http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6831 <pre>For some time I have been teasing my few economically literate friends on a possible Grexit &amp; Gre-re-entry for Grece's Euro blues, aka the 'Montenegro solution': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro_and_the_euro In an op-ed in today's issue of Le Monde, that is also, in my view, French economist and EHESS boss Jacques Sapir's take, when he writes that nobody appears to notice that the (next) Greek government _could_ (i) repudiate the entire Greek debt juncto the Troika demands, while at the same time (ii) ordering the Greek Central Bank to issue (in print or in scrip) as many Euros as it needs to keep the wheels of the country's economy moving. Meanwhile, Montenegro's rock star Rambo Amadeus, who already gave us the slogan "Don't Happy, Be Worry!" , is now the official Montenegro entry for the Baku Eurovision Song Contest Festival. His take on all this: Euro-Neuro, with hilarious (English, well, sortof) texts and funky images. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6S-FNLv2jQ Don't Happy, Be Worry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxz0jJz0aZM This went with a nice apocalyptic Live Short Film, Metro Last Light, reminding of Babylon A.D., the cine version of Maurice Dantec's novel Babylon Babies; If you don't get it, it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=trueview-instream&amp;v=nIKhXPkUpj4 Babylon A.D. trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyhEHKB6cmY Cheerio, p+4D! </pre> Patrice Riemens 2012-05-25T15:28:53 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6829 <pre>Back Patches and Elbow Patches Zack Furness From the introduction to Punkademics: http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=436 The position being taken is not to be mistaken for attempted education or righteous accusation. -Operation Ivy, “Room Without a Window” I think the moment at which I realized I was actually turning into a college professor was not on the first day I taught a class in 1999, but when I was listening to an old Operation Ivy tape about a year later and found myself wanting to sit the band’s singer, Jesse Michaels, down to have a frank discussion. Specifically, I wanted to ask him why, in a song written to both illuminate the politics of ideology (“walls made of opinions through which we speak and never listen”) and express the need for open-mindedness and self-reflexivity, would he choose to intentionally denounce the educational function of his lyrics from the outset? Not being a complete idiot nor unfamiliar with the band, I obviously realized that the song “Room Without a Window” (quoted above) was penned by Michaels when he was in his late teens, which is around the time when years of schooling and top-down authority have unfortunately succeeded at the task of turning education – or at least the compulsory, state-sanctioned version – into something from which young people want to run; I imagine all the more so for the sizeable number of kids in the late ‘80s East Bay (California) punk scene whose parents, like Michaels’ dad, were college professors. But whether the lyric intentionally gestures in this direction or is self-consciously ironic is hardly the issue. Indeed, even if the first line just sounded cool when he wrote it, the point here is that I wasn’t singing along, tapping out the beat (as ex-drummers are annoyingly prone to do), or even just engaging in the kind of run-of-the-mill lyrical analysis that has been the bread and butter for both punk fanzine writers and music journalists for over three decades. Rather, it’s that I was busy concocting some bizarre scenario in my head that, if allowed to play out in real life, would have undoubtedly translated into the world’s most boring and pedantic conversation with one of my punk heroes. As if it didn’t feel weird enough to catch myself pursuing this rather strange line of hypothetical inquiry at the breakfast table one morning, the sensation was heightened when I also realized, perhaps for the first time, that my own internal monologue was now being structured around concepts and jargon from my graduate seminars. Since when, I thought to myself, did I start to throw around – let alone think with – phrases like “illuminate the politics of ideology”? Was I becoming the kind of person who ends up nonchalantly remarking upon the “narrative tensions” in a Jawbreaker song? Or using the word oeuvre to describe Bad Brains’ discography? Was I heading down a path where I would eventually not even be able to go for a bike ride without theorizing it? Just then, as if the universe wanted to accent the point in as cartoonish a manner as possible, I narrowly avoided stumbling over my cat while rising from the table, and I managed to spill half a mug of coffee onto the stack of student papers I had been grading. Muttering to one’s self? Check. Coffee stained papers? Check. Analyzing one’s music collection through the lenses of critical pedagogy and rhetorical theory? Check. Shabby outfit? Certainly. Disheveled hair and off kilter eyeglasses? Indeed. Exhibiting behaviors that one might objectively identify as ‘wacky’ or ‘nutty’? Check. It was official. All I needed now, I thought to myself, was the kind of jacket where the patches are sewn nicely onto the elbows instead of silk screened and stitched across the back with dental floss. Elbow Patches and Back Patches Twelve years later I still don’t have one of those professorial tweed jackets, though I did manage to attain the job, the eccentricities, and the shock of salt-and-pepper hair that would compliment one quite nicely. And despite my initial anxieties over the prospects of compromising my then-entrenched punk ethics by turning into a stuffy academic, I actually ended up spending more time playing in bands and participating in various aspects of DIY punk culture as a graduate student and eventual professor than I did when I was younger. While far from seamless, I’ve often seen the relationship between these two ‘worlds’ as dialectical, though at first this mainly consisted of scrutinizing every new set of readings and concepts I learned in school through my own increasingly politicized worldview: a punk subjectivity that I fancied as something of a “bullshit detector.” But fairly quickly, though, my immersion in critical theory, cultural studies, feminism and political theory started to help me hold up a mirror to sub-/countercultural politics and to generally unpack some of the bullshit that is often embedded within our own bullshit detectors, as it were. Part of what facilitated this process, aside from personal experience and the guidance of some older friends, was getting exposed to the broader gamut of political punk and hardcore and to the range of writers, teachers, artists and activists who, in publications like Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Maximumrocknroll (MRR), Clamor and Stay Free!, not only connected many of the issues and concerns I’d previously encountered within different spheres, they also complicated and problematized (in the good way) a lot of my taken for granted assumptions about punk and the proliferation of ideas in general. It was through these channels – DIY punk and DIY publishing – as opposed to the classroom, that the relationships between politics, popular culture, education, and everyday life first started to make sense to me. As crucial as the composition of these ingredients was to my own development and positionality as a teacher, writer and ‘musician’ (a term I use very loosely), I am hardly the first person to test out the recipe and I’m certainly not one of the best cooks. Indeed, my real interest in punk/academic border transgressions was not borne of my own maneuverings, but from learning about and meeting punk musicians who had dual careers as professional nerds (I use the term lovingly; it is my job description after all) and reading sophisticated work from writers who seemed as equally sure footed in zine columns and basement shows as they did in a theory heavy journal publications, political organizing committees, or in front of podiums lecturing to graduate students at prestigious research universities. In addition to being generally interested in what other people have done (or aspired to do) with the kinds of energies, knowledges and tensions generated through their involvement with, or their reflections upon, both punk music and culture, I had a personal interest in wanting to meet more of these folks and to pick their brain about their paths toward careers as nerdy rockers or punk professors (given that either one sounded ideal to me). I was also intensely curious about the ways in which people reconciled their interests and understood the dynamics between two very different ‘scenes.’ I wanted to hear what other people had to say about scholarship on punk, or their relationships to band mates and fans (if applicable). And broadly speaking, I wanted to know what kind of sense people made of their punk/academic situation; whether it was something they analyzed, disparaged, incorporated into their work, trumpeted, or simply took in stride. What kind of stories did they have? What kinds of insights about punk and teaching have they drawn from their experiences or analyses? Unlike the prospects of time traveling to an Operation Ivy show in 1990, the possibilities for actually starting some conversations around these topics was quite real, and a few years ago I started the process with the aim of garnering essays for the book you are now reading. I asked people to contribute work that was either about punk specifically, or the intersections between punk and higher education, whether in the form of biographical pieces or chapters devoted to teaching and pedagogy. To keep things simple, I took the approach that punks of yore utilized when contacting bands they liked: sending letters. My interest was less in nostalgia (they were e-mails, after all) than in making contact with people whose work I admired and otherwise beginning what would become a long experiment. That is to say, part of my reason for doing the book was because, first and foremost, I wanted to see if it was possible. While I had long been attuned the fact that there were some professors and many more graduate students who, like me (circa 2005, when I hatched the idea for this book), simultaneously played in bands while they taught classes and worked on their degrees, I often wondered about whether there are a lot of “us” out there. By “us” I mean punkademics, or the professors, graduate students, and other PhDs who, in some meaningful or substantive way, either once straddled or continue to bridge the worlds of punk and academia through their own personal experiences, their scholarship, or some combination thereof. Punk Discourses Punk is neither a homogenous ‘thing’ nor is it reducible to a specific time, location, sound or a select number of vinyl records and live performances. It’s various meanings, as any self-respecting punk knows all too well, are subject to wild fluctuation and widespread debate. One might say that it’s because punk shapes – and is also shaped by – specific kinds of question askers, music makers, thought provokers, organizers, shit talkers, writers, artists, and teachers. At their best, the combinations of people, places, cultural practices, social relationships, art and ideas that co-constitute punk are rife with possibilities: creating new kinds of music or reveling in the ecstatic moments at the best shows; forging bonds of group solidarity and personal identity; carving out non-commercial spaces for free expression and the staking out of positions; and pushing people toward a participatory, ‘bottom up’ view of culture. Through the often conflicting accounts and histories of punk, one can identify the ebb and flow of countless scenes, interwoven subcultures, and a broader ‘Do it Yourself’ (DIY) counterculture in which people put ethical and political ideas into practice by using music and other modes of cultural production/expression to highlight both the frustrations and banalities of everyday life, as well as the ideas and institutions that need to be battled if there is any hope of living in a less oppressive world. And crucially, people have a lot of fun doing it. Those lucky enough to have experienced some of what I’ve just sketched out know what it feels like to sense that punk really can create something new in the shell of the old, to poach a phrase from the Wobblies. At its worst, punk can be and has been a fashion show, a cultural ghetto, a minor league circuit for corporate entertainers, a merchandise peddling aggregate of aspiring capitalist hustlers, and a constellation of practices that perpetuate varying degrees of machismo, sexism, homophobia, white privilege, classism, hyper-individualism, anti-intellectualism, passive conformity, and at times, both conservative religious dogma and racist nationalism. And like the worst trends to emerge under the banner of cultural studies – the academic field in which I work – punk’s incarnates have similarly been known to promote sloppy politics while championing ‘resistance’ in all of its self-styled affairs, regardless of whether such gestures (or fanciful arrangements of clothing, tattoos or words) bear a resemblance to anything like substantive political action, meaningful community engagement, or tangible social change. In this guise, ‘resistance’, ‘rebellion’, and of course, ‘revolution’, become just another set of buzzwords chirped in slogans, animated in bad songs and contrived writing, and emblazoned on t-shirts without a hint of Billy Bragg’s sharp wit: “So join the struggle while you may, the revolution is just a t-shirt away.” The various prospects and pitfalls associated with punk (I include hardcore in this designation throughout unless noted otherwise) are constant reminders that the stories we tell about it are always being folded into converging and often competing discourses about what punk really means, what it does or doesn’t do, and why it is or isn’t culturally significant, politically relevant, and so on. As both an academic and someone who spent roughly thirteen years drifting in and out of the punk scene (admittedly more ‘out’ in recent years), I’m invested in both the kinds of stories that get told about punk as well as the manner in they are put to work, as it were. Therefore, I think it is important to note from the outset that my interest in assembling Punkademics is neither to tell the grand story of punk (an impossibly arrogant and pointless task) nor to produce the scholarly cipher through which all of punk’s secret meanings can be decrypted. Academics should not be seen as the authoritative voices capable of explaining punk to the masses, and I have no interest in presenting them as such. In fact, I have always been rather conflicted about how punk music and DIY punk culture get taken up by academics in the first place. As a teacher, I tend to see punk – like all other cultural phenomena – as a messy but nonetheless fascinating cluster of things that can be analyzed, dissected and debated. Depending on the specific course, I’ve incorporated aspects of punk in my lesson plans to talk about everything from the underground press and the political economy of the media industry, to the role that punk music – like hip hop – plays in cultivating meaningful narratives about “the city” and the importance of space and place in everyday life. And quite frequently, punk comes in handy when I need to give concrete examples to illustrate or clarify what certain social and cultural theorists mean when they throw around phrases like cultural production, articulation, hegemony, resistance, commodification, cooptation, and of course, subculture. In addition to being pedagogically useful, I also get a certain degree of satisfaction in knowing that members of the bands I discuss in class would be alternatively delighted or mortified by the idea. However, my level of comfort with the melding of punk and academia decreases quite rapidly when punk becomes an object of study unto itself. As Roger Sabin notes in his introduction to Punk Rock, So What?, one of the main problems with scholarship on punk is the overreliance on unquestioned assumptions about punk itself and, overall, the “narrowness of the frame of reference.” Along with what he describes as the “pressures to romanticize,” Sabin suggests that the impulses and trends in punk scholarship foster the development of certain kind of “orthodoxy” that structures what it is possible to say, or most likely not say, about punk’s history, its conjunctures with other ideas and artistic practices, and, I would add, its current formations, and its possible future(s). Like many of the LP records that fit squarely and safely within the parameters of a punk’s splintered subgenres, a number of the books and essays that fall under the umbrella of this ‘orthodoxy’ have their distinct merits. Nevertheless, his point about the constrictive qualities of scholarship on punk is well taken and, broadly speaking, rather understated. Because while there are plenty of exceptions (including excellent work published by this book’s contributors), a significant amount of academic writing, conference presentations and the like are authored by people who – despite being fans of punk music and passionate about the topic – seem to have limited knowledge of punk music and DIY culture, and a level of engagement with punk scenes that is more akin to casual tourism than active participation. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop people from feeling entitled to make assumptions, lodge critiques, and draw conclusions based on what, more or less, amounts to an analysis of punk ‘texts.’ To be sure, there are a variety of things that broadcast this kind of work. My position, however, is not based on some naïve desire to preserve the sacredness of punk (Hot Topic put the final, pyramid-studded nail in that coffin years ago), nor do I think that people who are totally immersed in their activities or communities are necessarily in the best position to speak thoughtfully about their endeavors, or to critically reflect on the social or political significance of them; sometimes the exact opposite is true. Rather, my perspective is based upon what I see as a relatively uncontroversial point: whether due to shoddy research, distance from the punk scene, or harmless excitement for a topic tackled earnestly though wrong-headedly, the bottom line is that most academics simply miss the mark when it comes to punk music and culture. It would seem that I am good company on this point, even amongst fellow academics. John Charles Goshert, for example, argues that academic studies “tend toward the uninformed, if not careless, homogenizing of styles, personalities, and locales under the name ‘punk.’” David Muggleton expresses similar anxieties over the academicization of punk when, in the introduction to his own book, he describes his first encounter with Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style: “I fought my way through...and was left feeling that it had absolutely nothing to say about my life as I had once experienced it...The ‘problem’ lay not in myself and my failure to recognize what had ostensibly been the reality of my situation, but in the way the book appropriated its subject matter.” Stories matter Put simply, the stories we tell about punk matter. In the greater scheme of things, there is clearly much less at stake in the narration of punk than there is, for example, in the stories told about immigration, Indigenous land claims, prisons, or the philosophical and economic underpinnings of Neoliberalism. Nevertheless, they matter. Part of the reason why is because, like the stories told about other cultural practices and art forms, the relevant work on punk affects the ways we understand its specific histories, its present formations, and its possible future(s). Consequently, when the complexities and nuances of punk music, aesthetics and identities are ignored in lieu of sweeping claims and a reliance on problematic assumptions, this has a significant bearing on the ways in which people conceptualize, interpret and draw conclusions about the ‘politics of punk’, youth subcultures, and perhaps the social functions of art and music, as well. The concern here is thus not only the fidelity of the narratives – as in whether the accounts (of bands, scenes, events, etc.) are accurate and truthful – it is also a matter of who gets to speak for whom: whose stories are told and whose are silenced, and perhaps most importantly, who gets to shape public knowledge(s) that inform the ways in which we collectively remember people, events, institutions, ideas, cultural practices and cultural history. In addition, this body of knowledge is never only about punk in the first place: in academic research alone one finds discussions of punk situated within larger conversations about the music industry, the changing social status of ‘youth’ in the late 20th Century, the formation of identity, the nature of consumption, and the contentious dynamics of class, race, gender, sexuality and religion that are part of punks’ everyday relationships and also addressed within their own songs, musings, dialogues and debates. My point here is that the story and mythology of punk get reified over the years as much in academic writing as elsewhere. And it is not just dedicated books and peer-reviewed articles that do this kind of cultural work; it is also the hundreds of casual references that academics make to punk (for example in books on the 1970s or the Reagan Era) that simultaneously support the dominant narratives and constrain the possibilities of analyzing it without the compulsion to either validate its heroes or delineate its pure moment of inception. Because what gets missed, for instance, in the habitual focus on punk’s origins, its shining stars, its hottest locations, and its most obvious but nonetheless vital contributions – such as punks’ amplification (with all that the term implies) of independent music and art – are the everyday practices, processes, struggles, ruptures and people that make it so interesting in the first place. Up the nerds! One of my primary goals with Punkademics is to encourage a marked shift away from the punk-as-style paradigm that has become so commonplace in the wake of Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style but also from a number of the binary oppositions scholars have used to reduce ‘punk’ into a static, singular thing that can be mapped along an axis of success vs. failure, resistance vs. recuperation, authenticity vs. inauthenticity, and so on. Instead of producing another series of instrumental readings of punk that are strictly concerned with what it ultimately does or does not do, or what it definitively means or doesn’t mean at one specific moment, or within the confines of one specific scene or musical recording, I’m more inclined to think about what possibilities emerge within and through it. Scholarship on punk has sometimes pointed in this direction, though it’s typically focused on which kinds of musical and stylistic hybrids become imaginable or possible through the production of punk music and culture, or somewhat differently, which aesthetic and artistic trends are rendered most visible in punk’s history or that of its precursors. While I am interested in these linkages and the kind of work that, for example, contributors to the book Punk Rock, So What? take pains to highlight, I have always been much more curious about the kinds of subjectivities, people and communities that become imaginable or possible – or perhaps even probable – through DIY punk, i.e. the “vectors of punk that strive to escape models of production and consumption otherwise omnipresent in the entertainment industry.” A fruitful way to approach these interrelationships, as I’ve tried to demonstrate with this very book, is to consider some of the ways that punk maps onto or even organizes certain constellations of cultural practice, artistic expression, ethics, and notions of community. But crucially, I think this begins by reframing punk as an object of study and asking some rather different questions about peoples’ relationship to it. Through a combination of essays, interviews, biographical sketches, and artwork, one of the aims of this collection is to do this by way of example as opposed to merely stacking critique on top of critique. While not without its own limitations, Punkademics tries to offer more nuanced perspectives on various aspects of punk and hardcore – and in particular DIY punk music and culture – that stem from contributors’ academic backgrounds as well as their collective participation within and experience of punk scenes. But of equal importance is the attention focused in the opposite direction, which is back at the university, the classroom, and both the norms and ethics that get embedded into higher education. Given the fact that little research has been done about where punks end up or what their career paths and adventures (as well as struggles and failures) might tell us about punk or why it matters, this book offers some tangible examples that speak to these concerns, inasmuch as colleges and universities function as some of the places where people with ‘punk’ values can ostensibly thrive, or more accurately, where they can potentially put their ethics and ideas into practice; though not without great effort, considerable friction, and at times, complete train wrecks. The idea behind Punkademics is thus not only to offer some different perspectives on punk, broadly speaking, but to also tell some entirely distinct stories about academics and punks themselves, and how their priorities and passions get reconfigured by and through their experiences as theorists, artists, activists, educators and misfits working amidst the often tumultuous landscape of the modern university/edufactory. 1, 2, 3, 4, Go! </pre> Stevphen Shukaitis 2012-05-24T10:32:31 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6827 <pre>To give some background to this article. Woolworths is one of Australia's duopoly of supermarket retailers. They own heaps of other retailing business as well as well as lots of gambling outputs. They, along with Westfarmers have gradually been crushing rival businesses in all forms of consumer activity. They make very good profits and growth of profits. They have been pushing impulse consumption through digital media. This is what they think about digital media: http://www.smh.com.au/business/phone-addicts-keep-shopping-fixes-alive-20120521-1z16u.html Woolworths's digital multi-channel expert, Penny Winn, told a Trans-Tasman business lunch yesterday how smartphone users had become increasingly fixated by their devices and that shopping was a natural addition to their use. Noting how 1.6 million people had downloaded the Woolies phone app, Winn said smartphones had become a part of our make-up as if we were addicted to them. ''I guess the one thing about these things is that it's almost like a heroin hit,'' she said. jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. </pre> Jonathan Marshall 2012-05-23T23:11:04 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6825 <pre>&lt;http://www.technologyreview.com/web/40437/"&gt; The Facebook Fallacy For all its valuation, the social network is just another ad-supported site. Without an earth-changing idea, it will collapse and take down the Web. * Tuesday, May 22, 2012 * By Michael Wolff Facebook is not only on course to go bust, but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, that will sound hyperbolic. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people's behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command real attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising's impact. Advertisement click here... At the same time, network technology allows advertisers to more precisely locate and assemble audiences outside of branded channels. Instead of having to go to CNN for your audience, a generic CNN-like audience can be assembled outside CNN's walls and without the CNN-brand markup. This has resulted in the now famous and cruelly accurate formulation that $10 of offline advertising becomes $1 online. I don't know anyone in the ad-Web business who isn't engaged in a relentless, demoralizing, no-exit operation to realign costs with falling per-user revenues, or who isn't manically inflating traffic to compensate for ever-lower per-user value. Facebook, however, has convinced large numbers of otherwise intelligent people that the magic of the medium will reinvent advertising in a heretofore unimaginably profitable way, or that the company will create something new that isn't advertising, which will produce even more wonderful profits. But at a forward profit-to-earnings ratio of 56 (as of the close of trading on May 21), these innovations will have to be something like alchemy to make the company worth its sticker price. For comparison, Google trades at a forward P/E ratio of 12. (To gauge how much faith investors have that Google, Facebook, and other Web companies will extract value from their users, see our recent chart.) Facebook currently derives 82 percent of its revenue from advertising. Most of that is the desultory ticky-tacky kind that litters the right side of people's Facebook profiles. Some is the kind of sponsorship that promises users further social relationships with companies: a kind of marketing that General Motors just announced it would no longer buy. Facebook's answer to its critics is: pay no attention to the carping. Sure, grunt-like advertising produces the overwhelming portion of our $4 billion in revenues; and, yes, on a per-user basis, these revenues are in pretty constant decline, but this stuff is really not what we have in mind. Just wait. It's quite a juxtaposition of realities. On the one hand, Facebook is mired in the same relentless downward pressure of falling per-user revenues as the rest of Web-based media. The company makes a pitiful and shrinking $5 per customer per year, which puts it somewhat ahead of the Huffington Post and somewhat behind the New York Times' digital business. (Here's the heartbreaking truth about the difference between new media and old: even in the New York Times' declining traditional business, a subscriber is still worth more than $1,000 a year.) Facebook's business only grows on the unsustainable basis that it can add new customers at a faster rate than the value of individual customers declines. It is peddling as fast as it can. And the present scenario gets much worse as its users increasingly interact with the social service on mobile devices, because it is vastly harder, on a small screen, to sell ads and profitably monetize users. On the other hand, Facebook is, everyone has come to agree, profoundly different from the Web. First of all, it exerts a new level of hegemonic control over users' experiences. And it has its vast scale: 900 million, soon a billion, eventually two billion (one of the problems with the logic of constant growth at this scale and speed, of course, is that eventually it runs out of humans with computers or smart phones). And then it is social. Facebook has, in some yet-to-be-defined way, redefined something. Relationships? Media? Communications? Communities? Something big, anyway. The subtext--an overt subtext--of the popular account of Facebook is that the network has a proprietary claim and special insight into social behavior. For enterprises and advertising agencies, it is therefore the bridge to new modes of human connection. Expressed so baldly, this account is hardly different from what was claimed for the most aggressively boosted companies during the dot-com boom. But there is, in fact, one company that created and harnessed a transformation in behavior and business: Google. Facebook could be, or in many people's eyes should be, something similar. Lost in such analysis is the failure to describe the application that will drive revenues. Google is an incredibly efficient system for placing ads. In a disintermediated advertising market, the company has turned itself into the last and ultimate middleman. On its own site, it controls the space where a buyer searches for a thing and where a seller hawks that thing (its keywords AdWords network). Google is also the cheapest, most efficient way to place ads anywhere on the Web (the AdSense network). It's not a media company in any traditional sense; it's a facilitator. It can forget the whole laborious, numbing process of selling advertising space: if a marketer wants to place an ad (that is, if it is already convinced it must advertise), the company calls Mr. Google. And that's Facebook's hope, too: like Google, it wants to be a facilitator, the inevitable conduit at the center of the world's commerce. Facebook has the scale, the platform, and the brand to be the new Google. It only lacks the big idea. Right now, it doesn't actually know how to embed its usefulness into world commerce (or even, really, what its usefulness is). But Google didn't have the big idea at the company's founding, either. The search engine borrowed the concept of AdWords from Yahoo's Overture network (with a lawsuit for patent infringement and settlement following). Now Google has all the money in the world to buy or license all the ideas that could makes its scale, platform, and brand pay off. What might Facebook's big idea look like? Well, it does have all this data. The company knows so much about so many people that its executives are sure that the knowledge must have value (see "You Are the Ad," by Robert D. Hof, May/June 2011). If you're inside the Facebook galaxy (a constellation that includes an ever-expanding cloud of associated ventures) there is endless chatter about a near-utopian (but often quasi-legal or demi-ethical) new medium of marketing. "If we just ... if only ... when we will ..." goes the conversation. If, for instance, frequent-flyer programs and travel destinations actually knew when you were thinking about planning a trip. Really we know what people are thinking about--sometimes before they know! If a marketer could identify the person who has the most influence on you ... If a marketer could introduce you to someone who would relay the marketer's message ... get it? No ads, just friends! My God! But so far, the sweeping, basic, transformative, and simple way to connect buyer to seller and then get out of the way eludes Facebook. So the social network is left in the same position as all other media companies. Instead of being inevitable and unavoidable, it has to sell the one-off virtue of its audience like every other humper on Madison Avenue. Here's another worrisome point: Facebook is a company of technologists, not marketers. If you wanted to bet on someone succeeding in the marketing business, you'd bet on technologists only if they could invent some new way to sell; you wouldn't bet on them to sell the way marketers have always sold. But that's what Facebook is doing, selling individual ads. From a revenue perspective, it's an ad-sales business, not a technology company. To meet expectations--the expectations that took it public at $100 billion, the ever-more-vigilant expectations needed to sustain it at that price--it has to sell at near hyperspeed. The growth of its user base and its ever-expanding page views means an almost infinite inventory to sell. But the expanding supply, together with an equivocal demand, means ever-lowering costs. The math is sickeningly inevitable. Absent an earth-shaking idea, Facebook will look forward to slowing or declining growth in a tapped-out market, and ever-falling ad rates, both on the Web and (especially) in mobile. Facebook isn't Google; it's Yahoo or AOL. Oh, yes ... In its Herculean efforts to maintain its overall growth, Facebook will continue to lower its per-user revenues, which, given its vast inventory, will force the rest of the ad-driven Web to lower its costs. The low-level panic the owners of every mass-traffic website feel about the ever-downward movement of the cost of a thousand ad impressions (or CPM) is turning to dread, as some big sites observed as much as a 25 percent decrease in the last quarter, following Facebook's own attempt to book more revenue. You see where this is going. As Facebook gluts an already glutted market, the fallacy of the Web as a profitable ad medium can no longer be overlooked. The crash will come. And Facebook--that putative transformer of worlds, which is, in reality, only an ad-driven site--will fall with everybody else. Michael Wolff writes a column on media for the Guardian; is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair; founded Newser; and was, until October of last year, the editor of AdWeek. </pre> nettime's_bear 2012-05-23T11:47:00 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6824 <pre>chris mann &lt;chrisman-KealBaEQdz4&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org COMMUNISM Has Arrived (in fact, a long time ago)! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 09:35:45 -0400 Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! From: chris mann &lt;chrisman-KealBaEQdz4&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; isnt the point rather that people invest in apple coz its walled garden aesthetic is the most like television? i mean if the digital is the suburban expression of the quantum, an ode to the death of causality (seattle used to be kneedeep in mormans who believed the (ms) pc to be the democratised urim and thummim of a new age), then of course theres going to be a push for things that look like moments that nostalge (what i think the dsm refers to as 'self regard' and economists refer to as 'bubbles'. i mean what did you expect, music? On 20 May 2012 12:26, &lt;Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; wrote: &lt;...&gt; - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 09:49:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! Chris: Of course! Why did the *only* people who used Macintoshes in business come from the "creative department"? What "creative" means here is *commercial art* which is almost entirely in *service* to mass-media (i.e. "promotion" and "advertising.") Kids waiting in line for a new iPhone -- hoping to become "famous" among their friends or maybe even on the evening news -- are acting out *television* fantasies. The "sensibility" of TELEVISION is 100% closed and "in control." It is, after all, "propaganda" (in Ellul's sense of "totallizing") and that requires a CLOSED environment. Jonathan is correct to associate Apple with "conspicuous consumption" because that is the *behavior* of both those who slavishly buy Apple products *and* what they project onto the rest of the world through their attitudes and, in many cases, their jobs! However, OPEN is the *digital* sensibility and as more-and-more of the world makes that transition, this will be a growing problem for Apple. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY In a message dated 5/21/2012 9:35:45 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, chrisman-KealBaEQdz4&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org writes: isnt the point rather that people invest in apple coz its walled garden aesthetic is the most like television? i mean if the digital is the suburban expression of the quantum, an ode to the death of causality (seattle used to be kneedeep in mormans who believed the (ms) pc to be the democratised urim and thummim of a new age), then of course theres going to be a push for things that look like moments that nostalge (what i think the dsm refers to as 'self regard' and economists refer to as 'bubbles'. i mean what did you expect, music? &lt;...&gt; - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 14:07:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: COMMUNISM Has Arrived (in fact, a long time ago)! [from Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp.372-3] To Prince Bernard of the Netherlands (May 14, 1969) Your Royal Highness: It was good to be there. [The Bilderberg meeting took place May 9-11, 1969 in Elsinore, Denmark] It is good to be back. As you know, I was a rather bad boy at Bilderberg . . . The great advantage in participating in Bilderberg is that it gives one a means of estimating the level to which the incompetence of the participants has enabled them to attain. Every man has a right to protect his own ignorance. However, these men are responsible for coping with a changing world which has sent them scurrying for cover in the opposite direction of the changes that we have released. I asked them to instance a single example in human history of any community that had been able to foresee the consequences of any innovation. The group was unable to comply. When I explained that in terms of services available to the ordinary person, the services that the greatest private wealth could not possibly provide for itself, that is Communism. It happened long before Karl Marx. Such service environments are invisible to accountants and actuaries and bankers who deal in entries of double entries and arithmetic which conceal technological and environmental realities completely. Today, with the multi-billion dollar service environments available to everybody, almost for free, (these include the massive educational and information world of advertising) it means that we have plunged very deep into the tribal Communism on a scale unknown in human history. I asked the group: "What are we fighting Communism for? We are the most Communist people in world history." There was not a single demur. One fringe benefit of the conference for me was the sudden realization of what is meant by "class war." It means people deprived of an identity. It is only accidentally the result of poverty. Today the entire TV generation has been deprived of its identity by the new image (cf. Hertz's law.) "The consequence of the images will be the image of the consequences." It is the affluent young people today who are the deprived proletariat of our world. It is *they* who are fighting the new class war. Marxism is quite unable to cope with any 20th-century problem. The so-called 'Communist" countries are merely trying to have a 19th century of consumer goods . . . Marshall McLuhan Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </pre> nettime's_antithesis 2012-05-23T02:56:21 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6823 <pre>JORGE ZORREQUIETA and the DISPOSICIÓN FINAL: when will he show any remorse? May 22, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tijen For the full illustrated and documented article will links go to: http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/jorge-zorrequieta-and-the-disposicion-final-when-will-he-show-any-remorse/ This is old news about a book by the Argentinian author Ceferino Reato who managed to interview the former Argentinian dictator Jorge Rafaela Videla in prison and for the first time having Videla speak about the real numbers of people killed by his regime in his vision (7 to 8 thousand persons). The book was published in Argentina a few months ago, but it merits special attention in the Netherlands because the Dutch Royal House has a family relation with one participant in the Videla regime. This relationship has been constantly half denied and underplayed. The policy of the Dutch Royal House and Dutch governments is one of low profile on this issue, in the hope it will be forgotten. When I checked today the Dutch library system I did not yet find a single copy in any Dutch public library (available or on order), including the Royal Library of the Netherlands. I will certainly write the last institution about this omission! (*) “Disposición Final”(final disposal) is the military jargon – of the Argentinian generals and government – for the murder of those that were seen as a danger to Argentinian society. (...) </pre> Tjebbe van Tijen 2012-05-22T22:58:50 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6822 <pre>&lt;http://occupytheory.org/read/we-didn-t-know-it-was-impossible-so-we-did-it-the-quebec-student-strike-celebrates-its-100th-day.html&gt; "We didn't know it was impossible, so we did it!" The Quebec Student Strike celebrates its 100th day Malav Kanuga Origins of an unlimited general strike ("grève générale illimitée") Students in Quebec are marking their 100th day of an unlimited general strike on Tuesday, May 22nd, the culmination of the most stunning mass protest movements of recent months and North America's largest student movement in years. In fact, the mobilizations in Quebec might just be Canada's[9] Arab Spring. Students have been organizing against tuition hikes for nearly one and a half years, when the Quebec government first proposed to raise tuition fees by 75% over five years (amended to 82% over seven years by the government at the end of April). Before the general strike began in February, protests, demos, trainings, letter writing campaigns and attempts to negotiate in good faith with the government were consistently met with obstinate silence from the Charest administration. For the students there has been a growing sense of urgency and a shared recognition that increased tuition means a heavier student debt burden, hundreds of more hours a year spent working instead of studying, less access for working class and lower class students, and a shift in university culture toward the market, the commodification of education, the financialization of student life, and the privatization of the university. Even if fees increase, Quebec students would be paying less than other provinces in Canada, a gap the provincial government has been aiming to close. But so far every time the administration has proposed to do so, students have gone on strike. Deep in the Quebec struggle is a culture of solidarity and security, a social fabric, a sense of community that endures and mobilizes a powerful defense of their commonwealth. Call it what you will, it is precisely this that Margaret Thatcher declared war upon on May 1st 1981 when she said that the project of neoliberalism is to change the heart and soul of a `collectivist' spirit, and its means is economics. Indeed, the Finance Minister of the Quebec Liberal government recently called its austerity policies "a cultural revolution" and they are not shy about their plan to reorganize Quebecois life through fiscal discipline. The Modèle québécois of social collectivism (in its traditional social democratic sensibility, but also, and more importantly, its directly democratic ethic that has emerged in the course of the last 14 weeks of strike) is the target of these policies, specifically through education and health. This is what explains the Charest government's attempts to break the strike and destroy the student unions. Student unionism is particularly strong in Quebec, and for a reason: they are inherently political, engaging, and participatory, using principles of direct democracy in weekly general assemblies. A dispersal of power, where students have a direct role in shaping the culture of university life through the policies and activities of the unions has been the backbone of the growing movement against tuition hikes, and the secret to why it has been able to mobilize such a broad and popular base. Yet, while a rejection of political parties and emphasis on direct democracy and militancy infuse the movement, there are in reality a range of unions--from the combative wing of the movement, such as the [10]Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) that demands free education, to more corporatist and mainstream student unions that integrate with bourgeois political parties. But this struggle represents more than students. It represents an attack on the middle class and lower income families, their sense of social cohesion, and the social entitlement and equality of access to public services amid rising cost of living. The strikes register across these domains of everyday life, in the university, in the family home, the workplace, and the hospital, where increasingly the same growing resentment of the imposition of austerity measures in Quebec emerge, as the tuition increases coincide with the first ever "health tax," alongside a 20% increase in hydro rates, the raising of the federal retirement age to 67, as well as mass layoffs. A chronology of the last weeks of the movement On November 10th, over 200,000 students went on a one-day strike, and 30,000 took to the streets. 20,000 of which marched directly to Charest's Montreal office to demonstrate against rising fees. Hundreds, including the Quebec Women's Federation, shut down the Montreal Stock Exchange in mid-February, a site dear to the 1%, and where the Charest government, who had so far been ignoring the budding movement, would certainly devote its rapt attention. By February 23rd, forty thousand post-secondary students across the province joined the unlimited general strike. Thousands of students occupied the Jacques Cartier Bridge. If the tactical approaches of the movement had been ignored by university administrations and the provincial government in its first weeks, by March 22nd, student unions such as CLASSE (The Coalition large de l'Association pour une Solidarite Syndaicale Etudiante), whose 80,000 members have been leading the strike, couldn't be missed. Since then, they have shifted focus toward targeting governmental offices, ministries, and crown corporations, placing strategic emphasis on economic disruption, an approach to direct action that has had precedence in many earlier urban protest movements in the last decade or so. On March 22nd, as over 300,000 students had been on strike, a massive march in the streets inaugurated the Maple Spring ("Printemps Érable," a play on words in French), with university after university, and college after college, going on strike. Two months later, on Tuesday, May 22nd, the Quebec students' unlimited strike will celebrate its 100th day, already one of the largest student mobilizations in recent history. During 100 days of strike, contempt, and resistance, students have mobilized against steep tuition increases, austerity and debt, and the criminalization of the right to education. On Friday, a friend Lilian Radovac, who has been active in the student mobilizations in Montreal, described a cultural shift expanding in the cracks of everyday austerity: "For years, May '68 was a dry, dusty thing other people theorized about in poor translations, but these last months, something like it has been happening in the crevices of our vie quotidienne. How strange that it is just there, between bus rides and doctor's appointments and trips to the grocery store, a thing that is so extraordinary and so bizarrely normal at the same time. The metro has been shut down by smoke bombs? Oh well, I feel like a walk anyway. Did it feel like this when OWS started? It must have." Each week, in local general assemblies of student associations, students have voted to sustain the `renewable general strike'. With over 180 different unions representing some 170,000 students, university departments and the government can no longer hope the movement will dwindle on its own, and are increasingly forced to repress the movement actively. Indeed, days after the Education Minister Line Beauchamp resigned on May 14th over failed negotiations with student leaders, the Quebec Government enacted a special emergency law. Bill 78 specifically targets the massive student assemblies and mobilizations in order to break the growing strike and destroy the power of the student union. One member of the Quebec political opposition used the term "Loi Fuck" to refer to the blunt and draconian tool that outlaws public assembly, imposes harsh fines for strike activity (even tacit support), and effectively makes organizing an arrestable offense. The bill also gives more power to the police in enforcing student protest. Indeed, during the last many weeks of escalating street demos, police have repeatedly preempted demonstrations with CS gas, sound grenades, `blast disperser' grenades, and rubber bullets. Nevertheless, it is not clear how this law will be used in the coming days and weeks, or whether it will be successful in intimidating students. An emergency law announced on the previous Wednesday "suspended" the semester for many CEGEP (academic and vocational college) and university students, with provisions for classes to be postponed until August.[11] Provisions of Bill 78 that followed include: * Fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for anyone who prevents someone from entering an educational institution. * Steep penalties of $7,000 and $35,000 for anyone deemed a `student leader' and between $25,000 and $125,000 for unions or student associations. Fines double after the first offense. * Plans for public demonstrations involving more than 50 people (originally 8) must be submitted to the police eight hours in advance, and must detail itinerary, duration and time at which they are being held. * Offering encouragement, tacitly supporting, or promoting protest at a school, either is subject to punishment. In Montreal, specifically, a new municipal anti-mask law accompanies Bill 78, and another has been proposed at the federal level. With Charest's attempts to legislate the end of the student movement, the struggle has deepened and is now at a turning point. Yet, on its 100th day of an unlimited general strike, the movement does not show any signs of slowing down or veering from its median tactic of general assemblies, its preferred direct action orientation, and its culture of horizontal democracy. The return of the red square and our right to assembly Students in Quebec have popularized the symbol of the "red square" to signify being financially "squarely in the red" amid tuition hikes, cuts in social entitlements, and the specter of spiraling student and consumer debt. As their movement has powerfully reminded us, we are all `in the red' as long as the 1% imposes upon us austerity, debt, and repression. The politics of austerity and the increased policing of everyday life reveal themselves in these instances to be inseparably linked. We can see the direct link between tuition hikes and the criminalization of assembly in Quebec, just as we can see Bloomberg's management through "free speech zones" of political protest, the silencing of media, and the increased police aggression in suppressing the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thus, solidarity with Quebec students is also important work in defense of our right to demonstrate here and everywhere. When times of crisis provoke ramped up police power and allow desperate politicians to pass "emergency laws" that target unquiet sectors of the population, we are certain that the class balance of present society is threatened. But it is a cautious joy we should preach, along with the sober insight that without powerful international solidarity and coordination, as James Baldwin once wrote to Angela Davis, "if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night." The police backlash--through intimidation, repression, and wanton brutality--we have faced in NYC for trying to assemble is enormous. On May 2nd, students at Brooklyn College were met with police hostility as they demonstrated against policies that restrict access to education for lower-income students. Wherever the site of struggle, the very idea of opening up space for collective imagination is policed. But we are not battling on the plane of the imaginary. An attack in Quebec on the right to assemble, if unchallenged through coordinated international solidarity, will have real and chilling effects on our movements here. Solidarity in NYC Speaking about the Quebec students' strike in New York, there is often enthusiasm and support, if not bewilderment upon learning of the size and power of their movement, something that the media blackout in the U.S. has successfully eclipsed. But there is also a bit of shoulder shrugging. "Are they really on strike for $250 dollars?" one unmoved passerby queried as we were wrapping up an assembly in the park on Sunday. Indeed more popular education needs to be done here on the plight of students in the climate of this crisis. But the student struggle, here in NYC as in Quebec, is not only a struggle for the student: it is about access to education for all regardless of economic circumstance, a challenge to the very economic and political planning that has been transforming our cities into spaces for the elite over the last three decades. This past weekend, several groups from Occupy Wall Street and other organizations held an assembly to address these "emergency laws" and discuss solidarity with Quebec on Tuesday. Immediately a robust day was in the works: At 2PM on Tuesday, the time marches are slated to begin in Montreal, demonstrators in NYC will gather at the Quebec Government Offices at 1 Rockefeller Plaza. The Free University, which organized a day of free education in Madison Square Park on May Day, is hosting a pop-up occupation open to all students, educators, and community members. At 5PM, there will be a gathering on the north side of the fountain in Washington Square Park, where people will paint banners, make `book bloc' shields, and cut red squares for the evening march. At 6PM, there will be a teach in/speak out assembly about the Quebec student strike, the emergency laws, and the criminalization of dissent, followed by a number of self-organized lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions. In coordination with Quebec students who have been holding nightly assemblies, there will also be an assembly and march originating from Washington Square Park at 8PM to celebrate the successes of the student movement and to march against repressive anti-protest laws worldwide. On this day, in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Quebec, we will paint the town red. Malav Kanuga is a doctoral student in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, NY and editor of the publishing imprint [12]Common Notions. &lt;...&gt; 9. http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/judes/2012/03/maple-spring-quebec-students-protest-tuition-hikes-massive-numbers 10. http://www.asse-solidarite.qc.ca/ 11. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/05/18/quebec-student-protest-law-bill-78.html 12. http://www.commonnotions.org/ &lt;...&gt; </pre> nettime's_roving_reporter 2012-05-23T01:34:38 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6821 <pre>for all who are interested in this debate and participation - looking forward to see you my best Dmitry *Berlin, Sunday, June 3rd, 19:00h, Flutgraben* *Address:* Am Flutgraben 3 12435 Berlin +49 30 5321 9658 ArtLeaks invites you to a public working assembly around the issues that are at the core of the group?s mission ? exposing instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation in the art world. This is the official public launch of our platform, which began to operate in September 2011, and will be followed by a series of debates and workshops in the near future. These present a unique opportunity to engage more directly with conditions of cultural work that affect not only artists but creative workers in general: those from the traditionally creative fields as well as those generally involved in cultural production. - see full text at http://art-leaks.org/2012/05/21/1st-artleaks-working-assembly-2012/ event at FB page http://www.facebook.com/events/176353445826756/ </pre> Dmitry Vilensky 2012-05-22T09:08:37 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6820 <pre>Radical Openness and #LiWoLi 2012 Tomorrow I head to Linz, Austria to participate in LiWoLi 2012. Thinking about "the challenges of a open practice" gets me thinking about what "radical openness" could mean. On the surface, it could just mean really, really, extremely, very open. But that's a overly colloquial understanding of the word radical, as in "totally rad," as opposed to "radical critique." Extreme or drastic is not necessarily radical. Radical requires a fundamental transformation, change so deep it goes to the root, the "radix". Radical has the a same linguistic root as "radish," the edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family. Thus, to be radical, a practice has to get at the root, to work towards a fundamental transformation, no matter how moderate or gradual. Radical openness would be not necessarily mean being as open as one could be, but rather working towards the fundamental obstacles to openness that exist, perhaps even in ways that are not open, or less open we might like. To be open, we need to be safe and we need to be alive. To be safely open requires us to have the freedom and privileged to speak our mind, to do as we please. When what you want to say, or do is unwelcome by powerful forces, perhaps because what you are saying and doing is something they consider threatening to their interests, you can not be safe. So long as inequality and intolerance exists in society, any chance we have to get the freedom to pursue radical openness requires us to have privacy, requires us to be able to chose when and with whom to be open. Not having privacy means that we will have less openness. Radical openness requires privacy. To be alive we require food and shelter and the necessities of life, and in a capitalist society, what we do, our practice, is largely formed by our participation in the labour market, in order to obtain such necessities. As such, not only the practice, but what becomes of the results of work, is determined not by our own wishes, but by the logic of capitalism. This logic means thae do, our practice, is largely formed by our participation in the labour market, in order to obtain such necessities. As such, not only the practice, but what becomes of the results of work, is determined not by our own wishes, but by the logic of capitalism. This logic means that in most cases we can not chose either the conditions of our labour nor the terms of distribution of what we create. For the masses, openness in terms of their productive life is simply not a practice they can chose. This means that the degt in most cases we can not chose either the conditions of our labour nor the terms of distribution of what we create. For the masses, openness in terms of their productive life is simply not a practice they can chose. This means that the degree of openness that we can have is not determined by individual choice, but by collective struggle. Radical openness requires collective struggle. In this light, radical openness can only mean the collective struggle for a more open society, which is a society where open practice is not threatened by repression or economic consequence. Which means that radical openness must be closed to violations of privacy and to economic exploitation. A sharable version of this text can be found here: http://www.dmytri.info/radical-openness-and-liwoli-2012/ I'll be at stammtisch {2} this evening around 9pm as usual. {1} http://liwoli.at {2} http://bit.ly/buchhandlung </pre> Dmytri Kleiner 2012-05-22T14:44:20 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6818 <pre>Thinking about the weakness of the US president, the weakness of the Democratic Party and the present weakness of the Occupy-Movement and its lacking of a real goal I propose to concentrate on President Obama. Since having red this ??. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/the-obama-contradiction_b_1464721.html (in short: with a little help from 9/11 bush and cheney deregulated american law and put more and more power in the hands of one man, the president and commander in chief. while not really scoring with his domestic plans (health care..etc) Obama tried to gain respect by increasingly showing up as some kind of warlord, having his own private &lt;more militarized CIA army&gt; and growing hordes of special fordes, 60'000 of them. now imagine all this power in Mitt Romney's hands?.. ?.I sincerely propose this: OCCUPY OBAMA (think of t-shirts, banners, stickers?.) The Occupy-Movement should try to force/invite the president to de- bush and de-cheney the USA. Therefore: OCCUPY OBAMA. Hm - Losers from Hell? Or a last possibility of another USA? Could Occupy set Obama on liberal fire again, with a little big help from Occupy? Maybe In the face of general madness? If not, what else? Best wishes Albert / Zurich </pre> Geert Lovink 2012-05-21T09:54:03 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6817 <pre>Dear nettimers, as many of you probably know the Quebec's provincial government has recently passed an emergency law whose goal is to quash the massive student strike and demonstrations against tuition hike in public universities: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/19/quebec-passes-student-protest-law http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/massive-police-repression-victovillequebec-4th-may-protests/ http://www.mediacoop.ca/blog/bernans/10930 http://cutvmontreal.ca/broadcasts/2012/5/18-3 Below is the press release for a day of action organized by Free University NYC in solidarity in New York on May 22. cheers, snafu ***** ANNOUNCING THE FREE UNIVERSITY IN SOLIDARITY WITH QUEBEC STRIKE!! Pop-Up Free University in Solidarity with the Quebec Student Movement LIST OF EVENTS FOR TUESDAY, MAY 22nd The Free University is hosting a pop-up occupation Tuesday, May 22nd in Washington Square Park at 5PM on the 100th day of the Quebec students? unlimited strike, already one of the largest student mobilizations in recent history. During 100 days of strike, contempt, and resistance, students have mobilized against steep tuition increases, austerity and debt, and the criminalization of the right to education. In order to break the growing strike and destroy the power of the student union, the Quebec Government enacted a special emergency law (Bill 78) this past Friday. Popularly known as ?Loi Fuck,?the lawis a blunt and draconian tool that outlaws public assembly, imposes harsh fines for strike activity (even tacit support), and effectively makes organizing an arrestable offense. On Tuesday in New York City, we stand in solidarity with Quebec students who will be marching in record numbers, in defense of our right to protest, and for our right to education as we determine it. The Free University is hosting a pop-up university open to all students, educators, and community members. We call on all who want to come and TEACH a class/ FACILITATE a discussion/ HOST a skill-share as part of the Free University. Come to Washington Square Park on Tuesday at 5pm and join us! We call on everyone who heard about the how great the Free University was on Mayday, everyone who came to the Free University on Mayday and everyone who is interested in how we can organize education as a free and accessible commons to COME to Washington Square Park on Tuesday. We call on all to COME to defend our right to assembly?everywhere and anywhere. As part of the afternoon?s activities, The Free University will host discussions about the state of the student unlimited strike in Quebec, the criminalization of dissent, and what this means for our movements. If you want to teach a class or host a discussion just come to the park with a sign announcing your class and check in at our table on the North side of the fountain at 5PM. We?ll be announcing all the classes on a board at 6PM. Together we will stand in solidarity, determined to make our universities places of free education, inquiry, and access to knowledge for all. 2PM?Demonstrate, 1 Rockefeller Plaza Demonstration in solidarity with the Quebec Student Strike Outside the Quebec Government Offices at1 Rockefeller Plaza 5PM?Gather, Check-in, Washington Square Park, North Side of Fountain Gather to paint banners, make ?book bloc? shields, and cut red squares for the evening march. Check-in for those who want to facilitate lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions. Please bring all the materials you may need to make banners and host classes. 6PM?Free University, Washington Square Park, various locations-- check board on North Side of Fountain Teach in/Speak out assembly about the Quebec student strike, the emergency laws, and the criminalization of dissent; followed by self-organized lectures, workshops, skill-shares, and discussions of the Free University. 8PM?Assembly and March, Washington Square Park General Assembly and March against Repressive anti-protest laws worldwide WEAR RED? Students in Quebec use the symbol of the ?red square? to signify being financially ?in the red? amid tuition hikes, cuts in social entitlements, and the spectre of spiraling student and consumer debt. We are all ?in the red? as long as the 1% imposes upon us austerity, debt, and repression. An increase in the powers of the police and the state anywhere is an attack on us everywhere. We reject the politics of austerity and the policing of our right to assemble. We stand in solidarity with the Quebec student mobilizations. Join us! Wear Red! Long live the unlimited student strike! For more information, please contact maydayfreeu-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org &lt;mailto:maydayfreeu-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; Useful websites: Facebook page for the May 22 national demonstration in Montreal, QC: https://www.facebook.com/events/232620616844146/ &lt;https://www.facebook.com/events/232620616844146/&gt; The poster (PDF) http://www.bloquonslahausse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/100jours.pdf &lt;http://www.bloquonslahausse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/100jours.pdf&gt; The call for solidarity donations (includes an excellent summary of Bill 78): https://www.facebook.com/notes/max-silverman/urgent-appeal-to-the-rest-of-canada/10150913592787996 Stop the Hike! http://www.stopthehike.ca/ Edu-Factory http://www.edu-factory.org/wp/ To better coordinate information between our demonstrations, these hash tags are in use in Quebec and would help student strikers learn of our tweets, etc. Hashtags to use: #GGI (Greve generale illimitee/Quebec student strike/movement) #Loi78 (Bill 78) #manifencours (Demonstrations in progress, all actions) _FREE UNIVERSITY NYC _ twitter: &lt; at &gt;FreeUnivNYC phone: 347-670-FREU (3738) e-mail: maydayfreeu-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org &lt;mailto:maydayfreeu-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; facebook: on.fb.me/maydayfreeu &lt;http://on.fb.me/maydayfreeu&gt; trailer: http://bit.ly/freeutrailer video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id8FaDf3OMI </pre> Snafu 2012-05-21T15:44:09 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6816 <pre>Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Jonathan Marshall &lt;Jonathan.Marshall-1dnWGznF1N8QrrorzV6ljw&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Date: Sun, 20 May 2012 17:20:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! [conclusion of previous message that got truncated . . . ] McLuhan's *own* primary point about "software" is that it leads to PATTERN RECOGNITION -- not magic and not stupidity. Popular phrases like "get a clue" and "too much information" seem to support his insight. While he is mostly remembered for "the medium is the message" and "global village" -- both of which were phrases that were used by *advertisers* to promote their McLuhan wares -- in his *hey-day* the phrase he used most often when asked to "sum up" his work was about the effects of the "electric media environment" was . . . *pattern recognition.* He apparently got it from IBM and meant it as a very deliberate "re-purposing" of a term from Artificial Intelligence. No, he didn't believe that "computers" can THINK. And, as the subsequent 50 years have shown us, they can't! &lt;g&gt; You might be amused by this clip from a 60s television documentary about McLuhan, it which he sums things up regarding whether CHAOS is all we have to look forward to -- _http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/electric-age/1968-pattern-recognition.php_ (http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/electric-age/1968-pattern-recognition.php) Unlike so many social scientists who have been paid to figure out to "regulate" a society that tends towards "disruption and disorder," McLuhan was deeply committed to the HUMANS and hopeful that our technological environments could help us all to figure out what is happening on our own. After all, why else should we bother to . . . UNDERSTAND MEDIA? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Jonathan Marshall &lt;Jonathan.Marshall-1dnWGznF1N8QrrorzV6ljw&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; Date: Mon, 21 May 2012 09:10:41 +1000 Subject: RE: &lt;nettime&gt; Capitalism is FINISHED -- As a Result of the Internet! Hi Mark I'm talking about the more recent products, when apple have become far more succesful in saturating a market, and getting repeat (and largely unnecessary buys). This during a time when the 'new media' had actually taken off - wheras these examples seem pre mass usage of new media, or when digital marginal was marginal. 1997 for 'think different' (abandoned 2002). The 1984 add was even older. I'm not sure how they marketed the newer stuff, but it seemed to be through all kinds of adds in differnt places, and through social media. the new stuff seemed to be thought really cool, by the 'younger people' demographic that i talked with. Certainly nobody thought their image and their advertising was outmoded, which you would think if they were perceived as a stuffy old media company. But the real point is that Apples' products are, nowadays, all classifiable as new media and saturated in new media - where would they be without wireless, and without the internet? Perhaps mass media is not dead? perhaps new media is embedded in old media, old economics and so on? I suspect that this unsustainable and incoherent, but that is a slightly different issue... Finally, apple seems to be generating conspicuous consumption quite succesfully. Seems to me that they are currently trying to corner (monopolise) the market in, and distribution of, digital music, digital books, and possibly film. Hardly the attitude of a modest company. If that is the case, then it would seem that they are not being undermined by the 'talk back' new media, or by people discoursing about apple in a medium currently more important than mass media. So we could say this is an argument for the ineffectiveness of current digital media in producing change. Possibly, but this could always have been the case, mass media or new media. If you read me, i am not asserting that your comments are just your opinons. I'm quite sure that people are saying what you have reported. I'm just replying, along with some others here, that at the moment, despite these comments by people in the industry, i'm not sure that advertising is never going to work again. Submliminal web advertising seems a real possibility, and is helped by the medium. Impulse buying could well be encouraged by the medium. The medium might even help you raise credit to continue to purchase after you have blown your bank account. But that requires investigation of online loans as a business form. So, basically to return to the begining of all this, i'm not sure conspicuous consumption or excess consumption, or impulse buying is dead, and have given some casual evidence and arguments which point in that direction. sure but as you know that is difficult for outsiders. A major prediction of Mcluhan's seemed to me to be that we were heading away from 'rationalist' media, into immersive 'tribalising' media. And given the amount of 'magical' comments about the internet i've read over the years, this would seem to be born out :) That is interesting. Any procedings or publications from the conference i can look at? Perhaps. Perhaps, i'm just remembering that TV and other mass mediums are not dead yet and arguing that consumerism may not have died either.... jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </pre> nettime's_digestive_system 2012-05-20T23:27:50 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6812 <pre>Dear nettimers, I am not very often participating in signature campaigns but this one =20= is really impressive. There is a real momentum here to put pressure on =20= Elsevier and other academic publishers who continue their ridicuous IP =20= policies concerning publicly funded academic research. Yours, Geert --- 11619 Researchers Taking a Stand. See the list Academics have protested against Elsevier's business practices for =20 years with little effect. These are some of their objections: =95 They charge exorbitantly high prices for subscriptions to individual = =20 journals. =95 In the light of these high prices, the only realistic option for =20 many libraries is to agree to buy very large "bundles", which will =20 include many journals that those libraries do not actually want. =20 Elsevier thus makes huge profits by exploiting the fact that some of =20 their journals are essential. =95 They support measures such as SOPA, PIPA and the Research Works Act, = =20 that aim to restrict the free exchange of information. The key to all these issues is the right of authors to achieve easily-=20= accessible distribution of their work. If you would like to declare =20 publicly that you will not support any Elsevier journal unless they =20 radically change how they operate, then you can do so by filling in =20 your details on this page: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ </pre> Geert Lovink 2012-05-17T08:23:58 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6811 <pre>marc Lafia &lt;marclafia2-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; our world is teeming with empires: on networks, histories and { brad brace } &lt;bbrace-qx95VtOkOx/QT0dZR+AlfA&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; kickstart - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 15:04:08 -0400 Subject: our world is teeming with empires: on networks, histories and From: marc Lafia &lt;marclafia2-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; greetings - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 10:06:30 -0700 (PDT) From: { brad brace } &lt;bbrace-qx95VtOkOx/QT0dZR+AlfA&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; Subject: kickstart http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bbrace/global-islands-project Global Islands Project -- ongoing series of multi-media pdf-ebooks/field-recordings -- a pastoral, pictorial and phonic elicitation of island parameters. An intensive examination of small islands and their paradigmatic solutions to globalism... Ethnographically a shared world of historical experience -- not the romanticized and divided universe of them and us. Your feudal-world is based on mutual relief at your common corruption. Maybe some cultures are based on even worse. But that wouldn't change the bad faith of it and as years go by, you wake at night in terror of your whole life being an act of bad faith, where everything is self-interest and nothing more, where every human interaction is driven by a silent, even subconscious calculation of some ulterior motive, to the point that a sea of bad faith has taken over your whole life, there's no small island left from which you can even try to build a bridge of good faith, because even that effort becomes suspect, even good faith is nothing but self-interested, even altruism is nothing but solipsistic, even your professed agonizing right here right now is nothing but a gesture, made to the conscience in order to assure it that it exists. http://bradbrace.net/id.html http://bbrace.net/id.html Island 1.0 is Ambergris Caye, Belize Island 2.0 is Koh Si Chang, Thailand Island 3.0 is Lamu, Kenya Island 4.0 is Narikel Jingira, Bangladesh Island 5.0 is Isla Mais, Nicaragua Island 6.0 are The Grenadines, West Indies Island 7.0 is Hateruma (Yaeyama), Japan Island 8.0 is Waya (Yasawa), Fiji http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bbrace/global-islands-project - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </pre> nettime's_tout 2012-05-18T21:09:40 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6808 <pre>Keith: Fine question! Because technology defines the *environment* in which we live -- so regardless of what "we" bring to the situation, the *ground* of our experience is the SAME! ECONOMY means (etymologically) "how we manage our household" and whether its Pretoria or Mumbai or Jakarta or Berlin, in crucial respects we have all been living in the "same" house for quite awhile now. This of course is the theme of GLOBALIZATION -- which was already in place in the 1950s, pre-saged with the Arthur C. Clarke's initial article on geo-stationary satellites intended to "beam" the same television shows to everyone on earth. That is, of course, exactly what happened. Furthermore, following WW II, one group of elites "managed" the world economy -- since they were the "winners." They set up the UN, the IMF/World Back, the CIA and directly ran the "re-invention" of the German and Japanese economies. They defined the Cold War down to the level of "hiring" virtually every intellectual and social scientist, as well as the basis of "engagement" on both "sides." While there had been many EMPIRES before this, finally it had become one Big Blue Marble -- as symbolized by the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog (and the subsequent practices of its expansion into the Global Business Network and its spinoff WIRED magazine -- which, btw, under the name "Californian Ideology" was a key basis for the formation of nettime!) Your question also reflects the enormous difficulties social science has had dealing with the effects of new technologies -- particularly in economics but also in anthropology and sociology. Economics has become largely a field of "modeling," in which the requirement for "quantification" has forced the abstraction away from real humans, also reflected in the "micro" demands of CIA-funded "area studies" in which the BIG PICTURE has been largely sacrificed as the people in these fields became the "specialists" who never put together an overview. I work with the people in the area of "evolutionary economics." Never heard of it? Well, that's because it is decidedly NOT mainstream for the reason that it a) doesn't produce models and b) deals with technology -- which most economists consider an "externality" (even though there is general consensus that technology is the primary source of economic growth and change) and c) tries to understand how the MACRO features of the economy *evolve* under the impact of changing technology. In particular, Carlota Perez is on my company's advisory board and her 2002 Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (which continues the work of her recently deceased husband Chris Freeman and the group at SPRU) is where we all need to *start* in this MACRO economic analysis. _http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Capital-Dynamics/ dp/1843763311/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1337258077&amp;sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Technological-Revolutions-Financial-Capital-Dynamics/dp/184376331 1/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1337258077&amp;sr=1-1) _http://www.carlotaperez.org/_ (http://www.carlotaperez.org/) In addition, I work with the tools supplied by Marshall McLuhan -- who as perhaps the most important "renaissance(S)" scholar of the 20th century, dealt with the social and psychological effects of new technologies from a deeply researched understanding of Western history, as reflected early in his 1943 PhD thesis The Classical Trivium. _http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358 /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1337259099&amp;sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Trivium-Place-Thomas-Learning/dp/1584232358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UT F8&amp;qid=1337259099&amp;sr=1-1) As one nettime stalwart "shyly" put it to me in a private email yesterday, "Nice one! I disagree with your McLuhanist reasoning but agree with your conclusions..." If you don't approach these problems from the standpoint of how TECHNOLOGY changes *us* by CAUSING changes in our behaviors and attitudes (since it is the "medium" in which we live, like yeast in a vat &lt;g&gt;) -- which, in turn, *drives* the changes in our economies and societies -- then it seems to me that you will have few CLUES about what is going on. Here, McLuhan's (posthumous) 1988 The Laws of Media: The New Science is a *foundational* text for understanding our present situation(s). _http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153/ref =sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1337259136&amp;sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153/ref=sr_1_ 1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1337259136&amp;sr=1-1) The FUTURE has already arrived and we all live in it. Understanding the *present* is always a very difficult task. Many opinions are expressed on this list but rarely do they seem to take the opportunity to step back and provide a broad enough historic context. Let's all see if we can "up" our game, okay? If anyone reading this message knows of others who have successfully elaborated a body-of-work that provides significant insights into the *historical* interaction of new technologies and society over time -- where McLuhan's work traces back to the origin of the alphabet and Perez's to the first Industrial Revolution -- please tell us about them! What we need is some BIG HISTORY here (and not the Big-Bang-to-Global-Warming type &lt;g&gt;.) Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY </pre> Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org 2012-05-17T13:16:20 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6807 <pre> European Sociological Association (ESA): Research Network 18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research Conference “Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism“ October 18-20, 2012. University of the Basque Country, Bilbao Abstract submission deadline: May 31st Keynote talk: Peter Golding "Why a Sociologist should take Communications and Media Seriously” Submission information: http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/ESA_RN18_CfP2012.pdf Dear colleagues, In my role as chair of the European Sociological Association’s (ESA) Research Network 18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research, I want to invite you to submit abstracts for presentations at the RN18 conference “Communication, Crisis, and Critique in Contemporary Capitalism“. The deadline for submission is approaching – May 31st. The conference will provide opportunities for presenting ideas in the field of the critical study of media, communication &amp; society, for networking, and for meeting people working in this research area. It will feature the keynote talk “Why a Sociologist should take Communications and Media Seriously” by Peter Golding, who is not only a leading scholar in the political economy of media and communication, but also founded RN18 and is its honorary chair. The conference will take place in Bilbao, which is a great city to visit in autumn. Membership in the ESA and RN18 provides reduced participation fees both for the bi-annual ESA conference and the bi-annual RN18 conference and furthermore gives you access to a great community of scholars interested in critical studies of media, communication &amp; society. http://www.europeansociology.org/member/ RN18 also has a mailing list, to which you can subscribe here: http://lists.jacobs-university.de/mailman/listinfo/esa-rn18 Best, Christian Fuchs -- Chair of ESA RN18 – Sociology of Communications and Media Research http://www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn18-sociology-of-communications-and-media-research.html # distributed via &lt;nettime&gt;: no commercial use without permission # &lt;nettime&gt; 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: nettime&lt; at &gt;kein.org</pre> Christian Fuchs 2012-05-17T17:41:11 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6801 <pre>Sotheby's: offer your art handlers a fair contract Sign the petition at = http://www.change.org/petitions/sotheby-s-offer-your-art-handlers-a-fair-c= ontract May 1, 2011 For the past eight months, Sotheby's has locked its 43 unionized art = handlers out of work. Rather than negotiating a fair contract with its = employees, the company has issued a set of demands: the gutting of the = art handlers' union, the elimination of health insurance and other = benefits, and the replacement of full-time skilled workers with = temporary unskilled laborers. Sotheby's has decided that the handling of priceless artworks is an easy = job; that low-paid temporary workers with little training or incentive = can manage the constant stream of artifacts into and out of the world's = largest auction house. The 43 locked-out workers who have made art = handling their career know this is not true. There have been no negotiations. In meeting after meeting, Sotheby's has = stalled, preferring instead to extend the lockout in the hopes that = their workers might eventually capitulate to demands designed to exploit = them. To make certain, the company has hired Jackson Lewis, a = notoriously anti-employee law firm that the AFL-CIO has called the = "number one union buster in America." The message from Sotheby's is clear: art handlers do not deserve the = same benefits as the rest of their staff. If art handlers expect the = privileges of their betters, like health insurance or collective = bargaining rights, it is acceptable to make them suffer. Sotheby's has no financial incentive. Last year, the company saw its = highest profits ever, increasing revenue by 7% year-on-year. They = remain the largest and most successful business in the art world, and = they know it: in 2010, CEO William Ruprecht more than doubled his own = salary, to 6 million USD. The entire union contract totals 3.2 million USD. It is the sheer obviousness of this abuse of power that makes action = necessary.=20 We are asking artists, collectors, and institutions to sign this = petition and stand in solidarity with the Sotheby's art handlers until = they receive a fair contract. This is not about hurting the company = financially; unlike Sotheby's, we have no taste for the suffering of = others. This is about displaying a commitment to the moral principle of = fair pay for fair labor, and to the possibility of ethical practices in = the arts. This is about declaring, as an industry, that people should be = treated well. This is about standing up and saying, in one voice: "This = is wrong."=20 We must be the conscience that Sotheby's lacks.=20 If you?re an artist you can tell Sotheby's you don?t support their sale = of your work.=20 If you're a collector, you can buy and sell from other auction houses = whenever possible. If represent an institution you can refuse sponsorships from Sotheby's. If you're in the media, you can use your platform to assure that all = voices get heard. Whoever you are, you can sign this petition, and show Sotheby's where = you stand. Then forward it to everyone you know. You can make the art = world you want to participate in; a place where people matter, and no = one can be casually cast aside. = http://www.change.org/petitions/sotheby-s-offer-your-art-handlers-a-fair-contract Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director, Art Fag City Will Brand, Editor-in-Chief, Art Fag City Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, e-flux Hrag Vartanian, Veken Gueyikian, Hyperallergic Haim Steinbach, artist Deborah Kass, artist Marilyn Minter, artist AA Bronson, artist Shepard Fairey, artist William Powhida, artist W.A.G.E., artist collective </pre> anton vidokle 2012-05-01T21:50:40 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6800 <pre> I don't want to suggest that everything is business as usual, but my understanding is that this is pretty normal in financial crises in capitalism, when there is a shortage in the money supply, and governments abandon the 'keysian solution'. Certainly where i live banks seem to be refusing to loan to anyone who cannot immediately pay them off - which basically means small business and normal people cannot borrow. So, to a certain extent the 'bottom' end of the economy, (which has never been provided for first) is finding it hard to get credit, and given that credit seems to have been the main source of spending then spending will decline. Whether this will eventually fix itself or not i don't know. But i have no idea what this has to do with 'new media', the decline of mass media, or indeed conspicuous consumption. My point was that conspicuous consumption still seems to flourish in the new media field, where status spending fits in with market drives and status claims. I'm also not sure that the mass media is declining for more or less the same kind of reasons that Dmytri Kleiner discusses in his mail on 'Commercialization makes your online rights irrelevant'; namely that profit and effect determines the value of information in capitalism. So i still see no evidence for your statement that "The *effect* of digital media is to directly undermine "conspicuous consumption" which REQUIRED mass-media to prop it up" Whether advertising is generating needs as much as it ever has done but that people simply lack the cash, is another issue. People may simply react with depression, not with joy that they are no longer consuming, or feel they are simply working to pay off debt. My understanding is that in my part of the world, despite the depression, overt conspicuous consumption, like spending on weddings, expensive rock concerts, for example is increasing. My understanding of targeted advertising us that it is still cheaper and more generally effective - the main thing is to link it into spur of the moment purchasing.... but i'm just recalling some mails i've seen recently, so i'm not standing by that. Even if this is true what is the connection with 'new media'? and how do we know that people are not just 'saying' the latest thing, to show their status. as in 'I have enough money to not worry about quantity, just quality'? or 'I'm outside the system, i'm an independent entepreneurial type'. i guess i come from a field where it is recognised that what people say they do/want, is often different from what they do.... but again even if they say this, what has this to do with new media? What is a baseline need? How is that socially defined, or defined by networks etc? 'Real' baseline needs are pretty low.... possibly only a very few societies have volutarily had everyone on baseline needs ever.... Religion automatically complicates whatever is a baseline need, and that is pretty common.... and again even with a trend, what has this to do with digital media? Assuming the earth survives :) true but their, and India's, contribution to coal burning will be enormous - and how much of that is driven by the desire to show the West they have 'arrived' and are major world powers through conspicuous consumption? That they deserve this.... Absolutely, and what evidence is there that they will cease consuming, and just stay with 'base line needs'? Improbable, given the apparent spending patterns of the 'new elites'. And even if everyone in China decided to live at Mao type levels, what does this have to do with digital media? Still don't know why digital tech is driving this process.... Perhaps they have figured out the developed economies have stopped growing, because of the crisis in capitalism, or because they are in moral and physical decline generally and this is a great opportunity to take the lead? Something is happening, balance of power in the world is changing, military success eludes the US removing the fear factor, the US is becoming totally corporated dominated, and that domination is destroying its power and living standards, current energy sources are becoming problematic, Islam is growing as a political system all through the world, but i'm still not sure this has much to do with the effects of digital media in the west (except perhaps the growth of Islam). If you will pardon me, perhaps it is being stupid to think that everything is driven by digital media? i'd suggest that digital media's main effect is to contribute to the mess of information, and thus leave us all more and more deluded or uncertain, or wedded to absolute certainties so as to make sense of it all.... jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. </pre> Jonathan Marshall 2012-05-15T23:10:04 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6799 <pre>Commercialization makes your online rights irrelevant, more thoughts from my talk with &lt; at &gt;ioerror at #rp12 Last week I wrote about one of the topics Jacob Appelbaum and I discussed at our talk at Re:publica 2012 {1}; that as a result of the commercialization of the Internet, we have moved from free and open social platform, to the centralized social media monopolies we know today. Today I want to mention another issue that we covered, how commercialization is putting an end to the Internet as a public space. It's import to understand that it's not that capital does not want to fund free and open platforms, or that capitalists choose not to: capital simply can not do so. Capital can not fund free and open platforms because capitalists must capture profit or lose their capital, and thus for-profit platforms that can not capture profit must eventually vanish. In order to capture profit, capitalist funded platforms must introduce choke-points and/or toll-gates into there platforms, because their business models depends on the control of user data and interaction, and therefore these platforms can not be free and open. Thus, the prospects for free and open platforms returning in any mainstream form seem slim without alternatives to the profit motive to finance them. Free and open communication platforms that don't surveil, control or exclude can only be provided socially, as a public good. However, in the current era of unchallenged neoliberal ideology imposing public austerity and community precariousness everywhere, building the social capacity to create alternative platforms at a scale that can displace Facebook and the others seems unlikely. As these are commercial platforms, which are operated for profit, you only have the privilege of using the private platforms so long as you use them in ways that benefit the platform operator. The result of this, is that using these platforms becomes the only popularly accessible way to communicate with the masses, whether your an activist, an artist, a journalist or anybody who has something to say, privately run social media platforms are the only way you have to reach the majority of people. Activists, artists and journalists often have things to say that upset people, sometimes powerful people, who can create problems for the platform operators. As nobody has any explicit right to use a private social platform, these platforms have a strong incentive to remove users and content that may may create controversy. The early internet was conceived as a sort of virtual public space. In his 1996 "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" John Perry Barlow writes "We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity." Barlow's colleague John Gilmore famously claimed "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." The critical feature of the Net that gave rise to such freedom was the mesh topology of the network and the distributed and peer-to-peer architecture of the applications that ran on it. The early Internet was a social platform that allowed groups and individuals to interact directly with each other, and thus, such communications where unmediated by any public or private third party. As a result, it was difficult to monitor and control such communications. To preserve this freedom Barlow and Gilmore became two of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with Barlow's declaration becoming something of a manifesto for the group. The immediate threat was Government legislation intended to make the net more suitable for the purposes of commerce and law enforcement. Barlow's declaration warns how legislation such as the "Telecommunications Reform Act" (Telecommunications Act of 1996) are threatening to destroy the freedom of cyberspace. Barlow was so offended he claimed that the US 1996 act is one "which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis." The 1996 act was followed by many more in the US, as well as other countries. Some of these are well known. DMCA, SOPA, ACTA, The Digital Economy act 2010, the list goes on an on, all with the usual concerns: piracy and cybercrime. All part of the effort to make the Net safe for business and under the control of law enforcement. Yet, none of these laws where ever able to totally take away the freedom Gilmore and Barlow saught to protect. Since legislation is a public sphere, there is public contestation. These laws where opposed by the EFF, along with other groups such as Le Quadrature du Net, along with large social mobilizations, and even by the emergence of a political wing in the form of the Pirate Party phenomenon. Even if much of the opposition failed, some succeed. Certain laws where delayed, a few totally defeated, and many modified to include concessions. Opposition did not only take political form, the laws where also flaunted and simply shown-up by inspiring renegade sites such as the Pirate Bay. Legislating the public internet was no easy task when the people where willing to fight for their online rights. Laws such as the DMCA where conceived in the days of a peer-to-peer internet. When groups and individuals controlled their own means of communications, by, for instance, running their own mail and news servers, their own web servers, etc. If somebody was hosting content somebody else objected to, coercive laws where required to force the person to remove the content from their own server. While these laws where written in such ways so as to favour the interests of intellectual property holders and law enforcers, they where none-the-less regulating the internet as a public sphere. They recognize some rights and liberties for both sides, and, though with unequal capacity, both sides had the chance to fight for these rights and liberties. However, starved of sufficient financing, the original distributed and peer to peer applications that where the communications tools of the public internet began to be abandoned. As capital can not fund such platforms, online communications has largely moved to privately controlled social media platforms. Being private, they are not subject to the contestation of the public sphere. Our social space online has moved from the public square to the shopping mall. From the public sphere where we can fight for our rights and influence the laws and bylaws that govern our conduct, where we can engage in civil disobedience when we oppose the rules, to the private sphere, where we have no rights, and can be expelled and excluded at the pleasure of the private owners of the platforms. Today, if somebody is hosting content that somebody else objects to, that content is not likely to be hosted by a server they control, but rather by a commercial social platform. Such content can be removed with no due process, with no recognition of the rights and liberties of both parties, simply the unilaterally imposed rules of the platform operator. In the case that the content is controversial, and the objecting party is powerful, the operator has strong incentive to remove it, and very little incentive to put themselves at risk to keep the content online. The powerful interest that wish to control content on line no longer need coersive laws to do so, they simply need co-operation from from the platform owners. Such co-operation is happily provided by most operators, and is often even a precondition of the financing. Commercialization has made online rights irrelevant The world where "anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity" can not exist on Facebook, and can not be built by capital. A sharable version can be found online here: http://wp.me/p24fqL-xK I'll be at Cafe Buchhandlung at 9pm as usual tonight. Please join us. {1} http://www.dmytri.info/privacy-moglen-ioerror-rp12/ {2} http://bit.ly/buchhandung </pre> Dmytri Kleiner 2012-05-15T12:29:27 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6798 <pre>Hello Nettimers. Below is an essay response to an installation/intervention artwork I made last year as part of a series of commisions by Letting Space - an organisation producing site-specific works in commercial spaces left vacant since the 2008 market contractions. My project broke into the inner architecture of a 9 floor office block and took over the building's lighting system to run it via a data feed replaying that day's stock market activity. To some degree, this project was shaped by consumption of Nettime discourse. cheers, Colin LINK: http://www.lettingspace.org.nz/essay-market-testament HOPE IS NOT ABOUT WHAT WE EXPECT Martin Patrick looks retrospectively at Colin Hodson?s April 2011 Letting Space project The Market Testament "If art and politics meet at all, it?s in the obligation to work concretely in the present toward an ideal that may never be fully attainable" - Barry Schwabsky, The Nation, 12 Jan 2012 Cinematic Disasters I spent my otherwise uneventful small town pre-adolescence squarely in the shadow of disasters. That is to say, disaster films: Airport 75, Towering Inferno, Jaws (parts one, two, and three) and Poseidon Adventure. Our collective, nightmarish fears were projected back to us incessantly, as the prosperity of the post-war era diminished. Citizens sought comfort in the soothing delirium of the still-wide-screen American movie palaces. These were becoming bifurcated into ?twin cinemas?, or screened dollar movies or pornography on their way to bankruptcy, just before the advent of sprawling new multiplexes. Cinematic disasters come in cycles, as we alternately covet or reject our (post) apocalyptic visions. We currently see a return of this phenomenon - The Road, Contagion, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Perhaps more to the point here is the remarkable and straightforward documentary Inside Job, which painstakingly delineates the financial turmoil enveloping global markets and local households since 2008 (and earlier). One could argue that ?real? devastation - whether economic, psychic, or physical - bears no easy resemblance to fantastical obliteration in CGI mode. Our fears now are palpable, very real, but conveyed in more abstracted, oblique economic channels and forms. (And of course this is not to underestimate the long and difficult period of coping with the manifold effects of the recent earthquakes in Christchurch.) I fully realise I?m beginning to ramble and muse overly. My intention isn?t to detract from the manifest, novel singularity of Colin Hodson?s remarkable artwork The Market Testament. Nor, by contrast the fascinating ways in which Hodson?s authorial voice was radically diffused by the techno-omniscience of the installation itself. Was the building?s infrastructure itself perhaps personified in place of the author/artist? We might also remember the absolutely scarifying HAL the talking computer from Arthur C. Clarke?s 2001 A Space Odyssey more vividly than either Clarke or Kubrick as its sci-fi creators. Regarding Cycles Reports of the Occupy movement - spread virally, globally over the past months - eerily recall much earlier reports of social protest as spectacularly conjured events. Take author Norman Mailer?s brilliant yet idiosyncratic account of the 1968 March on the Pentagon in Washington (later published as The Armies of the Night): ?Now the Participant recognised that this was the beginning of the exorcism of the Pentagon, yes the papers had made much of the permit requested by a hippie leader named Abbie Hoffman to encircle the Pentagon with twelve hundred men in order to form a ring of exorcism sufficiently powerful to raise the Pentagon three hundred feet. In the air the Pentagon would then, went the presumption, turn orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled this levitation. At that point the war in Vietnam would end.?[1] When reading journalistic reports of today?s out of work artists, artisans, and designers throwing their lot in to create responses to the current climate of extreme economic precariousness, I think of this proposed Yippie[2] stunt, comprising an unequal mix of goofish mockery, creative imagination, and deadly earnest utopianism. Journalists of every persuasion are digging out their arsenal of tools to try and sum up and categorise an unfinished historical period. Such as Time magazine?s placement of ?The Protestor? as their nominated ?person of the year? for 2011. In writer Kurt Anderson?s words: ?2011 was unlike any year since 1989 ? but more extraordinary, more global, more democratic, since in '89 the regime disintegrations were all the result of a single disintegration at headquarters, one big switch pulled in Moscow that cut off the power throughout the system. So 2011 was unlike any year since 1968 ? but more consequential because more protesters have more skin in the game. Their protests weren't part of a countercultural pageant, as in '68, and rapidly morphed into full-fledged rebellions, bringing down regimes and immediately changing the course of history.?[3] Anderson?s slightly purple prose leans more toward the so-called Arab Spring than any perceived success or failure of the Occupy (Wall Street) Movement, which some have said has succeeded mostly ? and ironically ? by becoming a ?brand name? itself. Anderson?s mainstream user-friendly rhetoric contrasts markedly with the fervent manifesto-style approach of writers Franco Berardi and Geert Lovink in their ?A call to the Army of Love and to the Army of Software?, a posted bulletin dated October 2011: ?There is only a way to awake the lover that is hidden in our paralysed, frightened and frail virtualised bodies. There is only a way to awake the human being that is hidden in the miserable daily life of the softwarist: take to the streets and fight. Burning banks is useless, as real power is not in the physical buildings, but in the abstract connection between numbers, algorithms and information. But occupying banks is good as a starting point for the long-lasting process of dismantling and rewriting the techno-linguistic automatons enslaving all of us. This is the only politics that counts.?[4] Haunted Shells Traces from all of the above have raced through my mind retrospectively after observing and reflecting upon The Market Testament. A bunch of bland, boxy structures, arbitrarily generic, punctuated by little decorative flourishes: the colour of modernist glass and steel, the signage announcing their functions, or corporate sponsors. I don?t know much about these edifices of the Wellington Central Business District. I tend to avoid them assiduously. I can count on the fingers of one hand the memorable times I?ve spent in their midst: health exam, bank visit, solicitor consultation. Perhaps the strangest though was when graciously invited to facilitate a discussion on?or I should say inside ?Colin Hodson?s work. At 139 The Terrace I was ushered into the building after hours, up a lift and into a partially-emptied floor of office cubicles. The remaining contents included some dismal grey desks, formica tables, metallic filing cabinets, along with a few bits of stray, printed ephemera: Post-it notes featuring once urgent, but now discarded information. It was a haunted shell of a workplace. The artist, curator, curatorial assistant and myself as advance party exchanged jokes, but for me spooky uneasiness prevailed. Then, after the typical swollen handful of attendees as at any Wellington art event had arrived, we chatted about the surrounding context, the work, and the artist?s intentions. But most of what I remember were the slowly changing lights, staggering and stuttering in that typical way of antiseptic, fluorescent ceiling fixtures, being taken for a virtual test drive, flickering according to Hodson?s computerised collision course while we talked. One collision so to speak had already been had with the local media and respondents to the Dominion Post website, offering uninformed and surly rants that the work didn?t ?seem very artistic at all? and against ?wasting power this way?, accusations that The Market Testament was not art, etc.. In short, a typically unproductive verbal impasse. Hodson?s project took ongoing data reports from the New Zealand stock market, and converted them into visual signals over the course of a fortnight. The activity of lights flickering on and off on the different floors of the building onsite was relayed via a streaming webcam video onto an accompanying website, and it was of course visible throughout certain areas of Wellington city. Thus the project involved an actual material site, which was simultaneously mediated, dispersed, and disseminated. The Readymade Hodson?s piece brings to mind two notions originated by the artist Marcel Duchamp: the ?readymade? and the ?infrathin? (or, inframince). In terms of The Market Testament, the site becomes a readymade, an existing object to which new ideas are then applied and associated. The readymade in Duchamp?s view devolved or branched off into several sub-categories, such as the altered readymade (moustache painted onto a reproduction of the Mona Lisa), or the reciprocal readymade (use a Rembrandt as an ironing board, treat an ironing table as a masterwork). And the readymade was chosen by Duchamp, ostensibly, in an ?indifferent? manner such that the readymade object itself would be unlikely to be seen as aestheticised. Nonetheless readymades have been treated as visually elegant representations (Alfred Stieglitz?s haunting photograph of the urinal Duchamp entitled Fountain), or as mere rubbish (the bicycle wheel readymade was once stolen from Museum of Modern art and found partly trashed nearby). But the readymade seems to maintain such force and latent energy as a conceptual apparatus by the way it serves to deflect and resist meanings. It?s a shell that cannot be pried open; a sort of armoured exterior, in which the interior is left as an empty, conjectural cipher. Moreover, the notion of infrathin (far more obscure in terms of any comparable art historical fame or ubiquity) was exemplified by a series of glancing blows at philosophical meaning, literary phrases rather than visual figures: ?the difference between a shirt when it has been ironed and after being worn?; ?the gap between two sides of a piece of paper?. Duchamp?s compelling maneuver was to describe that which is almost imperceptible, but actually wields a deceptively large significance. This is echoed in the ways by which The Market Testament addresses the seeming arbitrariness of the ascending and descending stock tallies, a steady hum underneath our daily activities. Here this is represented by flashing patterns of lights drawing from algorithmic signals pulsing through the hidden recesses of an existing office block - itself a time capsule, symbolic of the 1980s ?Greed is good? mantra. A Conjuring Ultimately what?s both fascinating and frustrating about The Market Testament is its very elusive quality, as if turning itself inside out from time to time, transforming the flows of unseen numerical data into the visible flickering of lights, but also by asking in a sense, where, when, how is the piece? Even if its logistics were completely revealed to me, could I or would I comprehend them? This very opacity rejects a totalising understanding or awareness. This aspect is also quite different from a mode of activism. It instead operates as a conjuring, a sleight of hand presented only partially to the viewer, whose full comprehension is unlikely to aid the work, rather even to spoil its peculiar merits. Its resistance to totality recalls both Postmodern fragmentation but also something very of the moment ? historical commentary on the spot ? the splitting apart of forms, meanings, hopes that have failed to cohere. Who could have prognosticated the turbulence of the last few years of this new century? This is not to undercut the political awareness of the artist and the cogent research done which serves as background to its quirky fa?ade. It is significant to note that Hodson is a film director and actor as well as a visual artist, well versed in setting a scene, dealing with performance, and thinking through the durational aspect of a work. A number of years ago Hodson resided in New York and during that period worked closely with the renowned experimental theatre company, The Wooster Group, then comprised of members Elizabeth LeCompte, Willem Dafoe, Kate Valk, Ron Vawter among others. The group?s specialty was restaging, rewriting and utterly reconfiguring classics of the American theatre such as works by Eugene O?Neill, incorporating video, choreography, music, and various Post-modern style ruptures and interventions into the mix. As in the case of many engaging temporal projects created recently, Hodson?s work presents the intention of taking a snapshot that not only becomes a glimpse of one particular moment, but allows for the flow of events occurring prior to and after the event to prevent that glimpse from freezing totally. In fact I?m learning more in retrospect from The Market Testament - continuing to consider its reading of mid-2011, created just as the aforementioned protest movements were on the verge of commencing. In the maelstrom of events that continue to occur in these unpredictable times, and which can take a decisive toll on one?s own capacity for optimism and fortitude, I would return to the following statement by writer Rebecca Solnit: ?hope is not about what we expect. It is an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world, of the breaks with the present, the surprises. Or perhaps studying the record more carefully leads us to expect miracles?not when and where we expect them, but to expect to be astonished, to expect that we don?t know. And this is grounds to act. I believe in hope as an act of defiance, or rather as the foundation for an ongoing series of acts of defiance, those acts necessary to bring about some of what we hope for while we live by principle in the meantime. There is no alternative, except surrender. And surrender not only abandons the future, it abandons the soul.?[5] I would assert that such an emphasis on ?breaks with the present, the surprises,? becomes a very apt credo when considering artworks like The Market Testament. Colin Hodson?s welcome creative surprise simultaneously responded to the global and invigorated the local cultural context. [1] Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel/The Novel as History (New York: New American Library, 1968) 120 [2] A group of politically active hippies in which Abbie Hoffman was a key figure. [3] Kurt Anderson, ?The Protester,? TIME, Wednesday Dec. 14, 2011, Cover story. [4] Franco Berardi and Geert Lovink, ?A call to the Army of Love and to the Army of Software?, InterActivtist Info Exchange ( http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/node/32852), October 12 2011 [5] Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power (Melbourne: Canongate, 2005) 163 </pre> colin hodson 2012-05-14T02:42:54 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.culture.internet.nettime/6797 <pre>Jon: Sure -- the inability of any of the "developed" economies to grow. For some "unexplained" reason -- which is not simply because people are "poor" or have no "disposable income" or "are worried about the future" -- *demand* just isn't there to re-energize the "treadmill" required to grow the GDP. Furthermore, the widely understood "mechanism" used to generate demand in excess of *needs* -- in particular, the psychological impact of mass-market advertising -- has dramatically faded in its effectiveness and the presumed "replacement" of *targeted* advertising has failed to live up to expectations (as widely understood by those in this business.) In addition, those who have been "polling" US consumers about their attitudes over the past 20+ years, such as DYG Inc., have noticed a change that has grown over the past decade -- across all "demographics" and "cohorts" -- that shows a significant shift away from "quantity" to "quality" of life. LESS-is-MORE began to be a very popular theme in these polls started around 2002 and increasing annually since then. The fact that many groups still consume beyond their baseline needs is obvious but the overall trend is unmistakable from the data I have seen. Exactly! Which is precisely what you *should* want them to do as they go through a very rapid industrialization! At the same time, they are on track to dominate the "clean" energy alternatives to coal and, when/if fusion energy becomes a reality, they will likely dominate that business as well. Roughly 300 MILLION Chinese will be added to the middle class over the next 10+ years -- which is only a part of the BILLION+ who will go through this transition globally. This is a *remarkable* achievement! What the Chinese have "figured out" is that the DEVELOPED economies have already stopped growing our "needless" consumption and that they have adjusted their own goals and strategies accordingly. Furthermore, some understand that digital technologies are driving this process. Meanwhile, *we* seem to pretend that nothing fundamental has happened. Any ideas about why we are so *stupid* about our own society and its culture? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY </pre> Newmedia-YDxpq3io04c< at >public.gmane.org 2012-05-13T22:21:11 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.culture.internet.nettime