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
nettime democracy and decentralization
Hello, Well, there is a difference between actual physical control and the propogated illusion of control (thanks Brian for bringing Foucault back into the discussion - I have the feeling he never left). If we accept or passively follow the various socialising paradigms where mega-companies such as Google exercise ‘control’ then we fall into that behavioral abyss charted in 1984 and other dystopic works describing the collapse or devolution of democratic norms. As, perhaps, (as indicated below) what is important is maintaining, continuous invigorating, the terrain upon which the totalitarian nature of the neoliberal hyper-capitalist infrastructure can be contested. In this context decentralisation of forms/means of communication are an imperative - without vibrant discursive social spaces reflective of the social needs and desires that permeate daily life we are only so much fodder for the GoogleFacebook singularity, one-dimensional, social mechanisms. Sonja Buchegger is leading a group of scientists at KTH who are creating building blocks that developers could use to launch decentralized, distributed networks, which would not only be difficult to interfere with, but would also protect people from government snooping. The internet itself is not centralized – it would be hard to shut down, Buchegger says. It was built as a robust, decentralized tool to communicate; and we can do the same for other services that are now centralized, like social networks. Whether the demand for such networks would go mainstream any time soon is hard to tell. Buchegger notes that it is difficult for most people to wrap their head around the notion that their personal information is exposed on web-based email and social platforms. The whole privacy issue online is very young, and the population is not used to thinking in this way, she says. Offline, we know how to protect our privacy; we know who can overhear us; we see who is in the room with us and we know whether we can trust those people; but online we haven't really grasped who the audience is and how that changes over time. Buchegger's research is focused on the privacy issues of distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, that is, the underlying infrastructure for a decentralized system in which people could store their data beyond the reach of data miners or government surveillance. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-decentralized-networks-democracy.html # 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 Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #3 (continued) (Section #3) Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible rise of anarcho-capitalism. (...) It is therefore appropriate to provide information on these initiatives - actually each of them would warrant an enquiry of its own. The Singularity Theory is futurologist Ray Kurzweil's baby and is supported big time by Californian transhumanist movements, but also by scientists like Marvin Minsky, one of the proponents of 'strong AI' (artificial intelligence). Discussing transhumanism might sound weird to anyone not privy to technophile Californian sects - but it is equally out to lunch for the largest majority of human beings whose prime day to day concern is survival, as they battle to obtain drinkable water and enough to eat, and are not exactly enthralled about issues of technological immortality. And although, generally speaking, the enthusiasm for post-human dystopias is fortunately rather limited in Europe, few voices are raised against the prevailing technomania. There are not a many people who question their own dependance on all kinds of technologies, be it their car or their mobile phone. In this regard, the absence, in the mainstream political discourse, whether in Europe or anywhere else, of any questioning of the myth of ever more efficient technology-based unlimited economic growth - alsothe mainstay of post-humanist extremism - is very striking indeed. To sum up, Facebook is part and parcel of a set-up manipulated by the most powerful anarcho-capitalist businessperson in the world. Radical transparency is one of the component of a vast political project that aims at controlling human relations through surveillance technologies. (According to this creed) An information war is at hand, autarchic closed communities are planned in the middle of the ocean, kitted out with the ultimate in hi-tech, while research goes on technological immortality. All this has been known for long time. Yet all we hear is the deafening silence of the established media, of users, of activists, and (in general) of all people who (should) have enough common sense to be concerned about their independence and autonomy. And for the remainder, most of the political positions espoused by Thiel are fascinating, radical, and disturbing at the same time. The emerging ideology is one of frantic, unbridled individualism buffed up by a capitalism that is both techno-ecstatic and redeeming. Overtly criticising the elitist curriculum imparted by American universities, apparently not yet private enough to his taste, Thiel started in September 2010 a support program for selected, aspiring under 20s who are willing to start their own company without going through formal academic education. The '20 under 20 Thiel fellowship program' [#**] has thus funded twenty 'young promising individuals', who will receive one lakh Us Dollars each for two years. Free enterprise and meritocracy are the keywords here. Seen with Thiel's eyes it is not the Internet which created a social bubble without depth; it is the American education system which has become unable to create value with true innovation. Hence only total privatisation will be able to open the gates of a radiant technological future [23]. In a rather more theoretical text, very tellingly titled The End of the Future [24], Thiel waxes eloquent about the stagnation we are living in and fingers the fact that there is hardly any investment in leading edge technology while nobody is prepared to bank on future projects. He sees in that the root cause of today's social, cultural, and economic deadlock. The United States, traditional defenders of runaway innovation, and always on the look-out for /The Next Big Thing/, have shifted into standstill mode. And since the USA are the world's leader, you can expect the rest to follow suit into recession. Thiel sees the crisis of the West in terms of the vanishing Frontier, the frontier that needed to be reached, and then gone beyond, as essential prop of the American Dream. He often displays his profound disappointment in Silly Valley's entrepreneurs, far too much concerned about profits, and unable to do anything to save the world. For Thiel, capitalism is a truly revolutionary tool that, thanks to technology, will liberate the human species (if only the best of it). But if capitalism has already triumphed, what then remains to be saved? Answer next time! (to be continued) .. [#**] http://www.thielfellowship.org/ motto (from Mark Twain): I have never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education [23] http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/ (Famous first words: Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you. -transl) [24] http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278758/end-future-peter-thiel (October 2011) - Translated by
