nettime In Digital Death Valley
In Digital Death Valley Net/language - [EMAIL PROTECTED], Aymara.org and the Internet as a cemetery of languages Krystian Woznicki A look at the Internet is always a look through a magnifying glass at what we generally call globalisation. The Internet accelerates and reinforces the process that is causing everything on our planet to move closer together, that is synchronising, connecting and interlinking everything. Everything that accompanies this process is made more visible by the Internet - as a consequence of a revelation or a dramatic distortion. Language plays an important role in this connection. After all, the present phase of globalisation is seeing an interrogation and renegotiation of the model within whose framework language was mainly modelled as an ideological construct: the nation-state. This latter was only able to legitimise its homogenising ambitions with a national language - such as Spanish, French or German -, something that was never naturally existent, but had first to be laboriously constructed in the course of nation-building. This process occurred to the detriment of diversity within the respective language system, but also at the expense of other languages. A prime example of this is Spain, with altogether four other languages within its national borders that were systematically repressed in favour of Castellano, which advanced to become the national language. Recently, there has been much talk of languages dying out. According to Andrew Dalby's recent publication Language in Danger (Allen Lane, 2002), every week the world is rid of one more language. At the same time it is becoming increasingly apparent that a few languages, above all English, are expanding their national and international dominance in an alarming fashion. The geo-political hegemony of the G8 would thus seem to have a linguistic dimension: less competitive nations are dominated not only at an economic-military level, but also at a linguistic level, by a few others - in an echo of colonialism right down to neocolonialist tendencies.1 However much this may explain the homogenising developments in the field of languages at global level, it in the end says little about the present status of language as an ideological construct. After all, the present phase of globalisation is largely shaped not only by powerful nation-states, but also by equally powerful corporations and NGOs which, as comparatively young global players, do not define their identity within the linguistic domain per se. In the discourse about the vanishing diversity of languages, this blind spot is also reproduced in the discussion on this topic with reference to the internet. The basic problem lies in the reproduction itself. Certainly, there are offline developments that are reflected in the online sphere - but what is decisive is where the parallels cease, or, to be more precise: where the reflection effect loses its meaning and where the translation begins. It is obvious that communities form in cyberspace that are oriented according to national languages. It is just that one tends to turn to Internet services in one's own language; correspondingly, people talk of virtual language communities on the WWW. What is more: the surveillance of the Internet in countries like China or Burma sometimes recalls the efforts of the modern nation-state. After all, the initiatives to filter content bring about a nationally oriented linguistic homogenisation that reconstructs the seemingly anachronistic borders of the territorial state in a purportedly borderless association of networks. On the other side, there is the spectre of a world language. In this regard, English is literally on everyone's lips; the Internet, too, has given this spectre refuge. Here, it can unfold its ambition to be present on a global scale under the conditions provided by a medium that not only has the same ambition, but has also come up with a particularly effective mythos in this regard. The multiplicator effect has brought not only admirers, but also detractors into the arena. The media theorist Geert Lovink, for example, cites Adorno (The whole is always the untrue) to underline the fact that there will never be a united planet with a united humanity speaking only one language.2 A world language has nonetheless become a utopian dream for many Netizens. It even holds a fascination for those who do not want to see languages dying out. After all, it is based on the idea of a harmonious world community and the promise of becoming part of this community. Lovink implies, however, that these dreamers use globalisation only as a cheap excuse for no longer having to confront the stagnation and the boredom at local (and especially national) levels.3 But are the people who do get involved at these levels unreservedly to be accepted as our heroes? Take the UNESCO project [EMAIL PROTECTED] as an example. It has devoted itself to the multilingualism on the Internet
nettime HandsOfftheInternet, says ATT
Maybe it's time that they be taken to task for what is clearly a misleading advertising campaign? Sure. But then, I have yet to see an advertising campaign that wasn't misleading, Soenke http://www.saschameinrath.com/node/403 [UPDATE 1] HandsOfftheInternet.com -- More Sock-Puppetry from the Telecom Ministry of Propaganda. HandsofftheInternet.com is yet another prime example of astroturf in action. I can only suspect that telecom incumbents pay some sort of professional PR group to create websites like this specifically to misinform and mislead the public. So I decided to start an investigation to figure out who HandsOff actually was. Here's what I've found: Looking at the footer on HandsOff, but that didn't provide any information on who was actually running the site. The about us section just said things like Hands Off The Internet is a nationwide coalition of Internet users. Which begs the question, Who are the members of this 'national coalition of Internet users? This lead me to take a look at the Membership Organizations section -- and low and behold, membership organizations included: ATT Bell South Cingular Communications The National Association of Manufacturer and a host of industry front groups Now, this is rather enlightening, and I probably could have stopped there. But what happens if you delve deeper? A quick whois registrar search of HandsOfftheInternet.com shows that the domain was registered back in 2002 (by someone who, I suspect, is in no way affiliated with its current manifestation); however, it was updated in April 2006 and the name service set to 1and1.com. Strangely enough, so is DontRegulate.org -- which houses an incredibly misleading cartoon that leads back to HandsOff. What's interesting about the whois query is not what it shows, but rather, what it doesn't show. There's no real information on who's actually running either HandsOff or DontRegulate. In fact, one only gets information like, Registrant Name:Oneandone Private Registration (for DontRegulate) and the old registration info for HandsOff. Which is extremely strange... it almost makes one think that whoever is running both groups has something to hide. Which left me wondering, well, what about the Chairmen for HandsOff? Given that all other information has been carefully hidden from public view, who is this Mike McCurry and what does he do for a living. As it turns out, Mike McCurry works for Public Strategies Washington... What, I hear you ask, is Public Strategies Washington? Here it is, direct from their website: PSW is: A full-service government relations and lobbying firm, PSW provides the kind of special insights into the workings of Washington that are essential in developing and executing a successful lobbying strategy. Now wait a second, whatever happened to the national coalition of Internet users? Maybe there's more grassroots action through the Grassroots Enterprises, which McCurry is also on the Board of Directors of? So what does Grassroots do? According to their website: Grassroots Enterprise works for a wide range of corporations, trade associations, nonprofit organizations, and industry coalitions to help them recruit, educate, and mobilize potential supporters...most of our clients take advantage of our extensive experience in building web-based communications and advocacy programs, as well as our expertise in message development, grassroots and grasstops organizing, and political strategy...Our proprietary software platform, Grassroots Multiplier=AE has all the key features needed to wage effective online campaigns...Much of our client work and clients are confidential. So here's the big questions: Who is funding HandsOfftheInternet.com? If there's not a smoking gun here, why are the linkages to funders being obfuscated, the whois entries hidden, and the affiliations so damning? Who gave the funding for the series of huge ads run in such publications as The Washington Post, Roll Call, and The Hill? I still didn't have a direct link to who was behind HandsOff... And yet, someone must have slipped up somewhere -- just a thread that might begin to unravel things. Which lead me to HandsOff.org -- the URL listed in the big ads run in various DC papers. A whois of HandsOff.org just happened to have an administrator named Tom Stock lists -- that and the following information: Admin Organization:TSE Enterprises, L.L.C Fascinating -- who was TSE Enterprises? From their website: TSE Enterprises, LLC has been engineering web sites and portals, interactive multimedia, and electronic multimedia (EDM) campaigns for public relations, public affairs, and political groups nationwide. Maybe it's time that HandsOff came clean about who's funding this grassroots effort? Maybe it's time that they be taken to task for what is clearly a misleading advertising campaign? [UPDATE 1] May 17: Chris Wolf, co-chairman of HandsOff, has now
nettime =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Rerelease_of_=5Fpause_by_Garrett_Lynch_and_Micha?
Collaboration for artists can be one of the most productive endevours. It produces work by the artists involved which would have unlikely been produced individually and also obliges the artists to make conceptual compromises they might not usually have to. It frees up the creative spirit as each artist realises at a point that they have to let go of their single vision to accommodate the thinking of the other. The OTHER is the crucial element in collaboration, it not alone designates the other artist but also implicates the unseen, inexperienced, unknowable, unthinkable and inconceivable of the former Under this framework Garrett Lynch and Micha=EBl Sellam would like to announce the rerelease of a net.art work entitled _pause. --- _pause http://www.asquare.org/project/_pause/ _Pause was a work initiated as part of the Atelier de recherche interactive (interactive research studio) at Ensad, Paris France. Its initial purpose was to explain an object to an audience that did not have access to the object itself and to use any interactive medium (website, cd-rom, dvd etc) to explain in ways more than simple photographs could do. It was decided to create a website, a distribution medium that would be accessible to the widest audience possible yet still in complete control of its creators. Instead of creating something visual and interactive which would sit in the browser and function we wanted to create a work which would include the browser and use the browser as part of the work. Simple things, such as seperate windows defining different sections of the object/site, these sections/windows being placed in order, appearing or disappearing when necessary and in general performing certain functions when used, much as the original objects parts do. The choosen object was a coffee maker. When the user connects to the site their internet connection becomes this virtual coffee makers power, its electricity. Photographic representation of the complete object is not used apart from the last page when interaction with the site is complete, instead the site and browser combine to become the object which the user has to interact with to understand. The process is started by clicking on the three squares on the first page which launch three seperate windows. Each window is entitled 'read', 'act' and 'wait' which indicates how to proceed. The first window leads the user through a series of simple interactions via the style of an instruction manual and familiarises them with the object. Once the process is finished in window one it unloads and loads the second section in window two. Each window has a different series of interactions to perform, window by window, each getting more complex, visually and aurally to help the user build up an impression of what the object is. On completion all windows close and the user is given a non interactive application to download, a metaphorical coffee, a pause from what they are doing which their computer can consume or be consumed by. While there is a surface simplicity to this work it is an approach towards more complex issues. Questions asked include, how do you take a physical object and represent/reconstruct it in a virtual space? Does such an object in a virtual space become a transcription of the original or a new 'object'. If for example we envisage inhabiting virtual spaces sometime in the future, how do we expect to do this? How do we transfere the objects we need and use in reality to a virtual space? Will necessity for objects be superseeded? What will be the result on materalism? Will in fact these new 'spaces' be used as an escape from both people and object overcrowded spaces? _pause has previously been shown as part of the Jouable series of exhibitions (http://www.jouable.net/) in Geneva, Kyoto and Paris and online in the Rhizome Artbase. Requirements: Please make sure your browser has popups enabled and the shockwave player installed which can be downloaded here - http://sdc.shockwave.com/shockwave/download/ a+ gar __ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.asquare.org/ # 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime NMF: TEXT: The Return of the Author by Avi Rosen
TEXT: The Return of the Author by Avi Rosen, Feb. 2006, English translation -- Sonia Dantziger http://newmediafix.net/daily/?p=557 http://newmediafix.net This article can also be read at http://siglab.technion.ac.il/~avi /mehaber/TheReturn.htm The article transposes the text of Roland Barthes' Death of the Author, (La Mort de L'auteur (1968, 1977, 2005), to the arena of happenings in cyberspace, and examines the implications from the point of view of author-reader-text, active in the electronic environment. The Death of the Author was written in a transition period between the epoch of the written word and that of the electronic word. A transition period is usually characterized by hybrid works, inspired by new ideas, but realized by old means Gentner, D.R., Grudin, J. (1996). The claim is that over and above the use of the electronic medium for the needs of creating, distribution, and the consumers of the text, a dramatic change is effected in the whole, beyond the death of the author and the birth of a new reader. Ozenfant (1952) gives an example of this process in his description of a modern radio from the early decades of the last century. It was installed in the pulpit of a Gothic-style made of carved wood, with a heavy base, and at the top, a candlestick for a candle to illuminate the reading book. The book rests on a support that contains the loudspeaker of the radio. This ornate installation was an attempt to dignify new technology and its message, by giving it a classical appearance, and by adapting the manner of use to the old and familiar form. The pulpit vocalized the text written in the book that lay above the pulpit, instead of the reader standing in front of the illuminated book, concentrating on reading the text. These reading conditions were essential for conveying the meaning of the author's immutable text to the reader in the Newtonian world of fixed linear givens. This is actually an arrangement for conducting an experiment as in a physical laboratory, where rigid environmental conditions are enforced to ensure that measurement results bear out previous suppositions. Indeed, the pulpit kept the fixed relationships between the traditional author, the text, the reader, and the reading conditions. A change in the components of the experiment, through including the radio set, introduces a random variable, that must undermine the results. _ Picture no.1, from Ozenfant, 1952, pp.160-161 On the left, fine wireless Receiving set. On the right. The Pulpit, pure Gothic style, containing set complete in every detail. The music book is the loud speaker. Readers of a written text in the media epoch of radio and television are constantly subject to rapid changes in their understanding of their environment and the texts they read. The shift creates a gap between electronically fast changing consciousness and understanding, and the printed texts that remain slow and stable. The authors who make the texts try to introduce changes that will match the dynamic environment, but the moment the text is printed and fixed, it becomes separated from its author; the author dies. The article, The Death of the Author was written in the pre-internet transition period when the Aristotelian dualistic approach, with its dichotomy between object and subject, was still appropriate. The text was written, printed, and distributed by slow technology, for a reading public that became fast and its reading subversive. For the new fast reader, the fixated concepts that originated in the slow world, such as author, God, knowledge, and their derivatives, disappeared. Carried away in space, the reader lost all points of reference, and encountered random texts, to which he tried to give meaning, as best he could. Barthes describes the slow linear world where there is a clear distinction between different subjects and objects in space, and likewise, between texts composed of diverse words having clear meanings: the structure can be followed; 'run' (like the thread of a stocking) (ibid. p.16). Barthes then adds that We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God). His intention is that in the new state, the text ceases to be unambivalent, and causes the death of the traditional author. Barthes describes the process As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins. (ibid. p.8). In the slow world of Barthes, that preceded to cyberspace, the moment the text or the voice (the object) is detached from its creator (the subject), it is launched into void that separates the various objects from the subjects, and becomes detached from the significance that charged it when it was
nettime BLACKFLAG OPS [outside.US] Part3
many of the problems in the Middle East relate to failures and biases of .US FOREIGN POLICY which has been proven to be detrimental to .US interests in that these are the very problems generating the need for a 'War of Terror.' i.e. the catastrophic decision-making of the .US 'War of Terror' is an extension of failed .US policies in the Mideast by which to secure victory for one-side of the mideast conflict, at world-scale. fighting this war only generates more opposition to the basic policies underlying all decision-making, which is an unjust, biased, and distorted view of the situation between .IL and Palestine. and continuing to fight this war only compounds the basic situation further, becoming entrenched in the polarized binary ideological worldviews, which can only create more war, death, and destruction by taking such a path. for this reason .US BLACKFLAG OPERATIONS become necessary because the .US GOVERNMENT is no longer effective in its decision-making by which it could transform this situation in the interests of .US citizens and the .US STATE. that is, via POLICY which takes into account these well-known * facts * about the basic situation underlying the ideological struggle now underway. if anything, it could be said that the POLICY is based on an anti-enlightenment philosophy in which public reason has no role in .US decision-making, and only a private reasoning which is largely irrational if taken in terms other than those it can control. it is in this way that an INSURRECTIONIST agenda has found its way into .US POLICY via Neoconservatives who have subverted .US GOVERNMENT for an agenda that makes no sense for the .US citizens to pursue, including the .US military, because it is against the self-interests of the .US itself. instead of governance in a constitutional democracy in which the public will is being represented -- this has been short-circuited by PRIVATE POLICIES which are dictated, one-way, via MASS MEDIA which bypasses the public checks-and-balances of democratic governance, which then distorts the representation of issues and thus the reality of issues as they exist to .US citizens as represented in the mass media of magazines, newspapers, television, radio, etc. what is being represented in the .US is a violent right-wing perspective of the Mideast situation, by default. that is, an agenda that is based on fighting and winning one-side of the Mideast conflict, is the status quo position for all reporting and all representation of the issues in the .US with regard to issues between Israel and Palestine. thus, American citizens are only getting one-side of the story, and this is considered the only side of the story. this basic compromise of objectivity has led to the 'War of Terror' as being a legitimation of pursuing such a strategic extension of this basic idea, in that the 'War of Terror' POLICY further secures this narrow point-of-view (of Israel's right-wing) in the .US as its FOREIGN POLICY agenda, its geostrategic purpose and planning for its development in the world. the very fact that the narrow POLICY goals of an external state have become the sole geostrategic agenda for the .US is an indication of external forces interfering in the internal affairs of the .US, which is unacceptable. it accounts to treason, if not total subversion. this is to say that, because of the way the .US GOVERNMENT is short- circuited by special interests and corporate-machinery, the situation in the mideast has been 'misrepresented' by a one-sided and BIASED approach, which feeds the mideast conflict which scales up to the 'War of Terror' -- and that for those who are being represented by .US FOREIGN POLICY, are INSURRECTIONISTS both internal (Neocons) and external (Likud) to the .US affairs of state. in this way, the .US has taken on an agenda by which to fight and die on behalf of external forces, under the .US FLAG and by contorting the original intent of the .US CONSTITUTION, to place American lives and treasure in service to a foreign agenda and its self-interest -- a fatally unwise to pursue as .US POLICY, because it does not serve the .US self-interest. instead it is only automatically generating more and more terrorism which is naturally balancing this unequal situation. so, the POLICY which is a failure for .US interests actually becomes a business model which creates a supply of 'terror' by which the corporate dictatorial state can continue to destroy the constitutional state in pursuing such circular logic. that is, TERROR is an ecosystem by which corporate machines are making PROFITS off of this human oppression, via dehumanizing policies which are unfair and unjust, which create the very problem that the 'War of Terror' is supposedly to solve, yet this only creates more and more terror, as a commodity, by which to trade and extend this
