collect and host anything that folks find that cannot be preserved on some other server... Echoing Armin speaking about Robert Adrian's passing just 16 months ago: "we will always remember you well" peace, john -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: will someone explain
On 03/Feb/17 20:47, Scot Mcphee wrote: Tacitus seems to understand it pretty well: *ita varios motus animorum non modo in urbe apud patres aut populum aut urbanum militem, sed omnis legiones ducesque conciverat, evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri. *(Tac. Hist. 1.4) Hi Scott -- I've invoked Tacitus' Annals on nettime a number of times going back twenty years. Highly recommended as a substitute for the NYTimes. There is much wisdom in his observations of and charting the shifting of central power structures within the wider Roman system -- the fraught transition from Republic to Imperium being the most notable. Stressors on a (techno-social) system precipitate shifts in the power nexus' within that system. For example, the relationship between Nile River valley grain harvests and Roman stability -- that grain production was directly related to the extent of spring flooding Nile River. Climate had a direct effect on the balance of power in that grain was used as proxy pay to veterans of the Roman legions and to distribute to the civilian population as a way to quell dissent. (The very limited) arable land in the Italian peninsula was also distributed to veterans. Whenever that distribution process came under stress, it caused various shifts in the governing power structure. The hungry/angry man thing... And to comment to David -- probably the first thing to remind you of is that the US is nothing more than another imperial nation-state / social structure, and said document is 'just another' human production in a long historical line of 'states', 'empires', and, ultimately, 'failed states'. Invoking parts of the protocol discussion -- the 'balance' function of the US Constitution relies deeply on civil interactions -- when those civil communication protocols break down, there is a loss of interaction that is crucial to the 'balancing' act. You can't collectively govern if you can't have a civil discussion with 'the opposition'. Edicts (Executive Orders) are not conversations. Unfortunately Pres. Obama was forced to strengthen-through-use the EO process because of the lack of conversations with the Congressional branch. <<>> is taking full advantage of this legacy. That said, the power, as any other 'shared' power is constantly shifting between the three branches of gov't (with the military mixed in there as a fourth power nexus -- see, for example, the do-not-cross-the-Rubicon "Posse Comitatus" Act). The wobble between the inscribed Constitutional power centers has been, so far, limited by the stability of the overall social structure. (That stability last tested significantly in the Civil War. And the reasons for that stability, well, perhaps a simple way to say it -- overall lack of want -- or abundance of resources.) But in the intervening times, there have always been tensions between those centers and other power centers (for example private sector, gov't-sanctioned resource-driven/supported oligarchs and such -- Eisenhower's recognition of the dangers of the rise of the MIC is related to this, for example). As amply demonstrated today, a document will have little effect on shifts of power initiated by certain personalities. While obviously abstract social constructs do drive people to (senselessly) sacrifice their lives for 'a higher cause', social norms are malleable. <<>> and others understand the extent of malleability which allows a re-engineering of the social system. As for the sheep-like following these despots have on a wider swath of the population: the example of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Brown Shirts) was Hitler's way of 'empowering' (for his own ends) the dispossessed unemployed of 20s & early 30s. He eventually turned his back on them (they had come to the end of their utility, except as minimally-trained cannon fodder for the WWII Wehrmacht). I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of selective quasi-military system pops up (one actually initiated/sanctioned by the Presidency). Strengthening the ICE and other non-Dept-of-Defense systems is one means for this. Make Rome Great Again! Cheers, JOhn -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Fwd: What is the meaning of Trump's Victory
On 24/Nov/16 02:50, Keith Hart wrote: including lands of temperate zone new settlement). Its expansion was fuelleded by a demographic explosion, 1830-1930. It was the main centre for imperialism and machine industry; Africa had a share of only 7.5%, hardly any cities and almost no machines -- the 'scramble for Africa' from the The expansion was fueled by coal energy which 'allowed' for population growth... attribution is important in this regard -- population doesn't just 'grow' on nothing, it has to have a 'real' energy source to drive that expansion of the ordered expression of life... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD levitating on bentonite twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and the death of democracy
On 24/Jul/16 03:29, János Sugár wrote: imho, he bets on war, Precisely János -- a war on everything, through all means, to leave only he and his family standing in the end, on a desolate and burning plain populated with "for sale" signs. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: England leaves Europe
On 26/Jun/16 10:50, Brian Holmes wrote: The ruse of History exists, and with it, all possibilities for speculation. Britain as piloted by its ruling classes through all kinds of reversals and shifts has always been able to draw a new figure of imperial power from the accumulated reserve of past experience. Shaxson's core idea that the "treasure islands" of transnational finance represented a bid by postwar elites to organize a new system of plunder after military decline is brilliant. Who can doubt that a new and as yet unthinkable attempt will be made to hoist the old ways to new strategic heights? I dunno, Brian -- the 'ruse of History' -- it's clear that humans repeatedly behave in very certain and predictable ways -- competition for resources, killing, well ... Machiavelli and Sun Tzu would have long ago been forgotten if the predictablilty and stultifying repetitiveness of History wasn't gradually apparent as one spends more and more years on the planet. I'm not quite sure what you mean with 'ruse' unless it is simply the fact that we are all unable to escape that denial of reality called 'hope': paraphrasing Paul Valéry, that 'hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind.' Pragmatism and critical thinking, brought by life experience and/or rare educational contexts is in increasingly short supply. So we segue back to the doom of repetition of the old ways. Again. The 'newness' of the strategic heights is only that the myopia, minute attention spans, and unprincipled edutainment of the population makes the same old shit smell sweet -- or, makes the smell of shit a novelty not experienced since the last bowel movement which was, when? So it goes. Here in small-town-right-wing(nut) Arizona, I will go to 'the world's oldest rodeo' on Tuesday next to record audio, and make portraits at the 4th of July parade a week from Monday. I will report back. The last time I did the portraits, a few years back http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/45754 I came close to being roughed up by a group of white-haired veterans who angrily asked whether I was "from the New York Times"... this was after sitting opposite Sen. John McCain at a pancake breakfast that morning and thinking the whole time 'thank-fucking-god he didn't become president!' Any words I should share with him next week? Like, "You've got the principles of a (fill in the blank)." jh -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Renewed Tyranny of Structurelessness
[Sorry, delayed by flaky mods] On 15/Jun/16 03:19, Zenaan Harkness wrote: This means, that the cost to implement a "new community with new rules", in terms of education and effort, is not far off zero (at least for those with a Western schooling). Hmmm, this is a bit like saying "virtual worlds are not material" -- to generate a community requires sustained attention that is expressed through the expenditure of life-time and life-energy -- no way around it -- and neither of those inputs are refundable, they are something that you give out (freely or not) when engaged in building social relationships. I'd say that is a high cost indeed! JH -- ++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Mexico City is crowdsourcing its new constitution
Some may be interested in the failed case of a 'citizen's constitutional rewrite' that occured in Iceland five years ago. It was a more-or-less complete failure (on electorial technicalities and with heavy right-wing 'Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn' party opposition -- the very same one whose PM was a principle actor in the failure of the banking system -- and the same party that enjoyed a recent post-crash resurgence despite their abominable record.) A few pertinent links: http://tinyurl.com/mtc2onq http://tinyurl.com/zkz5vgn http://tinyurl.com/hfnncbu I know a few of the folks who were part of the elected constitutional assembly in 2010 -- but haven't had a sustained conversation with any of them about what went wrong in their opinion. Some of the more radical points in the draft (as listed in the wikipedia article): -- ‘one person, one vote' (in the existing system, a candidate 'requires much more votes to be elected as an MP in Reykjavik than in one of the more rural areas') -- a referendum on abolishing the state church (polls indicated 73% would vote in favour of separation of church and state); -- a number of changes to government, including not automatically making the biggest party's leader PM, introducing a ten-year limit for PM terms, and that a vote of no confidence should have to include a proposed replacement PM. -- obliging the state to provide internet access to all citizens; -- introducing a three-term limit for the President; -- allowing 15% of voters to put bills to parliament or call for a referendum on proposed laws; -- restricting government size to ten ministers, and barring ministers from being MPs at the same time; -- declaring Iceland's natural resources public property. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: "Offshore Leaks" clickthrough
On 10/May/16 17:23, John Young wrote: This could if nothing else provide a corrective to over-zealous promotion of leaks, neglect of "shoe-leather" investigation, over-reliance upon laptop potato-couchism, at the expense of deeper public understanding and broader participation beyond commodified outrage and inflammation -- and weariness of too much bellowing for attention with dumps of spurious voluminous data and shoot from the lip polemics, trite headlines and shallow op-eds, calculated handwringing and botoxed indignation -- the industrialization of WikiLeakification, Snowdenization, Panama Paper Banana Republication. Hmm, John, this makes me think that this enormous 'leak' is yet another facet of the mass datification of life, making the world out there seemingly kneel to the laptop-driving algorithmically-challenged quasi AI couch potatoes... What they don't realize that they will need several orders of magnitude more data to figure out the friggin' world in the way a quiet observer of humans might come by, sitting in a cafe, sipping espresso, and watching life on the street. That is, if they can figure out which algorithm with what boundary conditions to apply. Otherwise all's they'll get is more artifacts to feed their fanciful impression of reality... so it goes. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Live Your Models
Hei Brian -- While the discussion is interesting, I think for me, the crux of what you have written here is the subject line, which I am sure you chose with that in mind. It is our daily moment-to-moment practices (praxis!) that most affect the nature of reality and how the world goes. How we *live*: where we 'work', what we are working on, who we work for, how we treat the proximal Others who circulate around us, what we consume, how we consume, how we move around, how we treat our embodied selves, As I look around to friends, colleagues, and the various Others I run into, I often see a deep dissonance between the models they have in mind and how they actually live. The same pertains to the Self. Very few people go beyond dominant paradigms as it is locally understood to live a life that goes beyond lip-service. I have in mind a friend here in this small town at the end of the road in rural Arizona -- his daily practice is (literally) built around "DWAM", that is, "Doing With Available Materials" as a former urban planner, and now an alternative home designer/builder, (water harvesting) landscape architect, and all 'round handyman. Given local conditions, he implements his alternative biilding work through (many times) innovative techniques in the DWAM way. It's inspiring to work with him precisely because he has taken a wide range of ideas and brought them into a consequent lived praxis. I love the fact, for example, that he keeps a hard pressure up on the local building inspection regime, pushing them to accept alternative techniques (that they are blissfully ignorant of in the best case) and that are 'no-brainers' for this desertified region. Pressuring the dominant is best accomplished when the model is fully aligned with praxis, and vice-versa. Of last import is how we speak, what we say -- as the symbolic, while it may be the social source of profound actions and practices -- remains symbolic and is in constant need of being transformed into embodied action, us giving our energies back to reality in more-than-symbolic ways. Cheers, John -- ++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Fwd: Re: Shoshana Zuboff > The Secrets of Surveillance
On 15/Mar/16 09:07, Felix Stalder wrote: The fact that nobody knows how to put all of these things together into a coherent whole, a new techno-economic paradigm, means that these technologies and their associated potential are still open to interpretation and configurations based on particular social experiences . You know, Felix, as one anecdotal example, here on the ground, doing curriculum dev and renewal at The Ecosa Institute (http://ecosa.org) -- a Paolo Soleri-inspired spin-off founded by a British architect, Tony Brown -- I run into quite some naivete and lack of a sense of urgency. Even in the face of the absurd socio-political developments that are happening all around (all the more noticeable here in a bright RED state, Arizona, the source of Barry Goldwater). People supposedly trying to do interesting sustainable-oriented things seem to be slacking around all the time -- listless "trustafarian" students at the local 'alternative' college (http://prescott.edu) just wanting their identity to be cushioned from any shocks. I get little sense of urgency or intensity directed at the problems. There is the passle of grey-headed ecosophs who enjoy their back-country walks (I certainly fall partly under that rubric), but many are too romantically involved with this to, for example, even ponder what's going on in cities, that's why they live out here to begin with. Considering the most holistic systems view, it is impossible to not come to the conclusion that there are too many humans on the planet. I was recently at a packed talk (200 people or so) by the writer Terry Tempest-Williams, revered by many alternative folks (at least out here in the US West), but when she began relating a story of flying to Jackson Hole, and driving around Yellowstone (any drive can't be less than 300km!) in her rental Prius and ending up at a friends 'cabin' drinking French wine on the terrace talking about how great and precious life was ... she lost me ... And monkey-wrenching to deter development in the US West will get you taken out by a drone or F-16 anyway, these days. There are no quadrants in the so-called wilderness of North Amurika that cannot be rapidly gotten to by a well-trained and equipped desert military presence. Not only that, practically every single person I know of, working in the non-profit 'eco' sector lives something of an upper-middle-class life, driving those damn Prius' again, installing PV panels on the roof of a typically large house (with hot-tub), etc etc etc... It seems impossible to overcome -- although guidelines like: Odum, H.T. & Odum, E.C., 2001. A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies, Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado. point a certain direction for understanding and living ... (I do have a pdf copy if anyone is interested, contact me off-list)... Perhaps it is a failure of general education system-wide, and that too few people have the intellectual tools to be able to suss out sustainable *wide-scale* solutions. Personally, I wonder if the angstlich search for identity in US college-age kids is a convenient ruse (often) to avoid simply do-ing something, engaging in practices that are life-changing in the surrounding 'real' world. Granted in a country the size of the US there are always multiple exceptions to such pessimistic observations, and in the end, change comes at the microscopic level of daily lived experience, but somehow, the (psychic, psycho-spiritual, and real!) energy to have this occur society-wide just doesn't seem available. Maybe it will take a round of massive violence -- perhaps precipitated by a contested Repub Convention when Trump calls out his 'brown shirts' who are already armed, and the US 'left' will respond in like manner, violence in the streets -- for a trajectory change, or not. But as you see, I'm not optimistic. JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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 the DIEM25 launch
On 13/Feb/16 12:42, Felix Stalder wrote: The material circumstances that are dragging Europe (and the US) down have more to do with geopolitical and demographic shifts, the kind of stuff that Keith Hart is talking about. These are, at least in part, related to technological changes, but are primarily embodied in logistics, distribution of productive capacities and changing patterns of the world economy (such as increasing "south-south trade") and not in techniques of crowd control. "Material circumstances" is a key term -- and one that emphasizes some of the following points: Don't forget a more basal causal pressure: global population which affects all the above. Whenever localized resources are depleted, human populations begin to move, and if they can't move, they get angry: "A hungry man is an angry man." It is suggested that we are consuming 1.6 earth's worth of resources at the current population level. Surely pressures arising from this broad condition are propagating throughout the system in ways that we hardly are aware of or understand. Perhaps the fever of the 1% to accumulate what they do is related somehow -- another expression of the persistent drive of Life to continue itself in the form of 'optimized' (used with at least some irony!) evolutionary selection. The geo- in geopolitical change is definitely resource-depletion related to one degree or another. And certainly at some remove, but deeply related the 'political' as well. Technological 'change' also is one driver of resource depletion and shuffling around. I would not use a materialist approach, but trace the energy (re)sources and sinks as distributed across the entire techno-social system and globe. There is relationship between those flows and the flows of human conflict. jh -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: Life on Autopilot?
fense satellite connections. Yes, I know there will be places I may end up that I don’t have a map of. Traveling beyond the edge of a map is a good way of encountering the unknown. There is signage, and signs that can help mitigate the risk, but otherwise, first verging on and then leaping out over the edge of the map is a transcendent experience. "A map is not the territory," this should be the mantra repeated constantly by every voice navigation system, that and "Embrace the new!" And, in closing, I'm quite sure that the (amused) Icelandic response to the ignorant Amurikan tourist's 'mistake' lies with their incredulity that the tourist couldn't read the difference in spelling. One letter off in Icelandic and you change the meaning of the world! No culture that I know of treats language with an equivalent 'seriousness' -- even in humor. Cheers, John Pertinent links: Landmaelingar Îslands: http://www.lmi.is/english/map-services/ http://tinyurl.com/hwmbn93 http://tinyurl.com/h5kes5s etc -- ++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: A Veillance Ansatz
On 06/Dec/15 09:16, William Waites wrote: This short article is to try to put discussion about surveillance into theoretical framework. It is far from rigorous and is more a guide to a certain way of thinking about the topic. William -- good first step! While it might seem a bit facile to take a vector field equation (form) as a starting point, it is quite sensible in the process of understanding the holistic (and complex) dynamics of our living system. If you substitute 'energy' for 'power' you will get a more universal 'equation' that well compares to a progressive scientific worldview on the issue. The basic forms of field equations were generated to model the behavior of grav/mag fields (in Euclidean space) -- thus a bit old-fashioned, but extremely powerful tools. Approaching the question of observation as an energy/power/attention flow is something I wrote about in my dissertation while attempting to make the argument that broad techno-social systems may be better understood as precisely what you propose for the subset of the techno-social system -- networks of observation -- as a field of flows. For me it is clear that this approach is far more powerful than traditional materialist/mechanistic approaches that assume *no* connection between elements of our system unless proven, rather than assuming connection (described well via this vector field of power flows) and proceeding with this far more holistic understanding (that can also be modeled by systems thinking approaches). These disparate artificial elements -- economics, politics, science, nation-states, geographies, ideologies, even personal realities -- are extremely hard to reconcile from a materialist (even a 'new' materialist!) worldview. The 'veillance intensity' you speak of can be seen as the amount of attention (observing) that is directed towards a certain manifestation. The reason there is an increase in power flows is that a human 'paying' attention is actually expending life-energy in a directed way (in that vector field): attention can be seen as a directing, focusing, and expending of embodied life-energy. Bravo for coming up with this, and putting it out there on nettime! I'd be curious to know more about where this came from in your praxis! Oh, while you call it theoretical, I don't think it takes much imagination to see that what you propose well-describes 'reality'. As a model for that reality, if it works in many cases, it becomes a good tool; it's only when the model supercedes the reality it models that we run into problems... Cheers, John PS -- so the difference of 'sur' and 'sous' simply relates to the directedness (flux) of energy/power flows in the field. If only Lacan and Foucault hadn't been thoroughly immersed in a Newtonian model of their worlds ... life could have taken a more power-full turn for the many following their philosophies! -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: de Jong, Lovink, and Riemens: 10 Bitcoin
This info from the morlock & elloi and the previous poster raised the question in my mind -- a question that is *not* facetious -- of the conditions that Bitcoin miners are working under. Bitcoin mining is currently reduced to less than 10 operators. There is relatively small number of people involved, and none of these seem to have a standing army or a navy. How much would it cost to coerce/subvert 51% of these It does sound a bit like other global mining industries -- coalescing to a few powerful operators over time, yet, while they are operating crucial enterprises in terms of globalism, they are subject to the whims of the market, and to government regulatory activities (up to and including the use of military force). I wonder, though, about the personal lives of the miners. Are they enjoying the fruits of their labor?, what are their daily living conditions?, what kinds of stresses are incurred by their activities? As is well-known on this list, there is a terrible price paid by many of those who are at the contact point of natural resource extraction (and the ensuing wealth creation from the natural commons). Is there a corollary in Bitcoin? Why? Why not? jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: choose-your-own adventure: a brief history of nettime
A bit late on the thread -- I concur with Jaromil -- a fair, well-written, and inclusive (as far as that goes) account of the list, kudos for taking the time to compose it. Age does (productively or not) bring on reflection on the past, and at two decades, well, it's now a collective history. Thanks, Felix (@305 posts under no pseudonym) & Ted (@351 posts under no pseudonym) (1600 under the 'nettime ...' rubric) I'm wondering if there are any deeper stats available -- in retrospect -- such as subscriber numbers over time; posts over time, etc... My email archive shows 22600 entries ... but I had a few gaps of some months over the course of the almost 20 years... cheers, jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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
Mobile Justice app
Apps to Record Police Put Power in the Public’s Hands: http://tinyurl.com/p9r348t "Get the ACLU’s Mobile Justice app at and keep justice within reach." Where is this going? JH # 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: McKenzie Wark: Birth of Thanaticism
On the Thanaticism discussion -- I ran across this excerpt from an interview with Langdon Winner: Q: You have also been critical of the term Anthropocene, the idea that we are living in a new epoch where human activities define ecosystems. It’s an idea that could shape development planning over the next few decades. Why do you think we need to be wary? LW: It’s the idea that you can name geological epochs according to some identifiable characteristic. The people who proposed the Anthropocene say humanity is responsible for the significant changes of the past centuries and changes in the future. But naming this geological period after humanity is kind of deterministic — “this is what humans have done”. And it is self-exulting — “look at our grand role in the history of the cosmos”. But if you look at what is being projected, a better name might be Thanatopocene, after Thanatos, the Greek personification of death. It appears that instead of a grand exultation and transcendence of humanity, we are at a death spiral. So why exult ourselves with concepts like Anthropocene? I find its self-congratulatory power fantasy highly suspicious, at the very point where we ought to be looking at the good evidence that challenges the way of life that’s been built up over the last three centuries. Full interview at http://tinyurl.com/nuw6qjy -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: VW
This is the way the industry always works when closed-source. This event should remind everyone (and especially consumer associations) how important is to have the industry release its software open-source, down to the firmware and hardware. This must be an imperative especially for But of course this will *never* happen -- the nature of corporate/competitive capitalism is drenched in secrecy, stealth, corruption, collusion, profiteering, graft, etc ... To suppose that this nature will change seems a ... pipe dream. To counter the Machiavellian, I-and-I becomes one. Open and Closed systems exist as ways of seeing/modeling reality and are each mutally exclusive worldviews. To hold one negates the other despite the apparent reality that the cosmos is indeed an Open System -- and perhaps Open Systems 'win' in the end ... but not now, not yet. When the last corporatized human lays down to die, and the lamb lies with the lion, maybe then ... At any rate, no such imperative (the word itself sourced in imperial edict!) will come unless accompanied by imperatives erasing human rights within the techno-social system, that is the nature of imperatives. jh PS - I wonder if there is a precedent for the students and faculty @ Luneburg to push for divestment from their cash cow? True and empowered learning has always been at odds with state-sanctioned and corporate-supported institution. -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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: what if we were all right but all wrong?
Hallo Armin simple humanistic themes. On one hand slogans probably need to be so simple to mobilize so many, but on the other hand the absence of any deeper political analysis means that those 30.000 will not form the nucleus of a new political movement ... which made me a bit sad in the end ... I wonder if there is any connection between this passive simplicity, lack of robust intellectual engagement and action, and the 'Like' button mentality of FB? Not to say that there must be some who can translate the energy of mass demonstration into personal life-changing action, but it would seem that this lethargy becomes a deep part of life in this moment everywhere ... but who/what will wake people to thoughtful analysis and movement? JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # 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 Lori Emerson: What's Wrong With the Internet and How
On 28/Jul/15 02:56, Iain Boal wrote: So there was a purely political decision to build in the asymmetries. Can you corroborate, beyond the mere assertion? Who? When? Evidence welcome. IB Good question -- I don't think there is such a thing as 'purely political' decisions -- that would suggest that causation for techno-social change arises and is implemented without relation to actual resource constraints. (Nothing is purely political, eh?) I am no expert in this question, but in principle, when the task of engineering a solution is in progress, there is a finite number of assumptions, and variables that one is able to consider -- the solution is never perfect. It can approach perfection but that approach would generally behave asymptotically, based on the ever-increasing consumption of resources necessary to more and more accurately model the reality that the solution is embedded within and that is impressing itself on the solution. A systems approach -- which was, if nothing else, the widest approach of the social organization (the US military-industrial complex) that was spawning these solutions (networked communications) -- if not a more close structured approach for the particular development project (solution). No systems-based solutions are perfect. And it's easy to look back and conjecture about where precisely the imperfection arose -- from intent, from lack of time/funding/resources to further optimize solutions, from lack of understanding of ultimate use of the protocols, etc. And I'm not sure of the point in spending time in trying to suss out particular details aside from that process throwing light onto more general flaws in wider processes -- there are thousands of technological implementations that drive our lives in one way or another -- perhaps it's better to understand some principles as to the social dynamic of how those 'protocols' arise and control us than to reverse-engineer each particular protocol and determine its genesis. I would suggest that one piece of evidence that would support MorlockElloi's assertion would be to see where the developer(s) studied! (MIT?, likely). The Internet *is* it's lowest protocol layers. The ideology and politics are embedded in protocols, and attempts to 'solve' the problem without addressing these fundamental issues are doomed to fail. I would totally agree with this, and it's possible to drill 'deeper' into protocorollary layers of a technology below what is traditionally held as protocol -- into the protocols of systems theory, into the military itself (the 'protocols' of Sun Tzu!)... etc... JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Claire Bishop?s Game (kris cohen)
Hi Kris -- While as a practitioner more than a theorist, I have not read 'Artificial Hells', I note your observation that the analysis of form cannot spark w/o the sociological pole (Jameson)... This is a crucial observation that I intuit that Bishop's (and to a large degree Bourriaud's, imho) concepts fall flat. While I personally don't use a model that includes 'sociological' I have constructed a model of reality that transcends form (as I suspect that many (participatory) artists do to some degree). If there is any verity to the concept that you had to be there, a statement that I have often used when asked to describe a particular participatory 'situation' that I have facilitated as 'artist', formal analysis is a deeply flawed or even useless tool to access the ensuing dynamics, effects, and outcome of (some) participatory works. Her use of case histories, as one standing 'outside' is only for other historians and folks obsessed with sussing out a stance based on a representation of life, without ever expendig life-time and life-energy on it: the demon observer that kills Schrödinger's cat, or not. This is the question of difference that you raise: What is the difference between the structure of a participatory occasion and the affective experience of that event? -- The answer, frictional life itself! The map is never the territory. And you are quite perceptive in your ultimate call: the aesthetic case can do more than reorganize the art world around another collective noun. It can do analytical work in and on the present tense. Such attention to form would seek not only to use disciplinary standards to reassure ourselves of art’s critical distance—to notice when, from that distance, it attacks other people’s comforts—but would demand that historians of the aesthetic event re-invent the genres of our own participation. Be there then; be here now. Thanks, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime What should GCHQ do? [was Re: nettime-l Digest, Vol
Robert -- where are you licensed to practice engineering? And in what capacity/field? one of the rallying cries of the crypto crowd is 'trust the math.' I don't, because math doesn't exist in the abstract. Its relationship to engineering is obvious: engineers implement math, they make it real, make it happen. Its relationship to law is less obvious. I Actually, most engineers (I'm one) don't trust the math (or strictly speaking, the physics and the math behind it). I would challenge you to do a survey of professional engineers to prove the veracity of that statement. Although the general statements here are gross simplifications of engineering, I definitely trust the math as an engineer (at the very least in the case of mechanics and the physics of materials). Elsewise you would never know where to start with engineering a structure. Overkill on specs can be just as bad as underkill in causing the failure of a system. Behavior of materials under extreme conditions that they are poorly tested for (or not tested at all) certainly can end in failure, but it is not economic to test everything for every possible circumstance. Ask any engineer. If the physics says your material such be this thick to make it strong enough, engineers will always add a fudge factor, say 50% double the thickness, or even more. This is not a matter of math but of empirical experience and a feel for the medium the engineer is working with. Any professional engineer I know would never use the term 'fudge factor' -- if you did in anything but a humorous/drunken situation, you would lose your license to practice. You would use collectively determined and specified margins of error in material properties that would be carefully carried over from a component level to a system level and all that would be considered when implementing a particular design. The final design of the engineer in fact reflects a lack of trust for the theory and greater reliance on experiential/empirical data. Materials science is hardly theory -- the strength of a material fabricated in a known way is an empirically determined quantity -- stochastic, sure, but the range of properties are generally well-known for commonly used materials -- over-design is simply adding a quantified margin of error to compensate for events occurring within some statistically-determined framework of load. Sure there are failures -- in human calculation, in human operation, and in human knowledge -- but the fact that we have the level of civilization that we have is a rather obvious demonstration of the veracity of collective engineering knowledge. (Of course, I'm not arguing that it's all 'good', but most of it it pretty damned functional. Think about it the next time you board a plane.) JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime To Save the World… Preface by B
A few comments on Bernard Stiegler's intro... On 27/Apr/15 07:08, ??rsan ??enalp wrote: 4. Only knowledge has the capacity to produce new negentropic potential, and only social organisations based on systemic enhancement and culture made possible through reticular parity will enable a move beyond the anthropocene, to ???save the world???, and enter into what would therefore be called the ???neganthropocene???. Hmmm, intriguing as this is, I don't think I can agree -- knowledge may be seen as new (or novel) configurations of neural pathways (as embodied knowledge) or as ordered data (information) that has been ordered as a configuration of energized matter. Both these forms of knowledge require energy to create and sustain. They are therefore energy drains on the wider techno-social system and the eco-system. Of course, knowledge and information does function as an optimizing paradigm for making the best use of available resources -- supporting functions like the propagation of the species and the satisfaction of basic needs *and* the hegemonic control of one segment of society over an other. Prior to 'reticular parity' (does anyone know exactly what is being talked about here? My approximate guess is 'network equality' which is *only* a theoretical system state in a universe that is organized around the anisotropic distribution of energized matter!) -- with this, already, we are moving into the theoretical, not the actual! Saving the world is *not* going to happen without a substantial (precipitous) drop in the human population. Nothing short of this will alter the over-riding trajectory of what is happening in the present moment. One sure way of decreasing the population is to subtract large quantities of available energy from the techno-social equation -- this will have an immediate knock-on effect of severly compromised life-expectancy for large numbers of people. Semantically, a 'negentropic potential' can be understood to be a (potential) energy source. Nothing but a *real* energy source has (literally!) the power to counter entropic decline. Knowledge as an abstraction of such cannot in itself precipitate a negentropic 'situation' -- knowledge has to be combined with actualization (which means energy consumption). It is not known what mechanism precipitates a spontaneous negentropic 'situation' in an open system (the most fundamental example being the'rise' of Life from ???). But any such situation requires an energy input from the environs of that situation... A negentropic situation is one where energy is being consumed at a faster rate than is the case in simple entropic decline... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime process
Writing this morning reflection as an slew of F-16C/Ds dog-fight (or joy-ride)
in the skies above at a base operational cost of $20K/hour each, completely
drowning out the migrating bird sounds ...
Reflecting on the social integration of technology that is 'promoted' by
corporate players, there seems to be several discrete steps that are repeated
over and over with each 'wave' of technological 'innovation'. As I glanced
through http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32221363 it seemed to go something
like this:
(military-industrial) exploratory development of a particular root technology
(military-industrial) deployment of derivitaves of the technology within the
'defense' sector
early adopters just outside the military-industrial (academia and related social
areas in direct contact with the military-industrial)
corporate acquisition or simple corporatization of particular derivatives as
potential consumer 'goldmines'
hyper-advertising of particular product in targeted trade areas to extend the
industrial integration/base
early 'professional' adoption
more widespread hyping/advertising to the broader market
'prosumer' adoption
widespread adoption ('you have to have it')
then, on the side, a few smart/attentive/mindful individuals begin to realize
that the 'have to have it' paradigm for particular technology is merely a ruse
to ensure mass-adoption of what is essentially a technique for keeping the wider
popultion attention-enslaved by said technology. (nobody cares about this fringe
'nettime' phenomena)
the technologies comprise detailed methodologies for tapping the life-time and
life-energies of the widest swath of the population to ensure that there is a
constant power-base for those in power. they include energy-sapping feedback
mechanisms for making sure that the system is not compromised by infiltration of
countervailing ideas and processes.
(and it's possible to substitute, cultural-industrial, pharmaco-industrial,
bio-tech-industrial, media-entertainment-industrial, and so on, though I
personally consider that the entire industrial production complex is ultimately
rooted in a certain level of desperate violence that comes from that particular
dimension of human nature that demands Darwinian projection of genetic
information into the future, perhaps ... )
radio, TV, Internet, drones, bio-tech, over-the-counter drugs, cars, ...
rinse, wash, repeat.
we are Devo.
jh
--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++
# distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission
# nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime nottime: the end of nettime
On 06/Apr/15 07:48, Keith Sanborn wrote: Thanks for this explanation. Still, feel the love, Ted and Felix, before we move on. On the other hand, systems never persist forever. They exist within time and persist only when there is enough energy input to maintain their order. The last subscriber living will be responsible for posting a request to power down the mail server ... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime nottime: the end of nettime
Hei Brad - amazing that there is any accolade whatsoever for this institutionalised censorship! give us less of what you think we might read! how nice to be sheltered from unwanted intrusion into your comfy institutionally-sponsored lives! I understand that I don't know what I don't see on nettime, but I'm smart enough to have other sources of information that is mission-critical to my own existence, and don't rely on Ted and Felix to 100% determine what choices I make in my life. They have taken some of their lifetimes to do this moderation/filtering task which makes nettime more tolerable than, say, the old 7-11 list, etc etc, and for that gift of their time that they will never get back, I am thankful. I don't think there is a conspiracy behind every post. You cannot politically defy the institutions when all you really wanted was to be clasped to their bosoms and hope in time to be cherished under the very framework of furthermore, I have for the duration of this nettime project not had any particular 'institutional affiliation' -- quite to the contrary, I am living on a sustainable retrofit project on a small house in the Arizona mountains. Yes, I do hope to make a small profit in a year or two on my sweat equity. And indeed, this week's project is retro-fitting a defunct freezer and turning it into a sizeable worm farm so that I can further enrich the poorly treated soil on my property. At some level, it puzzles me that you pay any attention to nettime if it is so incredibly annoying to you. John PS - not to mention that I have in the past supported your work, you may have forgotten this... -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Wash Post: Jacob Silverman: the man whose utopian vision
I find all this more interesting: Meet the man whose utopian vision for the Internet conquered, and then warped, Silicon Valley Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google Plus Share via Email More Options Share via Email Share on Whatsapp Share on Pinterest Share on Google Plus Share on LinkedIn Share on Tumblr Resize Text Print Article Comments By Jacob Silverman March 20 at 11:28 AM Twitter: @silvermanjacob Read more from Outlook and follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter. Continue reading 10 minutes left * Share on FacebookShare * Share on TwitterTweet Comments Show Comments Discussion Policy Comments SuperFan Badge SuperFan badge holders consistently post smart, timely comments about Washington area sports and teams. More about badges | Request a badge Culture Connoisseur Badge Culture Connoisseurs consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on the arts, lifestyle and entertainment. More about badges | Request a badge Fact Checker Badge Fact Checkers contribute questions, information and facts to The Fact Checker. More about badges | Request a badge Washingtologist Badge Washingtologists consistently post thought-provoking, timely comments on events, communities, and trends in the Washington area. More about badges | Request a badge Post Writer Badge This commenter is a Washington Post editor, reporter or producer. Post Forum Badge Post Forum members consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on politics, national and international affairs. More about badges | Request a badge Weather Watcher Badge Weather Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on climates and forecasts. More about badges | Request a badge World Watcher Badge World Watchers consistently offer thought-provoking, timely comments on international affairs. More about badges | Request a badge Post Contributor Badge This commenter is a Washington Post contributor. Post contributors aren't staff, but may write articles or columns. In some cases, contributors are sources or experts quoted in a story. More about badges | Request a badge Post Recommended Washington Post reporters or editors recommend this comment or reader post. You must be logged in to report a comment. Sign in here You must be logged in to recommend a comment. Sign in here Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers. All comments are posted in the All Comments tab. More about badges Get a badge To pause and restart automatic updates, click Live or Paused. If paused, you'll be notified of the number of additional comments that have come in. Comments our editors find particularly useful or relevant are displayed in Top Comments, as are comments by users with these badges: . Replies to those posts appear here, as well as posts by staff writers. * Spam * Offensive * Disagree * Off-Topic * + Facebook + Twitter + Reddit + StumbleUpon + Digg + Delicious opinions Add Please enter a valid email address The Washington Post Every story. Every feature. Every insight. Yours for as low as JUST 99???! Subscribe Not Now opinions The Washington Post Add You might also like: Name of Related Newsletter (daily) Another Related Newsletter (M-W-F) This Newsletter is Good (weekly) No, thanks Sign Up Not Now Incorrect email -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Reframing the Creative Question
Hallo Allan - history. Now, to the point, what is disastrous is to see processes of change simply in economic terms - as a revolt against neoliberal values, social conditions - the shallow rhetoric of the Labour Party in the UK is a great, pathetic, example of this. Cultures of resistance, voices of change, a more expansive social horizon, do not appear, come into being, as a product of some creative class but emanate from a more nuanced, multi-dimensional social reality. I agree that the rhetoric of the market/economics seems to be a panacea that damages potentials of change -- the process would also have to entail embodied, internal change in one's own self as well as change in the momentary, daily, and cumulative life-pathway, way-of-going, way-of-being, way-of-doing. I think that the general politicization of change also works against a more self-controlled and internalized process that I believe is a necessary precursor of widely sustainable social change. Another pessimistic example is in the area of energy use -- try doing a survey to see who around you has made hard core changes in their life-style that would impact their total energy usage. I find the anecdotal evidence points to the situation that very few people are making substantive changes on that daily level... Cheers, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hackers can't solve Surveillance
Good points Dmytri Morlockelloi-- The nature of political challenges has changed *due* to the technology, and there is no way to enroll the unwashed into the action without understanding the said technology. It is clear that the feedback loops between what people do in life and what comes back to them get longer and longer in terms of how technology taps off their life-energies. And a 'big picture' that allows a sussing-out of the connections is very much not available to the general population. But I'm not so sure that a detailed understanding of a particular technological concept is any solution -- I think more principled understandings that are not so difficult to grasp, when presented in the right way, can address this problem. Given that the tech is predicated on systems theory -- perhaps some critical systems thinking could go a long way in allowing people to understand many of the power relationships that are operational in the present situation. Today, to get political traction on this issue, one needs to explain (a) long term consequences of the loss of privacy by (b) complex technical means. It's not going to happen unless you essentially teach the population to do crypto themselves, without benevolent or malevolent elites. You will not get real political traction on blind faith (something elite hackers tell us to do.) You cannot substitute real political engagement by religion, which this trust us, we're the good guys approach boils down to. Yet this is exactly the kind of traction that operates for those who get all sorts of uneducated folks to follow them -- it is occurring 'where the rubber hits the road' around the world -- the blindest of all faith -- from religious imbecility to techno-utopianism that continues (remarkably) to fluorish. This substitution is absolutely augmented by the technological. And it spawns 'real' political engagement -- especially at the level of bodies being spent to control territories. So it is back to the technology, and deep understanding by pretty much everyone. There are no shortcuts, and no amount of 20th century politics will solve this. That's the real challenge - education, and it looks like a lost cause. The unwashed are dumb, and the smart ones are well paid. I do agree with this -- 19th20th century political theory (or action) will not solve these issues. I know of no such ideology yet that is predicated on the concept get rid of 90% of the species and we'll be fine. Maybe in the near term such ideologies will arise with more force than anyone expects. Although I rather guess that the 'ideology' of viral contagion, or lack of water and food will trump any organized (and possibly altruistic) human response to what we face in the moment. An ideology that skips altruistic blandishment and intellectual pretension for I've got the biggest gun will be very attractive to many. Oh, wait that's what's happening, never mind... I don't see a good correlation between intelligence and pay. Maybe you are talking about a certain kind of intelligence? Like, how to manipulate people or something? I find that intelligence above a certain level is almost a handicap in average socialization. JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime McKenzie Wark: This is not capitalism, this is something
Hi Nic, -- you beat me to it by some minutes -- you are absolutely correct on your assessment of what appears as an always-present background hubris that can be found more than often embedded within the 'hacker aesthetic' (among other techno-social configurations). It makes sense that a way-of-going -- while having some progressive social beliefs but that is otherwise embedded (literally!) in the techno-social infrastructure -- that it could never deny that the use of its tools are part of the problem. And perhaps my response is not valid: if I go back and read this as a Lament, well, then, yes, things are going to hell, and maybe I disagree with the details, the general emotional content is understandable. (and a side note -- NYC seems over-controlled, but maybe not overdeveloped in the big picture -- it's been sliding towards a more chaotic state for some time now, if the general infrastructure is any indication, there are far more over-developed places on the planet these days) This is the meaning of the Anthropocene: that the futures of the human and material worlds are now totally entwined. Just as Nietzsche declared that God is dead, now we know that ecology is dead. There is no longer a homeostatic cycle that can be put right just by withdrawing. There is no environment that forms a neutral background to working and hacking. But this *is* bunk. If you don't think there is a homeostatic cycle that will override anything humans can produce, you need to get out more! While, yes, if you subscribe to an Indra's Net pov, then every small action or change anywhere affects all other things simultaneously and forever, sure humans have impacted the cosmos. But so has everything else. And, sure, human reconfigured nuclear materials and such are 'long term' compared to our puny existences, but they will not end life, as a general phenomena, on the planet. Maybe I'm not reading you correctly here, the future of nature (the material world) has never been separable from the future of (human) life on the planet. If you follow the Gaia model, what is typically construed as Life is a subset of larger, wider systems that are churning into that future -- humans and all they've done, thought, said, and believed are not the defining factor in that impulsion to order. Just as the category of `man' collapses once there is no God, so too the category of the social collapses when there is no environment. This could be very helpful, to be sure, to eliminate some categories and names that muddy a clearer perception of *what is*. To become child-like or unselfconsciously pre-cognitive. The social becomes the world becomes the environment, humans become only another transitory form of life. All the mess of society is dross and noise getting in the way of more fundamental perception. The material world is laced with traces of the human, and the human turns out to be made of nothing much besides displaced flows of this or that element or molecule. Well, if you want to go to Sagan's 'we are stardust,' sure, but we are not masters of all we see. We are a short-term blip on the face of the planet. The social easily fades away based on one's point of view and/or the world view one subscribes to. Maybe it never existed to begin with. We are as any other living organisms that without exception alter the energy flows that they are a part of. We have, from a strictly material metric altered certain flows that other life-forms have not. But regarding, for instance, CO2, bacterial life forms altered the global atmosphere on a much greater scale. And the fact that they did doesn't 'make a difference' compared to us, does it? All that said, I concur with your apparent cynicism regarding human social systems. But maybe that's just they way it is -- we are riding Life -- yet Life is the master here, not humans. And the trajectory (and 'meaning') of Life could perhaps be simply described as a quicker path for order to spend itself into chaos, and thus wind down the cosmos... The more order, the more over-development that we impose, the more we consume, the quicker it all winds down... The level of order that a cybernetic society imposes on the world has sped up our use of energy to maintain it all by orders of magnitude over pre-digital societies. A hacker utopia feeds this and feeds on this, and, I guess if you live in the moment alone with Buddha, it's quite okay to suggest that we 'build it live in it' but somehow this seems to be exactly what we are doing already. And that this, here, now, is either the greatest 'utopia' humans can create, or Hell, or both, simultaneously... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime
Re: nettime Evgeny Morozov and the Perils of Highbrow Journalism.
It takes time and energy to impose order on a system. Clearly many many segments of the 'developed world' are manifesting the inevitable decrease in the energy available to maintain their own order. Or, the perceived decline in fact-checking could rather be the result of a continued ascendance of the formal rituals of accountancy which t bytfield mentioned, combined with a networked innundation of facts. Yes, definitely -- fact-checking / accountancy are both forms of feedback for the various expressions and projections of power that are made within a techno-social system -- for the subjective purposes of 'optimization'. And when the level of feedback rises to a certain level, the system moves into dysfunction and ultimate collapse -- unless it is able to find and tap into additional energy resources (hire more fact-checkers, obviously, is a solution at one level, but this requires a bigger cash flow, etc, etc). And, as Tim and others pointed out, in early 20th century academic writing references, footnotes, and other direct, detailed linkages to other knowledge-work was generally sparse compared to the situation now. Attention was paid to original thinking, and perhaps the 'pressure to succeed' was less onerous (fewer people on the planet, and the wider social system had ascendant and seemingly unlimited energy resources). In a highly competitive system (now), where there is a surplus of some resources (bodies w/ PhDs), the system can project ever finer feedback controls over participants making them jump through ever-smaller hoops; while at the same time, resource competition in the global sense has gotten ever more cutthroat. There are barbarians, terrorists, drug users, Ebola, and general chaos 'out there' -- I'll do anything to be a functionary in the system Here's my article, Sir. What about the title, is *that* a fact?, you'd better f*kin' be sure! (do-loop repeat at each word in 5000-character article). When the shit hits the fan, no one will care how long your bibliography is, but rather, *can you think creatively enough to survive?* Until the flying excrement reaches a threshold value, folks' life-energies will be ever more enthralled by the presently-operational system. Perhaps in the end, it is the poetess/poet that is the most optimal digester-of-language, the rest are constipated on the bland gruel of the academy *and* socially-mediated life... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Evgeny Morozov and the Perils of Highbrow Journalism
On 19/Oct/14 08:53, David Mandl wrote: It seems clear that the New Yorker is no longer home of the best fact-checking/copyediting humankind can achieve. It takes time and energy to impose order on a system. Clearly many many segments of the 'developed world' are manifesting the inevitable decrease in the energy available to maintain their own order. This is not unrelated to decaying bridges, pot-holed roads, a medical system that cannot organize itself to deal with emergencies, problems with ones local cable internet provider, etc etc etc. Those with money can purchase the extra energy by proxy, the rest are left on a downward slide. While I'm sure there are not a few Wall Street types who still read the NY'er, it's 'demise' also evidences a shrinking power base in the wider social system... When they started a blog as a separate entity from the magazine I heard writer and editor friends complain about errors all the time. It had very The complexity of web-publishing versus print may have drained the organizations vitality. I just spent two months prepping a small print magazine for a rather simple Wordpress deployment. It was a clear example -- they were perfectly capable of dealing with their print existence, and were doing quite well with that; but the added complexity of a web deployment stretched them to the limits -- simply being organized enough to make sure of file naming conventions as content migrated from print to web was overwhelming for them... Things are bad all over, as the old saying goes. This is repeated along the slippery slope of Imperial decline... so it goes. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime automated digest [x2: griffis, gurstein]
Very, very prescient of McLuhan but his otherwise extremely insightful analysis missed one element--the political economic context into which these technology induced changes would be introduced and which would both influence and be influenced by. Michael a few comments/observations/musings -- I wouldn't use the term 'induced' -- in our context, as we are still very much immersed/part of the post-WWII military-industrial-academic complex, the political-economic dimensions (changes) are not being altered by induction, the entire structure of that MIA-complex is what the power relations are constructed on/from to begin with. [Induction is a concept about energy-transfer precipitating 'at a distance' between two otherwise disconnected systems.] Of course those power relations do evolve, and the MIA complex is not the only actor, given the power shifts of globalization. (Do we include the Army of the People's Republic of China and the entire mining/manufacturing/feeding regime that is integral to it as part of it? SURE!) The gist of the conversation here has isolated the 'digital' IT from the larger context of power structures and relations that it is still completely embedded within. To make an IT device requires machines, big machines, machines in the Industrial Revolution sense, and it requires numerous layers of those -- ever driven a 250-ton dump truck operating in a gold mine; ever bucked 10-inch pipe on a rotary-drilling platform on an oil rig? All these machines (and their operators) are part of a political/economic power structure that undergirds/immerses this IT sector (and it's expression of political/economics) that we speak about here in the isolated abstract. To ignore the political economics of ALL that wider system is to have a very unbalanced analysis of the overall set of human power relations (politics!) that drive our global techno-social system. What you call a 'new stage' is only a slight quantitative alteration in the relation between power expression and the feedback (surveillance, data gathering, data mining) that is/has been necessary to control the willing/unwilling participants in the system. It is clear that as feedback increases asymptotically that the system experiences a form of internal sclerosis (Vaclav Havel wrote about this in The Power of the Powerless in 1985, and the East German 'Stasi' state is a good example). Sclerosis usually ends with the death of the organism. IMHO, none of the power relations in this techno-social system have anything to do with democracy. And especially these days, it is no wonder that there would be an existential crisis, for Western democracies and their camp followers. Unfortunately I think that this crisis arises out of a general ignorance of the 'real' power relations that, again, arise from the fundamental structures of the MIA and that all our relations (even here on 'nettime') are predicated on. Cheers, JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Even so, many people here, while disliking Google for some things, also recognize that some of the tech giants are making real efforts on environmental issues, and some of them are trying to at least consider how they affect local communities. But sometimes it's hard to Certainly any of these 'giants' that are running on (carbon!) cloud computing have no interest in substantive environmental 'issues' except for hypocritical nods at things that do not affect their bottom line or their 'owners' endless egomaniacal desire to expand their control and power ... A massive corporation, as it rises, is a techno-social agglomeration that distorts existing flows and architectures of power. However, in our current case, as the pre-existing power flows are those of the military-industrial-academic complex, these 'newer' flows will doubtless not deviate from those pre-existing patterns and suddenly 'benefit' a local community. Is Silicon Valley really any different than the Niger Delta in this respect? jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Indeed Brian! Geez, why couldn't the Stanford folks have just stuck with Pong? Which for me suggests the rhetorical question: What is it that we searching for? JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime evidence of some things
In collaboration with global creative agency TKM9, CCA* the company used interactive digital signage installed on beverage coolers to collect data on sales and consumer interaction, and share content with customers at the point of sale – such as discount offers and weather reports. With the device, CCA is also able to draw consumers into an interactive multimedia and social-media experience, via the coolers and the consumers’ own devices, offering games, contests, Facebook posts and more. “Interacting with the coolers using touch, gestures and their own mobile phones gives customers a unique experience that has been proven to increase sales and brand loyalty,” says Hodgens. “For example, after snapping a photo of themselves with the cooler’s integrated webcam, they can use a built-in app to change their appearance with different hairstyles and outfits, set the image to music, and then share it through Facebook.” * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Amatil from : http://tinyurl.com/mx8mjbg Sounds like the populace is entirely subjugated ... from Whiskey Row jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, systems analyst http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Computers in Society's Future, W.H. Ware, Rand Corp, 1971
(ran across this brief doc -- some of you might be interested. It's a tiny bit prescient of the current situation...) Cheers, John COMPUTERS IN SOCIETY'S FUTURE (1) W.H. Ware The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California I very much appreciated the opportunity of speaking last year at the Kingston Conference on Information and Personal Privacy.(2) I also appreciate that opportunity to talk again about essentially the same subject: computers in our society. I feel very much indebted to Canada and its professional and learned societies for stimulating me twice in slightly over a year to organize my thoughts on this matter. I probably would not have done so otherwise, given the normal press of business. Also, I'm getting very fond of the idea of coming to Canada every springtime. Today, I would like to 'describe' briefly some of the reasons why the computer has attained its present position relative to society and to suggest ways in which it is already touching the life of each individual -- in some cases very extensively, sometimes for good, sometimes with ominous overtones. I want to indicate why I think there is a problem, and if my discussion is persuasive, I will succeed in making you realize that the problem is real -- and is here now. Let's begin by asking the question: Why is it that information has become so increasingly important to society? Some of man's needs increase roughly with his numbers. Food and clothing arc obvious examples; approximately twice as many people will require twice as much food. Other needs, too, increase with the number of societal units. For example, as the number of families increase, so does the demand for housing and household appliances. But the information needs or society are multiplying much more rapidly. Take, for example, your own case: How many credit cards do you have? insurance policy accounts? bank or other financial accounts? magazine subscriptions? Do they number fifteen? twenty-five? fifty? Each one of these represents an information packet of some kind that has to be dealt with. Thus, any one of us is responsible for increasing the information needs of society by a few tenfold. Even if the need for information is proportional to the number of individuals, it has a very large multiplicative factor. One might even argue that information need is related to all the possible interactions that can take place among societal units. If so, society's information requirements are increasing according to some combinatorial function. Whatever the case, society has created a vigorously expanding consumer market for information. I'd like to emphasize that society's size alone is sufficient to drive the problem. You all know the classic statement about the telephone company: If the telephone company had not invented automatic switching and direct-distance dialing, then every woman would be required for a long-distance operator. Therefore, as industry supplies society with services and products, it must also automate in order to deal with the information that these services and products generate and imply. Consider the notion of an information vector, which is some quantity of information that describes something about one of us personally, about something we do or about some interaction between one of us and another member of society. In this context, the number of information vectors needed to control, to govern, and to describe society and its members is increasing at a staggering rate. The number increases not only with the size of society but also with the affluence of society; as we acquire more and more disposable wealth, we want and do more and more things. Where does the computer fit into all of this and, especially, why has the digital computer become so important? Because it's all we have. It is the only technology that we possess that can store, retrieve, and manipulate data of any kind in very general ways. Let me point out in this context that the communications art, for air its usefulness, for all its advanced state of technology, is simply a transportation system for information. Thus, while communications technology provides us with a means of moving information from place to place, it does not process it. It is computer technology that enables man to really manipulate and process information in either simple or involved ways, and to derive new information from the original. Digital computer technology provides us with the tool we need to accommodate our growing information requirements; it lets us do the things we have to do as a society, economically and efficiently. The result is that we are today experiencing an almost chaotic proliferation of systems that deal with information about people, and that exploit the computer to do it. To put this in perspective, let me remind you that the computing business is only about twenty years old. In the 1950s, the industry really got
nettime aclu: IoT
http://tinyurl.com/l5vcnp7 and http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175822/ Finally somebody makes a public argument against the breathless Red Herring Utopian hype around IoT and its purported deep and beneficent innocence. Back in the 90s, there was the same level of hype around the Web in general, and we got the NSA. Imagine what IoT will bring us. The ACLU makes a powerful argument to where we *don't* want to end up, given the level of technological sophistication and data agglomeration we, under this globalized techno-social regime, are converging on... Cheers. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Post-digital
Rousseau comes fleetingly to mind: The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. And a short extract from my dissertation that resonates with that question of how to proceed while propping up the wider techno-social system *less*: We most impact the power concentrations of the Regime by cultivating an understanding of where our energy comes from, at all scales, where it goes, and most importantly, where our attention is engaged: on which signals, on which flows. In the process of paying close attention to the highly mediated, amplified, signals of the Regime, directed by its protocols, we confirm our reciprocal role as its optimized energy source. By (re)turning our creative attentions to the granular sources of the Regime's energy -- to the individual Others around us -- and spending our life-energy, our life-time in less mediated Dialogue with them via our own protocols, we immediately begin draining the Regime of its primary power source. We preserve those limited life-energies for more local and immediate encounters. It is within these energized encounters, these Dialogues between the Self and the Other, where transformation, (r)evolution, and change are ultimately sited. As a media artist, it is this generation of localized protocols that is perhaps the most effective strategy to mitigate or even reverse the slide toward hierarchic centralization [and consequent surveillance!!]. It should be some solace that though we cannot escape the ultimate destiny of Life on the planet: in the mean while we may choose to go with the flow of dialogue, embracing change in the Self and in the Other, here, now. and this aside, crucially: http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199 Cheers, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Rules for the digital world
-- effectively destroying it from the 'inside.' ** So it goes! jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime conjunctural analysis
On 19/Feb/14 21:38, d...@geer.org wrote: Tangentially related, this is a rundown of student economics as measured by lifetime ROI for the price of tuition (in the US): Hi Dan -- thanks for bringing this data up tangentially... but these numbers are verging on fantasy -- I know for my alma mater(s) the actual/(even potential) salary data for alumni 10-20-30 years out is extremely scarce -- to the point of being statistically very suspect. Those few who are actually tracked as alumni (who participate in alumni associations and such) are likely to be a more conservative, stable, and perhaps a more 'standard' population group. The kind of people who do their (socially proscribed) job to get the social rewards of that conservatism. And there is no hint of the other market forces (like the rapid contraction of the aerospace sector that liquidated tens of thousands of mid-to-late career engineers in the 1970s, and in the case of my engineering sector, the extractives industry, which has seen huge fluctuations in employment scenarios over the last 30+ years since I graduated with my degree). And who knows what the future holds? (College kids *DO* know -- unemployment!) Of course, some very very general fuzzy trends might be picked up from the data table, but I would say that in reality one standard deviation in the numbers could easily +/- 75% of these median values. Experientially accumulated knowledge-sets -- including learning that is socially or personally relevant (itself a hugely subjective question), learning that increases the survivability of the individual (or the survivability of the species or of the planet), learning that brings personal satisfaction -- are certainly sets that seldom fully coincide. I'm convinced that this statistics set is yet another belated and desperate effort to convince a population that a certain (college) knowledge set is relevant. I know that many of us who have experience inside this knowledge-generation system have come to the sad conclusion that large swaths of it are completely irrelevant. It also stands as yet another chunk of data that, in the end, emphasizes the complete poverty of ideas that has overcome the contemporary techno-social system -- where the market is the sole remaining metric of ... everything ... I have had this discussion with my college-aged son, I must admit, telling him he should get a degree (even using the economic argument!), but for his generation, data-sets like this represent perhaps just another lie being foisted on them by a system in near complete moral and fiscal exhaustion. Cheers, jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD photographer, media artist, archivist http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Command and Control
ISBN-13 9781594202278 Schlosser, E., 2013. Command and control: nuclear weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the illusion of safety, New York, NY: The Penguin Press. I found this 2013 book a well-researched and readable insight into the techno-social system that is intimately intertwined with the rise of computing, simulation, and the internet. Although there is not much specific history in that regard, among other subjects, it explores the development and tactical/strategic deployment of nuclear weapons and the management of the communications systems that were/are so crucial to their potential use via first-hand accounts of events during the entire Cold War. In the light of recent CC failures in the US nuclear weapons systems, reflecting on Charles Perrow's NAT (Normal Accident Theory) this account is a disturbing reminder of the reliable fallibility (!) of complex techno-social systems... JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD The Kickstarter Campaign Succeeds! http://tinyurl.com/neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime History of Computer Art, chap. V
On 12/Dec/13 00:05, Armin Medosch wrote: Hallo Armin! my reply was in no way meant to be a critique of the whole project as John Hopkins wrongly insinuated. It is just a critique of the title which projects a Nah, it was a more general reaction on my part, there were a bunch of folks who started to drill down looking for weaknesses in it... This should be a part of the discourse, but seems lop-sided, without much positive spin. I totally hear your original suggestions -- accuracy in linguistically framing a reductive re-framing of 'reality' is a good thing. And there are more obvious 'mistakes' and less obvious ones. And accuracy, surely is subjective. I was just remarking on a general nettime response which seems to be (imho) more times skewed to critique or to yawning silence than to praise or support. Seldom praise for folk's efforts. Maybe that occurs back-channel, I don't know. I haven't done a statistical analysis of this situation, so, yes, it's a feeling, I admit. As a learning facilitator, I recall when I first moved to Reykjavik where I established a photo/electronic media program at the Icelandic Academy (B.W. 'Before the Web'). I was quite troubled that there were no written or visual resources for teaching History of Photography, for example, aside from what I bought with me. (Yes, perhaps books in private hands, but only a couple Icelanders had gone abroad to study contemporary 'art' photography at that point). Even my teaching technically was illegal as I was not a member of the Icelandic Photographers Union -- a trade union! This dearth of material in many ways was liberating -- no need to 'fight' the canon of history when no one knew anything about it! But, of course, going back to basics of evolutionary development (paraphrasing Santayana): Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Having some texts (almost regardless of their content, in my case in Iceland) was better than none. They became the starting point in a discussion, *not* the ending point as a definitive statement of the nature of a former reality. I guess I've always been happy to see texts such as Dr. Dreher's being generated as they (possibly) enrich a learning situation. Happy to the point of being blinded to the negative potential of having reality mis-characterized. But wait that always happens with any reductive re-presentation! I am hyper-conscious of making that point a constant learning moment, as I find it seems largely forgotten in the education system here in the US. The Bush Regime did a good job of removing 'critical thinking' from K-12 curricula, and thus, half-a-generation later, that lack is seeping, flooding into the universities. It's true, the discussion occurring in nettime signifies what is always necessary, maybe it was the overall tone that I was objecting to. BTW, what is that ZKM document sourcebook you spoke of (did Darko author it?) -- do you have a bibliographic entry for that? Thanks, JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN: 10 NOVEMBER - 12 DECEMBER 2013 http://tinyurl.com/neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Anthony Townsend: What if the smart cities of the future are chock full of bugs?
Morning meditations upon seeing that subject line... What if the smart cities of the future are chock full of bugs? Or if the Internet of Things *is* the Internet of NSA's Things? At this point anyone who has 'monitored' nettime over the last (almost 20 years!) should realize the pattern: first comes the desire to prevail, then the technology to support that desire spills out of the womb of the military-industrial-academic(-counterculture) complex, then come the Siren (Server) songs of Silicon Valley along with hyperventilating dot-com VC-ism and the huffing of early-adopters, then comes the skeptical reception by European cultural/intellectual circles, then comes the need to 'keep up' by Eurocrats who then proffer cultural funding for creative industries to 'research' it all, then comes a slew of (re-action-ary) art projects about said technologies, several festivals, catalogs, exhibitions and earnest performances, and new 'ground-breaking' academic programs upsetting the old media studies departments by engaging the 'new' technologies, then academic journals started up, (all along the hapless media-koolaid-drinking consumers spread around the world are doing what they do best), [and a bunch of other increasingly confusing mediated crap happens during the previous steps], and then folks are suddenly reminded where the technology came from originally and why it was made. doh! The teats of technology rest on the bosom of an evolutionary product, the human social system, that will do whatever it takes to project its life into the future. This does not include optimizing the life of the individual organism, but in optimizing the survivability of the system. hah, jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced, unarmed and dangerous in the burn zone http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/70731 http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime John Naughton: Edward Snowden: public indifference
Hallo August - The current challenge, however, is first cultural, economic and political, then technical. Unless we can set aside some institutional support to build public electronic infrastructures that cater to users without the data surveillance and without major pressure from industry (again, like the internet), then we won't even get a chance to meet the technical challenge. Under current cultural momentum, this is unlikely to happen at the government or the University level (like it did with the Internet). Nor is it likely in the so-called free-market. I think this is now the core problem -- that constructing 'another' infrastructure (either from scratch or piggy-backing on existing (tottering!) systems) is simply not going to happen. No matter what social entity desires it. Even replacing the (aging) existing one is not possible. I read somewhere that for the US Interstate Highway system to be rebuilt (as it is in desperate need of after much of it exceeding its engineered life already) would have a direct energy cost of the equivalent of all Saudi oil reserves. This emphasizes that any wide-scaled infrastructure depends on the availability of significant (hydrocarbon) energy resources (a fact that, for example completely ignored by the 'hydrogen' economy people!). In a world where the US (or anybody else) was dominant and could gather the necessary energy resources, this was possible (i.e., 1960 USA). But now it is not. There is too much competition for shrinking resources. Even in an optimistic scenario with wide international cooperation (hah!), constructing any social infrastructure of a standardized scale that reaches a majority of the planet's population is not really possible, given basic energy resource restraints. This energy/resource question is a necessary precursor to cultural, economic, and political considerations and is the primary constraint on the technical challenge. (The issue of, for example, overall energy consumption of 'The Cloud' is going to hit the wall at some point in the (nearer future), an issue that will change that diffuse paradigm into a wet rag, or simply more dramatic global climate shifting...) As for the indifference, I think Allan touches on some sources. And perhaps indifference isn't quite the right expression. Stunned silence, as individuals in the US are beginning to understand that the juggernaut they have been riding in is not under their ideological control (as land of the free, home of the brave), perhaps never was -- something like Kennedy's riding on the tiger's back... That the platitudes of Amurikan exceptionalism that have bolstered many a citizens self-image are empty of any moral substance. And we all fall down... Not with a bang but with a whimper... etc... jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced, unarmed and dangerous, in an ultra-conservative stronghold http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
HI Florian -- In 2013, we're watching this history repeat itself as a farce. Many people (myself included) are flabbergasted by the lack of mass-scale protest against the government programs disclosed by Snowden. It seems as if two Speaking from the Belly of the Beast (semi-rural Arizona, next to Idaho and Alaska in terms of right-wing folks), the media consumption and actual media content here is literally stunning -- the volume on shouting heads (never-mind talking heads!!!) has the media consumer floating like a half-dead fish on the surface after dynamite in the water... It's coming from all directions, and just wait for maybe next week, when Social Security checks stop. There will be (armed) people on the streets... I see evidences of Empire in serious decline and I believe this strange passive-aggressivity will only increase as a feature of the whole damn thing. Where I am the dominant sentiment is not a far stretch from rural Afghanistan where many folks are heavily armed in their homes. Much more than an AK-47 for every man... FYI, my friend, the writer George Saunders had a great book out a couple years ago with the lead short story The Braindead Megaphone which explores the chilling scenario from a harsh satirical pov... but this shit is serious... You are only flabberghasted 'cause, maybe, you maybe believed a tiny bit of the 'US exceptionalism' mythology... The reality of Empire is ... the reality of Empire. Teaching a mixed group of third year Bachelor-level students of informatics, media technology and media design, I learned that even most of them did not know or understand systems like PRISM, commercial mining of personal data and big data operations. I stepped away from teaching (several Digital Art courses and a course titled Meaning of Information Technology* at the University of Colorado Boulder this year because of a deep inability on the part of the students that I had to engage in any critical discourse about technology, period. Of course, as a learning facilitator, I'm supposed to be able to make this happen, but there was another dynamic apparent -- that even the possibility (the concept!) critical engagement was not available to the students -- perhaps as a result of the No Child Left Behind educational policies of the Bush Regime which emphasized teaching to tests. For the first time in my 25+ years teaching path, I gave up. The brightest students were left to literally go crazy trying to extract something meaningful from their (corporate) educational experience. * It was a survey seminar for a Technology Arts Media minor -- syllabus @ http://neoscenes.net/teach/cu/2013_1/atls2000_mit/syllabus.html -- I had students from practically every major on campus both humanities and sci/eng people. Facilitating a collaborative and open knowledge-building process was definitely a question of moving against a strong current... Anyway... JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced, unarmed and dangerous, in an ultra-conservative stronghold http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)
In 2013, we're watching this history repeat itself as a farce. Many people (myself included) are flabbergasted by the lack of mass-scale protest against the government programs disclosed by Snowden. It seems as if two ei Florian -- it's also because crap like this is happening among the not-so-ultra-right... maybe 10%, maybe more, of the country: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leshiwPSHN1qg8gcmo1_400.jpg http://static-l3.blogcritics.org/11/01/16/151645/We-came-unarmed-this- time-1.jpg http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_leru1tj8XK1qg8gcmo1_400.png And of course Snowden would be taken out by such folks if he ever was to enter the US again... Gah, it's all quite ridiculous ... if it weren't so ominous in so many ways... JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced, unarmed and dangerous, in an ultra-conservative stronghold http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Review of Gregory Sholette's Dark Matter - corrected
We go on picking the rags, but every now and again, this other social snip... sourcing. The archive has split open. We are its dead capital. It is the dawn of the dead. This blatant appeal to the use-value of our necrophilia, artistic waste, the products of our labor and time, runs throughout an historical text, alternately conscious of its own limitations and brilliantly pervasive in its political critique and arts research. Molly -- this resonates with the idea of a bio-system where there is an excess of information -- that is, too much genetic diversity -- such that the need to procreate does not sit so heavily on individual organisms and that 'creative' energy can be expressed in non-essential forms. (Think of the myriad anecdotal ways that procreating changes the (perhaps your!) expression of 'artistic' energy). This situation, the opposite to, for example, needing to breed -- 12 children so that 2 survive to sustain a clan system -- may only arise where/when there is a surfeit of energy available. It is (merely) one expression of energy glut. It will correct itself in time ... fluff of many sorts will dissipate in the entropic decline of the post-hydrocarbon world. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced, unarmed and dangerous, in an ultra-conservative stronghold http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The Whole Earth -- Conference (Berlin, HKW 21/22 June
Hi Mark -- a few comments: I was instantly intrigued when I saw this show was up at HKW, and I did make the show but had to depart Berlin right before the conference (after breakfast with Barack and Michelle @ the Reichstag)... If this was mentioned on nettime (considering that it was once the primary topic of this list), I missed it -- did anyone from this collective attend and do they wish to offer a report? I spent an hour with Pit and Diana at HKW, and they did podcast the whole thing, worth listening to, as Fred et al gave a good talk. (I downloaded the podcasts, but have misplaced the URLs -- maybe someone could re-post them? Pit??) (thanks Nina!!) This past spring I had my Meaning of Information Technology students consume the last chapter of the Cyberculture to Counterculture book -- though it was quite deep history to them, and quite abstract in that sense -- it was hard for them to grasp. From eco-psychedelia to Internet neoliberalism: The CONFERENCE will revolve around questions of the legacy of the California counterculture. How did ...snip... of the Anthropocene, are being negotiated, updated, or ??? in some cases ??? forgotten. Yeah, anyway, the show was quite good, imho, a bit hard to picture what it looked like, if you had not been immersed in that cultural situation as we were. I came into possession of a Whole Earth Catalog via my brother who was, for a time, the editor of a radical student paper out of UCSD, and a member of the Weather Underground. He's 13 years older than I, and in 1968, when the first Whole Earth Catalog came out, I was just 10. A few years later when the really big one came out, 400 pages or so, I had a copy, and pored over it for many many hours. days... As a nascent foray into what became a deep involvement in the mail art network, I recall sending to a majority of the addresses in the catalog for more information, brochures, etc... It all made a deep impression, though one which was quite foreign to my family milieu (with my father there at MIT's Lincoln Lab, @ the Pentagon, etc). It definitely was a counter to the culture that I was a part of as far as my teenage mind could measure. I'm thinking that the next step to this exhibition would be a wide creative exploration of (open/living/general) systems theory from Bertalanffy to Church, Miller, Odum, Simms, etc etc and all those who were outside the cybernetics/cold war systems context. At any rate, the show was dense on textual and media content, well choreographed, enjoyable, informative, and again left me wondering what it 'looked like' to a 20-30-something German academic media artist. SO, maybe there are some attendees near to that profile on nettime who would care to reflect on it... I didn't take any notes, though I suspect that the catalog will give a good account of the shows actual content. I was impressed by the show -- and would be interested in hearing from the curators where the original idea to do such a project came from! Turner's somewhat radical connecting of Stewart Brand and the WEC/WELL, the counterculture generally to Wiener's Cold War cybernetics seems very intuitive and not as radical as it may appear on the surface. I especially appreciated his point how applied systems theory (taking the form of operations analysis, systems analysis, etc), is one formative basis for the corporate development of contemporary social computing (i.e., the corporate RD management structures of Silicon Valley). This for me is a powerful conceptual step in decoding the 'effects' and the pervasiveness of the military-industrial structure within Amurikan society. It is my belief that the US system is still, to a large degree, dependent on that M-I-(Academic) Complex framework for its socio-economic-political structural integrity. It's only less visible in these recent years, but no less powerful a determinant. Unfortunately most Amurikans do not make the connection with surveillance, drones-in-the-neighborhood, security, paranoia, etc as symptoms of a defensive (and of course many times offensive) imperial military state. Another book which gives some useful threads with the development of the MIA complex of which Silicon Valley is only one manifestation is: Leslie, S.W., 1993. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Anyway, Mark, get the catalog and listen to the podcasts that Nina gave the addresses of... it's well worth your time. Cheers, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD ensconced on the Western Slope of Colorado http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering
Re: nettime NSA-spying-on-Europe outrage somewhat disingenuous
Exactly at the tricky juncture of final negotiations for a comprehensive trade agreement between US and EU (remember - it's the economy, stupid!), the US government has probably more to explain than it ever be able to. Sortof comeback of Churchill's quip on the Balkans, whose problem was that they produce far more history than they possibly can consume... There are MANY actors who stand to gain and lose with the EU/US trade agreement one cannot eliminate the possibility of subterfuge arising from this (I suspect that the military-industrial actors are in a complex dance of power in this situation, not to mention many others...). But I think these are merely evidences of more wide-scaled power struggles between a waning superpower and other rising/shifting power centers that are re-aligning themselves to changing conditions. JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD beobachten das Tao, anstatt gerade die Dow vom Umfang der Ostsee +49 (0)171 911 4695 (until 04 July) http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Jaron lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class
But isn't it all just a bit Luddite? What kind of work were all those Kodak employees doing? Putting transparencies in plastic boxes to post to the owners. It's just a rearrangement of social labour, like when Manchester Actually a substantial chunk of their work was related to the military-industrial complex -- as photography (especially unusual techniques and processes) was crucial to early (airborne) surveillance, global mapping, and weapons research. JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Essay-Grading Software
Such as: a. raw domination b. rank servitude c. outright revolution LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) -- just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue ... (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to 'facilitating open encounter and engagement'... [Note: You can only tick one of the boxes...] The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. ...snip... accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we're all reduced to a cinder. Isn't that kinda obvious now? What's the next step? At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of 'use less' (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated ?ber-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph. That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression. This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times. Cheers, John -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime living systems theory [2x]
- Forwarded message from John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net - From: John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net Reply-To: jhopk...@neoscenes.net Subject: Re: nettime living systems theory Organization: neoscenes Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:20:03 -0700 To: list nettime nettim...@kein.org On 1/22/13 07:18, chris mann wrote: please, once again, computers process data. not information. they have no idea about what theyre doing or why, so it can only be data. computers have no motivation, no conspiracy, no horizon. therefore no possibility of dealing with information. As an organized and indivisible expression of a wholistic and continuous living system (ours!), through their operation, or even merely their maintained presence, they are increasing local entropy, and in that sense they are carrying information into the future as long as they are more organized than their surroundings. We are not separate from the wider system that we are immersed within. If we were, why worry about systemic degradations of the ecosystem...? Why worry about consuming energy? JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ - End forwarded message - - Forwarded message from John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net - From: John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net Reply-To: jhopk...@neoscenes.net Subject: Re: nettime living systems theory Organization: neoscenes Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:30:46 -0700 To: list nettime nettim...@kein.org On 1/22/13 07:38, chris mann wrote: if you make no distinction between information and data, no further distinctions are possible Hi Chris ~ Given that I actually did not conflate the two, can you expand on this? A machine (digital or otherwise) is not a closed system, it is an open system, and so that its very structure, provenance, existence, persistence carries information (as order). Maybe you are confusing the abstracted protocols that form the energy that pass through the machine for the materialized *thing* itself (which recursively is 'merely' an expression of other protocols and their actualized potential for directing energies in a specific way). JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ - End forwarded message -i # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
hehe Mark Economics is in *trouble* (like the rest of social science) because it leaves out basic realities and these simplifications -- whether in the service of modeling assumptions or whatever -- have now become too important to ignore. By emphasizing the HUMANS, you have correctly noted *one* of the parts left out. However, the humans are highly plastic and largely shaped by their environment -- which, in turn, is mostly defined by technology. Do you discuss this *environmental* effect on humans in your book? Although I am haven't the time to promote and explore the application a wholistic approach like 'living systems theory' or 'general system theory' to such issues, I believe that those intellectual tools could easily take on the scope and connectivity (immersiveness, etc) of our reality in a way that is, imho, wider than any particular considerations or efficacy of discipline-specific carcases, uff, I mean models, such as you folks are picking over here. For those who are not familiar with GST +/- -- you might consult Ludwig von Bertalanffy, James R. Simms, James Jessie Miller (for example, the following references) Bertalanffy, L. von, 1975. Perspectives on general system theory: scientific-philosophical studies, New York, NY: G. Braziller. Miller, J., 1995. Living systems, Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado. Simms, J.R., 1999. Principles of quantitative living systems science, New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime living systems theory
Well, the following might be an entry point to a systems theory approach to economics: which is, in fact, a subsystem of a wider ... living system. Living Systems Theory is a general theory about how all living systems 'work,' about how they maintain themselves and how they develop and change. By definition, living systems are open, self-organizing systems that have the special characteristics of life and interact with their environment. This takes place by means of information and material-energy exchanges. Living systems can be as simple as a single cell or as complex as a supranational organization (such as the European Economic Community). Regardless of their complexity, they each depend upon the same essential twenty subsystems (or processes) in order to survive and to continue the propagation of their species or types beyond a single generation. Some of these processes deal with material and energy for the metabolic processes of the system. Other subsystems process information for the coordination, guidance and control of the system. Some subsystems and their processes are concerned with both. The essence of life is process. If the processing of material-energy and information ends, life also ends. The defining characteristic of life is the ability to maintain, for a significant period, a steady state in which the entropy (or disorder) within the system is significantly lower than its non-living surroundings. Living systems can maintain their energetic state because they are open, self-organizing systems that can take in from the environment the inputs of information and material-energy they need. In general, living systems process more information than non-living systems, with the possible exception of computers which have greater information processing capabilities. Another fundamental difference between living and non-living systems is that all living systems have, as essential components, DNA, RNA, protein and some other complex organic molecules that give biological systems their unique properties. These molecules are not synthesized in nature outside cells. (from The Living Systems Theory of James Grier Miller) -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD exploring the patterns and flows of power @ http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime US to become 'net energy exporter'
Hi Felix! It's hard to wrap one's head around the number of possible implications this shift in energy extraction has. One thing seems clear, oil/gas production will not peak any time soon. So neither the breakdown of fossil fuel civilization is taking place, or will increased oil/gas prices drive the shift towards renewable energy sources. A somewhat simplified picture: One thing the article did not mention is that well life-times in these tight gas/oil shale reservoirs is very short. 'Traditional' oil production depends on rock reservoirs that are quite (naturally) permeable and that allow a stratigraphic flow through contiguous interstices to a well-bore without much help (or even none at all when under 'natural' pressure). In a fracked shale situation, the rock is extremely tight (shale having much smaller 'grains' and very low permeability) -- the fracking is the only source of flow pathways to the bore, and consequently wells peak quickly with the oil/gas that happens to be proximal to the fracked section streaming out but otherwise the rock is still tight, so that once that initial flow happens, the flow rate tails off very quickly. This is quite different than 'traditional' easy reservoirs, some which will produce for tens of years, albeit at a slowly declining rate. Another words, the following: US to become 'net energy exporter' doesn't really mean that much in the big picture in terms of depletion, unsustainability, and such. And to echo another posting, there is a consequent increase in methane and other heavy greenhouse gasses in the process all of which are way worse that Co2... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/20131514160576297.html Shale gas boom rewrites geopolitical rules, as US is set to produce more petroleum than Saudi Arabia within a decade. [I find it strange that there were so many typos in an Al Jazeera article, too -- their editors are getting REALLY sloppy!!! Wonder what that's about!?] jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime crowd-funding on nettime
Crowd-sourcing is a form of advertising based on an appeal to social pseudo-solidarity. Unlike other speech acts on this list, it has carries a Bingo, Keith! I think this hits on imho the most repugnant disturbing aspect -- the under-lying intense ego-centricity of social media hyping in general. Gathering cash via 'the network' is the same as gathering 'friends' and being 'liked' ... cheers, jh ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Another insult of the 1 percent: everybody does it!
Hi Brian: In this way you can see that the current attack on the universities is not just a caste issue for academics, it's a societal issue. The structure of society based on distinct professional fields defined and guarded by credentials is useless for the business entrepreneurs. The real question, imo, is not how to defend professional status but rather how to transform it into something that can have a positive social function for everyone. So instead of getting a degree to carve out a protected niche in the economy, you would get both a degree and a profession in order to contribute to a greater good. My experience is exactly so, though, in my engineering education -- I learned how to extract things from the earth that were/are in high (social) demand benefiting many, so, not sure what you mean here. What I learned was a positive social function (within the functioning of the contemporary world) -- so I think you have to go beyond that step if that is possible or reasonable in the complex system we have now... which does suggest that the sheer complexity of the system is part of the problem. A simpler system (as outlined below) has more functional and less abstracted roles, to be sure, simply to ensure survival of more localized social units. when you have larger, globalized systems, there is more 'wiggle room' for useless things to be going on: more (useless) people performing more useless tasks. Maybe this is a rule: You can't do engineering that has a positive social function for *everyone.* You can engineer something that benefits a subset, but not *everyone.* Bigger/smaller subsets, but not everyone. Adam Curtis' Pandora's Box series dances around this -- how engineering automatically introduces segregation into a techno-social system (because of the continuous inter-relationship between technology and society). Sounds like sheer naivete to the cynics, I know, but wait for one degree more of civilizational collapse and these questions will start to have immense practical value. That's because in a less organized system, multiple disciplines are necessary for survival -- killing, dressing, and eating animals, raising subsistence crops, self-protection of personal/local water/food supplies, DIY fixing of what breaks with what tools are available. But some how, I think that this is more than a single degree of collapse, but rather system-wide disorder (which, to be honest, will probably arrive as a consequence of a cascade of organizational failures (solar flare knocks out all satellites and large chunks of electric grid which knocks out gps which knocks out telecom which knocks out transport which knocks out the main structural building blocks of entire globalized system) -- which may all be a single degree, it's all relative! At any rate, much of the concept of capital investment and such abstractions lose any reason to exist without a passively operating consuming class which dominates the developed world. All that will be redundant in the face of systemic failures. Both the passive consuming class and the producing class will be rendered, literally, as so much meat, and they too shall pass away. etc... cheers, jh -- ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12
Interesting question William -- So, does capitalism still have a broad social *purpose* once a significant level of industrialization has already been achieved? I have a Harris tweed jacket that I like very much and wear almost every day. I like to take the train. Did the history that brought those things to me have to be a tale of depopulation, exile, disease, famine, cultural genocide and concentration of wealth? I can't see any reason why it had to happen that way. For a specific process stream (a Harris Tweed jacket would be the outcome of such a process), if you look at it from an open-systems pov, I'm thinking that yes, it would have to be that way. Unless mitigating factors like you living on a sheep farm with the requisite tools to process and assemble the object your self, or barter for it locally in a way. However, as soon as you look at the reality of the genesis of the looms, for example (needing steel, iron as integral (not possibly substituted by a 'local' product), it then ties the process into the wider global extractives industry, etc, etc... Which relies on massive collective social/relational structures which capitalism seemingly has acted as an optimizing force (as it rests on engineering). If you look at more general processes, I can imagine that there are, theoretically, more ways to 'accomplish' a particular task -- (that is, setting up process-flows that arrive at a similar goal/product). However, if you look at the constituent sub-tasks, this perhaps begins to unravel the possibility of that accomplishment in any way other than the way it was accomplished (i.e. a Harris Tweed jacket falling into your hands in the way it did at that moment of history as fully embedded in the indeterminate conditions that it was in...). Again, say, back to the extractives necessary for the loom -- how can you get a fine steel object from iron/coal industries remotely located from the loom location without a now-globalized transport network which rests on capital investment (or collective investment of a social systems energies), which, crucially, relies on the suspension of a concern (interest, care) for the individual over that of the collective... (thus the 'genocide', the environmental unsustainability (disease, exile)), etc., etc. Perhaps an infinitely recursive argument, but it in the end the dots between the product and the social system that directs its energies to construct that product in that particular form are absolutely connected... Not even to mention Nike's use of Harris Tweed as a retro consumable 'fashion' statement in their shoes...! Cheers, John -- ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Why I say the things I say
jep... it's a circus ... ur in the center ring ... or maybe not ... wait, where's the tent? This whole chain is increasingly silly. Because while Brian and others complain about things like... well if you want real silliness, just wait until the energy sources that have been driving the gravy-train for the last 120 years that cumulatively brought us to the situation where each and every one of us presently is embedded -- govt, elites, proles, academics, farmers, 'sustainability' engineers, media artists, social activists, writers, etc -- just wait until the nipple that supplies the suckle that structures each and every one of those social situations runs dry. the ensuing silliness will make any social designation other than 'might makes right' a quaint and extremely romantic vision that will rapidly be lost to transitory meat-space memory... Translation: At some point, you gotta say to those around you: Stop defending the rulers for their poison gifts. Start attacking them because they are a clear and present danger. And still other people complain that using the word complex is some kind of intellectual trickery... well if you want a demonstration of real complexity, just wait until the energy sources ... etc etc the initial conditions will change, and the system will undergo a major reset, with complexity driving the indeterminate outcome... jh -- ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive 'value abundance'?
Hallo Ana Dear John I am not sure if we are talking in parallell ways. When I am talking potlach I am talking from an anthropologist view (I am a trained anthropologist) and we are definitely talking about exchanges both in the symbolical view and in the physical form. I understand that much of anthropological is involved in seeing the world from that material/semiotic split. I'd recommend a reading of Leslie White's (anthropologist) work (one source here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/663173 - Energy and Evolution of Culture) and maybe White, L.A., 1975. The concept of cultural systems: a key to understanding tribes and nations, Columbia University Press. If exchange has no perceived or real value to enhance individual or tribal viability, it cannot be sustained. Potlatch exchange is rooted in real (energy) viability questions which only later became somewhat (only partially) 'symbolic'. And as you were referring to real people in 'virtual' sweatshops, the expenditure of life-time which is correlated to life-energy, is not virtual at all -- it takes a certain minimum amount of calories to maintain a living body for a day, regardless of activity and when the day is done, whether you are a wall st. banker or a ditch-digger, you cannot get that day back. Virtuality is only the situation where some sensory/energy inputs to the body are attenuated, it does not erase the energized presence and negentropic energy consumption necessary for any and all life... The most gifts exchanged were not included in the tribe's economy but were burned in a very ritualized ceremony at the end of the exchange festival. Which particular tribal grouping are you speaking of? Of course there are many varying customs, but if viability is threatened, you can be sure that burning was not an option. Burning (destruction) of reserves can only take place in a glut / energy reserve excess situation. Okay, sure, when the perceived 'sacrifice' will bring more 'stuff' sooner than later, people who were locked into a set of tribal religious rules would do so, but if starvation becomes endemic, you can be sure that those gods so faithfully invoked would be quickly removed from their position of power! (a 'reversal of perspective: http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/7458 !!) cheers, John # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean (or the limits of social network paranoia)
So, what's the real alternative if any? The alternative, I think, is perhaps too difficult to even imagine. The technical problems of building an open, stable, and user-run communication Hei August! I think one of the reasons that the focus on directly 'opposing' a large dominant techno-social infrastructure deployment with a small techno-social infrastructure deployment is problematic lies in its basic incomplete premise: it doesn't address the de-evolution of human encounter and relation in general. Also, a 'technical' solution, while it pleases the hacker aesthetic locally, does not address at all the effects that the technical 'box' applies globally (i.e., the misery spread via the extractive minerals industry, for example, necessary to prop up *any* kind of server *anywhere*). Much effort in my teaching and facilitation is to reset the conditions in a grouping of people so that -- on a sliding scale from highly-mediated human connection to less-mediated human connection -- people value less mediation more. This rather than valuing the latest technological implementation of a mediated communications tool as more valuable. I firmly believe that if we gave more attention to the humans who are in most proximal to us instead of the remote 'tele'Other the world would be a better place. (this suggests that, practicing what I preach, I leave nettime altogether, eh!?) But it is not an all-or-nothing game, it can be implemented at any level at any point in time. Indeed the dynamic of choice, when choosing where to give our attentions, is a crucial awareness to learn -- because it is the *where* we focus those immediate attentions on that becomes *empowered*. etc... jh # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Sex Work and Consent at @transmediale
Morlock, your comment is pithy, but it's a bullshit comparison. Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it's true. Access to the body is much more intimate than access to the brain. since when is the brain *not* totally unified w/ the body and vice versa? [despite Descartes is pumping his fist in the air, yeah, keep 'em separate! it keeps ma dream alive] I'm waiting to see consciousness/brain/mind existing without said body in complete continuous connection... Entering the body occurs through any receptive field of the Self, and I'd call it the very definition of intimacy when one is expressing energies that are entering an Other's body *and changing the neurosensory system itself,* for that effect is to change how the Other experiences the world... jh # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Portland Occupation's tactical innovation
hei tim -- The process you're talking about is called demobilization, and it has a social history. An important part of that history is how returning soldiers, and what exactly they're returning from, are mythologized. At one extreme there's _Dolchstosslegende_ nonsense and its US variations (e.g., POW-MIA lunacy); at the other there are things like the G.I. Bill. The experiences of generations of returning vets aren't reducible to a single analytical axis, of course. Still, you might want to think about where your macho rhetoric -- about vets who are battle-hardened and tested under From what I've looked found, those vets who return to police or other public/private sector law enforcement/security-related positions are around 1:8. That does not include ones who stay in the military as a career move (but have reached their battlefront deployment limits). (see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/pdf/IACPEmployingReturningVets.pdf, for example However, there is concern that regular law enforcement academy or in-service training curricula do not contain course material specific to the needs of returning combat veterans. ... current curricula do not address the heightened reactions veteran officers develop in combat to enemy threats and how to temper these reactions to appropriate levels in policing environments.) And I'd be mighty careful to connect the terms POW-MIA and lunacy if you are actually moving around the US outside of coastal urban centers... Remember, the G.I. Bill, which spoke very much to constructive aspirations, was central to America's post-WW2 prosperity. Iraq and But that 'prosperity' was constructed primarily on hegemonic, militarily-controlled access to a hydrocarbon energy glut, not on 'human' resources (well, of course there had to be bodies and other resources to take full advantage of the glut -- engineers and M-I-A Complex centers like MIT and their training of a whole new cadre of Military-Industrial-Academic proles to chart the course of the complex through the '50s, '60s, '70s (and later))... Afghanistan vets are returning to a country where many of the kinds of benefits offered to their predecessors have been withdrawn. How and where they see themselves fitting into the 1% or the 99% is up to them; hopefully they'll be less inclined than you to equate what the police are aware of with some final analysis. Returning warriors are as multifaceted as the population, to be sure, although you have to acknowledge the 'you-had-to-be-there' difference. Right, I was not addressing the full range of possible humans returning from these wars. But there are plenty of historical accounts of the patterns of instability that ensue in the social system when warriors return from campaigns, and those definitely include the 'use' of those veterans in the domination of the 'peace-time' social system. Sun Tzu and Machiavelli have a lot less to say on this subject than Hunter S. Thompson, IMO. You might want to reread his description of the Vietnam Vets Against the War demo at the GOP national convention in Miami in '72 -- not to 'predict' anything, on the contrary, to funny, my house mate in Sydney did happen to have that paperback of his early rotless jottings and dispatches on shelf which I read last fall... while I have always enjoyed his writing (I was writing a politics column in my university paper in Colorado partly inspired by his Aspen political train-wreck aspirations), I would never consider his writing as a guide for living, tho -- except perhaps as a metaphoric invective to following ones bliss (without submerging in the significant body-damage)... How many times was he jailed for speaking from a sense of righteous moral outrage? (maybe amoral self-righteous outrage, but...) jh # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime COMMAND, CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS, AND COMPUTER (C4) SYSTEMS SECURITY GLOSSARY
ACL Access Control List ADM Advanced Development Model ADP Automated Data Processing ADPE Automated Data Processing Equipment AE Application Entity AFSSI Air Force Systems Security Instruction AFSSM Air Force Systems Security Memorandum AIG Address Indicator Group AIRK Area Interswitch Rekeying Key AIS Automated Information System AISS Automated Information System Security AJ Anti-Jamming AK Automatic Remote Rekeying AKDC Automatic Key Distribution Center AKD/RCU Automatic Key Distribution/Rekeying Control Unit AKM Automated Key Management Center ALC Accounting Legend Code AMS 1. Auto-Manual System 2. Autonomous Message Switch ANDVT Advanced Narrowband Digital Voice Terminal ANSI American National Standards Institute AOSS Automated Office Support System APC Adaptive Predictive Coding APL Assessed Products List APU Auxiliary Power Unit ARES Automated Risk Evaluation System ARPANET Advanced Research Projects Agency Network ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange ASPJ Advanced Self-Protection Jammer ASU Approval for Service Use ATAM Automated Threat Assessment Methodology AUTODIN Automatic Digital Network AUTOSEVOCOM Automatic Secure Voice Communications (Network) AUTOVON Automatic Voice Network AV Auxiliary Vector AVP Authorized Vendor Program BCSSO Base Computer System Security Officer BPS Bits Per Second C3 Command, Control, and Communications C3I Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence C4 Command, Control, Communications, and Computer CA 1. Controlling Authority 2. Crypto-Analysis 3. COMSEC Account 4. Command Authority CCB Configuration Control Board CCEP Commercial COMSEC Endorsement Program CCI Controlled Cryptographic Item CCO 1. Circuit Control Officer 2. Configuration Control Officer CDR Critical Design Review CDRL Contract Data Requirements List CDS Cryptographic Device Services CEOI Communications-Electronics Operating Instruction CEPR Compromising Emanation Performance Requirement CERT Computer Emergency Response Team CFD Common Fill Device CI Configuration Item CIAC Computer Incident Assessment Capability CIK Crypto-Ignition Key CIP Crypto-Ignition Plug CIRK Common Interswitch Rekeying Key CK Compartment Key CKG Cooperative Key Generation CKL Compromised Key List CLMD COMSEC Local Management Device CM Configuration Management CMCS COMSEC Material Control System CMP Configuration Management Plan CMS C4 Systems Security Management System CNCS Cryptonet Control Station CNK Cryptonet Key CNLZ COMSEC No-Lone Zone COMPUSEC Computer Security COMSEC Communications Security COOP Continuity Of Operations Plan COR Central Office of Record COTS Commercial Off-The-Shelf CPC Computer Program Component CPCI Computer Program Configuration Item CPS COMSEC Parent Switch CPU Central Processing Unit CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check CRIB Card Reader Insert Board CRO COMSEC Responsible Officer CRLCMP Computer Resources Life Cycle Management Plan CRP COMSEC Resources Program (Budget) CRWG Computer Resources Working Group Crypt/Crypto Cryptographic-Related CSA Cognizant Security Authority CSC Computer Software Component CSCI Computer Software Configuration Item CSE Communications Security Element CSETWG Computer Security Education and Training Working Group CSM Computer System Manager CSO C4 Systems Officer CSPP Communications-Computer Systems Program Plan CSRD Communications-Computer Systems Requirements Document CSS 1. COMSEC Subordinate Switch 2. Constant Surveillance Service (courier) 3. Continuous Signature Service (courier) CSSO 1. Computer System Security Officer 2. Contractor Special Security Officer CSSP Computer Security Support Program CSTVRP Computer Security Technical Vulnerability Reporting Program CSWG Computer Security Working Group CTAK Cipher Text Auto-Key CTTA Certified TEMPEST Technical Authority CUP COMSEC Utility Program CVA Clandestine Vulnerability Analysis CVRP C4 System Security Vulnerability Reporting Program DAA Designated Approving Authority DAC Discretionary Access Control DAMA Demand Assigned Multiple Access DBMS Data Base Management System DCP Decision Coordinating Paper DCS 1. Defense Communications System 2. Defense Courier Service DCSP Design Controlled Spare Part DDN Defense Data Network DDS Dual Driver Service (courier) DES Data Encryption Standard DIB Directory Information Base DID Data Item Description DLED Dedicated Loop Encryption Device DMA Direct Memory Access DoD TCSEC Department of Defense Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria DPL Degausser Products List (a section in the Information Systems Security Products and Services Catalogue) DSN Defense Switched Network DSVT Digital Subscriber Voice Terminal DTD Data Transfer Device DTE Developmental Test and Evaluation DTLS Descriptive Top-Level Specification DTS Diplomatic Telecommunications Service DUA Directory User Agent DV Demonstration and Validation EAM Emergency Action Message ECCM Electronic Counter-Countermeasures ECM Electronic Countermeasures ECPL Endorsed Cryptographic Products List (a
nettime NAICS Codes
http://www.census.gov/epcd/naics02/naicod02.htm 52 Finance and Insurance 521 Monetary Authorities - Central Bank 5211Monetary Authorities - Central Bank 52111 Monetary Authorities - Central Bank 521110 Monetary Authorities - Central Bank 522 Credit Intermediation and Related Activities 5221Depository Credit Intermediation 52211 Commercial Banking 522110 Commercial Banking 52212 Savings Institutions 522120 Savings Institutions 52213 Credit Unions 522130 Credit Unions 52219 Other Depository Credit Intermediation 522190 Other Depository Credit Intermediation 5222Nondepository Credit Intermediation 52221 Credit Card Issuing 522210 Credit Card Issuing 5 Sales Financing 50 Sales Financing 52229 Other Nondepository Credit Intermediation 522291 Consumer Lending 522292 Real Estate Credit 522293 International Trade Financing 522294 Secondary Market Financing 522298 All Other Nondepository Credit Intermediation 5223Activities Related to Credit Intermediation 52231 Mortgage and Nonmortgage Loan Brokers 522310 Mortgage and Nonmortgage Loan Brokers 52232 Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities 522320 Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities 52239 Other Activities Related to Credit Intermediation 522390 Other Activities Related to Credit Intermediation 523 Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities 5231Securities and Commodity Contracts Intermediation and Brokerage 52311 Investment Banking and Securities Dealing 523110 Investment Banking and Securities Dealing 52312 Securities Brokerage 523120 Securities Brokerage 52313 Commodity Contracts Dealing 523130 Commodity Contracts Dealing 52314 Commodity Contracts Brokerage 523140 Commodity Contracts Brokerage 5232Securities and Commodity Exchanges 52321 Securities and Commodity Exchanges 523210 Securities and Commodity Exchanges 5239Other Financial Investment Activities 52391 Miscellaneous Intermediation 523910 Miscellaneous Intermediation 52392 Portfolio Management 523920 Portfolio Management 52393 Investment Advice 523930 Investment Advice 52399 All Other Financial Investment Activities 523991 Trust, Fiduciary, and Custody Activities 523999 Miscellaneous Financial Investment Activities 524 Insurance Carriers and Related Activities 5241Insurance Carriers 52411 Direct Life, Health, and Medical Insurance Carriers 524113 Direct Life Insurance Carriers 524114 Direct Health and Medical Insurance Carriers 52412 Direct Insurance (except Life, Health, and Medical) Carriers 524126 Direct Property and Casualty Insurance Carriers 524127 Direct Title Insurance Carriers 524128 Other Direct Insurance (except Life, Health, and Medical) Carriers 52413 Reinsurance Carriers 524130 Reinsurance Carriers 5242Agencies, Brokerages, and Other Insurance Related Activities 52421 Insurance Agencies and Brokerages 524210 Insurance Agencies and Brokerages 52429 Other Insurance Related Activities 524291 Claims Adjusting 524292 Third Party Administration
Re: nettime Franco Berardi Geert Lovink: A call to the Army of Love and t...
Ei Morlock! Perhaps I as not clear enough. I was pointing to the lack of projections, not to diagnosis. The future will likely mean (more) stupid humans: then less overall humans who are still (and increasingly) stupid. I'd suggest turning to people like Pimentel(1), Georgescu-Roegen (2), Odum (3), Price (4), and Wallace (5) (et al!), to see some very explicit and clear projections into the hydrocarbonenergy-poor future. It is not pleasant -- unless you are free of the hubris of human 'exceptionalism as a form of life on the planet. If you can shed that feeling of superiority over everything else in the cosmos, you might realize that species come and go, fluctuating in total biomass in relation to available energy (re)sources that they are capable of consuming. A 'machinic' future relies completely on the availability of massively excessive energy (re)sources. We, having been born into a global situation near the peak of availability of the only known such (re)source, cannot imagine another kind of regime as we have been accustomed to using tremendous doses of that energy 'invisibly' in every moment of our lives. This is largely because of the imposition of a layer of abstracted instrumentation called 'money' which effectively removes us from the direct experience of energy movement within and around the techno-social system. By focusing on the abstract, nothing, literally, is accomplished. This is why bodies (embodied energy) on the street is, in some ways, a positive sign. But the bodies in the street don't mean much when you can get an equivalent amount of work energy of one body for 5000 hours from a barrel of oil... (6) In a system where demands are rapidly increasing for a declining stock of available energy, the order of sophistication and complexity of the system will, on average, decrease. This is evidenced by a quick perusal of the state of general infrastructure in the developed world. While there are localized variations, the general state is lower than it was, say, a decade ago. This is no coincidence! Order and energy availability go hand-in-hand. Even the persistence of information/knowledge into the future is directly dependent on energy (re)sources to maintain it. For example, the US could not, even if it had to, rebuild the entire infrastructure of the Defense Interstate Highway System which was constructed between 1950 - 1975 -- it does not have the energy/(re)sources available now to do so. If you could subtract China from the global picture, the US might have enough (hegemonic) control over world energy (re)sources to do so. But otherwise, forget it! And such infrastructures 1) are necessary to continue life as it has been, and 2) have a limited life-span before complete re-building is necessary. Imagine calculating the true energy cost involved in having this trans-global communications forum here, nettime. It's impossible to parse from the sheer intertwinedness of all techno-social flows, but it is clear that it is not sustainable -- and saying that something is unsustainable means that it will cease to be at some point in the future. These thermodynamic principles trump altruistic re-cycling mentalities, alternative tech energy-development schemes, social/organizational engineering, and ever-remarkable human adaptability. Projections anyone? (1) - http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/2329 (2) - http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/750 (3) - http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/44561 (4) - http://dieoff.org/page137.htm (5) - http://www.pnas.org/content/107/suppl.2/8947.full (6) - for example - http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4315 JH ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime something about nothing
Without cash in a market society, you’re free to do nothing, to have very little, and to die young. In other words, under capitalism, money is the right to have rights. ... The gap between what people earn and the cost of their freedoms means that, for more and more Americans, freedom is just another word for nothing they can afford. -- Patel, Raj (2009). The value of nothing : how to reshape market society and redefine democracy. New York: Picador. ++ John Hopkins Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Fwd: Diaspora* means a brighter future for all of us.
Hei Yosem -- I understand the skepticism, John, but we're the real deal, when it comes to trying to do the opposite of what these corporate, commercial networks do. And we'd be lucky to have you on Nettime join us in our attempt to reinvent the social web. Actually not being sceptical at all -- IRC was/is the precursor to everything network social (in concert with email and Usenet). Certainly for file-sharing, and synchronous communications, it led the way from 1989 onwards until a few years ago... For me there are more fundamental issues at stake than 'which platform will win' -- dot.com or dot.net or whatever. Core is the deep problematic divide of giving life-time attention to screens and not to the human most proximal to you. (Especially given the decay of civil society as one can witness day-to-day in the developed world). jh # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Fwd: Diaspora* means a brighter future for all of us.
Ei Rory, I'll just say that I find it by turns incredibly naive, inspiring, irrelevant and hopeful ... sounds like netvertising for IRC ... come to think about it, IRC has always had most of the stuff that any of those phat .com networks got. jh + John Hopkins, Researcher Centre for Creative Arts La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria 3086 http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ chaz...@gmail.com; skype: chazhopkins AU Mobile - +61 (0)40 696 4610 US cell - +1 928 308 6466 +++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime universitas gulagiensis digest [hopkins]
ei amigo... Sure. Yet let me say that, pragmatically yours, I can't think of any insitutions of such size being configured differently, looking at the place where we live, InI call it Babylon. yeah, for sure... You'll find me side by side with all those protesting against the overwhelming presence of the military-industrial complex, we should even join forces planning something else out of the hashes of post-modernism, yet I can't avoid thinking that the very medium that puts us in contact (and the best example of Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome) comes from there, via a monopolization of research funds indeed: and this situation looks like growing, not diminishing. what I have experienced (from the start of life, literally, spending the second 6 weeks of life transiting the AlCan Highway from Strategic Air Command HQ in Anchorage Alaska, across Canada the US to the Pentagon in DC) is that the military-industrial complex continually generates a (technological) contingencies, a good historical example being the interstate highway system. (It's a bit simplistic an example, but I believe it illustrates the general principle.) The primary purpose of the highway system was/is to deploy men and material around the continent and facilitate whatever else needs to happen to support those deployments. The net result is that communities, families, and relationships are shattered en mass across the entire social system as 'men' can be moved around great distances much easier than before (when it took Ike Eisenhower 7 weeks to move a battalion from coast to coast around WWI). Of course the highway system is sold to the taxpayers as a marvelous technological innovation (thank you, Hitler's autobahn system) that brings FREEDOM! The shattered social structure then is partially patched together with a house-to-house centrally-deployed telecom network the next best thing to being there. and there is only praise and happiness for the telecom network, as every one has not clearly understood that the MIC concept of freedom means only that the 'system' is free to utilize participants in the social system as much as it can (taxation, finance control and profit, consumerism, industrial control of the production of food, etc, etc)... So in the Light of this example, it is easy to see why we are all so enamored of the Darpa Net that has us in its sway, we are feeling like it brings us a little bit more community than we have had before it came along. And the crucial question becomes, where did the paucity of relation come from that we were subject to before? When that is identified, the principle of 'progress' and 'development' may be seen for what it is -- a means of happily enslaving the whole lot of humanity to a Master of its own making (and in its own image). So I won't praise MIT for open courseware, but I respect the concerns of those operators that let their (well funded) research be free and accessible, because these are also the grounds on which I base my own criticism of technology - one could still argue that those of us focusing on technology might deserve ethernal damnation :) hehe, it is the plight of human incarnation in Babylon that puts us in the imperfect technology of body, and that body then utilized (distorts) existing flows of energy around it to to ensure its procreative activities. Its only a sliding scale, where each technology is placed. The concept is the same, so the process of carving a wooden harrow and harnessing it to a beast of burden can wreak havoc on the community of critters there in the cultivated soil only differs by degree from driving a 1.5-million-dollar John Deere harvester across a thousand acres of Monsanto-gen-x wheat in a day. Life distorts the flows that it is immersed in. Said that, InI feel grateful for reminding us that another World is possible. But if you know what life is worth, You will look for yours on earth ;-) as long as we have some Other(s) to encounter and interact with, regardless of the technological intermediation, we can still be inspired and electrified and moved to a higher level of be-ing... jh # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime some more nuanced thoughts on SWARTZ
Subscription rates are extremely high, and increasing, for high profile journals - which are mostly paid by libraries. The proceeds generally do not return to the author, they go entirely to the publisher. So the question is: How much should go to publisher versus author? Paid by library = Paid to author + Publisher overhead Is the university library paying for content or for access? Was it in nettime that someone pointed to an essay describing a rather elegant (but very utopian) solution to this conundrum. unfortunately I don't have the reference, but the gist was that a university would quit all journal subscriptions and instead use the money to have an in-house editorial/production staff that will take content generated by the university and self-publish, archive, and make available all of it for free to the wider community (taxpayers for public institutions, and so on). obviously this would have to include 'everyone' all at once, and there would develop a similar power hierarchy driven by elite institutions (with enormous endowments), but it seemed like a nice idea when I read it... jh Oh, and a PS rather than to send another note -- slightly off-topic, but in Light of the Norwegian irruption -- I wrote some notes about my encounters with neo-Nazi sympathies when I lived in Iceland in the 1990s: http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/43169 ++ John Hopkins exploring the patterns and flows of cosmological power @ http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime ISEA 2011 fees
hej Nicholas -- I presume that there are many nettimers who are planning on attending ISEA 2011 in Istanbul this year. If you have not looked at the registration fees for the conference, prepare yourself for some sticker shock. The fees seem to be disproportionately expensive for a conference hosted at a university. Student fees begin at EUR250, with Surprised? It keeps out the rabble ... between the registration fee and the flights and the hotels, and the lavish meals, well, when was the last time an individual without insitutional(ized) support could afford it? It's an institution for the institutionalized... jh # 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
