Re: nettime Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
John: The submersion (perversion!) of much general systems thinking into the cybernetic/military-industrial was an unfortunate result of crossovers between all these people (and others) at the time. As I emphasized to Brian, when you look at any of this with perversion and unfortunate in mind, you will have a MUCH more difficult time sorting out what was useful and what was BULLDADA in this material. You need to check your morals at the door, if you want to understand what was going on. The context for all this was the COLD WAR -- as you know from your family history. Very few could resist the *temptation* of getting involved and even fewer had a principled stance they could maintain in the face of what was a very effective and all-encompassing propaganda onslaught. It seemed that there were two rival global SYSTEMS fighting for the future of humanity and the systems people were deeply committed to winning. Telling yourself that you were the good guys and that the Soviets were the bad guys was exactly what happens when you insist on moralizing the situation . . . and when you insist on viewing everything as a complex system in which progress (i.e. the good vs. the bad) is easy to choose. Those who could resist -- which includes Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan and (to some degree) Kenneth Boulding -- seem to have been able to do this because they had *religious* reference that superceded the apparently earth-shattering conflicts of the day. Wiener was a Tolstoyian, McLuhan a Catholic and Boulding a Quaker. Take this away from them and you wind up with people who have no image of man -- which was Boulding's primary concern. But certainly some of the ideas are extremely powerful (as illustrated by the fact that our social system as it is rests largely on a technocracy constructed from that worldview!). This is exactly what we need to sort out -- NOW. Were these ideas really powerful? Did they succeed? Is there an important technocracy that somehow emerged with this world view? Indeed, is there even something that can be meaningfully be called a social system? I have my doubts. My guess is that these ideas failed -- which makes them even more important to understand today, because, as far as I can tell, the systems approach is the ONLY new way of thinking about society that developed in the past 50+ years. The reason for this failure is the same one that pointed Coase/Wang to issue their Man and the Economy challenge -- humans are NOT systems! As historian of science George Dyson puts it in the Preface to his 1997 Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature and machines. Trying to apply machine or nature thinking to the HUMANS might work as an approximation for a limited time and for a limited purpose but it cannot sustain itself -- or so I suspect. It's time that we figured it out! Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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 living systems theory [2x]
- Forwarded message from John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net - From: John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net Reply-To: jhopk...@neoscenes.net Subject: Re: nettime living systems theory Organization: neoscenes Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:20:03 -0700 To: list nettime nettim...@kein.org On 1/22/13 07:18, chris mann wrote: please, once again, computers process data. not information. they have no idea about what theyre doing or why, so it can only be data. computers have no motivation, no conspiracy, no horizon. therefore no possibility of dealing with information. As an organized and indivisible expression of a wholistic and continuous living system (ours!), through their operation, or even merely their maintained presence, they are increasing local entropy, and in that sense they are carrying information into the future as long as they are more organized than their surroundings. We are not separate from the wider system that we are immersed within. If we were, why worry about systemic degradations of the ecosystem...? Why worry about consuming energy? JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ - End forwarded message - - Forwarded message from John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net - From: John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net Reply-To: jhopk...@neoscenes.net Subject: Re: nettime living systems theory Organization: neoscenes Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:30:46 -0700 To: list nettime nettim...@kein.org On 1/22/13 07:38, chris mann wrote: if you make no distinction between information and data, no further distinctions are possible Hi Chris ~ Given that I actually did not conflate the two, can you expand on this? A machine (digital or otherwise) is not a closed system, it is an open system, and so that its very structure, provenance, existence, persistence carries information (as order). Maybe you are confusing the abstracted protocols that form the energy that pass through the machine for the materialized *thing* itself (which recursively is 'merely' an expression of other protocols and their actualized potential for directing energies in a specific way). JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow! http://neoscenes.net/ http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ - End forwarded message -i # 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 Response to Academe Is Complicit essay
On 23/01/13 05:04, Lincoln Cushing wrote: By withholding free access to the ultimate goody, the 60 megabyte image file, am I a traitor to the Free Culture Movement? If you want to phrase it in those terms, then yes. - Rob. # 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 living systems theory [2x]
my response was to your .. In general, living systems process more information than non-living systems, with the possible exception of computers which have greater information processing capabilities. and your A machine .. carries information (as order). seems to echo the confusion. the information is only information to other than the machine. otherwise we would be limited to saying yes. i'm disappointed enough by the californian flu of agreement not to need it amplified by my tools. On 23 January 2013 04:42, John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net wrote: - Forwarded message from John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net - From: John Hopkins jhopk...@neoscenes.net Reply-To: jhopk...@neoscenes.net Subject: Re: nettime living systems theory Organization: neoscenes Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:20:03 -0700 To: list nettime nettim...@kein.org On 1/22/13 07:18, chris mann wrote: please, once again, computers process data. not information. they have no idea about what theyre doing or why, so it can only be data. computers have no motivation, no conspiracy, no horizon. therefore no possibility of dealing with information. As an organized and indivisible expression of a wholistic and continuous living system (ours!), through their operation, or even merely their maintained presence, they are increasing local entropy, and in that sense they are carrying information into the future as long as they are more organized than their surroundings. We are not separate from the wider system that we are immersed within. If we were, why worry about systemic degradations of the ecosystem...? Why worry about consuming energy? ... # 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 Nobel laureate in economics aged 102 endorses the human economy...
Brian: And the question is: Does this represent the longed-for foundation of a new expansionist wave? Or (more likely in my view) just the agitated death throes of neoliberal informationalism? There you go again! g You really can't put an ideology on these developments, since they are not being driven by the *ideas* so much as by the technology. Don't let your morals get in the way of your analysis. Follow the technology! The rise of the US neoliberals was much more the result of a breakdown in coherence of the alternatives (labor had sold out for their pension plans and the intelligentsia had abandoned nationalistic thinking) -- all of which took place in the drive for globalization which is, in turn, occasioned by the Global Theater that is produced by geo-stationary/LEO satellites (delivering both television and surveillance.) Technology was in charge. So, the ideology question today is what happens to GLOBALISM now that the dominant medium is *not* television but rather the Interweb -- which is *not* a globalizing technology but rather a *localizing* one, driven by feedback (i.e. what really happens on Facebook, not selling soap)! Is DAVOS kaput? Does the failure of Schmidt/Page/Brin to showup this year do more to put a nail in its coffin then anti-globalization riots (which just makes these people feel important) ever could? Have people finally figured out why China *never* sent anyone of any rank to the World Economic Forum? On growth, your view is correct. Growth is over in the already-industrial economies, at the same time it will continue for decades elsewhere. The US has been post-industrial (notice, not an ideological term) since median wages leveled off in the 1970s. Europe since the 1980s(?) Japan since the 1990s. Without the steady upward push of industrialization, there is no place for the economy to go other than services, in particular finance. Calling this neoliberal misses the whole point and mistakes an epiphenomenon for the underlying causes. Party over. Industrialization has run its course for 1 billion people. The other 6 billion don't really need Goldman Sachs and, yes, sea levels are going to rise as massive amounts of carbon is burned to industrialize the rest of the planet. Forget about Kyoto -- which was just another *globalist* scheme. And, forget about the EU (ditto -- globalist scheme that has crashed.) Bravo that you are actually reading Schumpeter's Business Cycles and going over the SPRU materials! Carlota Perez is a friend and we have discussed the *qualitative* differences between the current Moore's Law Techno-Economic Paradigm and the previous FOUR surges that made up the Industrial Revolution. So, the *economic* question is what technologies are coming next? And, since the silicon TEP is in its final phases, what will the impact of the NEXT one (roughly 2020-to-2080) be on societies around the world? As long as the economists (and anthropologists and sociologists etc) *ignore* these developments they will have little to contribute. Btw, based on my conversations with Ning Wang, Ronald Coase's partner, he agrees. He's familiar with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Roadmap to 2050 -- a uniquely organized effort to address these issues. Available on Amazon. Read his book on China w/ Coates. These guys are *not* confused, like so many others. Yes neoliberalism is compatible with complex systems theory and, most of all, the illusive notion of emergence -- because all of this is based on a total lack of COHERENCE. All this talk about the 2nd LAW is the result of *disorder* not clear thinking. No ideas, no plans, no analysis, no strategy -- don't worry *emergence* will save us! No surprise that Kevin Kelly, Clay Christensen and George Gilder are all religious millenialists hoping for the end-of-the-world. Out of Control is their ticket to the spaceship that will take them to the PROMISED land! g But none of this is capable of motivating any activity other than gaming the system to line your own pockets -- which is what happens when a worldview is in disarray and decline, not when it is ascendant. The problem with conspiracy theories -- which includes the one that puts the neoliberals are in charge of anything -- is that they give far too much credibility and too much power to the enemy. Because they are really stories cooked up to explain one's own powerlessness, they have to construct a BOOGYMAN. All of this us vs. them is a distraction -- if understanding the world is really your goal. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # 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 transmediale 2013 BWPWAP
Dear nettimers old and new, I hope some of you are dropping by the transmediale festival next week. Have a look at an outline of the programme that I provided below! /Kristoffer Gansing, artistic director, transmediale. transmediale 2013 BWPWAP BACK WHEN Mobile phones were dumb. Letters traveled by pneumatic air. Tweeting was for birds. Users were chatting on the Minitel. ICQ beat IRC. Xerox challenged the Thermofax. YouTube was just another Web 2 start-up. Fax was the new Telex. You were calling up Bulletin Board Systems. Only university students were using facebooks. History had ended. We had nine planets. PLUTO WAS A PLANET. For its 26th edition, transmediale boldly goes BWPWAP – Back When Pluto Was a Planet. A net culture expression, BWPWAP is used for that which lies in the past or that possess an anachronistic character. In the context of transmediale, it does not mean entertaining nostalgia for the past. On the contrary, Pluto and its reclassification is taken as a metaphor for how quickly cultural imaginaries can change and be contested in a world underwritten by parallel developments. Adopting the BWPWAP expression in the form of a meme, transmediale 2013 recontextualizes cultural and technological forms through a travelling in time and space that creates moments of crisis in contemporary media culture. The program follows four threads: Users, Networks, Paper and Desire. The festival will look at what these topics meant BWPWAP, what they mean today and how they might develop in the future following the sense of alternate realities that lies at the core of the theme. These threads run transversely across the different festival events and by following them, visitors can experience constant shifts of modalities and perspectives. The Users thread explores the user as one of the most important figures occupying the 21st century cultural landscape: adopting a broad perspective which includes a historical look at user cultures' development in consumer society and cybernetics, as well as the changing roles of the user. In Networks we ask what it means when networks are BWPWAP, when (social) networks have become a pervasive part of daily life and have contributed in changing the way we create friendships and connections. The Paper thread traces the history of paper as a transcendent cultural form and its various artistic appropriations from Mail Art and visual poetry to electronic literature and beyond. In the Desire thread, we look at how critical reflections on sexuality and pornography can inform digital culture and politics of the present, by creating juxtapositions, decompositions, fragments and unexpected combinations as forms of queer expression. As with Pluto itself, these threads are “objects” in crisis. Their identity is not to be taken for granted in the post-digital age as is evident through the cultural, political and economical crises that they are all undergoing. These states of crisis are taken as opportunities for artistic intervention and reflection. In each thread, we search for new ways to engage with the histories, practices and futures of these familiar domains according to the time and place-shifting logic of BWPWAP: areas that we might have taken for granted until recently, but where we now need to learn from the past in order to intervene in the present and create new concepts for cultural practice. http://www.transmediale.de/bwpwap SNAPSHOTS OF THE PROGRAMME transmediale 2013 Exhibition programme: The Miseducation of Anya Major, curated by Jacob Lillemose. This exhibition is presented in three parts and openly investigates questions of knowledge, learning and education in relation to contemporary media, from the photocopier and paper shredder to computer games and the latest smartphone. Within this framework, the exhibition Tools of Distorted Creativity presents a series of contemporary works that expands the notions of software tools and their affordance of creativity in nonconformist, and even dysfunctional directions. Imaging with Machine Processes. The Generative Art of Sonia Landy Sheridan, is a survey exhibition of an artist who experimented with the machines of technological society as instruments of the philosophical mind and artistic imagination from inside educational institutions. Finally, Evil Media Distribution Centre by the duo YoHa (Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji) is an installation that takes its point of departure from the book Evil Media (2012) by Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey. Three Ongoing Networking Projects brought to you by reSource transmdedial culture, Berlin, curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Last August 2012, during the transmediale event reSource 002: Out of Place, Out of Time event, three installation projects were launched. Their ongoing production lasted six months, leading to transmediale 2013 BWPWAP, where the final results are shown and performed. The
