Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
I'm astounded. Nay, dismayed. There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. New patterns of social control? Check. See them emerging long the axis of service/empowerment (Google) and surveillance/repression (NSA). Changing social patterns? Check. See the deepening and hardening of inequality in Western Societies (99% vs 1%). New spatial patterns? Check. See the gentrification and privatization of cities spaces, eradicating histories of civic uses of the city and all traces of anything that does not conform to market forces. None of this is fundamentally new, but the everyday contradictions this engenders -- particularly in centers of Western progress -- are more visible today under conditions of economic crises that they were during boom times. OK, we all know that. What astounds and dismays me now is that all we -- lefty artist/intellectuals on this list -- manage to produce is a cynicism and bickering. Don't get me wrong, I'm personally very susceptible to the kind of in-jokery that cynicism represents, but as an analysis, it's really poor and asserts that it pretends to criticize. So, all this talk along the line a corporation cannot be evil because it simply does what capitalism is set up to do is really sophomoric. And then the bickering. Even worse. We all know the line: there is always a problem that is worse and that one REALLY should focus on, rather than betraying one's own privilege/ignorance/collusion by focusing on the supposedly superficial problem at hand. So gentrification is SF is bad? What what about Istanbul, or, Bejing? I wonder what that represents. Is this simply the endless jockeying for difference typical of the attention economy? An exhaustion of the project of cultural critique on favor of endless self-reaffirming micro discourses? A situation to complex to comprehend? The decline of the West in the face of changing global lines of force? Perhaps all of that, or none of that. Whatever it is, it makes these discussions stale, to say the least. Felix | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Oh, Felix, the pinheads are becoming ever tinier and hotter as the stems ares heated by national guardians laser-searching for needles in global haystacks of data. Dancers on the pinheads, veteran data guardian angels, high step as hot-foot Mercuries seeking perks inspired by oligarchic pay for uni ceos, catastrophic student debts, vanishing tenures, actuarial death risers of boomers doomed by Gitane-ravaged lungs of yute excessive Francoisme, by synapse- destroying wursts of Germanismiches, by Espana-garroting neckerchiefs and labial gorings, by gut-sclerosis of Anglo-bloody pudding at groan tables of pudders. Whatsayye to the blubber rubber-tires girdling the prancers bendng the pin heads asunder, tipping Shirl Jackson sacrificials out of the haystacks into the hoovers of natsec sucker. Whatsayye to the MF reearchers eager to sign up for fat contracts with the spies to gather, sort and corral pinhead terrorists among the tuition-penurious yute, implant yute spies among the disaffected addicted youtubers? I say to ye, mine hairless, who you working for, fronting for, uncovering for, whining for, disturbing the dying boomerless snoozers for, soliciting Magic Mountain stenching hospice for. YouTubercular brain disease of our youbiquitous my-selfie-spy time has come. Oh, Manno o Manno, whither self-erasure existenitialisme. At 03:42 AM 5/19/2014, you wrote: I'm astounded. Nay, dismayed. There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
HI Felix and nettime, Bringing together again the two threads, Bay Area and gentrification There is clearly a lot going. On a historic scale. None of this is fundamentally new, but the everyday contradictions this engenders -- particularly in centers of Western progress -- are more visible today under conditions of economic crises that they were during boom times. All true. Chris says this was in progress when he moved to San Francisco 20 yrs ago. Well, try this one: What happened in the Haight echoed earlier scenes in North Beach and The Village, among othersand it proved, once again, the basic futility of seizing turf you can't control. The pattern never varies: a low-rent area suddenly blooms new and loose and human and then fashionable, which attracts the press and the cops at about the same time. Cop problems attract more publicity, which then attracts fad-salesmen and hustlers which means money, and that attracts junkies and jack-rollers. Their bad action causes more publicity and for some perverse reason an influx of bored upward-mobile types who dig the menace of white ghetto life and whose expense-account tastes drive local rents and street-prices up and out of reach of the original settlerswho are forced, once again, to move on. This passage is from a letter Hunter S. Thompson wrote to David Wilcock of the Los Angeles Free Press dated December of 1969. With some minor changes in terminology and a couple of flourishes alluding to globalization and the New Economy, it might have been written yesterday. HST's observation was made in the context of outlining the Freak Power strategy he was then implementing in preparation for his run for office in Aspen, Colorado. He'd decamped to the mountains from the cities for the very reason of having been pushed out by the rising rents of the consumer bohemia, only to witness the same dynamic take hold yet again in Aspen. At the time his best answer to the creep of the land hustlers was to run for office himself, and to do it in a way that would present the clearest of choices. He lost, but not by much and that was for the office of Sheriff, ie quaint on its surface but in those days the real muscle in the county, the on-the-ground enforcer (of evictions, among other things). There was real power at stake, which meant the established concentrations of power were forced to defend what they had. For once, the developers and their political cronies were made to fight, sink resources into something other than land grabs, and in the process expose themselves further. That is still the lesson. OK, we all know that. What astounds and dismays me now is that all we -- lefty artist/intellectuals on this list -- manage to produce is a cynicism and bickering. I wonder what that represents. Is this simply the endless jockeying for difference typical of the attention economy? An exhaustion of the project of cultural critique on favor of endless self-reaffirming micro discourses? A situation to complex to comprehend? The decline of the West in the face of changing global lines of force? Perhaps all of that, or none of that. Whatever it is, it makes these discussions stale, to say the least. What it is, is the unwillingness for the usual thousand good reasons of the leftist intellectuals to engage themselves (ourselves!) in the actual workings of raw power: making legislation, lobbying, running for office. I believe there is a profound link between the limits to our ideas (as expressed collectively in the endless bickering) and the limits of our political engagement, whether that is expressed in the staleness of protest tactics, the way pressure group demands are articulated, or the unwillingness to take political offices that might be had relatively easily (school boards, local offices of all kind that are not so dependent on party organization). I'm all for the negative critique, but for that critique to advance a liberation agenda ultimately a positive turn in the society, and in ourselves people must produce new situations that then necessitate the critique. To take the example right in front of me, the Wisconsin Uprising surely merits full critical analysis in order to evolve as a movement. But it was the early events of Feb 14-17, 2011, during which mass collective actions moved with the speed of rumor and not the slowness of deliberative, reflective analysis and argument, that created the new situation and that temporarily destabilized power. The rearrangement devolved into retrenchment (as it usually does), but the rearrangement itself opened whole new channels for thinking through the role of union leadership, the possibility of cross-sectoral strikes and coordinated actions, even new perspectives on media politics and tactical communications. The old bickering (for which Madison, Wisconsin, lefties are famous) was put to rest by the fresh situation. With the piecemeal aggression of gentrification, a mass
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
I wish we were talking about governmental bureaucracies rather than corporations when discussing the id of institutionalized evil. --dan Save for the trifling detail that corporations, the big multinational ones, are our new ruling institutions. Governmental bureaucracies merely function as their flunkies, though, like all bureaucracies, they do watch their own interests. --p+5D! # 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
...Ben and Jerry's... The comedic genius Chris Rock, once made a joke that said that men are only as faithful as their options. The same applies to the ethical standards of corporations. Setting aside the fact that in the context of this conversation, our focus is obviously on large corporations, and not corner bodegas, the difference between a company like Ben and Jerry's and Google or Facebook is actually very little. So-called progressive businesses simply use a different form of manipulation and propaganda to get what they want, because they've found what they think is a niche market that will bring them a good return on their investment. To ascribe their seemingly good behavior to actual goodness or morals is delusional. ...that kind of cynicism completely excludes any basis for trying to understand high-level conflicts that really matter, like investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. No it doesn't. This isn't cynicism, it's basic class struggle. Being clear about which side you are on and the need for vigilance in monitoring and regulating power relations is common sense. It's the ruling elites and liberals who try to trick the rest of us into believing that we should all relax and hope for good behavior on the part of the owners or shareholders of these companies. Fuck them. We need laws. We need regulations. We have to fight. Period. It doesn't preclude us also using other means to keep power in check, but there should be no compromise on the baseline. Like how in the heck does recognizing the basic nature of power and class preclude the need to understand international treaties?! That in fact would be one of the core components of a struggle. It's a battle that's local, national, and international. You seem to think that in order to engage in all these arenas, I have to come to the table like some kind of naive and idealistic idiot. That's a elitist philosophy which has been imposed on the masses. I prefer to engage the enemy with my eyes wide open. Art McGee # 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
And btw, y'all could still dump your overpriced Mac OS for a nice Linux distro anytime! Hilarious. You are quite the comedian. Unfortunately, on the desktop, OS X is what Linux wants to be when it grows up. Now, getting back to the main issue, what is going on here? Facebook is evil? Google is evil? Seriously? Who are you people? When did the minds of learned academics and theorists become infested with such nonsensical religious mythology? These are corporations operating in a pseudo-Capitalist economic system, doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. There is no such thing as evil in this context, only logical self-interest. You either regulate their behavior, or they will always do what is natural. Evil has absolutely nothing to do with it. These insane attempts to distinguish one corporation from another, and ascribe to them personalities with ethical traits, is one of the saddest manifestations of mental illness I have ever seen. Why do people continue to delude themselves in this manner? Art McGee # 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
Art, It's a quote...for further information on the use of the term 'evil' in connection with google who initiated the use of the term themselves in relation to themselves, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/19/opinion/rushkoff-google-robotics/ http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/google-motto-dont-be-evil-contradicted-by-sandberg-court-confession/ http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/google-search-and-destroy-the-internet-giant-motto-dont-be-evil-has-bought-a-pioneer-of-scary-robot-animals-can-its-ethics-survive-9007562.html http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/ (point 6.) etc. etc. S Art McGee wrote: And btw, y'all could still dump your overpriced Mac OS for a nice Linux distro anytime! Hilarious. You are quite the comedian. Unfortunately, on the desktop, OS X is what Linux wants to be when it grows up. Now, getting back to the main issue, what is going on here? Facebook is evil? Google is evil? Seriously? ... # 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
This is pretty much the best mainstream article summarizing the current issues with gentrification in SF: How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF???s Housing Crisis Explained) http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ Art McGee # 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
On 05/15/2014 02:17 AM, Art McGee wrote: Hilarious. You are quite the comedian. Unfortunately, on the desktop, OS X is what Linux wants to be when it grows up. Maybe and maybe not quite. But Macintosh, the box and the brand, is a consumerist ideology, the most profitable corporation in the US, the epitome of the Chinese-American exploitative production line, and what soft power wants to be when it grows up (ie, total ideological domination). So if you are already captured to the point of total servility, fine. They will enjoy that. Brian Holmes # 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
-Are there regional differences in how converging technologies are imagined by science policy (E.U. vs USA vs elsewhere in world)? -Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced the direction of software development communities? Which ones? -What is the transhumanist imagination? How do we characterise it? what social/psychological(technical?) forces create such a strong enthusiasm for the technological sublime? What is its history? I would like to testify that some voices in the community of big picture scientists begin to scrutinize the hystery of the transhumanist propaganda which produces an ever rising rate of announcements, all sounding more and more like WunderWaffe. For instance: - Cliff Jocelyn (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ex Los Alamos) concluded our last seminar at Global Brain Institute on Modeling Global Control Systems by this question: What will stop the Global Brain from being just the information oligarchy? - Roland Bénabou (Princeton University) does very good maths on collective denial and willful blindness: what he calls Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD). - Jean-Louis Dessallles (Telecom Paristech) proposes a cognitive model (Simplicity Theory) which points out the fundamental link between language and weaponry. As I mentionned it in a recent paper (Les banquiers de la pensée), it can be assumed that, as the language was a strategy of survival against the threat that weapons poses to the species hundreds of thousands of years ago, a new strategy will emerge. For my part I bet that this will require the invention of a legitimate construction of the digital perspective. Olivier Auber WunderWaffe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderwaffe Cliff Jocelyn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Joslyn / http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/233 Roland Bénabou: Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%207p%20paper.pdf Jean-Louis Dessallles: Why we talk? (Oxford University Press) / Simplicity Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicity_theory Les banquiers de la pensée (french): http://www.cuberevue.com/les-banquiers-pensee/3345 Digital perspective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poietic_Generator#Perspectives 2014-05-13 21:58 GMT+02:00 Michael Reinsborough m.reinsboro...@qub.ac.uk: Hi nettimers, I don't get as much time to read (let alone to post to) nettime as would like but just wanted to underline the previous posts in this thread that made remarks on google/Kurzweil. ... # 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
On 05/13/2014 12:31 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on what Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our underlying frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring them in pursuit of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, following the direction of its friends in the US State Department--might be in order; and perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might be done about this. Ahem, I believe some denizens of this list have organized entire conferences about this? Does anyone remember Deep Search? Anyway, the point is always well taken: knowledge is power, epistemology is fundamental to both technical development and cultural elaboration in a complex society. Foucault left us that understanding, at the very least. But what Florian's post suggests, when you look at Google's acquisitions and obsessions all together in one basket, is even beyond computational epistemology. The Singularity is an ontological proposal. It maintains that the steady increase in computer-processing capacity will ultimately (and even soon) result in the emergence of a new form of Being. Like a good multidivisional corporation with an overgrown research arm, Google is preparing to realize and, I guess, profit from this ontological transformation. Why the military robots? Why not remember Manuel De Landa's little book, War In the Age of Intelligent Machines, which caused such a stir in its day? De Landa predicted that computers would gain autonomous intelligence and operational capacity through the kind of competition for processing speed and power that has historically occurred under both cold and hot war conditions. Of course, when we look at Google's present capacities for recording, analyzing and synthesizing global language usage, it seems that they may find another road to the Singularity. But like a good multidivisional corporation with billions of research dollars to burn, they are adding a little military insurance to their oh-so-civil program of ontological domination. Geez, why couldn't the Stanford folks have just stuck with Pong? best, BH # 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
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 05/13/2014 12:17 AM, John Hopkins wrote: 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 Perhaps your question was rhetorical, but even if that's the case, I'd like to think the answer might in fact be yes. After all, the commodity our new giants are built around is information. It seems unlikely to me that an organization devoted to leveraging information wouldn't also learn as it does so. We certainly have major issues around energy all around our society(ies) that we'll be needing to solve one way or another. I'm at least slightly optimistic that enormous entities *without* the word Oil in their name (or their 'DNA') have the potential to improve on the past behavior of multi-national giants. But alternatively it may be that I simply need to shed my rose-colored glasses. best, ~c -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Icedove - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJTci0JAAoJELuLPXMxqTZ/PI8QAJyMH+nXL8Qsy2hwjmYoUmOI 3IXlOttSYzfmXWBohFSZQiDPqxXC3MiGNoQxFexcqHo1SBCSM8NXjtRUgchddXrg /zSn9YJ7A59gB1T5euivBjfB1mGHV0MPsS+kgNs6em2zipi146Y/D3a16RlJHPwm qxB2Kthb+GsZ1dEwxqFcKlGfiC1faiYEJDnvdQNyHn9nS4oA5q38KIPLPy+4nWdS wO4T4L68XbN11KCQAbC1lWxmXAJrx1Al9b77/4U9OuyfeGUIVrUoJvvpp8zDjV9W W/oqG50U4rsjwuIFT1QpIonFwSv8gAgBN/skC43NBUKP6Na3zMeJZ05onfW6Y1qW X1Jgd680bDsiP/QFNl1AIIUb8RgzgdZ65jpMUCEnqrykjLQBkXP8fBke9WwstuML FPE1vXO7C/cBMbN1E5SVTrPA76m88OqYqeE6qNm3VZ55yb8l0B054SnxPZWvCnuK Ov9lDf5gJjpiWg/j9BqwWjeKsRXd2GzMGVAB98i1b22yjTxpCEJMjlebsjm+1Qig 74LFOEgVRNZWIY8G9OtAaKWQ7JqoKW0lQncznNWVum3hnb3ji5elyO2od+h8JgtE zyXRG+ZQtLh9TyTqUztjBWkv8Y5PxjfBxEm/3Lqbxkdsri3S9ij/WbeMVhQQkYJa AOa6j7oFmgIytpnecAtV =M1VM -END PGP SIGNATURE- # 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
if one reads, the IIC -industrial internet cons. documents and others from Cisco, GE on the IoE, one sees how openly these guys argue for 'connecting work and people on the move' the technoutopic way towards singularity which passes through the realisation of Internet of Free Labour in material field. this means construction of global and intelligent labour division which will based on 'zero marginal costs' machine, google and fb are the ones developing the infrastructure and will have structural strategic heights in the game. who will be absorbing all energy and creativity from the exploitable people, the rest can be butteries. This foreseen a new class society, so new hierarch within and without the ruling ones. The current geopolitics is imho is the manifestation of the intraclass war for the future, that's why Schmit plays a key role from the North Africa and OWS, to Korea and so on. we need a distributed and collaborative counter hegemonic formation as soon as possible. o. On 13 mei 2014, at 15:45, Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com wrote: On 05/13/2014 12:31 AM, michael gurstein wrote: Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on what Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our underlying frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring them in pursuit of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, following the direction of its friends in the US State Department--might be in order; and perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might be done about this. Ahem, I believe some denizens of this list have organized entire conferences about this? Does anyone remember Deep Search? ... # 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
On May 13, 2014, at 9:45 AM, Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com wrote, but not in this order: Why the military robots? Why not remember Manuel De Landa's little book, War In the Age of Intelligent Machines, which caused such a stir in its day? De Landa predicted that computers would gain autonomous intelligence and operational capacity through the kind of competition for processing speed and power that has historically occurred under both cold and hot war conditions. Of course, when we look at Google's present capacities for recording, analyzing and synthesizing global language usage, it seems that they may find another road to the Singularity. But like a good multidivisional corporation with billions of research dollars to burn, they are adding a little military insurance to their oh-so-civil program of ontological domination. I remember that book very well -- I edited it. Remember, though, that the rhetorical figure it opens with is a 'robot historian' writing a triumphal account in which man appears as little more than a bit player in the unfolding logic of the machinic phylum. I had misgivings about that at the time, because it seemed like the book could serve as a sort of anticipatory propaganda (or maybe 'premature,' as in 'premature antifascist'). It turns out I needn't have worried, because folks like the good people at WiReD came along and were happy to milk the 'out of control' cow for everything it was worth. But this is all based on a basic human-vs-machine mythology; I think the more likely results will (indeed *do*) involve conflicting models of relations between humans *and* machines. That's a useful way to think about Google and all the rest, without lapsing into business-journalism nonsense -- a constant threat when trying to understand new forms of corporate activity and power. Anyway, the point is always well taken: knowledge is power, epistemology is fundamental to both technical development and cultural elaboration in a complex society. Foucault left us that understanding, at the very least. But what Florian's post suggests, when you look at Google's acquisitions and obsessions all together in one basket, is even beyond computational epistemology. The Singularity is an ontological proposal. It maintains that the steady increase in computer-processing capacity will ultimately (and even soon) result in the emergence of a new form of Being. Like a good multidivisional corporation with an overgrown research arm, Google is preparing to realize and, I guess, profit from this ontological transformation. I think it's more useful to think of it as a historical model. It may indeed be ontological, but you lose 95% of your possible audience right there. 'History' is close enough for gummint work, as they say. Cheers, T # 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
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Hi nettimers, I don't get as much time to read (let alone to post to) nettime as would like but just wanted to underline the previous posts in this thread that made remarks on google/Kurzweil. Not only is the Kurzweil--other-transhumanists agenda emerging from the private sector (for example Google) but also there is quite a bit of it hidden in publicly funded projects. The Obama Brain Initiative in the U.S. and the Human Brain Project (HBP) in Europe intending to map the human brain https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en_GB/neuromorphic-computing-platform1 have subtle transhumanist influences. The HBP for example will spend half (!) of its budget on developing NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTER CHIPS in partnership with IBM. The hope is to copy the efficiency of the brain (a new type of biopiracy/intellectual property lifting/copyright copying?) to create 'brain-like' machines. http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=127617 While contemporary robots reduce the number of automobile workers needed (employed) to make cars, in the future these hypothetical brain-like machines might reduce the number of university lecturers (is anyone on nettime in this profession?) that it takes to build students. Another hope is that brain-like machines will be able to do face recognition successfully in a way that current software cannot, etc. a bit less dramatic than the imaginations of artificial intelligence (AI) that have previously circulated but significantly more so than contemporary robotics/ computing. The front-end justification for these research investments in mapping the human brain is medicine, pharmaceutical cures, and psychiatric health. Most of this medical research involves big data algorithm strategies for which is required massive assembling of patient data. not surprisingly this is about to set off a debate on consent/lack of consent necessary to access patients brain data (clinical, lifestyle, demographic, neuroimaging) by the neuroscientist/pharmaceutical company alliance that would do the research. I see part of the influence on the public research agenda by transhumanists as coming from the converging technologies discourse [for exa mple the convergence of biology and computer science as in synthetic biology circuit diagram type engineering of one-celled microorganism metabolic pathways (bugs in a vat that eat waste corn stocks- shit out petroleum!), as in medical informatics/big data, as in neuromorphic computing]. The convergence discourse in publicly funded science started with Mike Roco William Bainbridge who wrote about converging technologies for human enhancement. Roco is a big picture scientist at the National Science Foundation (of the USA) who supervised the huge investments in any physical sciences that worked at the molecular level and called this convergence 'nanotechnology'. http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/ Bainbridge is publicly a transhumanist. Roco doesn't talk about any political commitments he might have. Their latest description of convergence suggests the brain is the paradigmatic model for all convergences, and thus brain science will teach us the most about how to do convergences . http://www.wtec.org/NBIC2-Report/ Questions for nettimers : -How will brain science affect computing? does it matter whether or not predictions of the future are actually plausible? -Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced research investment by the military and by public science? -Are there regional differences in how converging technologies are imagined by science policy (E.U. vs USA vs elsewhere in world)? -Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced research investment by private corporations? Which ones? -Has/How has the transhumanist imagination influenced the direction of software development communities? Which ones? -What is the transhumanist imagination? How do we characterise it? what social/psychological(technical?) forces create such a strong enthusiasm for the technological sublime? What is its history? -Once the transhumanist influence is cleaned up for public consumption (some of them are kind of wacky in the same way that Eric Drexler was as soon as he started talking about nanobots and grey goo, etc. so his previous friends in the research community threw him under the tracks to make themselves seem more respectable, see the Richard Smalley/Eric Drexler debates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drexler%E2%80%93Smalley_debate_on_molecular_nanotechnology ) what will it be that corporate, military, and governance institutions will have gained from investing in their imaginative visions? BTW, has anyone seen the Johnny Depp film in cinemas just now 'Transcendence'? Perhaps we should even be asking about influence on popular culture. I think nettime spends a lot of time talking cultural theory, subjectivities of the web (no one knows you're a dog on the internet and that sort
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
On 05/11/2014 03:57 PM, Geert Lovink wrote: To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing… Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? I think many people have been switching back and forth between being suspicious, apprehensive and hopeful regarding Google - suspicious because of their centralization and monitoring, hopeful because of their technical cluefulness and huge contributions to free software, and apprehensive because of some of their inclinations towards right-wing politics - as in Schmidt's case. On the other hand, I don't see how Doctorow became part of the bay area elites. He's a notoriously leftist British-Canadian science fiction writer living in London. He did live in SF once, but it might take more than that to become part of the local elite? # 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
On 12/05/14 03:00, Brian Holmes wrote: Doctorow is a somewhat different story, no? He may get himself flown around the world to give talks, but he is not a full-fledged member of this newly dominant class - all the more so since he seems to identify himself at least partially with those on the outside of it. Both his politics and his own quest for attention-market share lead him to see, or at keast try to see, the new mangerialists as so many of his readers do, with ambivalent admixtures of envy, fear and class hatred. A contemporary court jester, then, or should we say cyber jester? Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests. Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558–1603) is said to have rebuked one of her fools for being insufficiently severe with her. Excessive behaviour, however, could lead to a fool being whipped, as Lear threatens to whip his fool. - The Royal Shakespeare Company quoted on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester Essential to the ruling elites across epochs, it seems. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Dear Geert Co Just to add to the complexity of the picture, Google is a rather decentralized mess - every googler I meet works on his/her own separate pet project - so far unable as a whole to take a stand with its billion of users against govenrments and large corporations, or for that matter switch to the other evil side either as Microsoft, Apple and other older actors of the Bay Area have done before them. Three points of hope though: -The Snowden scandal was met not just with anger within Google but also with steadfast pragmatism. The comments I heard frmo the inside all concerned war is a matter of resources California/Confucian style, exposing the fact that the only employer in the U.S. employing more top-rate mathematicians than Google itself is - tada - the NSA! So Google regard the war as a matter of who has the most resources will eventually win. Here of course with Google being aware that we the people will eventually opt out of Google if a more secure alternative far from the NSA eventually pops up (I assume Darknet, Bitcoin, Silk Road style but for communication and easy to use etc). Google does not have any enemy businesswise now, the next decade likely to be their golden age (Android and You Tube being enormous power generators). Their threat is definitely from the future and they are aware of it. - Eric Schmidt's book with Jared Cohen is a piece of horrible carp and so far I have not met a single Google insider who did not agree. Schmidt seems to be the borrowed stupidface to keep Washington happy about Google whereabouts but carries none or little cred within the Google hydra itself. He is an outsider and a pretentious and narcissitic one too. Judging from the book he is also a complete idiot and a puppet for someone. The book is that bad. Schmidt is definitely not Google. - Brin and Page are still young enough to be driven by their personal ambition to have fun and live the Californian dream (Burning Man every year, etc). They do listen and are not so much evil as naive when leaving their algorithm-driven comfort zone. But then again, Google is already what Foucault would refer to as an institution driven by the credo of endless self-expansion and of ciurse fed by senseless ad profits. And therefore a lot more dangerous for its naivety than for its evil. Drones, batteries, will they get involved with commercial cannabis next? The odds are really low. Apple are after Tesla (for the battery technology more than the cars I assume), Google will keep purchasing Star Trek dreamery. Google or Facebook? Google anytime. But with Schmidt in the midst of a bunch of fun-seeking hippies, the world desperately needs alternatives to a company that controls 80% of search outside China and 90% of smartphone data traffic (including China) worldwide. And has not been able to escape the long arms of the NSA. Its their naivety towards all this concentrated power which scares the shit out of me. Brotherly love Alexander Bard # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime tensions within the bay area elites
To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing? Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? Which company is currently in the spotlight and today's designated Dr. Evil is less important than the legitimate hostility and generalised anger at the winner takes all economy of info capitalism that these companies collectively represent. Its a political economy which has even departed from Adam Smith, as the creation of monopolies is increasingly seen as a necessary condition for survival in a world where transaction costs are near zero. In fact the imposition of 'temporary' monopolies was even proposed by dreadful Larry Summers as a last ditch policy to save capitalism in 2001 after the first dotcom bubble burst. In the event he needn't have bothered it happened anyway. The older heavy industries (even IBM) had to borrow heavily and issue equity to invest in ways that drove productivity and relatively secure employment. Today a company like Whatsapp (to take just one example) employs around 50 people and has a market value that is said to exceed Sony Corporation.. Once they reach critical mass the new info-companies do not need to borrow to invest. On the contrary, Smauglike, they sit on infinite piles of gold. The money is just not circulating. The hoarding vast piles of capital, the avoidance of tax, the employment tiny numbers, whilst simultaneously disrupting (and shrinking) established industries across the board is not an obvious recipe for winning any popularity contests. d a v i d g a r c i a new-tactical-research.co.uk # 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
It is very important to understand and critic the political economy of this emerging new, and possibility of the logic it bears for building counter class(lessness) strategies. Flos IoE(E meaning Every progressive-revolutionary agency) political organising can counter the clash of titans by bringing forward real alternatives being there and developed. To apply the idea or mechanism of 'reaching critical mass' to manage to decrease the transaction (meaning organizational, articulational and mobilisations) costs, in order to allow the mass participation in the creation and egalitarian distribution of the 'political change value', as distributed societal power, can bring the change before this clash explode. Orsan On 12 mei 2014, at 11:47, d.garcia d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk wrote: To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing? Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? Which company is currently in the spotlight and today's designated Dr. Evil is less important than the legitimate hostility and generalised anger at the winner takes all economy of info capitalism that these companies collectively represent. Its a political economy which has even departed from Adam Smith, as the creation of monopolies is increasingly seen as a necessary condition for survival in a world where transaction costs are near zero. In fact the imposition of 'temporary' monopolies was even proposed by dreadful Larry Summers as a last ditch policy to save capitalism in 2001 after the first dotcom bubble burst. In the event he needn't have bothered it happened anyway. ... # 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
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 Hey Geert, The tension between the Bay area elites is less interesting than the grassroots unrest from the 'data-havenots' who are slowly starting to feel uncomfortable with the level of governance/jurisdiction that Google is having in their lives: https://kevinroseisaterribleperson.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/home-demo-at-google-vcs-house-on-potrero-hill-sf/ http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231758/protesters-target-silicon-valley-shuttles-smash-google-bus-window We are seeing the very early signs of what I am sure will soon be a much more widespread discomfort with Google's practices. Cory is just more attuned than most to these weak signals (and so are you probably, hence your question). I've spoken about some of these issues at the recent Security in Times of Surveillance conference in Eindhoven. Video of my talk is here: http://www.win.tue.nl/eipsi/surveillance/zwart.mp4 Just look at the graph displaying Google's DC lobbying investment and you will instantly realise that Google is not the same Google that it was a decade ago. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of-washington-influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html Cheers, Hans On 11-05-14 15:57, Geert Lovink wrote: Dear nettimers, I know, there are tons of examples of this. I just want to know more what you think of it, in particular if you happen to live there, or come from the Bay Area. To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing… Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? Yours, Geert -- Eric Schmidt, war crimes apologist and colossal hypocrite Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Wed, May 7, 2014 Just a reminder that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a colossal hypocrite and an apologist for war crimes: “Some people will cheer for the end of control that connectivity and data-rich environments engender. They are the people who believe that data wants to be free and that greater transparency in all things will bring about a more just, safe and free world. For a time, WikiLeaks' cofounder Julian Assange was the world's most visible ambassador for this cause, but supporters of WikiLeaks and the values it champions come in all stripes, including right-wing libertarians, far-left liberals and apolitical technology enthusiasts, While they don't always agree on tactics, to them, data permanence is a failsafe for society. Despite some of the known negative consequences of this movements (threats to individual security, ruined reputations and diplomatic chaos), some free-information activists believe the absence of a delete button ultimately strengthens humanity's progress toward greater equality, productivity and self-determination. We believe, however, that this is a dangerous model, especially given that there is always going to be someone with bad judgment who releases information that will get people killed. This is why governments have systems and valuable regulations in place that, while imperfect, should continue to govern who gets to make the decision about what is classified and what is not.” - Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on whistleblowers, from The New Digital Age, written with Jared Cohen, another Googler. This is the man who said, If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place (but flipped out when Cnet performed the most perfunctory of doxxings on him), but whose position, when it comes to leaks detailing everything from the indiscriminate killing of civilians to criminal mass-surveillance of whole nations (and massive cyberattacks on his own company) is that grownups know what they're doing and it's not up to the far left, and right wing libertarians to publish the truth and hold powerful criminals to account. In short: if Google outs you through a Real Names policy on G+, maybe you just shouldn't be gay, or maybe you shouldn't be hiding that fact from your violent and intolerant neighbors. But if a whistleblower or a reporter outs an elected official for gross corruption and war crimes, she's an irresponsible child who's taken the law into her own hands and should know better. # 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 - -- Hans de Zwart Bits of Freedom | https://bof.nl hans.dezw...@bof.nl | 4CB931E5
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Oh yeah... It's probably just a persons problem.. probably related to ego and such... What could be wrong with the not-do-evil Google? - - the fact that they bent to entertainment industry and were the first to accept privatized, automated policing/sanctioning scheme on their platforms, thus opening the door to industry requesting private censorship everywhere? - - their acceptance of paid-peering deals with major telcos operators, opening the door to these priority deals breaching Net neutrality? - - real name policy and repeated attacks of E.Schmidt against anonymity (so ironical when you know how secretive is the guy and the decision-making process at the top of G)? - - change of their licence to explictly merge all data into a single profile (which they said a few years before they would never do?) - - the fact that they became a US military contractant by acquiring killer robots with Boston Dynamics? - - their cooperation with the State department? - - their transformation of users into proprietary drones through the use of locked-down implants (glasses)? - - Their investments in strategic portfolios in the domains of biotech and transportation? - - Their active cooperation with PRISM and other programs of the NSA? No really, I don't see why Google bypassing the fundamental right to a fair trial, implementing automated private censorship, attacking anonymity, participating in massive breaches of privacy, leading the trend of anti-net neutrality deals, turning users into drones, and expanding to strategic fields while acquiring killer robots would be a problem to anyone. j On Sunday 11 May 2014 01:57 PM, Geert Lovink wrote: Dear nettimers, I know, there are tons of examples of this. I just want to know more what you think of it, in particular if you happen to live there, or come from the Bay Area. To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing… Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? Yours, Geert -- Eric Schmidt, war crimes apologist and colossal hypocrite Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Wed, May 7, 2014 Just a reminder that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a colossal hypocrite and an apologist for war crimes: “Some people will cheer for the end of control that connectivity and data-rich environments engender. They are the people who believe that data wants to be free and that greater transparency in all things will bring about a more just, safe and free world. For a time, WikiLeaks' cofounder Julian Assange was the world's most visible ambassador for this cause, but supporters of WikiLeaks and the values it champions come in all stripes, including right-wing libertarians, far-left liberals and apolitical technology enthusiasts, While they don't always agree on tactics, to them, data permanence is a failsafe for society. Despite some of the known negative consequences of this movements (threats to individual security, ruined reputations and diplomatic chaos), some free-information activists believe the absence of a delete button ultimately strengthens humanity's progress toward greater equality, productivity and self-determination. We believe, however, that this is a dangerous model, especially given that there is always going to be someone with bad judgment who releases information that will get people killed. This is why governments have systems and valuable regulations in place that, while imperfect, should continue to govern who gets to make the decision about what is classified and what is not.” - Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on whistleblowers, from The New Digital Age, written with Jared Cohen, another Googler. This is the man who said, If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place (but flipped out when Cnet performed the most perfunctory of doxxings on him), but whose position, when it comes to leaks detailing everything from the indiscriminate killing of civilians to criminal mass-surveillance of whole nations (and massive cyberattacks on his own company) is that grownups know what they're doing and it's not up to the far left, and right wing libertarians to publish the truth and hold powerful criminals to account. In short: if Google outs you through a Real Names policy on G+, maybe you just shouldn't be gay, or maybe you shouldn't be hiding that fact from your violent and intolerant neighbors. But if a whistleblower or a reporter outs an elected official for gross corruption and war crimes, she's an irresponsible child who's taken the law into her own hands and should know better. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
Brian, nettime, Brian, you have said this so succinctly...the Bay Area as epicenter of this technologicalized spread of an apparently securely spreading monoculture, the globalization of management and work in which a giant like Google or Twitter or Facebook defines what that is and how much it costs and how many can use it and who the players are going to be; as if we all were players. I agree with Jaron Lanier, that everyone working on FB should be paid. We are, after all, sources. One lens to see this through, in terms of Google'spervasive power, is the adoption of Google by huge sections of the municipal public sector, presumably because there is no equal alternative. No questions asked, The San Francisco Unified School District - a direct indoctrination of 50,000 children grades K- 12 to forms of work structured through use of Google now uses Google as its online educational platform. They bought secured space so that email addresses of kids are not accessible, intranets per each school, but all on google platform. Yet, this was the default position - Google because there was no alternative. Google because many of the tools are accessible and easy to use. Our children, their ideas of education, the intermingling of market research with education, are all intertwined in this massive widespread municipal acceptance of Google's authority and product. The controversial Google buses are a visible sign of the times. Literally, urban planning may be more conditioned by where Google picks up its workers in the morning, and where, then, the Google workforce would buy condos close to transport, than by any other kinds of concerns. And if Google already has convinced the public schools, and is transforming real estate, and may be putting wi fi into the parks, then why not just change the name of our city to Google CA? We could be incorporated all the way down the peninsula. It's as if the bus represents a frame into which the city is being stuffed; a frame, which is much larger and clearly more in tune with the future of all things, than the one in which residents now living here (but possibly soon to be evicted) have a stake. The very ground plane of the city of San Francisco is being altered as if it were a Google Map, by Google itself and with a tacit nod from city hall. Maybe we all just need to own stock to have a say in city government? Google's answer to complaints is to pay for free transportation on city buses for young people - the Free Muni Pass for Youth program. They have just signed on to do this for the next 2 years. How can anyone criticize that? That's good for families and young people, but again its a micro lens. The same poor kids for whom this project was originally designed, by an activist from Coalition for the Homeless, are being forced to leave SF in droves due to rising costs. How far will Google's bandaid attempts to make good in SF go? Their offer to put free wi fi in all the parks, so the utopian dream of seamless connectivity, need not be disrupted is similar. They wanted to supply all the wifi ten years ago. And someone needs to pay for this service. I look around and see the white cords of ipod headphones inserted into ears, the more I think of that iPod advertising campaign that was so creepy at the turn of the 21st c. ---where silhouettes were dancing and all that was white was the headphone and ipod. and they were everywhere. The idea of the everywhere that we are everywhere and everywhere is us...the all seeing eye of Google...the all pervasive use of this one tool, all in one...and you are one and i am one, and our identities are now privatized because against the backdrop of monoculturalism, anything else seems a wierd anachronism; a throwback to what is happening 'now'. I'm afraid its corporate imagination running away with the bacon once gain, and don't get me started on Bill Gates and Windows 8 and the take over of higher education! molly Molly Hankwitz On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.comwrote: On 05/12/2014 04:47 AM, d.garcia wrote: Which company is currently in the spotlight and today's designated Dr. Evil is less important than the legitimate hostility and generalised anger at the winner takes all economy of info capitalism that these companies collectively represent. This is the key point. Google represents the new managerialists because it's the most visible and also, the most hypocritical (Burning Man, fun, and all that). But what's impressive is how the Bay Area has become the single most important point of production for the software that organizes work and daily life for users of devices around the globe. US and especially Californian discourse is so apolitical that most of these new managerialists probably don't even realize the degree of direct algorithmic control they exert, nor the standardizing influence which their ethos, values, economic profiles and lifestyles is having on national and
Re: nettime tensions within the bay area elites
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Hans de Zwart hans.dezw...@bof.nl wrote: Just look at the graph displaying Google's DC lobbying investment and you will instantly realise that Google is not the same Google that it was a decade ago. To chime in here: If Facebook qualifies as scary, then Google does even more so. Lately, the company has been aggressively ventured into military-industrial territory with its recent investments into robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and drone technology. On top of that, or rather: in sync with it, its top management believes in technological Singularity (about which Wikipedia remarks that the flashback character in Ken MacLeod's 1998 novel The Cassini Division dismissively refers to the singularity as 'the Rapture for nerds'). Ray Kurzweil, chief Singularity evangelist, has been working as Google's director of engineering since 2012. Google is co-founder and main sponsor of his Singularity University ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13sing.html?pagewanted=all : For those who haven't noticed, the Valley's most-celebrated company - Google - works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans. Larry Page, Google's other co-founder, helped set up Singularity University in 2008, and the company has supported it with more than $250,000 in donations. Some of Google's earliest employees are, thanks to personal donations of $100,000 each, among the university's 'founding circle.'). Google's most recent projects straightforwardly follow the Singularity script. Most of them are bundled under Google [x], a semi-secret facility run by Google dedicated to making major technological advancements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X). Examples: - Through quick and aggressive company acquisitions, Google has become one of the main players in contemporary robotics. The company has put Andy Rubin, architect and former chief developer of the Android operating system, in charge of its robotics program. Its most recent and most spectacular acquisition has been Boston Dynamics, a company at the cutting edge of military robotics and notorious for products like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ (The Guardian has more information on that acquisition: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/google-boston-dynamics-robots-atlas-bigdog-cheetah) - Linked to its robotics research is Google's project to develop driverless cars. The company is beyond the prototyping stage and currently runs test-drives of autonomous cars throughout the U.S.. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car) - Google has also begun to invest into drone technology and bought up the drone manufacturer Titan Aerospace: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/14/technology/innovation/google-titan-drone/ . Google strongly competes with Facebook in this area. - Google's acquisition of 'smart meter' company Nest ( http://www.theclimategroup.org/what-we-do/news-and-blogs/google-buys-smart-meter-start-up-nest/) and development of a Google Contact Lens equipped with wireless chips ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens) are further indications that the company is leaving behind its search engine roots. On the likely upside: All this sounds as if the company, with the billions it can burn on experimental projects and its attempt to find new areas of business, is going through some retro- or neo-1990s cyber phase. It's quite possible that these efforts will eventually fall flat on their face. Public resistance against Google Glass, even in a tech-friendly country like the U.S., and the protest actions against Google employees in San Francisco seem to indicate changing times. -F # 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
There is also tension within Google, that is interesting to observe. I have a friend working in Google.org, the humanitarian arm that works on projects like apps to help find missing persons after some type of disaster. he and others there are often extremely frustrated by what goes on over at google.com, not only because they might disagree on ethical or political grounds, but also because Google and quite a few of the big tech joints play at being counter culture, but often have the effect of making countercultural events and locales too expensive for the people who started them/built them. 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 disentangle corporate policy from personal behavior by employees (whether it's positive or negative). On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 8:36 AM, Hans de Zwart hans.dezw...@bof.nl wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 Hey Geert, The tension between the Bay area elites is less interesting than the grassroots unrest from the 'data-havenots' who are slowly starting to feel uncomfortable with the level of governance/jurisdiction that Google is having in their lives: ... -- Kim De Vries http://kdevries.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 tensions within the bay area elites
Dear nettimers, I know, there are tons of examples of this. I just want to know more what you think of it, in particular if you happen to live there, or come from the Bay Area. To me, it is somehow super clear that Facebook is evil. Not hard to understand. But Google? Why are tensions rising so high lately around them? Look at the tone of the Cory Doctorow blog post to Boing Boing… Don't get me wrong. But have they really gone down lately? In my humble view they are as evil as were a decade ago... What happened? Have we changed? Yours, Geert -- Eric Schmidt, war crimes apologist and colossal hypocrite Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Wed, May 7, 2014 Just a reminder that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a colossal hypocrite and an apologist for war crimes: “Some people will cheer for the end of control that connectivity and data-rich environments engender. They are the people who believe that data wants to be free and that greater transparency in all things will bring about a more just, safe and free world. For a time, WikiLeaks' cofounder Julian Assange was the world's most visible ambassador for this cause, but supporters of WikiLeaks and the values it champions come in all stripes, including right-wing libertarians, far-left liberals and apolitical technology enthusiasts, While they don't always agree on tactics, to them, data permanence is a failsafe for society. Despite some of the known negative consequences of this movements (threats to individual security, ruined reputations and diplomatic chaos), some free-information activists believe the absence of a delete button ultimately strengthens humanity's progress toward greater equality, productivity and self-determination. We believe, however, that this is a dangerous model, especially given that there is always going to be someone with bad judgment who releases information that will get people killed. This is why governments have systems and valuable regulations in place that, while imperfect, should continue to govern who gets to make the decision about what is classified and what is not.” - Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on whistleblowers, from The New Digital Age, written with Jared Cohen, another Googler. This is the man who said, If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place (but flipped out when Cnet performed the most perfunctory of doxxings on him), but whose position, when it comes to leaks detailing everything from the indiscriminate killing of civilians to criminal mass-surveillance of whole nations (and massive cyberattacks on his own company) is that grownups know what they're doing and it's not up to the far left, and right wing libertarians to publish the truth and hold powerful criminals to account. In short: if Google outs you through a Real Names policy on G+, maybe you just shouldn't be gay, or maybe you shouldn't be hiding that fact from your violent and intolerant neighbors. But if a whistleblower or a reporter outs an elected official for gross corruption and war crimes, she's an irresponsible child who's taken the law into her own hands and should know better. # 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
I don't think this is a Bay Area thing. Google, Schmidt, and even Cory, operate at a supranational level, traveling from place to place and speaking and working all over the globe, without any regard to national borders or local cultures. They live in cyberpsace, literally. I'm sympathetic to Cory's concerns, but they are a little childish. Cory is shocked, shocked to wake up and find out that Eric Schmidt, the old-school businenessman hired to be the adult in the room at Google, turns out to be a moderate Republican who sees his company as a fellow traveller with western governments (Google pulled out of China). Why wouldn't a company like Google seek to be in concert with Boeing, Lockheed, GE, or GM? Like his entitled brethren, Cory wants special rules to apply to him, his family, the places he shops and eats, and to no one else. I mean, I listen to this discussion almost every day. It can be described as a generational difference as much as anything, and Cory identifies wit h the generation below him (Millenials), and Schmidt identifies with the generation above him (late Boomers). Google plus (a practical failure BTW, like most of Google's rollouts) will not be where the mass murder of anyone is 'outed.' And Cory can bitch all he wants about privacy, but Boing Boing, his blog, has nine trackers on its site, including doubleclick and google analytics, and beacons as well. So I guess Cory is all religious when it comes to his own privacy, but not so much when it comes to making money on his website from snarfing up little bits of others' privacy. I'm not sure who is more, or less hypocritical. Mike Weisman On May 11, 2014, at 6:57 AM, Geert Lovink ge...@xs4all.nl wrote: Dear nettimers, I know, there are tons of examples of this. I just want to know more what you think of it, in particular if you happen to live there, or come from the Bay Area. ... --- Mike Weisman please respond to pop...@speakeasy.net # 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
On 05/11/2014 01:38 PM, Michael Weisman wrote: I don't think this is a Bay Area thing. Google, Schmidt, and even Cory, operate at a supranational level, traveling from place to place and speaking and working all over the globe, without any regard to national borders or local cultures. Yet there is a local effect. As Google and other major Silicon Valley companies have grown to become a global economic force, supplying information-processing capacities and managerial tools to the entire world, their local footprint has grown disproportionately. Their presence, buying power and influence in the Bay Area is palpable and increasing. A social class cannot simply remain invisible. And the sight of a superior class - arguably, a dominant class, a ruling class - is generally painful to the eyes of others. Thus the recent (and in my view, quite justified) attacks against Google techies/execs by Bay Area political countercultures. Doctorow is a somewhat different story, no? He may get himself flown around the world to give talks, but he is not a full-fledged member of this newly dominant class - all the more so since he seems to identify himself at least partially with those on the outside of it. Both his politics and his own quest for attention-market share lead him to see, or at keast try to see, the new mangerialists as so many of his readers do, with ambivalent admixtures of envy, fear and class hatred. These kinds of tensions within elites have often emerged in the capitalist democracies. They are a good sign. We need more of them, and not just within the elites themselves. It is healthy to lash out against those who rule you. Otherwise they do what they are doing right now. They just walk all over us. With pleasure and impunity. best, Brian # 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
As the saying goes, where you stand has a lot to do with where you sit. Outside looking in? Vulnerable to the politics of envy. Inside looking out? Vulnerable to the politics of manifest destiny, personal edition. --dan # 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
