Re: VW

2015-09-27 Thread t byfield

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 intellectual 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.


On 26 Sep 2015, at 10:22, Florian Cramer wrote:


 The implication for "our" field are much more immediate than one would
 expect, given that the Centre of Digital Cultures of Leuphana
 University Lüneburg has been funded from a grant by Volkswagen
 Stiftung (Volkswagen Endowment) a few years ago. Look at who's working
 there - a who's who of European media studies including many Nettimers:
 http://cdc.leuphana.com/people/


It'll be very interesting indeed to hear what the stars of ~German media 
theory have to say about this. Maybe about as much as most US academics 
have to say about their role in imposing indentured servitude on 
subsequent generations...


On 27 Sep 2015, at 5:02, Jaromil wrote:


to debate this thing as if it would be just about Volkswagen is so
naive! srsly. There is nothing to be learned there.


Jaromil, I think it's a bit premature to counter claims that this is 
'just about Volkswagen,' because no one said anything like that. 
Obviously there are many ways in which this is symptomatic of broader 
structures. But Lehman Brothers and Fukushima were symptomatic as well, 
and would you really argue that 'there was nothing to be learned there' 
either? *And* hold hold up Android's OEMs cheating on benchmarks as a 
more illuminating example? I don't think so. Relying on open-source 
metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?') to 
analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry is like relying on 
Godwin's Law to understand neo-nazis. :^)


As to whether there's anything to be learned about the car industry, a 
friend sent me this offlist (forwarded with permission):


Just wanted to say that many many auto dealerships within much of the 
USA -- and I certainly don't know if this is the case in Europe or the 
northern coastal (blue state or /we/ US) -- are strange franchise ops 
in which a single owner has bought into multiple auto brands -- eg 
[where I live] the VW dealer is also the Audi, Infiniti, Maserati, 
Acura, Jaguar, Fiat dealer. While the bylaws of these franchises 
typically require separate showrooms they do not always require 
separate facilities for other operations. So, for example, the service 
department, where one expects hypothetical but impossible repairs to 
"ramdoubler" VW emissions tech would occur might be shared by multiple 
auto brands. Some of those might be tiered brands fabricated by the 
same financial interests (e.g. VW and Audi) but that will not always 
be true. As such, we will not have the results of the capitalist 
competition we may expect -- that is if VW and competing brands are 
collocated and share infrastructure and personnel in terms of auto 
dealerships, the falling VW dominos will knock over the dominos of 
other automobile sellers and maintainers and servicers (and thus 

FW: VW

2015-09-27 Thread Michael Gurstein
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...

But if VW can and will commit fraud and what is in effect a crime against 
humanity for short term financial (and/or ego) gains then what might one expect 
from lesser lights with perhaps less to lose and who aren't so deeply enmeshed 
in what should have been (and what purportedly was) a deep web (errr network) 
of accountability, responsibility, enforced integrity etc. (as per your 
comments...

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.

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.
  <...>


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Re: VW

2015-09-27 Thread John Hopkins

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


But of course this will *never* happen -- the nature of corporate/competitive 
capitalism is drenched in secrecy, stealth, corruption, collusion, profiteering, 
graft, etc ... To suppose that this nature will change seems a ... pipe dream. 
To counter the Machiavellian, I-and-I becomes one. Open and Closed systems exist 
as ways of seeing/modeling reality and are each mutally exclusive worldviews. To 
hold one negates the other despite the apparent reality that the cosmos is 
indeed an Open System -- and perhaps Open Systems 'win' in the end ... but not 
now, not yet. When the last corporatized human lays down to die, and the lamb 
lies with the lion, maybe then ...


At any rate, no such imperative (the word itself sourced in imperial edict!) 
will come unless accompanied by imperatives erasing human rights within the 
techno-social system, that is the nature of imperatives.


jh

PS - I wonder if there is a precedent for the students and faculty @ Luneburg to 
push for divestment from their cash cow? True and empowered learning has always 
been at odds with state-sanctioned and corporate-supported institution.



--
++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++


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Re: VW

2015-09-27 Thread Florian Cramer
 It'll be very interesting indeed to hear what the stars of ~German
 media theory have to say about this. Maybe about as much as most US
 academics have to say about their role in imposing indentured
 servitude on subsequent generations...

   The German state of Lower Saxony owns more than 20% of Volkswagen
   stock, a legacy from the Third Reich when the company was founded on
   Hitler's order and owned by the NSDAP's labor organization. The
   Volkswagen Endowment, whose sole purpose is the funding of academic
   research, was created with the money that Lower Saxony and the federal
   government of Germany made when 80% of the company went public after
   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. - Whatever one may object to
   these close ties between state and industry (described as "state
   monopoly capitalism" by some Marxists), it also has some social
   advantages when companies are partially owned by the public and their
   profits go into financing public research and tuition-less public
   education.

   There are other aspects in German media theory, cultural studies and
   humanities academia that I find by far more objectionable. For example,
   how the more or less biggest names of German media theory and cultural
   studies - Friedrich Kittler, Peter Sloterdijk, Horst Bredekamp, Hans
   Belting - got in bed with Germany's yellow press tycoon Hubert Burda
   (owner of Hubert Burda Media, publisher of among others "Bunte",
   "Focus", "Super-Illu", the German "Playboy" and minority shareholder of
   German tv station RTL2) for Burda's conferences and publications on the
   "iconic turn", as documented on the website
   http://www.iconicturn.de. (The website itself is run by the Hubert
   Burda Foundation.) For those who can read German:
   http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/kultur/article10863152/Bilder-rasc
   heln-nicht.html . Quick translation of the second paragraph:Â
   "Bazon Brock isn't Hubert Burda's only dialogue partner and
   intellectual friend. Peter Sloterdijk, Friedrich Kittler, Horst
   Bredekamp, Wolfgang Ullrich, Hans Belting are also part of the circle;
   top-notch art historians and cultural analysts, and reliable
   contributors to academic criticism. In Karlsruhe, where Burda's book
   was presented, they all sat in a half circle, an honorable club of men.
   It was quite touching how politely they all demonstrated their respect
   for the author. Wolfgang Ullrich, wonderfully insubordinate younger
   generation art historian, called his colleague, the Ph.D. art historian
   Hubert Burda, an 'embedded scientist' who had managed to infiltrate the
   business world for espionage work. Horst Bredekamp, wonderfully
   down-to-the-earth mid-career art historian, showed a reproduction of a
   'Hörzu' (German 'TV Guide') double page to praise its structured view
   on the world of television."Â

   - Regarding jaromil's objection that firmware (especially of critical
   technical devices) should be Open Source: yes, but this won't be
   enough. Volkswagen could have released its firmware in 2005 as Free
   Software/Open Source with the manipulation code cleverly obfuscated,
   speculating on the fact that the release would have remained relatively
   low profile (as opposed to popular Open Source software like, for
   example, Apache or the Linux kernel, which passes hundreds of critical
   eyes every day). For sure, the odds of discovery would still have been
   better then. But what's really needed are mandatory independent code
   audits for firmware - similar to the approval procedures for medical
   drugs. If such policies were in place, they also would have huge
   implications for the so-called "Internet of Things".

   -F



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