Letter to a young philosopher

[Machine translation from https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Brief-an-einen-jungen-Philosophen-4250192.html ... note the failure to translate 'Misstraue' ] Letter to a young philosopher December 31, 2018 Winfried Degen Well-intentioned advice for the study of philosophy to prevent the worst I

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

Maybe it's just me, but when I recently re-watched Easy Rider, I kept rooting for someone to off the f*cking hippies. The same film now has happy ending. It's funny how death as exit strategy lost its appeal. On 12/30/18, 09:45, Patrice Riemens wrote: "You do one thing" was an admonition I oft

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

The issue is not implied morality of scaling, whether it's good or bad (and I agree on the current modality of scaling for value extraction by few from the many.) The issue is that the opposition bent on atomizing the society does scale, and has no moral issues with it. The concentrated capita

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

The problem is that this doesn't scale. Or at least the scaling model has not been discovered. At the same time, the opposition scales pretty well. For this scaling to involve machines (computers, programs, networks and such, and I cannot imagine competitive scaling not involving machines - a

it is the end of history

While looking for something else, I found unrelated interesting stuff (as it usually happens): https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/maillist.html This is nettime archive from September 2001, and the good stuff is not just after September 12 (nettime was not particularly impressed

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement (Brian Holmes and Vincent Gaulin)

Isn't this like going to shrink to cure the discomfort of belonging to the not-ruling class and get sedated, instead of looking for a pitchfork? Are we at the point where problems are framed as caused by cosmic rays and weltschmerz, and need some primordial nurturing to 'heal', the 'situation'

inverted fascism

Interesting insight from https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump - internationalized elites vs. nationalist proles is the exact opposite from the environment that brought us fascism. " This underlines the dramatic inversion of class–nation relations that is another contras

Surplus population: the rage of the product

I wonder how long will it take to rebrand sterilization - perhaps by offering volunteers virtual children, which would be synthesized from parent's DNA analysis, live on AWS (or Azure for more traditional value), backed up in prominently displayed living room media containers ("he was only 3 ye

Tim May

Tim May has passed away. The post below is from 20 years ago, in many ways deeply optimistic. Subject: What we are Fighting From: Tim May Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 20:04:48 -0700 For the Nth time, let me restate the obvious: all current crypto restrictions being discussed involve _exports_. There

The Geert thing

about acceptability of out-of order postings on a quiet maillist. m. > From: Geert Lovink > To: Morlock Elloi > > There are five Morlock Eloi postings to nettime in a row. Is the problem back? Let’s not repeat the blues, OK? Best, Geert # distributed via : no commercial use w

Re: When the Party becomes a Platform [Incident: 181213-015157]

Dear Service Desk, This is extremely urgent! Knowledge base didn't help, the question is uncommon. On 12/12/18, 18:42, ITS - Help Desk wrote: The University of Queensland Thank you for your enquiry to Information Technology Services. Our self-service knowledge base

Re: cellular

tend to be rather unruly and disorganized, but their numbers make them irrelevant. On 12/12/18, 11:29, Morlock Elloi wrote: It seems, based on energy invested in passionate discourses in forums by otherwise intelligent people, that there is little understanding of cellularity of machine-mediated

cellular

It seems, based on energy invested in passionate discourses in forums by otherwise intelligent people, that there is little understanding of cellularity of machine-mediated communications. The amount of cross-talk, which is essential for spreading ideas to wider audiences, is near-zero. The pe

Re: When the Party becomes a Platform

The medium is the politics. The medium is the ideology. Content is irrelevant. Around the world and Europe in particular we are witnessing to a rapid transformation of political parties. Political parties seemed to be among the most impervious to the change ushered by the digital revolution, th

Re: When the Party becomes a Platform

The deep servility of so called intellectuals towards underlying propositions of the fingerish ... I mean digital is fascinating (while paying lip service to 'outrage' regarding ephemeral surface effects.) Their superficial understanding of machine systems, and latching onto popular mythologie

Re: Ideological Turks

'bot' appears to be colloquial name for NPCs paid to post comments along the party lines (live humans working for low wages, allegedly often remunerated in food - sandwiches etc.) "SNS" is the ruling party (right wingers converted to euroiberals.) On 12/9/18, 19:01, Thomas Keenan wrote: The o

Ideological Turks

Recently there was a leak from a fringe decaying country about numbers involved in poor man's version of social media manipulation. Having no access to control structures of network monopolies like the big guys, Serbian honchos had to resort to manual labor: In the last 12 months, about 3,500

residency

“This mesmerizing spectacle is the culmination of everything I’ve worked toward in my life,” said the 87-year-old Chomsky, bedecked in one of the sequined cardigans he will wear during the nightly appearances, which will reportedly feature nine total costume changes. “Audiences can expect a daz

A short appraisal

Not to disturb high intellectual discourses on nettime, a short interlude with numbers and reality. IMF suggests that a typical collateral for major loans should be around 60% book value or 30% market value. The Republic of Ecuador just got $1.1B loan using Julian Assange as collateral (https

Re: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Progressive Politics in Europe

Exactly. Two excerpts from the paper I wrote on the topic: "" One aspect of this ideology is centralization. Centralization of traffic, directories, data bases, personal information, you name it. That center is somewhere where you are not. People interfacing machines built under this ideology

tech orders

There is an interesting twist that may help guide how to upgrade Marx to relevance. The traditional industrial workers had only their bodies and time, and would get employed based on generic or specific skills. A consumer driving Ford or Chevy could not infer, in any way, anything specific ab

Find your identity

STASI identity determination chart: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsynyjYWoAE0qy7.jpg # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mai

Mineshaft toilet signage

The American left convulsively loathes the current president of the US. A pathetic disclaimer became popular: whatever the topic is, one must mention that POTUS is horrible ("some of my friends are black".) The reason is strictly commercial: he is saying the unsayble, serving the unpackaged pro

The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of marxsism is not normal

There is a rather interesting post at https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-present-phase-of-stagnation-in.html , and a lively discussion around it (that tells me that institutionalized, paid for, research unfortunately always breeds the same kind of sad types.) I have changed only 4

Zero identity

One space remained free of identity lunacy, survivors, creepdom and infantilized safety. It's funny and terrifying how the process of elimination can make this space remaining oasis of intellectual inquiry. From "The Teaching Ministry of the Diocesan Bishop" (1992): Freedom of Theological Inqu

Re: "THERE IS NO PEACE WITHOUT DIGITAL PEACE" (Micosoft)

to create rules of the road that protect our digital society A comprehensive compiler control legislation is in order, including total ban on assault compilers (C and Rust), and registration and background check for all javascript VMs. This is the only way to make us feel safe, sheltered and

back to normal

GOOG has been offered Stasi building for Berlin HQ: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DrojODFXgAAMPK-.jpg # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http:/

Re: Nein, danke [was Re: Inhabit: Instructions for Autonomy]

Left doesn't abstract. Left lays fiber. On 11/10/18, 08:06, tbyfield wrote: to lure progressive/leftists into a rightist fantasy world # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural poli

The Church of Internet Salvation

There was an event at the Internet Archive earlier this year: "John Perry Barlow Symposium". The stage was streamed, the whole thing is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaci9vlg_Sc . TL;DR: Barlow enabled Snowden; the Internet is as revolutionary as LSD (a lot); it's not about info

Re: Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

d not need crowd cheering to assert a valid position. On 4/8/18, 00:44, Jaromil wrote: Morlock, On Sat, 07 Apr 2018, Morlock Elloi wrote: I had no idea about the project details when I wrote the first post in this thread, other than what was in the parent article itself. It turns out that I gue

Re: Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

As an activist who lives and fights in Barcelona since 28 years, I can say without fear of legal reprisals that Francesca Bria's policy as Commissioner in the City of Barcelona is for the most part a fraud. This was the "Woody Allen brings out Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall" moment ... # di

Re: Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

On the intention side, DECODE is superb. For example, in "D4 7_Privacy Interface Guidelines.pdf": 3.3 Privacy Design Considerations 3.3.1 User-Focused 3.3.2 User Control 3.3.3 Information and Device Context 3.3.4 Consent 3.3.5 Clarity and Understandability 3.3.6 Inform 3.3.7 Educate 3.3.8 Minim

Re: Surveillance Valley - a polemic review

After finding the details "on the Internet", I order books at the local bookstore by giving them the printout of the AMZN book page. It's a feel-good message for the cost of one printed page. Amazon works very nicely for me, however: they provide a nice catalog that I can search and then cont

autonomous suicide

In Peter Yates' Bullitt, a small remote-controlled model car with explosives chases Steve McQueen through San Francisco streets - it was too small to be shot at. Eventually Steve McQueen escapes. The current crop of software-controlled vehicles is life-size. The computer controlled actuators -

Re: Francesca Bria: Our data is valuable. Here's how we can take that value back

The first big lie is that somehow inferring hidden patterns among the citizenry (other than "people tend to be more awake during daytime") will offer significant "savings" in "data-driven services" (whatever that means.) I won't even get into the "because blockchain" bulls*it. Just put more sen

Re: The other cleavage

The proposition that she-Clinton beat left-D.Trump in the primaries and then lost from right-D.Trump in the finals due to the voter indoctrination technologies, and that these technologies result in 50-50 splits over extended periods of time, would imply that investments behind implementing the

Re: School of red herrings

E. Morozov on FB play: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/31/big-data-lie-exposed-simply-blaming-facebook-wont-fix-reclaim-private-information After the Facebook scandal it’s time to base the digital economy on public v private ownership of data Evgeny Morozov The continuing coll

Re: The other cleavage

M. Taibbi on Piketty's paper: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-piketty-study-is-two-party-system-doomed-w518585 Is the Two-Party System Doomed? A new study shows us what observation should already have made clear: a messy restructuring of America's political parties is coming By M

The counter-infrastructure of Wikileaks and Julian Assange

Those with longer memories may hazily remember events from 2010 when the obvious became known, and aftershocks that followed and shaped this decade. It was done by introducing new piping in the global information flow system, that enabled short-circuiting between siloed domains of the ruling c

The other cleavage

Piketty analyses the rise of multiple-elite systems in "Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict (Evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017)" - full paper at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2018.pdf and concludes with:

Re: Uber Blues

Mea culpa, I made a terrible mistake, by factor of 25: EU: $5 B US: $3 B Soros can totally do it. > EU: $120 billion US: $80 billion # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural pol

Re: Uber Blues

Yesterday I took taxi ($30), and then checked Uber pricing - it's exactly one half of what I paid ($15). For many people this is a non-trivial difference that outweighs moral issues. The point being: Uber VCs are funding temporary increase of the standard of living for some, while destroying t

Re: Uber Blues

The real tragedy is that what cabbies see as a protest, app-ride systems interpret as a solution. From https://www.wired.com/story/why-are-new-york-taxi-drivers-committing-suicide/ Why Are New York Taxi Drivers Committing Suicide? Miranda Katz It was a somber scene outside New York’s City

School of red herrings

It's interesting to observe the pace of the official narrative regarding CA/FB drama. It reminds of backup strategy of some animals, that are ready to ditch tail or leg to save the body. Initially, CA was the bad guy, and then the fall guy. Some more acute observers noticed that it's FB that's

Re: Uber Blues

Taking an app-car ride is materially participating in the crime of destructing the urban transportation infrastructure by the good old price dumping. This crime (on the books) is not being prosecuted because the politicians have been paid off - ask any transportation professional. App car syste

Re: Please show some conscience

Using term "AI" also facilitates occupying the human "interface space", by squeezing out other humans from it. In other words, bots are coming to real space (almost wrote "meatspace" :) People "talk" to "voice assistants". More and more service phone lines use IVR and insist on user "talking"

Re: The New Military-Industrial Complex of Big Data Psy-Ops

Good read. While I previously mentioned the significance of being able to make correlations between apparently totally unrelated data, and act on such correlations without bothering to understand why they exist (it's a fallacy to assume that understanding is required for acting), I was specul

Re: Please show some conscience

Before the Internet, people used to read papers aligned with their ideology. Just by looking at the paper selection you could tell who you are dealing with. The more eclectic ones would read several papers, which was the whole point of the 'free press'. There is absolutely nothing preventing (

Please show some conscience

Twitter thread from GOOGL ML employee: François Chollet The world is being shaped in large part by two long-time trends: first, our lives are increasingly dematerialized, consisting of consuming and generating information online, both at work and at home. Second, AI is getting ever smarter.

Re: accelerating eats the world

It doesn't seem likely that the Chinese (4 mints in China mainland control 50+% of the hash power) will agree to such fork (even if it is technically feasible, which I doubt), that is capable of removing arbitrary transactions in the past - that would make everyone unsafe (like while the legisl

accelerating eats the world

Heavy involvement of technology in social interactions keeps producing new challenges, that someone needs to deal with. That someone is getting more and more busy. The latest event is discovery that someone was/is burning child pornography into ... blockchain. To be more specific, into Bitcoin

History: CounterSpy 1973-1984

Eight years of CounterSpy are available online at https://altgov2.org/counterspy/ . Texts in general are of good quality and documentary value. Some of them provide insights into origins and longevity of today's burning issues. (excerpts from Volume 2, Issue 1) p.14, "The Ideology of Interna

Re: Troll factories in some shitty St Petersburg office?

This becomes patently obvious when one tracks actors - dozens of people who envisioned, decided, approved, designed, implemented and maintained particular mechanism of social engineering. None of them were even aware of these ideologies that are claimed to govern their actions. They acted base

Re: Troll factories in some shitty St Petersburg office?

I suggest reading Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley" for broader context and sanity restoration in general. This targeted ideologizing has been going on for decades, and rather intensified in the last one. The notion that it was somehow just now applied by a conservative outfit is ridiculous

Re: Endgame?

Isn't the simplest and the most effective way to act: support the presidency? Funny how the only thing ideology's blind spot can do is grow to gigantic proportions. That is the endgame. Folks, as Trump's presidency collapses, what we see in the newspapers are multiple preconditions for some

Re: The System Development Corporation

It was uninformed :) but I definitely think that the infrastructure is the message. I don't doubt that a whole universe of ideas and battles can exist on the top of any given 'infrastructure'. The hard question (or even hard problem) is what matters? Where is the line drawn between the abstr

Re: Nationalising big data

[Sharing a message from the individual that could not post to nettime-l, and my response to it] I think that fetishizing Big Data is very similar to fetishizing Blockchain. Big Data is a consequence, and putting lipstick on symptoms doesn't get one too far. The underlying issue (or infrastr

Re: The System Development Corporation

> What do you mean by "confronting on an infrastructure level" and > "liberating the infrastructure"? Sure, one thing is to understand the 1. Requiring equal access to switches and fiber. Like cities (most so far) cannot have private streets, and like Ma Bell was forced to provide phone service

Re: The System Development Corporation

These distinctions (humans, animals, machines) are artificial and not helpful (also a slippery slope - the end game in that direction is racism/identity politics.) Speech is most likely a mutation only 50,000 years old (we didn't get quite used to it yet.) The difference between the speech tec

Re: The System Development Corporation

Using acoustic waves through the air as the carrier is definitely confronting at the infrastructure level :) And then something really radical: talk to your neighbour, come out of # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, #

Re: The System Development Corporation

The old-fashioned way, by confronting at the infrastructure level, away from keyboards. Messaging through the adversarial infrastructure is like drawing graffiti on the enemy tanks - cute but doesn't do s*it. This is not something that will be achieved overnight. What is missing is the awarene

Slide-Rule Studies Department (was Re: The System Development Corporation)

More history. The article below explores history of the successful propping up of a tool to level of science. I think that this is a major 'elephant in the room' phenomenon that has permeated everything. Including nettime, of course - I'm referring to philosophical discourses on primitive and

The System Development Corporation

There is a fantastic piece of history of the dystopia we live in at https://archive.org/details/6240_System_Technology_01_29_28_19 It's a promo film by System Development Corporation, predicting pretty much everything, up to and including simulating societies and taking corrective measures.

Re: The untenable technophobia of the Left

Wait - is this the public evidence of breaking WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption? Or was it leaked by one of correspondents? On 3/5/18, 03:30, Florian Cramer wrote: Which naive cyberlibertarian has written up this childish nonsense? work". As it happens, a PRIVATE WhatsApp chat got leaked i

Re: Oliver Leistert: "Blockcian as a Modulator of Existence"

In "Borat", there was a scene where a guy wanted to make sure that the car he is interested in is a "*ussy magnet". Blockchain is * magnet, in the sense that it attracts everything, especially *topian discourses. The way out (if one indeed is looking for a way out,) is to look at the boring de

surveillance instincts 70 years ago

Cryptome recently published a collection of declassified intelligence documents from Italy at the end of WW2 (https://cryptome.org/cic/cic-italy/cic-italy.html) While today everyone talks about surveillance, it's interesting to look at the history, to understand what it really is. Contemporary

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

I regret to be this anal - nettime is not (that) technical forum, but in this case blockchain has has nothing to do with securing IoT communications. At best, blockchain can provide authentication (ie. public key tied to identity), with properly expensive PoW, which is not the case here. This

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

Interesting point of view! Non-blockchain technologies are badder (because they are far more efficient and actually work) for implementing dystopia, so blockchain's dismal inappropriateness and inefficiency are counter-measures against the dystopia. It's a poison pill. Finally I get it. Blo

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is contradiction in terms. T

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

I have hard time understanding how is blockchain special, unique, and apart from other technologies, relative to dystopian outlook in the article. The only difference between blockchain and prior technologies (public cryptography, including signatures and certificates, databases, etc.) is the

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

After witnessing assorted Bitcoin, blockchain, Ethereum and related meetings, lectures, conferences and such, audiences ranging from people from the street to Ivy League PhDs: - Most informal meetings have pure religious feeling; people smile and listen. The content is irrelevant. Idiocy rules

Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

I did a linguistic experiment - replaced word 'Blockchain' with 'mayonnaise' throughout the article, and the amount of sense remained constant (that particular word was sense-neutral.) It's very hard to find actual use for blockchain. This thought experiment provides some help: imagine a large

Re: Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

While these are relevant issues, I had something far more mundane in mind, actions that do not touch philosophy, but do touch criminal law. Programming machines is ultimately a mechanical process, like digging a hole with a shovel. You can toss the dirt anywhere around, or into one specific s

Re: Mechanical Turkish

But didn't the tech-savvy non-right (I can't bring myself to use idiotic terms as "left", "progressives", "liberals", "democrats") make a bet that slicing the society into micro-groups ("left-handed transsexuals" etc.) and managing these gullible groups with the high-tech networked systems, is

the medium is the peer

This may sound as far-fetched amateur anthropology, but is worth considering. The initial motivation came from observing how protective users are when their handsets are concerned. As there is no known parallel of similar widespread object-attention in the recorded history, it must be drawing o

Re: Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

From the enumerated professions, those who affect society at large on the long time scale - architects and educators - are actually licensed by the state, and subject to license revocation (if, say, architect includes abattoir in the apartment building entrance hall, etc.) Structural engineers,

Re: Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

I forgot to credit the author: David A. Banks On 2/11/18, 20:45, Morlock Elloi wrote: Engineered for Dystopia # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets

Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

Perhaps it's the extreme concentration of the industry that leaves most people unexposed to, let's call them core engineers. While everyone is aware of the tremendous impact of the technology, very few understand who the people producing it are. When some technology comes along, it's named afte

Re: John Perry Barlow R.I.P.

Assigning ideological fiber of any provenance to the swindle is going too far. It was something simpler: rehashing of the acid culture, but this time with monetizable infrastructure and centrally directed trips. LSD was ultra cheap to make, transport and consume. If someone suggested in '60s t

Re: John Perry Barlow R.I.P.

There is definitely something to be said about vacuous fascination with celebrities, but it's all about the fascinated ones. Is Deadhead songwriter to be blamed for the airheaded followers that neglected their civic duties? Hardly. The phenomenon is neither new nor particularly interesting. HS

Re: I farted

Referring to events 30-40 years ago as reliable determinant of today's consequences is ... not reliable. It's unlikely to repeat, even as a farce. What bothers me is something else - that stooping to scatological level by an (nominally) elite art manager was generally cause for celebration in

I farted

From: Nancy specter Sent: Friday, September 15, 2017 8:18 AM To: Smithi Donna A.-- -- Subject: Request for a loan from the Guggenhelm Dear Donna Hayashi Smith, Many thanks for your request to the Guggenheim Museum to borrow Vincent The narrative boils down to: POTUS invited me for a breakfast

Re: Mechanical Turkish

The Ludovico Technique has certainly been improved. I wonder if the handset operators have already started to time and serve political/ideological content in sync with positive (or negative) social messaging: you receive a message from child/lover - and at the same time link to the article pra

Re: Mechanical Turkish

Agree. It's about machine-mediated 'socializing', not about who runs it. As I mentioned earlier, open sourcing/democratizing the dystopia is not solving anything - it might even make it worse. On 1/27/18, 14:24, Florian Cramer wrote: Thanks for sharing this. None of the issues described in t

Mechanical Turkish

TL;DR: Fb extracts ethical decisions from its digital precariat humanness deposits at the rate of one decision every 22 seconds (that's 0.045 decisions/sec.) (from https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/46820/Three-months-in-hell ) Germany has become one of Facebook's most impo

the 5th Law of Thermodynamics: conservation of Trust in humans

The first few talks at the just started "Blockchain Protocol Analysis and Security Engineering" conference at Stanford have an interesting aspect - they illustrate the thriving field of subverting the machines, reducing various 'invincible' schemes to 19th and 20th century banking risks: - su

Re: They know not what they do

But the problem is, does IQ measure intelligence? Or is IQ uniquely the measure of that aspect of intelligence associated with the treatment of technical tasks, from which computer reasoning is derived? IQ has little to say about such essential aspects of intelligence as affectivity, perceptual se

Re: They know not what they do

> however sophisticated, the computer does not itself transcend the > algorithms it is programmed to execute There is no proof. In this context 'transcend' appears to encapsulate the mythology of 'human mind', as being something in a different dimension, and the thinking industry developed on

Re: why isn't memetics a thing?

Because the slightest official concession (ie. including it in the education system) that the present society is mainly based on organized lying would have devastating consequences. Every era needs a taboo, and this is ours. Instead, scholars and thinkers must operate around it, bowing to and

Re: social media critique: next steps?

There is a symbiotic relationship the affects both sides. Where the boundary is becomes irrelevant. The point is that the majority will be excluded from the symbiosis. There is one rare talk about thinking machines that makes sense, from the guy who defined the field: 1951 "Alan Turing's lost

Re: social media critique: next steps?

FB as HIV: The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines and machines that control humans. While the internet has brought about a revolution in our ability to educate each other, the consequent democratic explosion has shaken existing establishments to their core.

the thing with Europe

Or maybe it's time to put down our phones, pick up shovels and start laying fibre. I don't know. This, of course, is the only solution. If all other arguments fail, consider that this gets you to the jail fastest. QED. --- Europe was mentioned several times recently as alleged potential for

Re: social media critique: next steps?

If this is the only solution, we are in trouble. 1. The current (and foreseeable) political climate will not have any monopoly-breaking anti-trust mechanisms applied, period. This is the 20th century thinking, a non-starter. The opposite actually happens. 2. Curated vs. censored problem was n

Re: social media critique: next steps?

The first step would be to stop calling it 'social media'. It's as much social media as fairgrounds merry go round. Don't legitimize it by implying it is a medium of the society. Call it some. It's important to understand the mechanics of how machine-fed deluge of stimuli affects victims. When

Re: The California Ideology has a fascist character

On 12/27/17, 11:33, Morlock Elloi wrote: This is not to say that forcing a declaration of unconditional love through 140 characters (let's take the simplest, apparently benign formatting constraint) is inherently evil. However, that number was decided by someone else, not you. And just whe

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

Don't forget the mine shaft gap, which seems to motivate most of the crypto currency frenzy. On 1/10/18, 08:24, byfield wrote: genealogy, from the 1957 Gaither Report's 'bomber gap' to Stiglitz's 'knowledge gap,' says a lot about how deeply militarism has pervaded # distributed via : no comme

Liberal Lords of the Flies

A fascinating look into the infantry that merchandises your information - browse the screenshots, starting at page 13: https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Google-Class-Action-Lawsuit#fullscreen # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated

Re: ArtScience

LivingDead PeaceWars UserFriendly # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.ne

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

There is an interesting read suggesting the shape of things to come from *ARPAs, starting at p.50 of https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/telligent-evolution-components-attachments/13-14882-00-00-00-21-68-05/OE-Watch_2C00_-Vol-07_2C00_-Issue-11_2C00_-Dec-2017.pdf While 5 tons is far from t

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

To state the obvious, what is changing is knowledge (literacy) and its distribution - atoms and Standard model particles are pretty much the same. The acquisition and distribution of knowledge used to be much slower, so it was sufficient to control its substrate (culture) and its artifacts (gu

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