Re: nettime A Movement Without Demands?

2012-01-06 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
On 06-Jan-2012, at 5:33 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: You say the Occupy movement lacks strong core principles that could serve to define itself as a transformative force in society. I agree. Brian, A few thoughts: To examine the Occupy movements in terms of demands or principles is to only see

nettime The Death of the Avant-garde in the Attention Economy

2012-01-10 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
These are some speculations that have been bouncing around in my head for some time, particularly with reference to architecture - the discipline I practice - but perhaps having wider implications: Ever since the early stages of the modernist movement (since the second half of the 19th century)

Re: nettime The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive 'value abundance'?

2012-03-04 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Are we getting into the right issues here? The debate seems to have moved to the ethics of sites like Facebook and whether they are exploitative, whereas this thread started with the question of whether capitalism will survive a world of value abundance. To begin with this, my sense is that it

Re: nettime crowd-funding on nettime

2012-08-28 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
One way to look at it is from the viewpoint of information symmetry. When a forum revolves purely around ideas, then once the idea comes into the public domain of the forum everyone has an equal relationship to it. So the forum is founded on high levels of information symmetry. Monetary

Re: nettime Pascal Zachary: Rules for the Digital Panopticon (IEEE)

2013-10-12 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
This discussion thread indicates that (a) there is a high level of discomfort with the current situation of the digital panopticon, and (b) bringing the oversight of engineers (or other humans) into the loop is not really going to change things much because there are wider systemic issues at

Re: Return of the F-scale

2016-02-29 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Patrice, True, Havel was in a very different kind and level of authoritarian state. But it is a prescient warning that ideology can offer a tempting security where the centre of power is allowed an equivalence with the centre of truth. And this can happen across the entire range of pre-fixed

Re: Forms of decisionism

2016-07-15 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
When one accepts that the exception is the rule, the question changes from "How do I recover social order?" to "How do I live with being lost?" Rebecca Solnit argues that we must acquire the wisdom of the woodsman who can wander into the most unfamiliar woods, but because he has learnt to discern

Changing winds?

2016-08-08 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Till recently neoliberalism was treated as a gospel that should not be questioned. But now, some of the institutions that had championed neoliberalism are beginning to question it. The IMF has raised questions about how neoliberalism increases inequality, which in turn causes

Where is Liberalism?

2016-12-29 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
While written specifically for an audience in India, I believe it is a question that affects all geographies. [1]https://premckar.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/where-is-liberalism/ Where is Liberalism? A few weeks ago, I attended the launch of a book titled [2]What Does It Mean To

Re: Phillips/Beyer/Coleman: "false assumption that

2017-04-23 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 21-Apr-2017, at 8:50 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: > > The only way to regain any kind of political autonomy - by which I mean, > the capacity to relate deliberately to the present - is to form groups > that feel, think, discuss and act. The group needs dense ties

Re: Why I won't support the March for Science

2017-04-24 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
It is a problem when an issue is polarised across two extremes without exploring some substantive middle ground. Am reading Thomas Nagel, whose views are quite useful on this subject. He argues that the objective viewpoint that science prescribes is extremely useful, but if you extend this

Re: Why I won't support the March for Science

2017-04-24 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Nagel says in The View from Nowhere, “What really happens in the pursuit of objectivity is that a certain element of oneself, the impersonal or objective self, which can escape from the specific contingencies of one’s creaturely point of view, is allowed to predominate. Withdrawing into

Re: Paolo Cirio: Evidentiary Realism

2018-05-03 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
The challenge of ‘realism’ is to a large extent a self-created problem in contemporary art, resting on an aesthetics of expression: the belief that art (or the artist) must say something about the world. I have long felt that art has not sufficiently explored an ‘aesthetics of absorption’,

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

2018-01-04 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Another argument against the governmental monopoly on currency is Bernard Lietaer, “The Future of Money”. But Lietaer does it for a different reason than Hayek. His concern is that speculative transactions have leveraged technology to exponentially increase their volume and presence. In the

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

2018-01-10 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Just looked up my notes from a lecture by Joseph Stiglitz which I attended in July 2016. Some key points: Sustained economic development requires a learning society Western economies started the transition into a learning society in the 1800’s. However, this has flattened out towards the end

Re: Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

2018-02-22 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 21-Feb-2018, at 11:26 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote: > >> Going back to the traditional architecture and structural engineering >> business, there is no way that the building code could be successfully >> enforced without licensing and prosecuting individual >>

Re: Just as rabid as the Unabomber, but safely on the winning side ...

2018-02-22 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 22-Feb-2018, at 9:04 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: > > My sense is that practices responsive to place, and the educational resources > that come out of such practices, only stand a chance of being incorporated > into the mainstream *after* the predictable

Re: Shree Paradkar: When will there be a film on Winston Churchill, the barbaric monster with the blood of millions on his hands? (Toronto Star)

2018-03-12 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
In a similar vein: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/10/in-winston-churchill-hollywood-rewards-a-mass-murderer/?utm_term=.61f5a658e188

Re: ZAD Press release - Intergalactic Call-Out

2018-04-23 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Wah wah! Here’s another in the same vein (from Kaifi Azmi) Jo door se toofan ka karte hain nazaara unke liye toofan vahaan bhi hai yahaan bhi. Dhaare mein jo mil jaaoge, ban jaaoge dhaara, ye wakt ka ailaan vahaan bhi hai yahaan bhi Translation: For those who gaze at the storm from far, know

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

2018-12-29 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
To find our way by constructing a vision of an alternative society may be counterproductive. Living systems (and that includes society) are emergent: defining ‘emergence’ as the capacity of a system to display at its core fundamental properties that cannot be found in an earlier state of the

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

2019-01-02 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
reflexivity will not allow these conditions to emerge spontaneously. Best, Prem > On 30-Dec-2018, at 12:30 PM, Brian Holmes > wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 11:29 PM Prem Chandavarkar <mailto:prem@gmail.com>> wrote: > > we need to think about the spaces w

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

2019-01-09 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 05-Jan-2019, at 9:28 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: > > Maybe you are part of some such attempt? Maybe you are involved in some > experiment or initiative that you could describe? > Brian, I am afraid I do not have a clear answer to your request, as I am still early in the search. I can

Re: Managing complexity?

2019-04-02 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 02-Apr-2019, at 9:18 AM, John Hopkins wrote: > > The 'size' of the system is an externally applied abstraction in that, unless > one is speaking theoretically, a 'system' is always a subset of wider system: > a subset conveniently defined via limits (of interaction with that wider >

Re: Managing complexity?

2019-04-06 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 02-Apr-2019, at 11:24 PM, Brian Holmes > wrote: > > Because of this permeability, highly invasive techniques are continually > designed and applied in order to get people to behave, not as their own > system with its own autopoietic compass, but instead, as a subordinate or > even

Re: Managing complexity?

2019-03-31 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Let me throw in my two bits worth: Complex systems can be of two types: linear and non-linear In linear systems there is a relationship between input and output - small inputs result in small outputs and large inputs result in large outputs. The complexity of the system comes from the number of

Re: The World Wide Web 30 years later: We Wove a Tangle (Guardian Editorial)

2019-03-12 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
A fundamental change is what Hossein Derakshan points out here - the foundation of the web experience has changed from the hyperlink to the stream. https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426 > On 12-Mar-2019,

Re: The World Wide Web 30 years later: We Wove a Tangle (Guardian Editorial)

2019-03-12 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> I feel lucky to have enjoyed the broad audiences of the blog era. And equally > lucky not to have gone down the desperately self-seeking Facebook route. Thanks Brian, I made the mistake of going down the Facebook route, and came to terms with its problems only very recently. Derakshan’s

Re: rage against the machine

2019-03-14 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 15-Mar-2019, at 2:28 AM, Brian Holmes wrote: > > There is much to critique in the operations of Boeing and of the FAA. But > it's not about AI taking full control. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/13464-structural-design-and-thinking-in-approximations

The City and Complexity

2019-04-16 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Since there has been much discussion on complexity here, this conference may be of interest: Best, Prem THE CITY AND COMPLEXITY - LIFE, DESIGN AND COMMERCE IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT June 17 - 19, 2020 City University of London http://architecturemps.com/london-2020/

Re: Facebook

2019-11-03 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
About eight and a half months ago I quit Facebook and all social media. My reasons are given here: https://medium.com/@premckar/a-farewell-to-social-media-33db26074498 Having said that, I echo the sentiments expressed by

The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a Future

2020-05-04 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
https://medium.com/@premckar/the-covid-pandemic-seven-lessons-to-be-learned-for-a-future-81792f7f175 Reflecting on the experience thus far of the Covid-19 pandemic, I propose seven lessons

Re: The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a

2020-05-07 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Thanks Michael, Perhaps I was not clear. I do not propose an isolationist self-reliance - that is not feasible at all. International scales of operation are still necessary. I only argue that in the attempt to define what should be done at the local level and what should be done at the

Re: The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a

2020-05-08 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
My thoughts: I believe the Wuhan case supports the point I make. There, local government lives in fear of an autocratic centre that is intolerant of dissent to and deviance from predetermined norms. That is what motivated a cover up which may not have happened if there was more political

Re: "Consume revolutionary media"

2020-07-13 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Brian, I was on this podcast some weeks ago and will repeat something I said there. https://www.architecturetalk.org/home/73-jyaga-sa9ls-6wtny-6wgg5-4mgza-kdpel-3rn64-nrbkb-2lpnb The challenge to

Re: made for TV, made for social media

2021-01-07 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
On 07-Jan-2021, at 11:55 PM, Brian Holmes wrote: > > In my view, far from being a harbinger of possibly worse threats to come, > yesterday's events were the most positive thing that could have happened. I > had hoped - dreamed - that we would see something exactly like this. > My sense is

Re: The War to come ...

2022-03-11 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
> On 11-Mar-2022, at 1:39 PM, Andreas Broeckmann > wrote: > > The impression that Prem's analysis might be marred by the conceptual > limitations of "imperiology" is underscored by the fact that his examples > (anecdotal, but no doubt valid examples) relate only to the US. Andreas, The

Re: A new avant-garde of Public Truth

2022-03-15 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
David, Brian, I have my doubts on whether an avant-garde is possible any more. Firstly, we are in an attention economy where attention is the scarce and determining resource. One of the primary means of grabbing attention is through novelty, and any avant-garde is seen as a potential that can

Re: The War to come ...

2022-03-10 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
at this point I have no idea and would all the more like to hear your > insights, Prem. > > The big question for me is how to get a rules-based international order out > of a glut of imperial war machines. It's a serious one, and since the > glorious leaders of our glorious empire

Re: The War to come ...

2022-03-08 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
The fearful scenarios you lay out are all highly plausible, and will dominate till Putin is given greater options by considering a wider history of hegemony in which the US is highly complicit: In 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Soviet Union was beginning to

Re: The War to come ...

2022-03-09 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
Sorry for a consistent error of saying ‘eastern front’ when I meant ‘western front’. A senior moment. Thanks Andreas for pointing out the error > On 09-Mar-2022, at 12:05 PM, Prem Chandavarkar wrote: > > The fearful scenarios you lay out are all highly plausible, and will dominat

Re: Well, so long, "California Ideology"

2022-01-06 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
The problem, as Edward O. Wilson said, is that we have a combination of “Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.” > On 07-Jan-2022, at 1:02 AM, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: > > I did a lot of web consulting and project management for years, and that > definitely became

Re: Spamming the Data Space – CLIP, GPT and synthetic data

2022-12-24 Thread Prem Chandavarkar
The true question is how we recognise the other, and perhaps the fault lies in our assuming we do it through intelligence. As neuroscientist, Anil Seth, observes, we hear a lot of talk on artificial intelligence but never hear anyone speak of artificial consciousness. And that is because