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 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
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. <...> # 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
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/ ++ # 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
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: "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." - 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 # 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