Re: VW
I'm afraid you may be right, that the closed system is so entrenched that it utterly negated the possibility of an open system. Tesla made a lot of designs open-souce last year, and I have seen no effect from that at all, in spite of demand for electric and hybrid vehicles being very high. http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you On Sun, Sep 27, 2015 at 11:14 AM, John Hopkins wrote: This is the way the industry always works when closed-source. This event should remind everyone (and especially consumer associations) how important is to have the industry release its software open-source, down to the firmware and hardware. This must be an imperative especially for <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: VW
Am 27.09.15 um 23:09 schrieb Florian Cramer: WWII. As far as I know, all profits that the state of Lower Saxony makes from its remaining 20% share go into the endowment. And, Leuphana is a state university of Lower Saxony. (marginalia) folks, i think this is besides the point, but before assumptions about the amounts of funding by the VolkswagenStiftung to Leuphana and its Centre for Digital Cultures get completely out of hand, i suggest that whoever wants to make claims about that should first do the research, e.g. here: https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/funding/funding-statistics.html ... probably to find that less than 20% (just a guess) of the funding for the CDC in the last 3 years (it has not existed longer) came from VolkswagenStiftung (more from EU-EFRE, same from DFG; besides, formally, Leuphana is also not a state university but a foundation, but since it is basically treated like a public university, that's probably a legalistic detail). the german mass media are playing the game of "who knew what when" this morning. personally, i am looking at the case mostly from the perspective of my small collection of software-induced fuck-ups, accidents, frauds, etc., which begin to pile up into a relief picture of the vulnerability of both the technical and social (belief) systems that our glorious "digitised culture" is relying on. regards, -a # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: VW
a fwd. from the rethink uva list (university of amsterdam) /geert From: "Engelen, Ewald" Subject: Re: [Rethink UvA] We can't let VW get away with this Date: 28 September 2015 7:44:04 am GMT+2 Volkswagen is also an aggressive tax evader, using Dutch shell companies (of course) to do so Volkswagen Financial Services it is called Here is the website http://www.vwfs.nl/content/sites/vwcorporate/vwfs_nl/en/home.html e # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: FW: VW
Hi,  well said: What VW tells us (and why "motivation" is worth looking at) is that when push comes to shove we really really need some structures of accountability that are responsive to "our", the public's needs and not the shareholders and that multistakeholderism as a system of governance is basically giving away the keys to the kingdom. which leads me to a slightly different topic, this fascination for "civil society" that has become so endemic, especially also with regard to the current refugee crisis. While the states are failing to organize this migration with some dignity, the heroism of civil society becomes fetishized. Although I would not regard myself as a statist, there is something suspicious in this construction. This article from Rastko Mocnik provides some perspective on the notion of civil socitey from a post-Yugoslav position http://www.internationaleonline.org/research/real_democracy/6_the_vagaries_of_the_expression_civil_society_the_yugoslav_alternative last not least a short report from a small, unimportant country in the center of Europe:yesterday the post-Haider Freedom Party won 30+ percent of the votes in Upper Austria, an economically strong region whose capital is Linz which hosts Ars Electronica. Now guess what, the F-Party celebrated its victory in the rooftop bar of Ars Electronica Center best Armin    Mike -Original Message-    From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org   [mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield    Sent: September 27, 2015 12:08 PM    To: nettim...@kein.org    Subject: Re: VW    On 25 Sep 2015, at 20:59, Michael Gurstein wrote:    > Thanks Ted, very useful.    >    > I guess what I'm curious about is the motivations, individual and/or    > corporate thought processes/incentives etc. that underlie the initial    > decision to go down this path and then the multitude of decisions at    > various levels up and down the organization to continue on this path.    <...>    Michael, your line of questions seems to be a high priority for the    media: today's NYT top story is "As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1,   Ambitions Fueled a Scandal." Personally, I don't think there's been much   innovation in the motivation dept since, say, Sophocles, so the   human-interest angle isn't very interesting, IMO. If anything, it's the   primary mechanism in diverting attention from the real problem, namely,   how to address malfeasance on this scale. Corporations are treated as   'people' when it comes to privatizing profit, but when it comes to   liabilities they're become treated as amorphous, networky constructs,   and punishing them becomes an exercise in trying to catch smoke with   your hands. Imagine for a moment that by some improbable chain of events   VW ended up facing a 'corporate death penalty,' there remain all kinds   of questions about what restrictions would be imposed on the most   culpable officers, how its assets would be disposed of, and what would   happen to its intellect  ual property. (It'd be funny if the the VW logo   was banned, eh? I'm not suggesting anything like that could actually   happen, of course.) The peculiar details of this scandal could spark a   systemic crisis of a different kind, one that makes evading guilt more   difficult. The 'too complex for mere mortals' line won't work in this    case: VWs have come a long way since the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or R.    Crumb-like illustrated manuals about _How to Keep your Volkswagen   Alive_, but not so far that people will blindly accept that they can't   understand them. Popular understanding of negative externalities in   environmentalism is decades ahead of its equivalent in finance. And it   doesn't hurt that Germany, which has done so much to bend the EU to its   will, looks like it'll be the lender of last resort.    <...> <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
VW
"Bad employees come up with problems - or excuses; good employees come up with solutions" (New Management mantra) Mething Michael was right with asking the question about the internal workings that made the VW clusterf%$#&^*k 'happen'. And I also think it has to be analysed and answered before we move further - it's not the paramount issue, Jaromil and John are right about that, but tackling the issue is a prioritary, necessary condition to be able to go forward. The more so since the mechanism is not limited to the 'commercial' world, it is universal. Besides the above, another concept to keep in mind is "plausible deniability". It is what the now ousted president of VW invoked "I am responsible, but I didn't know" - bit strange for someone having asserted before he knew every screw of a Beetle, but that's not really the point. The point is that subalterns are expressivily prevented, forbidden, to tell superiors about problems and risks which might slow or even halt 'advances' (be it in the form of profits, political gains, academic credits etc etc etc). Incidentally this also (partially) explains the quandary whistleblowers find themselves in. And there is nothing recognizablym, demonstrably, - within the system - evil about it. As they say at M$ "it's not a bug, it's a feature". Modern Management and its governmental equivalent 'New Public Administration" function, like the rest of the neo-liberal system, on the principle of externalising the burden and the liabilities downwards the pyramid and internalising all benefits and credits upward. Of course that is in itself nothing new (it is known in French as "faire payer les lampistes"), but it has reached a rare degree of sophistication in our times, in parallel with the ever growing technological complexity. Its most disturbing aspect is that it has been mentally internalised by all parties in a form of particularly perverse TINA, blanking out everybody's conscience, and even consciousness, from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. The bad news is that this situation is not amenable to improvement. Any attempt at it turns out into fighting the symptoms, not the causes (VW's new directorate's statements are surrealistic manifestations of this approach) and even more probably into what was (un)funnilly called in the former DDR "verschlimbesseren" (betterworsening?). Cheers from p+2D! (Meanwhile in Athenes ... ;-( # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: Astroturf 'Apptivism' and the 'Sharing Economy' (Mondato)
On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 7:05:41 AM UTC-7, patrice wrote: > Original to:Â http://mondato.com/blog/apptivism/ > > (Bwo Eduard de Jong Frz.) > > ASTROTURF APPTIVISM AND THE SHARING ECONOMY From Wikipedia: "Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participant." That's not what is going on here, since the message is always clear to be coming from Uber. I like the neologism 'apptivism'. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Extent & mechanisms of censorship
Hello Nettimers, There is (or at least there was, until recently) a particular photograph on the internet. Black and white, cropped to an approximately square format. It appears to have been taken with a flash, or supplementary lighting, in a dark interior. The upper right quarter of the image shows an area of dark background and a circular table with a white tablecloth. A central figure, in the foreground, faces left. His face, visible in profile, is that of a young man, his expression unreadable. His right hand is raised. He appears to be seated, and is wearing some kind of military or psuedo-military dress uniform, perhaps like the ringmaster of a circus. The upper left quarter of the picture contains the most detail. In the upper centre left is a young man in a dark dress suit, who appears to be playing a supporting role. Two hands, from a figure standing behind him, reach over his shoulders, perhaps to tie or untie his bow tie, or to restrain him. The upper body of the owner of the hands is invisible, as the upper edge of the picture crops it off. The upper left and centre left of the picture shows a young man, naked except for a bow tie. His face is clearly visible, and his expression is apprehensive. From the angle that the photograph was taken, his genitals are concealed by an object on the lap of the seated figure in the foreground. The perspective of the photograph is quite unusual. The (presumably horizontal) back of the chair of the figure in the foreground, and the angle of the circular tabletop in the background (again, likely to be horizontal) suggest that the picture was taken from a height of approximately 1.5m. The eclipsing of the naked figure's genitals by the thing on the lap of the seated ringmaster suggests something else: that the naked figure and his dark suited companion are both kneeling, and that the incident depicted is some kind of ritual. The naked figure is entirely recognisable as a major British public figure. The object in the foreground is the head of a pig. What exercises me about this image is not the incident depicted, nor whether or not it is a fake. What concerns me is the sequence of events immediately following the publication of a book that revealed the incident that this photograph appears to document. As you may be aware, that book's publication precipitated amusement, scandal and argumentation online, the volume of which is hard to overstate. The sheer scale of the sudden outpouring of emotion in the UK was a newsworthy item in itself, and has been notably under-reported by British media. A hashtag associated with the incident trended as number one in the UK for 24 hours or so, but disappeared from top trend tracks surprisingly quickly. Searches using a popular search engine revealed this picture on the first page of search results in the day following the breaking of the scandal, but it quickly became invisible. Searches using other search engines over the following period have revealed the image less and less prominently. I have noted a US website which appears to have removed content quickly and untidily (404 not found) while cached search results showed that the image had been published. Tweets including the image, that were visible in the immediate period following, the scandal, have been deleted. Facebook postings that include this image have been removed. There appears to have been a massive, alarmingly successful attempt to prevent the transmission and dissemination of this image. I should note that the suppression of the image is some of the best evidence that it may indeed be genuine. The mechanisms by which this image has been erased from the internet are of intense interest. They are likely to leave traces vulnerable to forensic investigation. That the effort to suppress this image has thus far itself remained invisible, suggests that deep, structural vulnerabilities in digital networks have been exploited. This is possibly the most chilling aspect of the event. I welcome: * Vigorous dissemination of the image in question. * Merciless ridicule of its principal subject. * Investigation into the mechanisms by which this image has been suppressed. * Information about the extent of such suppression: is it limited to the UK? * The publication of discoveries regarding what must surely be an extensive and coordinated campaign of internet censorship. Best Regards, James = # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: [governance] VW
[Orig CCed to -- mod (tb)] David, Let's assume for the moment that we agree that the fundamental and overriding objective is the protection of the public interest in the operation and evolution of the Internet (and not for example as seems to be (or at least to have been) the case with some of our colleagues that the fundamental objective is the protection of the integrity of the Internet itself). The questions then are several: 1. how is the public interest defined 2. who is to be involved in making those definitions 3. what procedures are to be followed in making and implementing those decisions 4. and so on. Certainly the private sector and particularly the Internet giants have to have a significant role in advising on this process--as Jeremy pointed out--they have a lot of the knowledge and expertise and already are making a lot of the rules. But should they be involved in actually defining and making the rules? However much Facebook or Google are attempting to in effect become the Internet -- they are not the Internet, they are private corporations seeking in various ways (sometimes ethical sometimes less so) to pursue their own private interests--and we would not expect anything else. In fact under certain jurisdictions they are legally obliged to act in this way. Why VW is pertinent is because it shows the depths to which a major corporation will go in pursuit of those interests. Fortunately there is a legal regime which was meant to govern their actions and which they fraudulently flouted. Imagine if they had been in a position to legally and with an enthusiastic welcome participate in the definition and implementation of that legal regime (notably one of the reasons that their actions were undetected for so long is because following the logic of governance in the age of neo-liberalism, funds for enforcement were cut back in the various jurisdictions and the companies were given the responsibility of "self-enforcement"!). Do you really believe that these companies would somehow end up pursuing the public interest rather than their own private interests and with their wealth and power (and capacity for political influence) not in the end "do whatever it takes" to skew the outcome in their favour and further closing the circle by structuring the rules and the structures of accountability to support their private interests. I agree with you about the need for transparency and accountability for the TPP and TISA etc.etc. and quite honestly I think the active promotion of the multistakeholder model by the major proponents of these types of agreements is precisely because they recognize the difficulty they are having in pursuing these given Civil Society (and Labour and other) opposition they are concluding that where there is a multistakeholder approach with a coopted/compromised civil society is a part of the process, it is a lot easier to control and implement the outcome than it is by pursuing the current TPP and TISA model. M -Original Message- From: David Cake [mailto:d...@difference.com.au] Sent: September 28, 2015 10:48 AM To: governa...@lists.igcaucus.org; Michael Gurstein Cc: t byfield Subject: Re: [governance] VW > On 28 Sep 2015, at 6:16 am, Michael Gurstein wrote: > > Ted and all, > > Far be it from me to second guess the insight (or well-placed cynicism) of > Nettimer folks but dare I say that not all folks who should be, are quite as > perspicacious. > > The flavour of the day in global governance circles--think managing the > Internet (ICANN etc.), the environment, "sustainable development" and on and > on is what is being called "multistakeholderism" i.e. where governments, the > private sector, civil society and all get together and "find consensus" > solutions on to how to manage the world for the rest of us. > > Significant portions of Civil Society have bought into this approach > which is firmly premised on the notion that somehow the private sector > should be directly involved in making governance decisions because > well, they are so public spirited, or that they have the long term > interests of everyone at heart ("they are people too aren't they"), or > we can trust them much more than those perfidious folks in government, > or they are "accountable" to their shareholders and wouldn't do > anything completely untoward to risk shareholder value etc.etc. (you > know the drill??? Shocking though it is when policy is determined via open and transparent meetings of government, private sector, civil society, academia etc get together to work out policy, I still find it preferable to the de facto alternatives - which is usually government and the private sector get together secretly and work out a deal. I vastly prefer multistakeholderism to processes like the TPP or TTIP - which seem to be the status quo. > > But if VW can and will commit fraud an