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ISOC-NY President David Solomonoff writes about the pitfalls ofprescriptions for Internet freedom:Hackers Fight For Freedom With Net Tech; Ignore Politics, Psychology AtTheir Peril <http://www.bloggernews.net/126134>Internet freedom initiatives must be independent of political connotations,run on a decentralized infrastructure, and use technology that is subject topublic review by security experts. Most importantly, users must havecomplete trust in the skills and integrity of the people providing thosetools and services.If they don?t the cure could prove worse than the disease.-----------------------------------------------------------------Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcastWWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org---------------------------------------------------------------

Hi,not that that would be a truly liberating step, but it's interestingnonetheless:Germanys extremely popular minister of defense Karl Theodor zuGuttenberg resigned from office yesterday. There are two or threeinteresting aspects which make this resignation different from others.The starting point was an article about his doctoral thesis (law)containing a number of plagiarisms, published maybe three weeks ago.This led to a vast wiki-based online collaboration of many peoplelooking for pieces in the thesis that were in fact copied fromelsewhere. Within days it turned out that approx. 70% of the 400+ pagesdidn't have the necessary footnotes. The collaboration on this wasstarted on Google docs but was moved to a proper wiki shortly after:http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com/wiki/GuttenPlag_WikiGuttenberg and his political allies - including the chancellor - triedto belittle the whole affair as irrelevant to his being minister ofdefense. Alongside wild public debates an open letter was set up bydoctoral students protesting against the belittlement of their academicwork. Within days 30.000 signatures were collected online and handedover to the chancellor. Almost - the students were refused at theentrance of the Office of the Federal Chancellor and told that becauseof terrorism dangers the signatures couldn't be accepted.. (not sure ifthis is really true but it could be). They were all over the news anyways.Lastly Berlin's first demonstration took place last saturday that wasorganised solely through Twitter and social networks. Some 500 peoplegathered in Berlin's commercial center and marched to the ministry ofdefence holding up shoes - a reminiscence to the Arab shoes. This gotattention in virtually all of Germany's news, major tv news included.I've never participated in a demonstration that small - there wasn'teven music - that got this much national attention. (Some pictures herehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/guttbye/interesting/)Another Twitter revolt, style: western industrialised country? I don'tthink so. Both tv and big printed papers played the decisive role. Butwhat's interesting is how public attention is moving 'our' way. Whywould less than 500 people protesting against a corrupt defense ministerplay any role at all? Because 'the net people started it', via Twitter.The fact that the amount of plagiarism in the dissertation was detectedso fast by using a wiki played a role. It was noted widely that onlinecollaboration can be very different and very effective in campaigningagainst politicians who didn't have to fear this kind of attack so far.Both the plagiarism detectives and the doctoral students wouldn't havebeen able to get together, do something and go public this waybefore.We've had Twitter, wikis, open letters online for a while. What's new isthe way this is being discussed. And the resignation of the most popularpolitician Germany's had for years.BestAnna---http://about.me/annalist

The Politics of Contemporanising: some notesPrathama Banerjee In this presentation, I try to set up the contemporary – as idea, subjectivity, time – against the modern.I do so because modernity – with its discourses of progress, modernization, development and transition – has historically established non-contemporaneity as the mode of being of peoples. As different peoples were discursively and materially constituted as different moments of the same historical time – some primitive, some backward, some modern – life-in-common became unimaginable, except via re-presentation, literally, of the non-present. In other words, by feigning that different entities cannot meet each other in a critical, indeed explosive, encounter of difference – because they do not appear in the same instance in time – modernity sought to insert representation as the necessary mediating moment between different peoples, societies, world views. This has led, we know, to an unprecedented dominance, in modern times, of representation in the domains of both politics and knowledge. In other words, historically, modernity can be seen as seeking to tame the recalcitrance of the contemporary under the regime of time as succession and politics as representation. For that reason, mobilizing the contemporary can work as a political act of disruption of the modern. I say disrupting the modern, because, by its very linguistic constitution and temporal intent, modernity seeks to perpetuate itself ad infinitum. It makes out as if everything that is and everything that is to come (including utopian futures) is always already modern. Formally, the modern appears to be just another historical period, analogous to the ancient or the medieval. And yet, in our historical imagination, there is a before but no after modernity. We have imagined the end of capitalism, the end of history, the end of the subject, indeed the end of the world in nuclear holocaust and environmental cataclysm. But the modern has remained constant, as the sign under which time and human history unfold. Perhaps, this is why the non-modern has been derivatively named postmodern, in an ironic analytical symmetry to pasts and presents being rendered, across the non-West, as premodern. In face of this unrelenting modern, then, there might be a point in arguing that the contemporary throws up elements and moments which are indifferent to and irrespective of the story of modernity. While the modern is very much part of the genealogy of our present, the contemporary is by no means another empirical instant in the mutating career of the modern – however uncertain, decentred, provincialised, hybridized, differed and so on, we may take modernity to be. The contemporary may be another, not- quite-modern time. Perhaps if we can force the contemporary out of the premodern, modern, postmodern transitional narrative, we may notice that the contemporary falls at an angle to the modern. One way of mobilizing the contemporary may simply be to admit that the modern has been, even in recent times, only one amongst many possible ways of being contemporary. This was the way of valourizing the present by setting up a favourable contrast with the past, and more importantly, by refiguring the present as the necessary and logical future of the past. This present was then made (a) self- identical by exporting differences to the past and/or the periphery and (b) eternal by making all times to come appear always already modern. Contrast this mode of setting up the present to other possible modes. Santals, a tribal people in Bengal and Bihar, argued in the latter half of the 19th century that familiar causalities no longer worked in their present, because this present no longer seemed have a simple relation of succession to their past. The modern, they said, was then nothing other than utter contingency and must be engaged as such. The point I am trying to make is that if the modern is seen as only one, particular, historical way of grasping the contemporary, it becomes possible for us to imagine other ways contemporanising too, which are not necessarily exhausted by modernities and their afterlives. Now, the modern and the contemporary belong to the same field of intelligibility, they are neighbouring times, at least apparently. This to my mind is important. Because this enables us to rethink the modern without necessarily setting up a relationship of negation with it, in the way of other temporal categories like the primordial, the archaic, the traditional, the pastoral and so on. For relationships of negation, while sometimes enabling anti-modern ideologising such as in the south Asian Gandhian or the German romantic moment, fail to effect a division within the modern and end up as the ‘external’ ground for modernity itself. Thus, it is not accidental that categories of temporal otherness such as the primordial and the classical have founded modern Western metaphysics, just as the category of tradition and/or culture have grounded modern social sciences and their imagination of transition towards a potentially global, even though heterogeneous, modernity. The contemporary, on the other hand, does not necessarily bolster the idea of modernity, because it is not quite oppositional to it in a dichotomous sense. It is in a way aside of it. The modern and the contemporary can be made to compete to claim the present, as it were. What it means to mobilize the contemporary is however not obvious in any manner. This much seems clear to me though that we should guard against seeing the contemporary as an ‘objective’ condition out there – a new real to be grasped through new knowledges and reformed institutions. I say this for two reasons. One, casting the contemporary as chronologically our recent-most condition is to fall into the transition narrative once again, and thus remain within the conceptual ambit of modernity. And two, it is also to disregard the fact that the contemporary, because of its excessive proximity and lack of form, does not present itself as an ‘object’ of study in any self-evident way. The contemporary is not accomplished, in the way of facticity, and does not lend itself to either realism or empiricism or even ethnographic description in familiar ways. To me, then, mobilizing the contemporary would mean contemporanising, not a description or explanation of contemporary times but an active intellectual-political exercise that seeks to reconfigure and recompose the world, often against the grain of histories, genealogies and narratives of succession and inheritance. In other words, contemporanising is an act that seeks to set up unlikely relationships, alignments and exchanges across what conventionally appear as parallel histories, distant lands, mismatched times and mutually untranslatable languages. Such contemporanising is not easy, and not only because our existing knowledge-forms and disciplinary training militate against it. It is not easy also because we could easily slip into the colonial-modern framework of ‘comparativism’ that once mapped the world in terms of a temporal hierarchy and a spatial enclosure of nations, civilizations and cultures, a comparativism that produced what we today know as the geopolitical map of the world. We should therefore be wary before we take nations – India, China, south Africa and so on – as our units of analysis. We should perhaps seek out, as part of our act of contemporanising, possible conduits and passages that bring us together spatially – not just those pathways that seem to exist out there as ‘real’, such as the ones charted by mobile capital, labour, faiths and identities, but also those novel ones which can lead to unprecedented spatial proximities and assemblies, however ephemeral or virtual, cutting across the erstwhile three worlds and across the current academic separation of postcolonial and postsocialist studies. Contemporanising is not easy also because we could just as easily slip into the capitalist mode of instituting an apparent temporal simultaneity across the globe, through designs of perfect equivalence and universal exchange across life-worlds, rendered for that purpose into ‘cultures’ and ‘brands’. In face of this dream of capitalist globalization, then, we need to recover, as part of the act of contemporanising, imaginations of temporal heterogeneity, which goes beyond merely stating that in real life, people live in multiple times. One possible move in the direction of conceptualizing temporal heterogeneity could be to disentangle the distinct histories that appear to come together to constitute the modern – such as the history of democracy, the history of capital, the history of public sphere, the history of the self, and so on. Hitherto we have worked with the presumption that these different histories necessarily articulate without surplus under the name of the modern. And yet we are not entirely clear about the nature of these articulations. We almost always work by using epochal signifiers such as modernity, capitalism and democracy interchangeably or at most through hyphenated concepts such as capitalist modernity, colonial modernity, capitalist democracy and so on. This, however, is not for lack of theoretical rigour amongst us. In fact, this is in the nature of how modernity itself operates, in the nature of the modernity-effect as it were. Modernity, after all, is a unique name, in that it function simultaneously as one and many, proper and common – now a set of ideas (reason, enlightenment, progress), now a set of norms (equality, liberty, secularity), now an orientation of the self (secular, rational, individual, modernist, schizophrenic), now institutions and technologies (public sphere, governmentality, democracy), now capital, now an epoch (with a beginning but no end), and now an empty place- holder (filled with content by various peoples in various times and places). In other words, the modern works precisely by subsuming all histories and all subjectivities of the present under its sign. So whether we write the story of capital or of democracy or of the public sphere or of faith or of the self, they all seem to flow into the singular and capacious story of the modern. This is the self- perpetuating technique of the modern as idea and as performance. If, however, we imagine all these histories – of the state, of the demos, of self, of capital, of gods, of work, of the modern itself – to be distinct or sometimes even contrary histories which nevertheless can and do interesect, it becomes possible for us to disarticulate the present, open it up to recomposition. The other possible move towards recovering temporal heterogeneity is to actively reconvene the past – not through the language of inheritance but through the admission of the impossibility of inheritance. In the colony, as we know, the modern appeared as a time which did not and could not succeed the past, i.e. as an external even though inescapable contingency. In face of such a disruption of the past-present relationship, colonial-modern acts of engaging pasts and traditions came to be pitched as acts of culture rather than acts of intellection, quite unlike the way in which, for instance, modern European philosophers habitually engage their own antiquity contemporaneously. For culture is precisely that which is meant to persist irrespective of the contingencies of time and vagrancies of consciousness, both being the predicament of the colonial and the postcolonial subject. To my mind, then, acts of contemporanising would involve breaking out of the framework of culture and re- establishing connections with past traditions, where indeed no connections exist, through intellectual and political maneouvres. Such acts of temporal recompositions would be utterly distinct from and irrespective of what we know as genealogies of the present, because the presumption here is that in the postcolony, the modern can claim no obvious relationship to the non-modern in the mode of genealogy and succession. Contemporanising would then mean the owning up of temporal heterogeneities, and a laborious and fragile suturing of fissured times. Finally, a few words in conclusion. When we set up a transnational and interdisciplinary event such as this, we could see ourselves as seeking to contemporanise – rather than merely compare or connect or converse. By emphasizing the active voice, as I have tried to do throughout, I wanted to flag the artificial and artistic nature of the enterprise. I wanted to say that there is nothing natural or obvious in a south-south alignment – for colonial modernity has turned us into incommensurable cultures and mismatched times, forced to talk through the translating and regulatory mechanisms of universal language and global currency. These mechanisms are best exemplified by the working of terms such as culture and nation on the one hand, and economy and democracy on the other. Terms such as culture and nation ascribe a universal form to the singular while terms such as economy and democracy render it abstract and ideal. Non-contemporaries are then set to talk under the global, sense-making regimes of culture, economy, nation, democracy. Such has been the ruse of modernity and its rhetoric. If we seek to contemporanise, both intellectually and politically, instead of seeking merely to globalise, we need to disrupt the apparently easy availability and seamless usage of terms such as culture, nation and economy.

Alain Badiou: “Tunisie, Egypte : quand un vent d'est balaie l'arrogance de l'Occident”By Sarah Shin / 25 February 2011Read an English translation of Alain Badiou's recent article for Le Monde.Translation kindly provided by Cristiana Petru-Stefanescu.The Eastern wind is getting the better of the Western one. How much longer will the poor and dark West, the “international community” of those who still think of themselves as masters of the world, continue to give lessons of good management and behaviour to the whole planet? Isn't it laughable to see certain intellectuals on duty, disconcerted soldiers of the capital-parliamentarism that stands as a shabby paradise for us, offering themselves to the magnificent Tunisian and Egyptian peoples in order to teach these savage populations the basics of “democracy”? What a distressing persistence of colonial arrogance! Given the miserable political situation that we are experiencing, isn't it obvious that it is us who have everything to learn from the current popular uprisings? Shouldn't we, in all urgency, closely study what has made possible the overthrow through collective action of governments that are oligarchic, corrupt and—possibly, above all— humiliatingly the vassals of Western states?Yes, we should be the pupils of such movements, and not their stupid teachers. That is because, through the genius of their own inventions, they give life to some political principles that some have been trying for so long to convince us that they are outdated. And especially the principle that Marat never stopped reminding us of: when it comes to freedom, equality, emancipation, we owe everything to popular uprisings.We are right to be revolted. Just as with politics, our states and those who take advantage of it (political parties, unions and servile intellectuals) prefer management to revolt, they prefer claims, and “orderly transition” to any kind of rupture. What the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples remind us is that the only kind of action that equals a shared feeling about scandalous occupation by state power is mass uprising. And that, in such a case, the only watchword that can federate the disparate groups of the masses is: “you out there, go away”. The extraordinary importance of the revolt in this case, its critical power, is that repeating the watchword by millions of people will show the worth of what will undoubtedly and irreversibly be the first victory: the man thus designated will flee. And no matter what happens afterwards, this triumph of the popular action, illegal by nature, will be forever victorious. That a revolt against state power can be absolutely victorious is a lesson universally available. This victory always indicates the horizon where all collective action, subtracted from the authority of the law, stands out, the horizon that Marx called “the failing of the state”.That is, one day, freely associated in the spreading of their own creative power, peoples could do without the gloomy coercion of the state. And it is for this reason, for this ultimate idea, that a revolt overthrowing an established authority can determine unlimited enthusiasm throughout the world.A spark can set a field on fire. It all starts with the suicide through burning of a man who has been made redundant, whose miserable commerce that allows him to survive is threatened to be banned, and with a woman-officer slapping him to make him understand what is real in this world. This gesture expands within days, weeks, until millions of people cry their joy in a far-away square and the powerful rulers flee. Where does this fabulous expansion come from? The propagation of an epidemic of freedom? No. As Jean-Marie Gleize poetically puts it: “a revolutionary movement does not expand by contamination. But by resonance. Something emerging here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something emerging out there”. This resonance, let's name it “event”. The event is the sudden creation, not of a new reality, but of a myriad of new possibilities.Neither of them is the reiteration of something we already know. This is why it is to say “this movement is demanding democracy” (implying the one we enjoy in the West), or “this movement is demanding social improvements” (implying the median prosperity of the small-bourgeois in our countries). Born from almost nothing, resonating everywhere, the popular uprising creates unknown possibilities for the whole world. The word “democracy” is practically never mentioned in Egypt. There's talk of a “new Egypt”, of “the real Egyptian people”, of constituent assembly, of an absolute change of existence, of unprecedented possibilities. This is about the new field that will be there where the previous one, set on fire by the spark of uprising, will no longer be. It stands, this new field to come, between the declaration of overthrowing forces and the one of assuming new tasks. Between what a young Tunisian has said: “We, the sons of workers and farmers, are stronger than the criminals”; and what a young Egyptian has said: “Starting today, 25th January, I take charge of the affairs of my country”.The people, and only the people, are the creators of universal history. It is very surprising that, in our West, governments and the media consider that the revolts in a square in Cairo are “the Egyptian people”. How come? Isn't it that, for these men, the people, the only reasonable and legal people, is usually reduced to either the majority in a poll or in an election? How is it possible that all of a sudden hundreds of thousands of revolted people have become representative of a population of eighty million? It's a lesson to remember, and we will remember it.Once a certain threshold of determination, obstinacy and courage has been passed, a people can indeed concentrate its existence in one square, one avenue, a few factories, a university ... The whole world will be witness to this courage, and especially to the amazing creations that accompany it. These creations will stand as proof that a people is represented there. As one Egyptian protester has put it, “before, I used to watch television, now it's the television who is watching me”.In the midst of an event, the people is made up of those who know how to solve the problems that the event imposes on them. It goes the same for the occupation of a square: food, sleeping arrangements, protection, banderols, prayers, defence fight, all so that the place where everything is happening, the place that has become a symbol, may stay with its people at all costs. These problems, at a scale of hundreds of thousands of people who have come from all over the place, may seem impossible to solve, especially since the state has disappeared in that square. Solving unsolvable problems without the help of the state, that is the destiny of an event. And it is what determines a people, all of a sudden and for an indeterminate period, to exist, there where it has decided to gather.There can be no communism without communist movements. The popular uprising we are talking about is manifestly without a party, without any hegemonic organisation, without a recognised leader. It should always be determined whether this characteristic is a strength or a weakness. It is in any case what makes it have, in a pure form, without a doubt the purest since the Commune of Paris, all the necessary traits for us to talk about a communism as movement. “Communism” here means: common creation of a collective destiny. This “common” has two distinctive traits. First, it is generic, representing in one place humanity in its entirety. In this place there are people of all the kinds a population is usually made up of, all words are heard, all propositions examined, all difficulty taken for what it is. Second, it overcomes the great contradictions that the state pretends to be the only one capable of surmounting: between intellectuals and manual workers, between men and women, between rich and poor, between Muslims and Copts, between people living in the province and those living in the capital ...Millions of new possibilities for these contradictions spring with every moment, possibilities that the state—any state—is completely blind to. We see young female doctors, who have come from the province to treat the wounded, sleep in the middle of a circle of fierce young men, and they are more at ease than they've ever been, knowing that no one will touch a hair on their heads. We can equally see an organisation of young engineers addressing youngsters from the suburbs to ask them to hold on, to protect the movement with their energy for combat. We also see a row of Christians standing in order to keep watch over the Muslims bent in prayer. We see vendors feeding the unemployed and the poor. We see each person talking to their unknown neighbour. We can read thousands of banners where each and everyone's life is mingled to the grand History of all. All these situations, inventions, constitute the communism as movement. It's been two centuries since the unique problem is the following: how can we establish in the long run the inventions of the communism as movement? And the unique reactionary statement is: “that would be impossible, even detrimental. Let's put our trust in the state”. Glorious be the Tunisian and Egyptian peoples who remind us the true and unique political duty: faced with the state, the organised fidelity to the communism as movement.We do not want war, but we are not afraid of it. The pacifist calm of gigantic movements has been talked about everywhere, and it has been linked to the ideal of elective democracy that we bestowed upon the movement. We should, however, note that there have been hundreds of dead, and their number increases each day. In many instances, these dead have been combatants and martyrs of the initiative, then of the protection of the movement itself. The political and symbolical places of uprising had to be kept by paying the price of fierce combat against the militia and the police of the threatened regimes. And who has paid with their own lives if not the youth from the poorest classes? The “middle classes”, of whom our inspired Michèle Alliot- Marie has said that the democratic outcome of the movement depended on, and on them alone, should always remember that during the crucial moment, the duration of the movement has only been guaranteed by the unrestricted commitment of the people's militia. Defensive violence is inevitable. It still goes on, in difficult conditions, in Tunisia, after the young provincial activists have been sent to their destitution.Can we seriously think that all these innumerable initiatives and cruel sacrifices' fundamental goal is to make the people “choose” between Souleiman and El Baradei, just as we here resign to arbitrate between Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Strauss-Kahn? Will that be the only lesson of this splendid episode?No, a thousand times no! The Egyptian and Tunisian peoples tell us this: to rebel, to construct the public space of the communism as movement, defending it by all means and making up its successive steps of action, that is the reality of the popular politics of emancipation. It is not just the Arab states that are anti-popular, of course, and, fundamentally, with or without elections, illegitimate. Whatever their future, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have a universal significance. They prescribe new possibilities whose value is international.Visit Le Monde to read the article in French. For an alternative translation, please visit lacan.com.http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/394-alain-badiou-tunisie,-egypte-quand-un-vent-d'est-balaie-l'arrogance-de-l'occident_________________________________________reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.Critiques & CollaborationsTo subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request-5JVyulwl005eoWH0uzbU5w< at >public.gmane.org with subscribe in the subject header.To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-listList archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

More from anonymous..Glenn Beck + V for Vendetta mashupFunny to think Radical groups from the Left are turning to his show forinspiration.http://www.youtube.com/user/iamlegionanonymous

(just for the record and those interested, here some info of the rudimentary website of google's research institute for internet and society, in the process of being established in berlin. /geert)http://www.internetundgesellschaft.de/The following mission statement has been developed by the multistakeholder team that boostraps the research institute. The mission statement is meant to serve as a totem for the community behind the institute; it is therefore a living document that will develop over time.Mission Statement (Version 1.0)The Internet and society research institute (*the name is not decided yet*) centers on research and deliberation on the culture and practice of (1) Internet based innovation, (2) Internet policy, and (3) related legal aspects. We strive to provide insights enabling all stakeholders to better shape the transformations the Internet stimulates within our networked societies in Germany, Europe and internationally.Specifically, the institute:• focuses on transdisciplinary research and collaboration between academics, policy makers, civil society and private sector.• promotes a humanistic conception of the Internet and a user centered approach to Internet policy making and innovation, multi- stakeholder governance in digital ecosystems, their relationship with society, and their constitutional implications.• supports the continued development of a free¹ and open² Internet and its potential to increase welfare, democratic capacity, sciences and the arts. Hence we aim to better understand the qualities, dynamics, and implications of the Internet with regard to society and governance at large.¹free space = in that there are little restrictions on content and behavior and contribution is broadly permitted²open space = based on a philosophy of openess, i.e. open standards that ensure interoperability and open innovation-- ‎FAQsQ: Which institutions and who are you working with to set up the institute?A: We are currently in the process of identifying the best academic partners. We hope to announce the concrete plans including the academic institutions and the team of leading academics within the next months after we have reached a final agreement.Q: When will the Institute start its operations?A: The plan is to inaugurate the institute later in the year.Q: Why are you funding such a research institute?A: Web-based innovations cause a variety of social, economic and political transformations. These demand interdisciplinary research carried out in a specialized center of excellence. While Germany is already the home to many world class researchers the Internet and society institute will give the community a space to exchange and learn from each other and to tap into the insights of other stakeholders from civil society, business and politics.Additionally, we want to further our investments in Germany and we believe that such an independent research institute will improve understanding and discussion about Internet governance and Internet based innovation.Q: What are the research subjects of the institute?The Internet & Society Institute centers on research and deliberation on the culture and practice of (1) Internet based innovation, (2) Internet policy and (3) legal aspects.Q: Will the Institute focus on research about/for Germany?A: The institute will strive to provide insights enabling all stakeholders to better steer the transformations the Internet stimulates within our networked societies in Germany, Europe and internationally.Q: Where will the institute be based, will it be with the Humboldt?A: We are currently finding the best organisational set-up for the institute. Humboldt University is one of the potential partners and possible hosts for the institute.Q: Who will be heading the institute?A: We believe the institute should be led by a board made up of thought leaders from academia, the Internet community, politics and web entrepreneurs.Q: Will the name be the Google Institute?We believe that the institute should be independent and pursue an academic mission that is in the public interest.Q: Is this the first time you are installing such an institute or is there a role model from Google in other countries?A: Yes, this is the first time we are founding a research institute for Internet and society.Q: How many professors/staff will be working there?A: It is too early to talk about details. The idea is to work with a core faculty that organizes and supervises research through Calls for Proposals, with PhD-students as well as national and international partner institutions.Q: Will the institute be open for other companies/institutions as well? Can others support with additional funding?A: We are actively looking to work with partners from academia, civil society and the private sector. We are certain this will be an important step to broaden the scope, relevance and impact of the institute. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

please join us at AHAktitude 2011 in Carrara, in April 01-02-03, 2011AOS will present:Vacanza! a really relaxed Augmented Reality workshopat AOS (and in the other initiatives such as REFF and FakePress) we’vebeen proclaiming the rise of a new (or old?) idea of AugmentedReality, a philosophical approach screaming:“Autonomy! You have the power and tools to shape your own world,creating additional spaces for your expression and free action!”We’ve started some time ago, joyfully attacking supermarkets with ouraugmented reality invasion in Squatting Supermarkets.http://www.artisopensource.net/?s=squattingThen we continued the Augmented reality experiments with FakePress,exploring the possibility to invent new languages and usage grammarsfor the world that had impacts on education, knowledge, society,cities and relationships.http://www.fakepress.it/FPAnd, lately, with our recently released Augmented Reality Drug, withREFF, RomaEuropa FakeFactory.http://www.artisopensource.net/2011/03/13/an-augmented-reality-drug/All these actions used technologies and practices to reinvent theworld, our roles and the things we can do each days, promoting amultilayered, polyphonic, multicultural, free, autonomous version ofreality, and suggesting that new imaginaries, languages, strategies,politics and poetics can be created, reinventing art, business,activism and communication.This is why we’re truly happy to present:[[ Vacanza! ]](holiday)http://ahacktitude.org/event/2011/doku.php?id=vacanzaa series of micro-workshops, micro-lectures, micro-forums andmicro-interstitial meetings executed using crumpled-up AugmentedReality and other technologies.When: April 1-2-3 2011, at AHAcktitudeWhere: Carrara, ItalyAHAcktitude Program: http://ahacktitude.org/event/2011/doku.php?id=programWhat:An intense program of micro-workshops, micro-seminars,micro-lectio-magistralis disseminated in the spaces and times of theAHAcktitude meeting.The micro courses will define an interstitial narrative that willtraverse the whole event:- Workshops on Augmented Reality executed by throwing crumpled-upmicro-sldies to other people during other workshops- Lectures on the Reinvention of Reality made for 1 people at the timewhile we invent new ways of remixing beer, vodka and tomato juice- The tales of our latest actions with squats in London, studentgroups at universities, taking them “REFF’s education program on themethodologic reinvention of reality through critical practices ofremix, mashup, recontextualization and re-enactment” and organizingthe initiatives for the protest that will take place on March 24-25-262011: narrated wearing stupid glasses with fake mustache and plasticnoses, hiding post-it notes, qrcodes, AR markers and distributingsmall softwares, micro slideshows, mini websites prepared there, live,in realtime.** Feedback and interaction **Workshops are open for everyone!They are anytime, anywhere, always!Being hit by one of the crumpled-up slides will mean that you are inone of them!The objective of the workshops is to create emergent, spontaneous,effective, reproducible, appropriatable, remixable, re-enactable,disseminated, augmented discussions.Throw me your micro crumpled slides with questions and ideas!Throw them to other people, so that they can be in the workshop, too!Copy, fake, reproduce, show and plagiarize the micro workshops! usethe post-its and qrcodes!Make “fake” ones yoruselves!Place them all around AHAcktitude and in the whole city!Copy the micro softwares and micro-lectures!send them by mail to everyone! click “i like” and “share” on social networks!Finally, reality is augmenting.

BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood"Best Music on an Economics & Politics Radio Show"Village Voice Best of NYC 2005Just posted to my radio archive<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>:March 19, 2011 Abe Sauer, who’s been covering Wisconsin for The Awl, on Walker, the protests, privatization • Steve Early, author ofThe Civil Wars in U.S. Labor, on the fights in & around Andy Stern’s SEIUit joins:--------March 12, 2011 Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, on the spurious and destructive fantasy of a link between vaccines and autism • reprise of a 2006 interview with the splendid Robert Fitch, who died on March 4, about his book Solidarity for Sale and the role of corruption in the sad decline of American unions (and a brief memoir of his work)March 5, 2011 Jodi Dean, keeper of the I Cite blog and author of Blog Theory, interviewed in December on what digital culture is doing to us, returns to tell us how events in Cairo and Madison may have changed her mind • Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin on that state and its labor uprisingFebruary 5, 2011 Lance Lochner, author of this NBER paper, on the social returns to education (lower crime, better health) • Vijay Prashad of Trinity College on the Egyptian revolutionJanuary 29, 2011 Mark LeVine of the University of California–Irvine (and author of Heavy Metal Islam) and GIlbert Achcar of SOAS (and author of The Arabs and the Holocaust) talk (separately) about the popular uprisings in the Middle East • Bhaskar Sunkara on the new magazine he edits, JacobinJanuary 22, 2011 Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, on what the web is doing to our brains and minds • Robert Fatton, author of Haiti’s Predatory Republic, on Baby Doc’s return, the failure to recover from earthquake, the horrid class systemJanuary 15, 2011 Mark Ames, author of Going Postal and editor of The Exiled, on Tucson and how the U.S. is like a decaying Russia • Jefferson Cowie, author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, on the 1970s---Doug HenwoodProducer, Behind the NewsSaturdays, 10-11 AM, KPFA, Berkeley 94.1 FM"best music on a show about economics & politics" - Village Voicepodcast: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/radio-feed.php>iTunes: <http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73801817>or <http://tinyurl.com/3bsaqb>Facebook group: <http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53240558375>."blog": <http://lbo-news.com/>

*UniCommon **The rebellion of living knowledge** **An extraordinary season of struggle, beyond Uniriot.*Uniriot has been several things: the will to compose different politicalcultures, the desire of conflict and the innovation inside and against theuniversity reformed by Bologna Process. The attempt of building up a newexperimentation outside of any reassuring identity, but creating a newnetwork able to change and being changed by the richness of discussions andthe unquestionable reality of the struggle that cross us.Uniriot.org has been a great platform, a useful tool for the challenge weissued five years ago: not only a showcase of our ideas, but a crossroads ofdifferent experiences and projects, new narrations of struggle,communication about the transformations of the university and our research.We have been trying to carry this challenge forward since the movement of2005, when we created Uniriot, through our experience inside the Europeanstruggles during the AntiCPE movement in France, Bologna Burns in Wien andMadrid, until the anomalous wave of 2008 and the incredible autumn we livedin 2010.We have been profoundly changed during these extraordinary months, togetherwith students, precarious and researchers that have passionately animatedand continuously organized the struggles of the last year. As we cannot bethe same, we close the experience of Uniriot and launch a new politicalconstituent process to live up to our time and the transformations requiredby the struggles. A new challenge!* **The rebellion of living knowledge: UniCommon*UniCommon moves its first step in an era of crisis and austerity: theeducation reforms enacted without any public funding inside the framework ofthe failure of Bologna Process and, at the same time, its extension outsideEurope as a tool of exploitation of transnational living knowledge; thedismissal of public university and the dequalification of high schoolseducation, the massive young unemployment, precarity and the absence of anyfuture for a whole generation inside and outside the academy.In this landscape, movements shouted firmly the shelter of public universityagainst cuts, rising tuition fees, free research labor and debt loan, not asmere defense of the extant, but as a strategic field to claim quality ofknowledge and free education against any rhetorical meritocracy.Self-education has been our political dispositive focused on the strugglefor a qualified and critical knowledge, a device of organization that we aregoing to practice; our aim is to focus on the transformations of researchersstatus in the era of delegitimization of research work and peer-reviewsystem. Militant research is our collective tool to understand and to mapthe transformations of the present; self-education is our device beyond thepublic/private dichotomy to make our university!UniCommon wants to switch the nexus between education and precarity,creating a new social constituent deal within the new composition of labor,a democratic reappropriation of welfare against the private plunders and thefeudal academic power. We have learnt that where there is a capitalrelation, there is exploitation of toil, passions, words and knowledge;where there is globalized cognitive capitalism so there is a parasitic powerthat robs our body, our life.The European and north-African movements of the last autumn have taught usthat the claim for welfare against poverty and rights against exploitationare strictly connected to the claim for democracy and freedom against thepower and its corruption. Students who have animated the revolts of lastyears, thousands of precarious and young unemployed took up the book shieldsto defend their lives: a rioting generation reclaiming knowledge, freeaccess and circulation, income and new welfare, democracy and freedom ofchoice above our body.UniCommon is born within the practice of Book Bloc, a common tool ofdefense, a production of imaginary to express our desire. We have createdthose book shields as an attempt of combining radicalism and people?ssupport; the challenge of our time is to build up a wild experimentation,widespread and radical at the same time, to step over the crisis and thefailed utopia of cognitive capitalism. The Book bloc is a transnationalpractice, against any fixed identity and outside any representation ofconflict, it is our defense within the democracy of turmoil!The failure of Bologna Process does not mean the end of exploitation of ourknowledge, on the contrary the crisis deepens the capitalistc command overour body; at the same time, the struggles have showed us their powerfulcapacity of creating connections despite borders, sharing common projectsand practices, shaping a different future where free knowledge, income,rights and citizenship are not just a privilege. UniCommon is a new compassoriented by self-education, created by the wild demos that blocked thecirculation of commodities; it is a device defended by the transnationalBook Bloc inside a European space definitely twisted by the Mediterraneanrevolts, the margins that break into the center to overturn it.Moreover Unicommon is a network of communication and political organization,a web platform that will work as a place of information and communication ofstruggles from high school to the academy, a space of connection amongexperiences of self-education and autonomous collectives of research.UniCommon.org is a new website inside the 2.0 web time: video as a tool ofenquiring and mapping transformations, photos as the continuous effort ofimaging the fuzzy movement of our demos and discussions, audios as a preciseopinion of different voices, augmented reality to shape and multiply ourworld.***UniCommon starts from La Sapienza University within a day of largediscussions to make a public analysis of the past autumn and to imagine thespring that lies ahead.** **Meet you in the struggles, to create the future and subvert the present,**to make the university of the common!*?????*Program 24.03.2011**Create the future, subvert the present**10:30 a.m. College of Philosophy, Villa Mirafiori, La Sapienza - Roma*Public assembly of students and precarious collectives and networks*Against the dismissal of public university, creating the university of thecommon*???2:00 p.m. Lunch break???*4:00 p.m. College of Political Science, LaSapienza - Roma*Round table*After the revolt of the autumn toward the general strike of 6th May 2011*speakers: Ilenia Caleo (Zeropuntotre); Roberto Ciccarelli (Il manifesto),Claudio Riccio (Link), Eva Pinna (Surf), Luca Tomassini (CPU), GiorgioSestili (Atenei in rivolta), Simone Famularo (Assemblea di Medicina - LaSapienza) Francesco Sinopoli (Flc-Cgil), Corrado Zunino (la Repubblica)???7:30 p.m. aperitif break and videos???info: www.uniriot.org / from 24th March >>> www.unicommon.org >>>

Dear nettimers,today the Berliner Gazette (berlinergazette.de) published a text by historian Yuki Tanaka on the nuclear industry in Japan, embedding the Fukushima in a historical context as well as in the context of world economy. Here the link:http://berlinergazette.de/atomkraft-japan-gegnerinnen-lobby-und-die-ueberlebenden-von-hiroshima-und-fukushima/Since this text is an original contribution to the Berliner Gazette the English version (see below) has not been published yet. Therefore I would like to share it with you. If you have any ideas, where it might get published, please get in touch with the author (yjtanaka68[at]yahoo.co.jp)Best wishes,Krystian- berlinergazette.deThe Atomic Bomb and "Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy"Yuki TanakaResearch ProfessorHiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City UniversityThe devastating earthquake registering 9.0 on the Richter scale that hit Japan on March 11, together with the following massive tsunami, completely destroyed the picturesque northeast coast of Japan's main island, taking tens of thousands of lives and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees.Along this stretch of utter destruction, four nuclear power stations comprising a total of 15 reactors are placed within a distance of about 200km. Of these, the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station, operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), is the largest, comprising six nuclear reactors. Until now, TEPCO has been proud of the robustness of the containment vessels of these reactors. It has claimed that they were made utilizing the brilliant technology originally developed to produce the main battery of the world-largest naval artillery ever produced, mounted on the gigantic battleship, Yamato, of the Japanese Imperial Navy, which U.S. forces destroyed towards the end of the Asia-Pacific War. TEPCO claimed that the nuclear reactors would safely stop, then automatically cool down and tightly contain the radiation in the event of an earthquake, and that there would therefore be no danger that earthquakes would cause any serious nuclear accident. The vulnerability of nuclear reactors to earthquakes was already evident, however, when TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant on Japan's northwest coast caused several malfunctions, including a fire in a transformer, and a small quantity of radiation leaked into the ocean and the atmosphere following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit this region in July 2007. In spite of this serious accident, TEPCO still arrogantly overrated their "world best nuclear power technology."Yet, immediately after the March 11 earthquake violently shook these reactors and the towering waves of a tsunami surged and damaged many buildings of the power station, the myth of the "safe and durable reactor," a myth promulgated by TEPCO, was immediately shattered. At this writing, half of the six reactors seem to be on the verge of melting down, and one of the containment buildings has caught fire due to spent fuel rods combusting. The radiation level in the vicinity of the power station is extremely high, and it is spreading as far as Tokyo and Yokohama. Thus, as every day passes, an unprecedented scale of nuclear disaster is unfolding, making it more and more difficult to arrest the multiple problems of radioactivity.What went wrong with Japan's nuclear industry? It is often said that the Japanese are hyper-sensitive about nuclear issues because of the experience of nuclear holocaust in August 1945. On the morning of August 6, an atomic bomb instantly killed 70,000 to 80,000 civilian residents of Hiroshima city and by the end of 1945, 140,000 residents of that city had died as a result of the bombing. Three days later, another atomic bomb killed about 40,000 civilians in Nagasaki and 70,000 had died by the end of that year. Many others have subsequently died, often after experiencing a lifetime of suffering, or are still suffering from various diseases caused by the blast, fire and radiation.It is true that the Japanese, in particular the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are highly conscious of the danger of nuclear weapons, the most lethal weapons of mass destruction. A-bomb survivors, who know well the terror of the bomb and who are fearful of the long-lasting effects of radiation, have therefore been the vanguard of the anti-nuclear weapon campaign. Despite this, however, many A-bomb survivors and anti-nuclear weapon activists have so far been indifferent to the nuclear energy issue. Anti-nuclear energy campaigners have long been marginalized in Japan.For example, a small group of anti-nuclear energy activists in Hiroshima have been actively involved in the movement against the Chugoku Electric Power Company's (CEPCO) plan to build a nuclear power station near Kaminoseki, a beautiful fishing village on Japan's Inland Sea, about 80km away from Hiroshima City. However they have had virtually no support from any A-bomb survivors' organizations. Nor have either the former or current mayors of Hiroshima, who are widely known as strong advocates for the abolishment of nuclear weapons, ever supported this local anti-nuclear power movement. Indeed they never expressed concern about the danger of nuclear power accidents. Despite strong opposition by this group of anti-nuclear energy activists in solidarity with fishermen of Kaminoseki, CEPCO started construction work early this year. (However, CEPCO temporarily stopped construction work on this site on the day of the earthquake, perhaps indicative of the very great difficulty the nuclear power industry and the government will have in resuming work on nuclear plants following the disasters.)There are many reasons for this peculiar dichotomy in the anti-nuclear movement in Japan. One reason is that nuclear science was strongly promoted in post-war Japan, in particular after the new American policy of "peaceful use of nuclear energy" was initiated under President Eisenhower in 1953. This was mainly due to Japanese self-reflection about having neglected scientific research during the war. In particular, contemporary Japanese politicians and scientists strongly believed that their nation was defeated in WW2 by American technological science, exemplified by nuclear physics.This attitude, together with a deep anxiety about the lack of natural energy resources in a nation that relies on imports for 100% of its oil and is the world's largest importer of coal, overtly encouraged Japanese adoption of nuclear energy. Particularly from the late 1960s the Japanese government engaged in pork barrel policies to secure approval of local communities in remote areas for the construction of nuclear power plants in their regions. The government allocated huge sums to build public facilities such as libraries, hospitals, recreation centers, gymnasiums and swimming pools in areas where local councils accepted a nuclear power station. Power companies paid large sums of money to landowners and fishermen to force them to give up their properties and fishing rights. Political corruption soon became part and parcel of the development of this industry. At the same time, the government and power companies promoted the myth that nuclear power is clean and safe, thereby marginalizing the anti-nuclear energy movement.Although for a short period following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, the anti-nuclear power movement in Japan gained nation-wide support, this quickly subsided following campaigns by the government and the power companies. Despite many accidents since, the seriousness of these incidents was effectively covered up. Consequently there are now 17 nuclear power stations around the earthquake prone Japanese Archipelago, comprising 54 nuclear reactors which provide thirty percent of Japan's electricity is generated.The anti-nuclear movement has been warning of the dangers of a devastating nuclear accident for years, but this has always been met with dismissive assurances of the safety of the reactors. The Fukushima accident has brought to fruition all the fears and predictions previously expressed. In the same way that the atomic bomb indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of civilians, this nuclear reactor accident is likely to be responsible for indiscriminate suffering and death of numbers which cannot at this time be foreseen but are likely to play out over the next several decades as a consequence of radiation pollution. For this reason, a nuclear power accident can be called an "act of indiscriminate mass destruction," and in this sense, it appears that Japan and Japanese people twice in 65 years will become the victims of "nuclear mass destruction."Australia and Canada are the two largest uranium suppliers for Japan. Thirty three percent of Japan's uranium import comes from Australia and twenty seven percent from Canada. Australia is faced with the decision of whether to continue exporting uranium even as certain politicians insist that we cannot afford to risk introduction of nuclear power. Surely it is hypocritical to avoid the dangers at home, while benefitting from the export of the cause of this disaster. In the same vein, these politicians advocate the need to abolish nuclear weapons, but refuse to ban the mining of uranium.Japan is not the sole nation responsible for the current nuclear disaster. From the manufacture of the reactors by GE to provision of uranium by Canada, Australia and others, many nations are implicated. We all should learn from this tragic accident that human beings cannot co-exist with nuclear power, whether it in the form of weapons or electricity. The risks and the costs, in dollar terms and above in terms of the destruction of human beings and the environment are excessive.This catastrophic event could potentially be the catalyst needed to drastically reform Japan's existing socio-economic structure and way of living. As a positive outcome, it could provide the wake-up call and opportunity to redirect the nation on a new course that emphasizes green energy development. In the same way that Japan's unique Peace Constitution evolved from the ruins of World War II, this calamity could be used to initiate a hitherto impossible, totally new, peaceful and environmentally harmonious society. Such an optimistic outcome is dependent on the determination and actions of the Japanese people, supported by the whole-hearted assistance of those outside Japan.End --(March 19, 2011)

re all,in the media storm and iphone rubbing that goes on around, is anybodynoticing what is happening in Haiti?do you remember Haiti? Coup d'etat, problematic presence of UN and US"humanitarian" troops, "suicide" of a Brasilian general refusing tocrackdown on Lavalas... and then the earthquake, the only thing mostof people living in Babylon remember probably because they could bragabout PHP applications to save the World. well, if you want to reallyhelp Africa then keep an eye on Haiti *NOW*few days ago WL cables exposed the plots vs. Aristide and the case ofarmy general Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar http://ur1.ca/3mk6t just while Aristide comes back in Haiti http://ur1.ca/3mk7gand now the elections are taking place, but without the candidate thatwould win them, so people is boycotting them - a deja vu for thosethat know well the paradox of western democracies http://ur1.ca/3nkme Stand up for Haiti *NOW* ! *democracy* is a value to be defended much more than philantropy ! "...and let them live in Peace, Harmony - Justice and Fairness."

http://nuclearanxiety.artisopensource.net/A global realtime discourse on nuclear energy. Scared of nuclearpower? Are you up for it? Discover what the web is saying.

Koch Industries Employs PR Firm To Airbrush Wikipedia, Gets Banned For Unethical ‘Sock Puppets’http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/koch-wikipedia-sock-puppet/Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor.Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites.As ThinkProgress has reported, the billionaire Koch brothers maintain contracts with over a dozen public relation firms and lobbying firms. Pushing back again recent scrutiny, the brothers have also relied on a conservative media infrastructure owned by the Koch brothers or closely linked to them by way of their donor conferences. We have documented how the Koch message machine has targeted ThinkProgress and even placed hit-pieces against a New Yorker journalist investigated the Kochs. But now it seems the Koch brothers are at work manipulating Wikipedia to polish their image.Update: New Media Strategies at one point tried to lie about its affiliation with Koch Industries. The account "MBMAdmirer" wrote in December on Wikipedia: "I am a citizen who has read about and admires the Koch family. I was not pleased with the way that they have been presented in the media. And I thought that I could come to Wikipedia to try to make sure that there are balancing facts. Nothing I do is in coordination with Koch or authorized by Koch.# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

March 27, 2011Paul Baran, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 84By KATIE HAFNERhttps://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/technology/28baran.htmlPaul Baran, an engineer who helped create the technical underpinnings for the Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, died Saturday night at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 84.The cause was complications from lung cancer, said his son, David.In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”Mr. Baran’s idea was to build a distributed communications network, less vulnerable to attack or disruption than conventional networks. In a series of technical papers published in the 1960s he suggested that networks be designed with redundant routes so that if a particular path failed or was destroyed, messages could still be delivered through another.Mr. Baran’s invention was so far ahead of its time that in the mid-1960s, when he approached AT&T with the idea to build his proposed network, the company insisted it would not work and refused.“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.In 1969, the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency built the Arpanet, a network that used Mr. Baran’s ideas, and those of others. The Arpanet was eventually replaced by the Internet, and packet switching still lies at the heart of the network’s internal workings.Paul Baran was born on April 29, 1926, in Grodno, Poland. His parents moved to the United States in 1928, and Mr. Baran grew up in Philadelphia. His father was a grocer, and as a boy, Paul delivered orders to customers in a small red wagon.He attended the Drexel Institute of Technology, which later became Drexel University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1949. He took his first job at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in Philadelphia, testing parts of radio tubes for an early commercial computer, the Univac. In 1955, he married Evelyn Murphy, and they moved to Los Angeles, where Mr. Baran took a job at Hughes Aircraft working on radar data processing systems. He enrolled in night classes at the University of California, Los Angeles.Mr. Baran received a master’s degree in engineering from U.C.L.A. in 1959. Gerald Estrin, who was Mr. Baran’s adviser, said Mr. Baran was the first student he ever had who actually went to the Patent Office in Washington to investigate whether his master’s work, on character recognition, was patentable.“From that day on, my expectations of him changed,” Dr. Estrin said. “He wasn’t just a serious student, but a young man who was looking to have an effect on the world.”In 1959, Mr. Baran left Hughes to join RAND’s computer science department. He quickly developed an interest in the survivability of communications systems in the event of a nuclear attack, and spent the next several years at RAND working on a series of 13 papers — two of them classified — under contract to the Air Force, titled, “On Distributed Communications.”About the same time that Mr. Baran had his idea, similar plans for creating such networks were percolating in the computing community. Donald Davies of the British National Physical Laboratory, working a continent away, had a similar idea for dividing digital messages into chunks he called packets.“In the golden era of the early 1960s, these ideas were in the air,” said Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at U.C.L.A. who was working on similar networking systems in the 1960s.Mr. Baran left RAND in 1968 to co-found the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research group specializing in long-range forecasting.Mr. Baran was also an entrepreneur. He started seven companies, five of which eventually went public.In recent years, the origins of the Internet have been subject to claims and counterclaims of precedence, and Mr. Baran was an outspoken proponent of distributing credit widely.“The Internet is really the work of a thousand people,” he said in an interview in 2001.“The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral,” he said in an interview in 1990. “Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, ‘I built a cathedral.’“Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then comes along an historian who asks, ‘Well, who built the cathedral?’ Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else.”Mr. Baran’s wife, Evelyn, died in 2007. In addition to his son, David, of Atherton, Calif., he is survived by three grandchildren; and his companion of recent years, Ruth Rothman.# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Quakebookhttp://quakebook.blogspot.com/"The 2:46 Quakebook project started with a tweet …. Led by OurManInAbiko, a call went out across Twitter for contributors to create a book to raise funds for Red Cross Japan. The idea was to share the stories and experiences of people actually on the ground during the earthquake, whilst raising funds for the Red Cross.…The contributions have come from a wide variety of sources, and include photographs, personal accounts, drawings; each telling their own tale. Every penny from sales of the book goes directly to Red Cross, Japan."----------------------On 11 March 2011 a major earthquake and an unprecedented tsunami hit Japan, resulting in the worst tragedy in the country's history after WWII. Jammed by the people who desperately tried to get in touch with their family members, relatives and friends both within Japan and from abroad, phones (both mobile and landline) didn't work and emails didn't reach anywhere. Even in Tokyo where damage was minimal, it was noticeable right away things were out of normal. It took more than a day for me, now an expat from Tokyo, to get connected with my brother who lives there. Even then he had to use his landline since his mobile phone, which he uses exclusively otherwise, was still out of function. It also became clear a couple of emails he had sent to me after the quake never reached me. Strangely Twitter and Facebook seemed to have been working. For many these became their way of communicating with the world; not only could they tell each other their whereabouts but also gather important information on the quake's epicentre, the scale of tsunami, further proceedings regarding shelters, etc. For some, this condition continued for several days. A friend of mine, also a resident of Tokyo like my brother, told me her phone was not working properly even after 3 days. She continued to say Twitter and Facebook were the easiest way for her to communicate with others; according to her, the feature on Twitter and Facebook to be able to post one's location was a great additional help for her and her family. Similar stories are told by others, a couple of which you can read at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/opinion/17azuma.html?_r=1&src=twrhp (first two paragraphs) and at http://10mh.net/2011/03/26/quakebook. This is not the first time I experienced the power of social networking sites in recent years. Last year Sweden, where I currently reside, had its general election. To many's dismay, the Sweden Democrats, a political party whose agenda is clearly and only racist motivated, entered the Swedish national parliament for the first time. After this news broke, a 17-year-old Felicia Margineanus made a posting on FB asking people to gather in Sergels torg, Stockholm's central square, to unite against racism in Sweden. Within a few hours, the word spread, and at 6 pm on the day after the election day, a time set by Felicia's message on FB and less than 21-22 hours after the election result hit the news, more than 5000 people came to Sergels torg, resulting in one of the largest demonstrations in Sweden in our time.Though I remain extremely sceptical about the role FB/Twitter played in Tunisia, Egypt, etc., I nonetheless decided to share with you these two incidents I myself witnessed.Sachiko

Dear nettime,Just to keep the words from Madison coming...Thanks for all the encouragement, I/we appreciate it!Dan w.*Check blog for images and such, plus earlier reports, they kinda build oneach other:http://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/report-from-madison-why-wisconsin.htmlhttp://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/report-from-day-five-first-chance-to-reflect.htmlhttp://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/second-report-on-the-wisconsin-movement.htmlhttp://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/from-madison-third-report.htmlhttp://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/the-wisconsin-uprising-why-madison.html*We are into phase two.The massive crowds of 15-30k on the weekdays and 75-150k on four consecutiveSaturdays have dispersed. Now the people are spread out, working the groundof the entire state in a multi-pronged strategy of electoral canvassing,working recall campaigns, bird-dogging Republican state senators and thegovernor himself wherever they go, organizing targeted protests, coherently<http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/article_dae2c8dc-514b-11e0-9a2f-001cc4c002e0.html>  andincoherently boycotting businesses<http://whitefishbay.patch.com/articles/shorewood-sendiks-comes-under-fire-with-threatened-boycott>  that are said to have a Walker association, orsimply lashing out in hundreds and maybe thousands of acts of primitiveresistance, ranging from wheatpasting General Strike posters on utilityboxes to gluing locks<http://whitefishbay.patch.com/articles/shorewood-sendiks-comes-under-fire-with-threatened-boycott> . Wisconsin is alive, electric with politicalactivism and political expression, both organized and not. Window and yardsigns blanket the neighborhoods of the hippie east and the bobo west sidesof Madison. In Milwaukee, joint union/teacher/immigrant rights actions arebeing planned. Nine hundred people marched in the little town of Mt. Horeb<http://www.wkow.com/Global/story.asp?S=14251606>  a couple weeks ago, whichis more amazing than 100k in Madison. Our new adoption worker, a woman juststarting out in her social services career, showed up on our doorstepsmiling and professional, but sporting bright blue and yellow anti-Walkerbuttons. The bus driver wears a button that says Friends Don¹t Let FriendsDrive Republican. Many at the Stoughton Opera House for Friday night¹s TimO¹Brien show (high quality white music, for the unfamiliar) wore Kloppenburgbuttons.The political inhibitions of the average Wisconsinite, only two months agoseemingly internalized to the degree that politics had become a subculturerather than everyone¹s business, have evaporated, steamed off by the extremeattacks of Scott Walker. <http://prop-press.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f3da504b970b014e6027fcde970c-pi> Thepolitical has returned to Wisconsin, to everyday life, to people¹sexpressions in both private and public spheres. And just in time, because itis not too early to call a victory for Scott Walker. More on that below.But first I continue my inquiry into the conditions of the uprising. Whathas been happening, at the various distances of the local, the regional, andthe global, that the Walker agenda began to generate a kind of oppositionalcoherence, a broad sense of belonging to a current far beyond oneself, orone¹s town, or one¹s country? On this blog I have already discussed both thelocal and the global, how the Madison infrastructure and the internationalechoes of Cairo played into the uprising. From where I type this, both ofthese elements continue to be present. Last Wednesday evening I attended theChris Hedges event on the UW campus. After being out of town for nearly twoweeks, I was curious about what I¹d see. The lecture was held in Humanities2650, a room that seats 268. There were hardly any empty seats and quite afew standing in the upper reaches of the hall. People came out on a crummy,cold and icy night‹a good sign that interest and motivation remains high atthe grassroots level. The energy in the room was lively and Hedges ended uptaking questions for an hour after a thirty-five minute lecture.  Whether weare talking about movement analysis events organized by the Havens Center,immigrant rights groups working to fight Walker¹s cuts to bilingualeducation, the neighborhood bars hosting benefits for interfaith laborjustice projects, or the Dane County administration and judicialestablishment standing up to the GOP¹s legally questionable manuveurs, theMadison activist and progressive infrastructure is humming. As well, the global echoes‹drowned out and overshadowed for weeks byeverything from the disaster in Japan to attention on the Wisconsin 14 andthe villanous Koch brothers‹reappeared on the fifth Saturday, in all-tootragically convenient a way: the massive demonstrations that were sparked byScott Walker¹s attack on the day Hosni Mubarak resigned came to a close onMarch 19, both the eighth anniversary of the bombing that started the IraqWar in 2003, and the first day of American and European bombing of Libya. Ifthe War at Home/Wars Abroad meme had been shoved aside for a little while,history will always neatly bookend the first phase of the Wisconsin uprisingin the wrapping of a single global class and energy war, and the beginningof generalized global chaos. Lots of us, including Iraq Veterans Against theWar, who called for the March 19 Madison demonstration and came out in aforce of more than fifty GWOT veterans<http://www.ivaw.org/blog/10-000-stand-solidarity-iraq-war-anniversary> ,would not have it any other way. So, we have the local and the global. What about the movement dynamic at thestate and regional level? Or put another way, why Wisconsin, and why now?Sure, it is a comparatively homogenous state, with a strong and distinctivetavern culture, a single, statewide university system, and self-embracedcustoms of beer + brats, dairy + deer hunting. But what of the conditions inearly 2011? What was different then?Having made something of the echoes of Cairo, I must say, the story of the2010-2011 Green Bay Packers also helped to set a kind of pre-uprisingclimate in Wisconsin, because of how they reached and won the Super Bowl,the kinds of storylines that spun out of the team¹s postseason run, and thefact that the Super Bowl was played on the Sunday of the same week in whichScott Walker later unveiled his budget repair bill. Given the eventproximity, two of those storylines resonated with the Wisconsin uprising ofa week later. The first concerned the Packers as an institution. When thePackers take the national stage, the national media enjoy re-telling thestory of why and how the comparatively small city of Green Bay, Wisconsin(pop. 102k), happened to land and hold onto the most storied of all NFLfranchises. This happened in the old media world of January of 1997 when thePackers last reached and won the big game, and it happened again in 2011.The surprise ending part of the story goes, little Green Bay keeps its teambecause it isŠ (drumroll) publicly owned! The merits of public ownership andnon-majority ownership clauses are then held up for consideration as anhistorical quirk that actually works‹unlike the failure of privateownership, for example, to currently supply Los Angeles with an NFL team.The merits of public ownership are then brought into the nationalconversation, in however superficial a way. For Packer fans, who like mostmidwesterners are more self-conscious than their coastal countrymen abouthow they are perceived by the bi-coastal media/cultural establishment, it isanother reason to take pride in who they are, and another media-reflectedself-image around which the trace of a collective identity coalesces.The second important storyline emerged in full as soon as the championshipgame was over. Starting the day after the big game, sports talk radiochatter turned the topic from post-game analysis to the negotiations betweenthe NFL owners and the NFL players association, a loomingmillionaire-versus-billionaire labor showdown that cast a shadow over thewhole season and now finally took center stage. The contentiousness betweenthe two parties got football fans everywhere considering the possibility ofa canceled season or watching scab teams. If nothing else, this situation(which weeks later hangs in a stalemate due to the owners locking out theplayers) imposed a discourse of labor politics on a wide swath of thefootball-watching population. A great many apolitical fans are being forcedto think about the fact that labor conflict exists. And once engaged, a lotof fans see the players as reasonable given their concerns about things likecumulative head injuries and the owners refusal to disclose their profits.Here in Wisconsin, it didn¹t hurt the image of the players association thatthe Super Bowl MVP, Aaron Rodgers, the latest player to reach Packergreatness, is also the team¹s union rep. Finally, there were the two SuperBowl XLV competitors, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers,each club named after the twentieth-century workers associated with thosetowns, and each club bucking the labor-bosses faultline‹the Packers withtheir aforementioned anomalous shared ownership and the Steelers with theiroutspoken owner, Dan Rooney, who has openly complained about the greed ofhis fellow owners. The fact that both teams had this vestigialidentification with the working man, and whose current ownership didn¹t fitthe venal role played so well by that of other NFL clubs, and yet had risento the top of the competitive hierarchy by beating everybody else on thefield, dispelled the claim that labor-friendly relations lead to a declinein quality and performance. If anything, these two teams proved that theopposite is true. So this whole NFL thing, with the Packers as newly crowned champs after animprobable, attention-getting run of four straight do-or-die victories (notincluding the final game), has been running parallel to the Wisconsinuprising. At times it crossed over, with some Packer players, including starcornerback and team co-captain Charles Woodson, tweeting statements insupport of the Wisconsin state workers<http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20110223/GPG0101/110222188/0/GPG0706/Budget-debate-ensnares-tweeting-Packers-fans?odyssey=nav|head> . <http://prop-press.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f3da504b970b014e6027cc80970c-pi> TheSunday, March 19 NYTimes sports section featured an article on the NFLlockout and its effects on the town of Green Bay<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/sports/football/20greenbay.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=green%20bay&st=cse> . It was the first post-uprising piece on thePackers I¹d seen, and it necessarily mentioned the political turmoil of thestate‹not the usual thing for sports journalism.On the question of spatial scale, the Packers reinforce state identity as aconstituency, because in Wisconsin the Packers are regarded as belonging tothe entire state and not just the city of Green Bay, literally owned bythousands of shareholders around the state, and Packer fandom is practicallya secular religion binding together far-flung Wisconsinites, including thoseof the Wisconsin diaspora. Also interestingly, of all the population centersin Wisconsin, Madison is the least Packer-crazy town. Too many transients,hoity intellectuals, and Chicago transplants, plus a fan focus on theUniversity of Wisconsin teams. So the NFL and Packer storylines spoke moredirectly to the people of Wisconsin outside of liberal Madison than inside,helping to generalize the politicized climate of labor strife to the farcorners of the state. Even more than that, the Super Bowl underlined afundamental turn in consciousness that informs any political uprising,anywhere. And that turn happens when an angry people wanting to do somethingbecome aware, and then are self-confident enough to tell themselves, ³Whynot us, and why not here‹after all, we are somebody, we are somewhere.² And that's how we get pure Wisconsin action, like artist Rick Kurki showinga new painting at a recent protest up north in Hayward, Wisconsin. Pic byPete Rasmussen.   <http://prop-press.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f3da504b970b014e8702a0d7970d-pi>Not to overplay any of these factors‹the Packers, Cairo, the built-inactivism of Madison‹but taken together, they all mattered, they allreinforced the tide. Then, as a movement imprinted with the stamp ofmultiple places, signaling a simultaneous belonging, echoes of itcould beheard in other places. Demonstrators in Albany on March 23 chanted³Wisconsin, New York‹the struggle is the same!²<http://online.wsj.com/article/AP42319f69d7cd4f16bb4ae1537eb9d7dd.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook>  Last week a solidarity event in LAdrew more than tenthousand people <http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news%2Flocal%2Flos_angeles&id=8036154>  and featured Wisconsin firefighter¹s union president Mahlon Mitchell<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzOir-Bcfww> , one of the scores of newleaders to have emerged in the course of the last six weeks. Activists inMichigan have measured the smaller demonstrations there against whathappened in Wisconsin<http://labornotes.org/blogs/2011/03/michigan%E2%80%99s-attack-democracy-where%E2%80%99s-wisconsin-spirit> , trying to ascertain the different limitsunder which a nascent Michigan movement toils. Movements sited in andidentified by place, whether that place is first thought of as a city, astate, a country, or a region, are doing the work of validating themovements of other places. We have learned from the world social forumstrategy from the past decade. No more summit hopping. We work where wehappen to find ourselves, but build into the process a sending and receivingof signals from other places.My attempt, speaking to Oaxaca and Wisconsin, from Chicago, pic by AliceKim:   <http://prop-press.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f3da504b970b014e87029aa1970d-pi>*More to say about Wisconsin, good and bad, besides the Packer thing, butmoving onŠ. Let me end this post by addressing the state of the movement, in bulletpoints.1. Now it is clear that the story of the fourteen senate Democrats who fledthe state in order to stall the passage of Walker¹s bill stands in danger ofoverwriting the earlier heroism of the grassroots. Had not the Madisonteachers, public school students, firefighters union, the TeachingAssistants Association, a goodly number of undergraduate students and lotsof independent citizens stuck their necks out in the days leading up to theFlight of the Fourteen. And yet through all their hero¹s welcome, not one ofthem has given full credit to the strategy of peaceful, legal escalationthat gave them the opportunity to take dramatic action with full confidenceof widespread support. Even worse are their exhortations to support theDemocrats, exclusive of the many elements making up the backbone of thismovement. As the struggle continues through a protracted phase withoutfurther massively unifying attacks by the GOP, the splits between Democratsand the grassroots will widen.2. Walker won. His bill is still not clearly law, but he¹s not waitingaround for any court decision to implement it, even though every move hemakes toward implementing it further muddies the legalities. And thequestion of political payback remains highly motivating, and there areplenty of deserving targets, not only Walker himself. Through electoralpolitics we will end the careers of at least a few, and make life at timesmiserable for the rest through all manner of activist confrontation. But thefact is, we will live with a seriously degraded state bureaucracy and adysfunctional state government, and a horribly unbalanced state budget foryears to come. Undoing the damage will be monumental task beyond thecapacities of the Democrats. Thus, one of the high points of the liberalstate structure‹twentieth-century American Upper Midwestern stategovernment, effective, professional, and mostly non-partisan‹in Wisconsin isdefinitively no more. Time to roll up our sleeves, grab a tool, and startplanting or building whatever it is that we want to grow.3. The movement response to the March 9 surprise assault by Walker and hisstate senate minions remains unexamined. Surprising, when one considers thefact that we know the day and even the moment the movement lost the battleover Walker¹s bill. But perhaps not so surprising when we consider theunpalatable truths such a examination would reveal. To begin with, thefailure to meaningfully respond begs the question, where, exactly, the unioninterests lie? If the rank and file¹s willingness to strike was overriddenby the leadership, that is one thing, complete with an ugliness all its own.But what if the basic conservatism of the unions crouched in a defensiveposture stands at cross purposes with those of us looking ahead to adifferent world? In other words, what if, as Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs wouldsay, a job ain¹t the answer? Even though the various unions took alldifferent kinds of heroic and historic action over the last six weeks, Ican¹t help but point out that the visionary element is completely missingfrom the union side, and the lost opportunity of March 9 showed us the priceof accumulating power without vision. Nicolas, Erin, and I are working up afuller treatment of March 9. Will post when it¹s ready. 

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Copyright-Expert-Who-Spoke/126877/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=enA Copyright Expert Who Spoke Up for Academic Authors Offers Insightson the Google Books RulingPamela Samuelson, a professor of law at the U. of California atBerkeley, suggests what might be the next steps for the partiesinvolved in the Google Books project.By Marc ParryPamela Samuelson played a lead role in voicing academic authors'concerns over the Google Books settlement. That advocacy made animpact: Judge Denny Chin cited her writing in his ruling rejectingGoogle's deal with authors and publishers, who were represented by theAuthors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.In an interview with The Chronicle on Wednesday, Ms. Samuelson, acopyright expert and professor of law at the University of Californiaat Berkeley, shared her take on what the judge's decision means—andwhere we go from here.Q. Is this a good ruling?A. It's the only ruling really that the judge, I think, could havemade. The settlement was so complex, and it was so far-reaching. Withthe Department of Justice and the governments of France and Germanystridently opposed to the settlement, it seems to me that the judgereally didn't have all that much choice. So the ultimate ruling, thatthe settlement is not fair, reasonable, and adequate to the class, isone that I think was inevitable.The thing that surprised me about the opinion was that he tookseriously the issues about whether the Authors Guild and some of itsmembers had adequately represented the interests of all authors,including academic authors and foreign authors. That was verygratifying because I spent a lot of time crafting letters to the judgesaying that academic authors did have different interests. Academicauthors, on average, would prefer open access. Whereas the guild andits members, understandably, want to do profit maximization.Q. So did the ruling address the concerns you raised in general?A. Yes. The adequacy of representation was one of the key points. Ialso raised issues of the scope of the settlement in relation to theissue in litigation. Many of the things that the settlement would doare copyright reforms that I think are good. The question is, Can youdo this through a class-action settlement? One of the things that wasvery pleasing to me about the judge's ruling is that the judge alsosaid changes this far-reaching to the default rules of copyright lawhave to be done through Congress.The settlement would grant Google about five different licenses thatordinarily, to get that broad a license, you'd have to get it fromCongress. It's a license to scan all the books and to store them. Alicense to make nondisplay uses of them for purposes such as improvingsearch technologies and automated translation tools. It would grant alicense for nonprofit researchers to engage in "nonconsumptive"uses—so research uses for academic purposes. It would grant Google alicense to give "library digital copies" of the books scanned fromlibrary collections back to those libraries and allow the libraries tomake certain kinds of uses of the works. And it would give Google alicense to commercialize all of the out-of-print books in the corpus.It's really quite extensive.If Congress was going to grant licenses like this, it wouldn't justgrant them to Google. Part of what the Justice Department came torecognize is that the licenses that Google would get from thesettlement would create barriers to entry to any other firm, becauseno one else could get those licenses. That's something that really fedinto the antitrust analysis in the case. The settlement would giveGoogle a de facto monopoly over the orphan books [unclaimed workswhose copyright owners aren't known or can't be found] that would makea subscription service that it could offer unreachable by anysubscription service that anyone else might offer. Google could havemillions and millions of books that no one else could reach.Q. What does the judge's ruling mean for privacy concerns raised aboutGoogle Books?A. He decided that the privacy objections by themselves were not areason to reject the settlement. The concerns that were raised aboutprivacy issues were nevertheless ones that he thought were veryserious. And he indicated that he hoped that any further iteration ofa settlement would deal with those issues more seriously.The way the settlement was drafted, it called for Google to engage inextremely extensive monitoring of access to books. Now you could saythat one of the reasons they needed to do that was because, if they'regoing to pay specific authors for specific books that might be read,let's say, in the institutional-subscription corpus, then they've gotto know whose books are being read.But as we all know, Google basically also wants to know everythingthat we look at and everything that we read, and they would be engagedin profiling and serving up ads. There were virtually no privacyguarantees for users in the settlement agreement. Efforts to persuadeGoogle to adopt a set of principles were only partially successful,and then they were only willing to say, 'Well, OK, we'll sort of agreeto do this.' But they weren't willing to do anything that would bindthem.One of the things the judge noted is these are things they could adoptfor a while and then abandon. Libraries have been very, very carefulover time about protecting the privacy interests of their user base.And Google was not willing to make commitments to essentiallyaccomplish an equivalent level of protection. When we're talking abouta corpus of books that millions of people in the U.S. would be using,not to have any serious privacy commitments here really wasdistressing.Q. What does the ruling mean for academic authors?A. There are a couple of paths that can happen from now going forward.One path is that academic authors can communicate with Google abouttheir interest in making their books available on an open-accessbasis. That would be something that would allow more of their books tobe more widely available.Second, I'm planning to be working with a group of academics to try toput together a legislative package that would accomplish some of thepositive goals that the Google Books settlement raises aspossibilities. Much greater access to out-of-print books: I think thatgoal is really commendable.A third possibility is that, if this matter goes into litigation, Ithink academic authors will probably offer support to Google in itsfair-use defense, because we are the kind of people who think that ifyou scan my book in order to index it and make little snippetsavailable, that's actually a good thing. That's going to promote moreaccess to my books, and that's what I want as an academic.Q. What do you think of the prospects for legislative change?A. It would require a lot of energy, and a lot of coalition building.But I think that there's some possibility of it, actually. I'm notwildly optimistic about it. There is this amazing vision of access toknowledge that a lot of people are in favor of. If that's true, thenwe ought to be able to come up with something that would make it allwork.All of the major parties have been in favor of orphan-workslegislation. Because of the settlement, for the last two and a halfyears, that legislation has been on hold. Right now, if a book is anorphan, or you think it's an orphan, you can't make it available toanybody because the copyright owner could come out of the woodwork,and then you could get sued, and statutory damages would be awardedagainst you, and that would be bad.The legislation that Congress has been considering, and that theCopyright Office recommended, was that once you make a reasonablydiligent effort to locate a copyright owner, then you should be ableto use the work if your diligent effort doesn't find that copyrightowner. So go ahead and use the work, and make free use of it actually,and if the copyright owner shows up later, then maybe you have to takeit down. But statutory damages and other remedies that otherwise wouldordinarily apply, would not apply.I have some tweaking that I want to do to that particular approach,but nevertheless it seems to me that that's more consistent with theutilitarian principles of copyright law than the settlement approach,which would have charged profit-maximizing prices for orphan booksthrough the end of their copyright term, even though there's nocopyright owner out there who actually deserves and needs thecompensation that Google would be providing.Q. Who might lead the coalition to push for legislative change?A. Obviously Google will have an interest in thinking about this. TheAAP [Association of American Publishers] and the Authors Guild were insupport of orphan-works legislation. Most of the technology companieswere in favor of it. Libraries and academics were in favor of it. It'sjust that it was taking awhile, so Google just said, "Hey, we'll solvethe orphan-works problem ourselves."Q. Could there be a meaningful settlement under the "opt-in" modeldescribed by the judge? He said many concerns would be resolved if thesettlement made rights-holders opt in, by asking to have their worksincluded in the Google Books project, rather than forcing them to optout.A. It's hard to say, because trying to read the tea leaves about whatthe details would be is very difficult at this point. From thestandpoint of the objections of most of the authors—not necessarilyacademic authors, but other authors—an opt-in regime is actuallyrespectful of copyright. But it doesn't solve the orphan-worksproblem. All the orphans would be out of the settlement. Then if youwant to make it available, you've got to come up with a fair-useargument.Let's say a library makes a reasonably diligent search for thecopyright owners of certain books, and they can't find the copyrightowners to get a rights clearance. I can make an argument that makingorphan books available for nonprofit educational purposes, after youhave reason to believe it's an orphan, is fair use. So while I thinkit would be better to do this through legislation, I'm not willing togive up on the idea that within the existing framework, there's a wayto at least address some of the orphan-work problems.Q. What about all the research that had been planned for Google Books?A. That's one of those details that's very important in terms of anyrevised settlement. The question that the judge didn't address iswhether it would need to be an opt-in regime for everything, or onlyan opt-in regime for the commercialization [which refers to sellingads against the books, selling the books themselves, and puttingtogether an institutional subscription to the corpus]. There are fivelicenses.Suppose that Google said, "I'm willing to make it an opt-in regime forthe commercialization of the out-of-print books, but I want to be ableto scan the books, I want to be able to make nondisplay uses of them,I want to be able to authorize nonconsumptive research, and I want tobe able to make library digital copies available to my librarypartners without any compensation to the rights-holders." So, as tothat, it's an opt-out regime; as to commercialization, it's an opt-inregime.Q. What happens next?A. They've got two options. One is to go back to litigation. The otheris to come up with a new settlement. Now the statements that thepublishers and the Authors Guild made are very clear that they want toactually reach another settlement. And the judge is encouraginganother settlement.Whether Google will be willing to settle on different terms is aquestion that's quite open right now. Before the judge, in February oflast year, Google's chief lawyer basically said that this opt-in deal,which the Justice Department was urging, was not acceptable to them,that unless it was an opt-out regime—that is to say that they get tocommercialize the books unless the author shows up and says, "Don't dothis"—they weren't willing to settle the case. Now that may have beensomething that they've been willing to say before the judge becausethey want the judge to feel like he's got to approve it. But theymight actually change their mind.# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

original to:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/world/asia/28tokyo.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/world/asia/index.jsonp(http://ur1.ca/3oyvb)bwo Multitudes-infos/ Frederic NeyratIn Deference to Crisis, a New Obsession Sweeps Japan: Self-RestraintBy KEN BELSON and NORIMITSU ONISHINew York Times, March 27, 2011.TOKYO — Even in a country whose people are known for walking in lockstep,a national consensus on the proper code of behavior has emerged withstartling speed. Consider post-tsunami Japan as the age of voluntaryself-restraint, or jishuku, the antipode of the Japan of the “bubble” erathat celebrated excess.With hundreds of thousands of people displaced up north from theearthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, anything with the barest hint ofluxury invites condemnation. There were only general calls forconservation, but within days of the March 11 quake, Japanese of allstripes began turning off lights, elevators, heaters and even toilet seatwarmers.But self-restraint goes beyond the need to compensate for shortages ofelectricity brought on by the closing of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclearplant. At a time of collective mourning, jishuku also demands thatself-restraint be practiced elsewhere. Candidates in next month’s localelections are hewing to the ethos by literally campaigning quietly forvotes, instead of circling neighborhoods in their usual campaign truckswith blaring loudspeakers.With aggressive sales tactics suddenly rendered unseemly, the giant BicCamera electric appliance outlet in central Tokyo has dropped the decibelson its incessant in-store jingle, usually audible half a block away. Atthe high school baseball tournament in Osaka, bands put away theirinstruments; instead, cheering sections have been clapping by hittingplastic horns together.There are also doubts about whether it is proper to partake in theseasonal pleasures that regulate much of Japanese life.“At this time of the year, we’d usually be talking about going to seecherry blossoms,” Hiroshi Sekiguchi, one of the country’s best-knowntelevision personalities, said on his Sunday morning talk show.In fact, cherry blossom viewing parties and fireworks festivals have beencanceled. Graduations and commencements have been put off. Stores andrestaurants have reduced their hours or closed. Cosmetics and karaoke areout; bottled water and Geiger counters are in.It is as if much of a nation’s people have simultaneously hunkered down,all with barely a rule being passed or a penalty being assessed.“We are not forced or anything,” said Koichi Nakamura, 45, who runs akaraoke shop in Kabukicho, Tokyo’s famed entertainment district, wherecustomers looking to sing their lungs out have all but vanished. “I hopeit will somehow contribute to the affected areas.”The almost overnight transformation is likely to continue for months, ifnot years. The hot summer ahead is expected to further strain the nation’selectrical network, leading to more disruptive blackouts that make it hardfor business to be conducted the Japanese way, face to face and often intothe night. The vast entertainment industry that greases corporate Japan,including sushi bars and cabarets, is likely to be deeply hurt.As effective as the self-restraint has been — conservation measures haveallowed Tokyo Electric Power to cancel some planned blackouts — thecontinued scaling back is likely to have a corrosive effect on Japan’ssagging economy. While the government will spend heavily to rebuild theshattered prefectures to the northeast, consumer spending, which makes upabout 60 percent of the economy, will probably sink; bankruptcies areexpected to soar.Had the disasters hit a more distant corner of the country, things mighthave been different. But because Tokyo has been directly affected by theblackouts and the nuclear crisis, the impact has been greater. The capitaland surrounding prefectures, where so many companies, government agenciesand news media outlets are located, account for about one-third of thecountry’s gross domestic product.Japan has gone through spasms of self-control before, including after thedeath of Emperor Hirohito in 1989. This time, though, self-restraint maybe a way of coping with the traumatizing scale of the loss of life as wellas the spreading fears of radioactive fallout, according to KensukeSuzuki, an associate professor of sociology at Kwansei Gakuin Universityin western Japan.“With the extensive coverage of the disaster zone, jishuku has become away for people in Tokyo to express solidarity at a time of crisis,”Professor Suzuki said in an e-mail. “Jishuku is the easiest way to feellike you’re doing something, though perhaps there isn’t much thought putinto how much these actions make a difference over all.”It is not surprising then that the national obsession with self-restrainthas bled into political circles. In several prefectures, like Gifu, Aomoriand Akita, candidates have agreed not to campaign too aggressively, bylimiting their appearances and not calling voters at home.In Tokyo’s luxury shopping district, Ginza, on Sunday, HideoHigashikokubaru, 53, a politician and former comedian, practicedjishuku-style campaigning by riding a bicycle and eschewing a bullhorn.“I’m trying my best in my own voice,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said, surroundedby voters on an intersection overlooked by Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Cartierand Bulgari.Political analysts have said that such campaign constraints will favorincumbents like Shintaro Ishihara, the three-term Tokyo governor Mr.Higashikokubaru is trying to unseat.“That’s right,” Mr. Higashikokubaru said in a short interview. “That’s whyI have to try even harder.”But outliers, like Japan’s Communist Party, have explicitly rejected acalmer tenor to their campaigning, saying that it would rob voters ofvaluable information about candidates.Another objector was Yoshiro Nakamatsu, 82, who despite a past draw ofonly a few thousand votes was running for Tokyo governor for a fifth time.Mr. Nakamatsu — an inventor who claims credit for hundreds of gadgets —campaigned in front of his truck in Ginza on Sunday, standing on top ofwhat he described as a stretching machine that would prevent deep veinthrombosis.As a loudspeaker played a recorded speech, he described campaigning bywalking or riding a bicycle as something from “another era.”There were other opponents of self-restraint. While the ethos has beenstrongest in northern Japan and in the Tokyo area, western Japan appearedsplit. Kobe, the site of a 1995 earthquake, was firmly in favor.But Toru Hashimoto, the governor of Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest city,said too much holding back would hurt the economy. Echoing President Bushafter the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Hashimoto urged people to spendeven more, so as to support the economy; some businesses are helping bydonating part of their proceeds to affected areas.In Tokyo, though, there was no debate.At Hair ZA/ZA, a salon in the Shin Koenji neighborhood, appointments havedried up because so many school and corporate ceremonies have beencanceled. The rolling blackouts could also make it hard for customers tokeep reservations, according to Takayuki Yamamoto, the salon’s chief hairstylist.This has upended Ayaka Kanzaki’s plans to pass the salon’s tests for newstylists. The exam includes three components: cutting, blow-drying andhair coloring. Ms. Kanzaki, 21, passed the cutting section, but to qualifyfor the hair coloring test, she must recruit 20 models. So far, she hasmanaged just seven and is worried about getting 13 more.The salon’s efforts to reduce electricity use have made it difficult topractice after hours, too. In addition to turning off the lights, trainingwith blow dryers has been stopped. Ms. Kanzaki, however, keeps anyfrustration to herself.“I’m not the only one in this condition,” she said, in a remark thattypified Japanese selflessness. “Others are, too.”Reporting was contributed by Ayasa Aizawa, David Jolly, Harumi Osawa,Fuhito Shimoyama and Hiroko Tabuchi.

notes on the development of the so-called social web and the role of cyberpunks inside this processhttp://el.blogsport.de/2011/03/28/cyberpunk-is-dead/The weakness of cyberpunk was its virtuality, being a complex of imagery mostly used by writers in fiction, by bloggers in egomany and by journalists in, well, „journalism“. What was missing, is a cyberpunk realism, in the sense of an aesthetics that relates to and occupies something else than the realms of literature. From this viewpoint, real existing cyberpunk was the adaption of cyberpunk as a shiny static representation for what was left of the dynamic of electronic pioneers, the early computer hackers, and their process of dissolving their avant-guard status in time and into mass. Comparable to the punks that were the mass reproduction of the avantgarde activists before them. The name of this historic forerunner of punk referred to here, was the Situationist International, a 1950s and 60s avantgarde group (Read their texts and Greil Marcus‘ history book). Just like the situationists worked at the fissure between literature and street, the early real-existing cyberpunks worked at the fissure of literature and cyberspace. The cyberpunk literature served its purpose to provide aesthetic naratives some time ago, and in the ensuing process the real-existing groups that were trying to adapt these clichés turned into clichés for others to adapt to. A virtual movement.What constitutes the weakness of the aesthetic force, results in the weakness as a material force: Cyberpunk made its way on the market of despiritualized ideas, as the shopping good for the masses. Ever tried to squat something in Secondlife, like offline punks would do? Technically impossible. In the process to solve this dilemma, cyberpunk had to give up integral parts to be able to work on social topics without a realism and therefore without a political strategy. Which led to a certain aligning with the social and economical facts in the process of trying to gain a social impact through the cyberpunk models. Wondering why Wikileaks doesn‘t have a wiki anymore? Because cypherpunk (with ph in this case, refering to those fractions of cyberpunk that focuse on encryption) was either mass movement or political tactics of an avant-guard. In deciding to focus on political manouvres, an open publishing model is not fitting anymore. Contrary to this, CHAN-culture (imageboards, fast communication channels) and the ANON-meme (crowd orientated cyber actions) try different ways in waging real mass-based cyberwars, they reach this point by being more punk again, punk as in: deviant subculture that parents are afraid of.Still inside this historic #fail of cyberpunk, there were hacker groups and cyberpunk collectives not only representing the literary images of cyberpunk, but trying to do cyberpunk realism. In the sense of picking up the punk culture and porting it to the cyberspace. Working with images and text in the new media, taking it back to the roots of post-war pre-punk movements, creating free tools, cultural gifts and mixed artworks, like all the minds from Guy Debord (and many before), to John Lyndon, to Allen Ginsberg, to Wau Holland, had shown the way. But working with punk attitude in the 90s and the Zeros proofs to be a delicate business. Now we can see the last phase of cyberpunk, the virus has spread, it has dissolved into one of its more justified aims: the dissolution in non-elitist mass approaches. If you search today for crazy netpunks, doing the mix with images, ideas and slogans, fighting cyberwars against scientology and other creepy institutions, you don‘t come to the avantgarde collectives, you go the chans.These collectives had been reaching out to you, flooding you with texts, movies, songs, images, a vast wave of media. Working all the time under fake identities to give away anticommodities of a little countercultureindustry. With that fulfilling the idealist idea of the free and useful citizens. Only through the nature of these efforts being collective and collaborative, this theater of autonomy could be kept running, serving as a good example to all little self-managed projects out there that with a little circle of friends you can reach everything you can imagine. Nothing else though. So when the participants got tired of the shooting in the dark acceleration these collective products had taken, all the releases, all the administration, all the fuzz, it went down the spiral of individualization: moving to a aggregation of solo blogs, then moving on to the short notes of twitter, a medium only to well fitting for the self-advertisement. After the autonomous text production of the last two decades, we face a shift to short notes and images. The DIY music scene remains a bit unaffected by this, since the hope to become a money earning musician is still a more powerful cultureindustrial meme than the one of a writer actually getting paid. The recent shifting from myspace to facebook shows although, that everyone-is-an-artist wasn‘t a powerful enough idea. It had to be self-representation, mini-blogging, star-cult, focus on images and other spectacular media instead of text: The hyperindividualist self-representation platform of facebook suited the masses best.For large parts, this big network is filled with representations of static faces. Faces, that are amongst our most subliminal ways of communicating, become our fastest and most plain way of making a statement. Update profile picture, comment, like, like back, update again. The collectivization of communication (lat. communicare = do sth. together) failed, in fact this means the failure of mass art. Todays market of representations means that we exchange images that are valued by statements without consequence, statements whose only value is the one of attention, something we have learned from the advertising process, which has become the key process of culture. This cultural praxis fails to find a history of the human faces. The faces tried to break the boundaries of word and image, they were processes of conscious creation of speaking images for the feelings that words fail to describe. The times of boredom that everyone wanders now, through images that don‘t form related stories anymore, are a result of loosing our dream of creating non-static post-representative playful expressions. To associate the fragile idea of friendship still with the formalized and online media based networks of „friends“ is the dramatic deception that covers this loss. It was the fragile nature of friendship itself that was lost, that what made communication between friends comfortable. The need to be near to others and to be free on ones own at the same time, was dissolved into the mode of being present to each other only through distance. The tools of social media cover up the failure of the social itself. Giving up the idea of the possibility of social relations in which one can give each other the comfort of being together and granting all freedom the same time, is a failure whose results may be not so easy to cover. This is not a judgment about the idea of mass communication per se, but about the idea and modes of social media networks.Coming back to the crews for once: the game of creating a strong collective representation that immediately represents itself was programmed to fail in a society that only uses representations to mark the value of exchangeability. The punk image of a cybergang that somehow evades the mainstream norms and holds up the, now conservative, ideas of elite and underground was the joke that had to choke itself. It was working with the idea of an everchanging collective project that would remain the same all the time in order to avoid to spoil the fans. This planned contradiction of the ultimate hype was not scandalous anymore when the whole web turned to the noncontradictive targeted creation of hypes. What these groups had caricatured since decades was only about to become the online model of creating static ideas that represent dynamic change. The cybergangs were constructed never to end, because as a project, a channel, it was not aiming for something and therefore it couldn‘t fail. Other media collectives of today, opposed to this, want to start because they realize that pictured dynamics has to be the key feature of a successful industrial media product.So from this learning process we gain the perspective of boringness. Being a progressive participant of cyberspace today is not about being elite and surfing the most underground hubs. It’s about surfing on the top of it all, on the big normal junkyard of human creation and picking up the inspirations together. It’s also about reading a book again, following an author’s thought through 400 pages instead of 140 letters. And also in the same sense: doing a website again, a static thing that waits for hundreds to come by, just like a book in the library, instead of giving daily updates to attract some other thousands that need their daily fix of info. Some books still are more actual than the daily news reports (when these were still existing, now the news must be updated all the time). And maybe the lost dreams in these books need an actualisation through a website, instead of just a quotation in the fast streams of actualities. It’s about refusing the entertainment, it’s about finding enlightment in thought processes themselves and not in what forms they have been given for representation. It’s about picking up something dead and giving it life instead of living the perpetual death of the bubble of statements.The non-conformism of today is a real challenge: To deal with something beyond the instantaneous satisfaction of a pseudodynamic static image. The progressive illustrations, thoughts, projects and processes will need you to stumble over them, to search for them, to look closely or even stare at them (not like you stared at the TV since 50 years ago, at youtube since 5 years ago). It needs you to stop worrying about the central hub, website or plattform that you feel like home in. It needs you to stop worrying about any rss-feeds that you only used to feed your identity out of angst in this process of identification, representation and individualisation. Not to learn even more exiting ways of being alone – you can easily find those in the entertainment industry – but to pick up again the idea of communication. Surf around, take off from time to time and play with what and whom you might find.

I`m thinking that the Execs of TEPCO and their enablers at GE and in theJapanese government are ideal candidates for a global citizens initiative tohave them charged with Crimes Against Humanity.All humanity is very likely to suffer the ill-effects of their cravenbehaviour, greed, stupidity and bureacratic incompetence... surely a worseset of behaviours (with a much wider range of victims) than simply the greedand stupidity of most of the current crop being charged with these crimesand a worthwhile extension of the notion I believe (the next candidatesshould surely be the banksters and their enablers among politicians,bureaucrats.Mike Gurstein