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In Defense Of WikiLeaks: Looking At Cables On Pharmaceutical Drugs And Trade PressuresPosted: 9/4/11 02:43 PM EThttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/wikileaks-cables-pharmaceutical-drugs_b_947806.htmlJames LoveDirector, Knowledge Ecology InternationalLike many others, I have spent the past several days combing through countless US Department of State cables. I am primarily looking at the cables that describe our government's efforts to drive up the price of medicine in developing countries. This is an act of state-sponsored violence that is rarely reported by the New York Times, the Guardian or other newspapers that had received early copies of the cables.I am also looking at the news of and the reaction to WikiLeaks' failure to withhold access to cables that include the names of sources of intelligence, putting at risk the lives of the persons so named.While I join those who are greatly saddened by this lapse in security, and aware of the consequences, I am also shocked at the bitter attacks on WikiLeaks, which seem unbalanced, under the circumstances. I think that Glenn Greenwald got things right in Salon, when he wrote yesterday that "a series of unintentional though negligent acts by multiple parties -- WikiLeaks, The Guardian's investigative reporter David Leigh, and Open Leaks' Daniel Domscheit-Berg" led to the release of all documents in unredacted form. Domscheit-Berg, who sought to share in the glory of the WikiLeaks operation, essentially stole a copy of the encrypted files from WikiLeaks, which led, unintentionally, to the circulation of the encrypted version of the unredacted cables. But this by itself would not have created the problem, except for the fact that David Leigh of the Guardian chose to publish the password to the file in a book, last year.This is the passage from David Leigh's book: Assange wrote down on a scrap of paper: ACollectionOfHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#. "That's the password," he said. "But you have to add one extra word when you type it in. You have to put in the Word "Diplomatic' before the word 'History." Can you remember that?"Nigel Parry, in his excellent account of the disclosure, notes that David Leigh remains unrepentant about having published the "secret" password, claiming he did not realize that a password to the encrypted file would be permanent, rather than temporary. And, given the reporting in his own book, it seems obvious that Leigh did not know much about computers. But at that point, as Greenwald and others have noted, after a series of mistakes by lots of people, "virtually every government's intelligence agencies would have had access to these documents as a result of these events, but the rest of the world -- including journalists, whistle-blowers and activists identified in the documents -- did not." So, WikiLeaks finally released everything, and I think this was the right thing to do.Is there blame to go around? Yes, plenty. The US Department of State allowed someone to leak its cables to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks allowed someone to leak those same cables in encrypted form, and a reporter from the Guardian thought it would be good literature to publish the password to the encrypted files.What else was happening during this period? US political figures were calling for Assange to be assassinated, or thrown in jail. Every major financial institution was blocking financial transitions to WikiLeaks. Domscheit-Berg and others were carrying out what increasingly looked like a personal vendetta to smear WikiLeaks. The Swedish government put out an Interpol red alert charging Assange with rape. And, probably lots of other things were going on to destabilize the WikiLeaks operation. This was, I am certain, more pressure than most of us have experienced.In the end, what have the WikiLeaks cables given the public? For those who care about such things, we now have a much clearer and documented view of the actual policies carried out by the US government, and also by many other governments, whose actions were described in the cables.The Arab Spring may be the most visible and important consequence of the WikiLeaks cables. WikiLeaks did not by itself cause this social movement, but WikiLeaks did a great deal to stimulate action and to lend creditably to critics of the regimes, and for this, WikiLeaks certainly deserves credit.My own areas of expertise includes trade policy, as it relates to intellectual property rights. Here the cables provide an unprecedented wealth of information about the Bush and Obama Administration policies over roughly a nine year period, ending in February 2010.Even before the most recent dump of documents, were were able to locate 240 cables detailing U.S. government efforts to expand controversial intellectual property rights in the evidence that new medicines are safe and effective -- an IPR rights that works interdependently from patents granted on inventions. This is a topic that is obscure to most non-experts, and completely unreported by the mainstream press, but is extremely important in the eyes of public health groups. To see what our government does, why it is important, and how aggressive is U.S. advocacy in shaping another country's laws, take a look at these cables on Jordan or Guatemala, for just a few data points.The U.S. government also constantly pressured developing countries on drug pricing. Even when US government officials knew, and wrote, that high drug prices would undermine access, they conspired to undertake all sorts of pressure to get policies favorable to the drug companies. Read some of these cables and then ask yourself: what this would feel like if you were reading about a foreign government telling us what to do?Not counting the latest disclosures, from May 2001 to February 2010, the Department of State published 23 cables per week mentioning pharmaceuticals. A typical but shocking example of this was the U.S. campaign to undermine legislation and reforms to make medicines more affordable in the Philippines. In one striking quote from a September 2009 cable setting out opposition to price controls, Kristie Kenney, then the United States Ambassador to the Philippines (currently Ambassador to Thailand), acknowledges there is a strong rationale for the Philippines to cut drug prices: "Prescription medication prices in the Philippines are the second highest in Asia (next to Japan), in a country where about a third of the population subsists below the official poverty line. In this instance, some multinational companies failed to recognize that cheaper medicine for the masses is an emotional and political issue."Then there is this May 14, 2007 cable from Ralph Boyce, then the Ambassador to Thailand, where he seems elated that Abbott Laboratories was withdrawing drug registrations for seven products, including among others, a version of a US government funded AIDS drugs that could be used without refrigeration

Hello,I just noticed the European Commission has a consultation running on'scientific information in the digital age' till 9 September:http://ec.europa.eu/research/consultations/scientific_information/consultation_en.htm<http://ec.europa.eu/research/consultations/scientific_information/consultation_en.htm>It concerns access to scientific publications and research data. One ofthe key discussions is if EU-financed research should be availablethrough open access.See also the earlier Commission Communication on Scientific informationin the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation (2007) -http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2007:0056:FIN:EN:PDFThis survey should feed in a new Communication on this subject.Seen the discussion about access to scientific publications on thenettime-list, I suppose this can interest several of you.But do not wait too long, it only lasts till 9 September.Best wishes,Hans

«Nowadays artistic practice should not be a modernistic practice, itshouldn’t be a feticism on matter and form which respond to previous matterand form. It should deal with actual cultural production. We try to produceculture progressively.»http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/outofink/?p=399

Please support the Yes Lab!Dear Friends,The Yes Men need your help.For years, we’ve been tossing our little buckets of water on the blazes of social injustice. Last year, we decided to form a bucket brigade: a system (we’re calling it the Yes Lab) to help others do the kind of funny, headline-grabbing actions we’re known for.It worked. In its embryonic first year, the Yes Lab helped launch nearly a dozen activist media campaigns (see below), garnering a total of 4.5 metric tons of media hype. It even attracted threatening legal letters (frames not included) from five coal companies, one oil transport company, one utility, France, and GE! (Seriously, GE, no one meant to knock $3.5 billion off your share price. But no one’s sorry, either.)Given this proof of concept, the Yes Lab is now (almost) ready for prime time.It’s got a brand-new home at New York University, complete with plenty of space, a big supportive crew, lots of eager collaborators, and a structure that will let it tackle five or so projects at once. (If you’re in New York, come to our launch Sept. 14 and see how you can get involved!) It’s also got a lovely new website that will soon have a number of fancy tools to help hundreds more carry out or join up with Yes Lab projects.There’s only one hitch. We’ve got the venue, the participants, and (soon) the tools. But we’re short on cash for the projects themselves— which, of course, are the entire point of the Yes Lab. That’s why today, we’re asking for $10,000 on Kickstarter, to hire project managers and cover expenses for projects that don’t have other funding. It's all the Yes Lab needs to become a fully-functioning mischief machine.OK, you got the point of this email: the Yes Lab needs money. So here, without further ado, is a summary of last year's mischief, accomplished by just a few dozen folks. Imagine what hundreds will be able to do!General Electric Short-CircuitedActivists US Uncut, with a little help from the Yes Lab, sent out a press release announcing that General Electric would repay the $3.2 billion tax credit they received last year despite massive profits. The announcement was momentarily picked up as true by the AP, and the market, unable to leave a good deed unpunished, responded by knocking $3.5 billion off GE’s share price. The result was massive, enlightening coverage of GE’s tax-cheating ways on everything from local TV to CNN.What the heck is an Asthmaze?A small group of activists wondered how a big coal company might address the fact that coal causes childhood asthma. The result: “Coal Cares,” a faux greenwashing campaign in which Peabody Coal tried to “make asthma cool” with free themed inhalers to kids living within 200 miles of a coal plant. The site, taken as real by many, quickly went massively viral, which didn’t amuse Peabody one bit but did help publicize coal as a major public health issue. And as it happened, in the week following the launch of Coal Cares, a real-life attempt by the coal industry to mislead children was defeated by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Hooray!Beat Up On Chevron? We Agree.Chevron decided to launch a $90 million greenwashing campaign with a street-art aesthetic, and was stupid enough to approach street artists for help. One of them, Cesar Maxit, promptly leaked Chevron’s plans to Amazon Watch. The Yes Lab helped Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) release a much more honest version of Chevron’s campaign just hours ahead of the “real” McCoy, generating a deluge of media coverage. Hundreds of user submissions and some amazing videos from FunnyOrDie further derailed Chevron’s $90 million lie, infuriating Chevron even more—though not quite as much as the $18 billion judgment against them in Ecuador, which Chevron has vowed never to pay. The fight goes on.Coal Burns Wealthy Neighborhood. Neighbors Nonplussed.Students from Columbia College in Chicago came together with Greenpeace and the Yes Lab to create the illusion that a new coal plant was planned in their city—but that instead of going in a poor neighborhood (like the two coal plants that already exist in Chicago), this one would be built in a rich one. The plans got a rise out of residents and the media, and helped focus attention on Chicago’s much- needed Clean Power Ordinance.Canada was the victim of two Yes-Lab-assisted actions, both targeting the Alberta Tar Sands, the England-sized mess that has made Canada the worst per-capita carbon emitter on earth.Hair Clogs PipelineIn the first Canadian action, a group of activists had Enbridge—who are aiming to build a massive pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands through pristine wilderness to the British Columbia coast—announce “My Hair Cares,” a crackpot plan to sop up inevitable spills along the pipeline route with the hair of volunteers. The resulting press publicized Enbridge’s botched spill cleanup in Michigan, and let Canadians know how stupid it can be to let oil flow through your watershed.More and More MordorIn the second Canada-centered action, a group of students, working with Greenpeace, launched a surreal campaign, complete with infomercials, cell phone videos, a tweeting campaign, a Facebook page, etc. to make folks in Canada think that the new Hobbit film was saving money on Mordor scenes by shooting them in the Tar Sands. The “news” went quickly viral and helped to cement the Canadian Government’s reputation as top-shelf planet-killing bastards.Canadian War Room DefeatedAnother Canadian action on the same subject took place way back in December 2009, before the Yes Lab really existed—but it happened according to the same model, so the Yes Lab is claiming it. Read about it here!France Remains OffensiveAn ad-hoc group called CRIME (Committee for the Reimbursement of Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti) announced, on France’s behalf, the repayment of €17 billion to Haiti in relief aid—a payment equal to that which France extorted from Haiti in 1804 as a condition for their independence. Because of France’s ham-fisted reaction, the story received global attention, alerting many to the deep colonial roots of Haiti’s problems. The media attention was also used to launch a campaign that further built pressure on France to do the right thing.People Bite AppleIt’s a bummer that our shiny tech toys are made using the blood of people—or, more precisely, the “conflict minerals” that play a big role in the violence and instability of Central Africa. So a group of students, together with Friends of the Congo, produced a fake Apple ad campaign touting a “Conflict-Free iPhone,” and calling for the citizen’s arrest of John Paulson, whose company finances some of the worst extraction practices. The project received hundreds of media hits worldwide.Unnatural GasStudents and local activists launched a campaign to cover Manhattan with stickers warning residents that if a ban on hydraulic fracturing is not extended in New York State, they’ll soon need to test for their water’s safety by trying to light it on fire. The project communicated viscerally just what’s at stake if gas companies are allowed to drill in New York’s aquifer, as the companies are demanding.Shell Game Uncovers Oil SlickIn the Hague, activists impersonated oil giant Shell and publicly apologized for devastating the Niger Delta each year with oil spills larger than that of the Exxon Valdez. The action generated hundreds of stories—all highlighting Shell’s atrocious record.Phew. Not bad for something that still hasn’t launched!Meanwhile, as long as we're writing a long breezy email, we have other news too:Tim DeChristopherTim DeChristopher’s amazing story continues to inspire a movement. He’s currently living in a federal prison, in a tiny room he was offered in exchange for single-handedly saving hundreds of thousands of acres of gorgeous Utah wilderness from destruction at the hands of Big Oil and Gas. Listen to Tim speak about why he did what he did, and what he’s asking of you—and then make up your mind.CointelCOCSpeaking of small rooms, we are still, almost two years later, waiting for the judge to rule whether to throw out the US Chamber of Commerce’s lawsuit against us. Meanwhile, the Chamber’s lawyers—the same ones who are apparently suing us—recently made big news for dirty tricks not seen since the days of CointelPro. We almost hope we have a chance to address these creeps in court. Meanwhile, we’ll have to be content trying to express our anger in other ways.Yes Men RevoltingOur latest film, The Yes Men Fix the World, didn’t. It won the Berlin Audience Award and the UK’s most prestigious prize in documentary film, was released theatrically in the U.S. and 40 other countries, and was shown on HBO and all kinds of other TV. But it simply did not fix the world—which is why our new film will be called The Yes Men Are Revolting. It’ll feature many of the Yes-Lab-assisted actions above, as well as conversations with funny people who have overthrown tyrannies worldwide. It’ll be funny and watchable, and will use the word “revolution” quite a bit. Isn’t it time? The rich (except for Warren Buffett) are not getting nicer, and our leaders seem less and less able to think about us. So let’s say it: “re-vo-lu-tion.” Goooood.Finally, huge, huge thanks to all of you who helped make the long list of Yes Lab-supported hijinks happen. We believe humor can have a role in shaking off tyranny, whether of one crazy dictator or of a whole bad idea. Please keep active in whatever way you can, and if you can, please pledge to our campaign. THANKS!!Gratefully yours,The Yes Men

[What Mickey Mouse is to the US, Beatles are to Europe......]EU regulators vote to extend music copyright for another 20 yearsBy Mark Brown08 September 11http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/08/eu-copyright-extensionEU regulators in Brussels have voted to approve a controversial directive that would see musicians retain copyright over their sound recordings for a further 20 years -- a move that appeases ageing rock legends, but has plenty of opposition elsewhere.Currently, as the UK's Intellectual Property Office explains, "if a song is recorded then copyright in this sound recording lasts for 50 years from the end of the year in which it was made." Record labels and musicians have lobbied to extend this to 70 (or, in some cases, 95) years.This doesn't affect composers, though. Those who write the music retain copyright for as long as they live and a further 70 years beyond that -- the same as authors, film directors and screenwriters.The proposed extension is sometimes called the "Cliff Richard Law" or "The Beatles Extension", because both 60s-era artists are seeing the copyright on their recordings expire at the moment and both Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney have campaigned for copyright term extensions.The Who singer Roger Daltry -- another campaigner for term extensions -- told BBC News in 2007 that thousands of artists had "no pensions and rely on royalties," and "they are not asking for a handout, just a fair reward for their creative endeavours."But a government-backed, independent review of copyright doesn't agree. A 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property said, "The European Commission should retain the length of protection on sound recordings and performers' rights at 50 years"In its conclusion, the review says, "it is our view that a term extension will likely result in a net loss to UK society as a whole", arguing that while retrospective extensions would line the pockets of the largest record producers, money to individual performers would be minimal and the cost to the consumer would be massive.But that report has mattered little, as regulators in the EU have given the thumbs up to extending copyright terms to 70 years. On 12 September 2011, a Council of Ministers will have the final say and if they rubber-stamp the changes, member states will be required to write them into law by 2014.And that means no public domain Beatles works for us to mash up on YouTube for another two decades. Damn.

For those interested, the Declaration is open for endorsement.http://infojustice.org/washington-declarationThere is still time to claim a coveted spot in the top 500.Cheers,JoeJoe KaraganisVice PresidentThe American Assembly

Press Release,September 7th, 2011. Linz.Face to Facebookhttp://www.face-to-facebook.netStealing 1 million Facebook profiles, filtering them withface-recognition software and posting them without user authorizationon a custom-made dating website, sorted by the characteristics oftheir facial expressions.A project by Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico.The awesome news:The Face to Facebook project won a prestigious Award of Distinction atPrix Ars Electronica 2011 in the "Interactive Art" category.Furthermore the work was also on display in the related Cyberarts 2011exhibition, which took place at the OK Centrum, in Linz (Austria).Face to Facebook presentation, September 5, Prix Ars Electronica Forum 2011:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZKW0ArCmmkFace to Facebook installation, "Cyberarts 2011" exhibition, OK Center:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_ars.phpLegal update (new downloadable files):We have published the entire legal correspondence between our lawyerand Facebook's legal team so far:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/legal.phpSeptember 5th is our response to the allegations contained inFacebook's letter of April 7th. Our lawyer answered all theirquestions precisely, pointing out Facebook's vulnerability (thewebsite did not have any anti-scraping protection for years), theinconsistency of the accusations of criminal violations (we didn'tbreak security measures) and our right to document our art project onthe website face-to-facebook.net.The letter ends: "Moreover, given the recent controversy and questionsregarding the legality of Facebook's own "facial recognition" software("Facebook 'Face Recognition' Feature Draws Privacy Scrutiny",Bloomberg News, July 8 2011), we are surprised that Facebook wouldcontinue to aggressively pursue a nonprofit conceptual art projectthat illustrated the risks of sharing data on social networkingwebsites and wrapped up long ago."The social experiment (new documents):We published the personal reactions that we have received so far. Theanonymous reactions were obtained through contact forms on thelovely-faces.comand face-to-facebook.net websites. They includedresponses from a variety of people; some upset, some confused and somevery enthusiastic. Check them out here:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/social_experiment.phpThe Global Mass Media Hack Performance (new downloadable files):The almost overwhelming press reactions have been archived in the formof screenshots. The whole archive of over one thousand global mediareviews (still yet to be completed) can be downloaded from:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1527685/face-to-facebook/f2f_press_coverage_screenshots.zipExhibitions and lectures:In the next months we have the following lectures scheduled:* 28 September, Rewire Conference, lecture, Liverpool - UK* 13 October, Unsound Festival, lecture, Krakow - Poland* 5-9 December, Psychoeconomy!, lecture, Seville, SpainIn the last few months Face to Facebook was included in sevenexhibitions and we made ten presentations around Europe and beyond.Here are some of the installation pictures:* Origin at Ars Electronica Festival 2011 in Linz:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_ars.php* REALITYFLOWHACKED at Aksioma Project Space in Ljubljana:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_lub.php* ENTER | DATAPOLIS at 5th Art|tech Biennale in Prague:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_enter.php* Chilling Effects at Tetem in Enschede:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_tetem.php* File PAI Festival 2011 in Sao Paulo:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_file.php* Data cuerpos y retratos compartidos at De Centro Fundación Telefónica in Lima:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_lima.php* RESPONSE:ABILITY at Transmediale Festival 2011 in Berlin:http://www.face-to-facebook.net/face-to-facebook/face-to-facebook_tm.phpThanks for your attention.Paolo & Alessandro

dear friends,if you happen to be around, please consider attending the officialpresentation ofLeaf++, augmented reality for leavesatISEA 2011 in IstanbulDEOL 2011 in HelsinkiMindtrek 2011 in TampereLeaf++ is a research project by FakePress Publishing, Art is Open Source andthe University of Rome "La Sapienza" in which an ubiquitous social andperformative ecosystem is built on leaves using augmented reality andcomputer vision techniques.In Leaf++ a collaborative environment available on mobile devices allowspeople to take pictures of leaves in natural environments and to use them totrain a distributed computer vision system which allows to visuallyrecognize the various types of leaves.Leaves in the environment thus become naturally available markers that canbe used to disseminate knowledge and information: text, sounds, videos andinteractive experiences can be attached to the various types of leaves andbecome instantly accessible to everyone using Leaf++.We are presenting several use cases for this system:- a knowledge environment through which information about plants can beattached to plants themselves and accessed through augmented reality, thusrealizing a tool for education and scientific research- an application dedicated to the concept of Third Landscape defined byGilles Clément, in which augmented reality is used to train our vision intospotting, recognizing and gaining awareness of the interstitial gardensdisseminated in our cities, their importance for biodiversity and their rolein urban ecology; Leaf++ also acts as a realtime emergent mapper of theThird Landscape, allowing us to research the evolution of plant ecosystemsin our cities;- a tool for urban awareness focusing on the idea that plants have longbecome part of a peripheral part of the vision of urban dwellers, who havelost contact with the knowledge associated with them, includingseasonalities, uses, traditions and origins;- a disseminated social network in which user interactions take place "onleaves";- a tool for artistic performance, in which the computer vision systemtrained by the ubiquitous community to recognize leaves allows performers toactually "play leaves" in an "augmented reality concert for leaves";- a series of experiments in which the possibility to use the visual profileof leaves to generate other media is used to create solutions to aid peoplewith disabilities, for example by being able to recognize leaves by hearingthem;All these use cases will be presented under various forms at the variousvenues and publications: a presentation across arts and sciences at ISEA; adescription of the possibilities to create ubiquitous social applicationsusing this kind of technology, at Mindtrek; a workshop/performance at DEOLto present the possibilities for education, knowledge and performance.All the software is Open Source and is distributed under a GPL license byFakePress Publishing and Art is Open Source.The research has been performed by Salvatore Iaconesi, Luca Simeone, OrianaPersico and Cary Hendrickson, with substantial support provided by the longlist of organizations, collectives, events and publications which you willfind listed at the project's website.We are currently searching to extend the Leaf++ team, to further explore ourresearch directions, and to apply these technologies to new ones. If you arepart of a research group which is interested in these themes (augmentedreality and computer vision technologies used at the intersection of artsand sciences to create ubiquitous publishing, knowledge/narrativesdissemination and natural interaction experiences) please feel free tocontact us.More information is constantly updated on the project page here:http://www.artisopensource.net/category/projects/leaf-plusplus/all the best,xDxD

>> moddr_ installs "Subroutine" in current exhibition at NIMK >> on "the Art of Hacking"...Rotterdam-based moddr_ is showing works by Birgit Bachler, Tim Schwartz, Willem van Eck, Kim Asendorf, Loud Objects, Dennis de Bel, Travis Goodspeed and Philipp W. Teister + the opening performance "Catchy" by Lovid from NYC, tonight!more info at http://nimk.nlmoddr_ is a Rotterdam-based media/hacker/co-working space andDIY/FOSS/OSHW fablab for artgeeks, and part of the artvenue WORM;Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation.Since being founded in 2007 by alumni of the Piet Zwart Institute,department of "Networked Media", they host and promote young local andinternational talent with a focus on the artistic modification('modding') of contemporary and emerging technology.moddr_ represents a critical attitude in our 'new'-medialandscape through projects like the "Web2.0 Suicide Machine", and more recently with the "BINLO♥ER" project by resident-artist Philipp W. Teister.http://moddr.netWORM is a Rotterdam based artist collective, a venue and a workspace for music, film and new media. Born under the stars of punk, dada, fluxus, situationism and futurism, WORM has grown to a tenacious organisation that combines the ‘Do-It-Yourself’ mentality of it’s ancestors with ultra-pragmatism and good bookkeeping. The output of WORM is film, radio, concerts, performances, web-projects, installations, an array of tactile media and a 24/7 webstation.WORM focuses on OpenSource, re-cycled material, Superuse, seriousness and fun.http://worm.orgplz>fwd and hope to see you there,:w!# 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

HalloTo whom is coming to Isea2011 Istanbuljust a last updating on ISEA before the beginning the 14 september.I guess you all received updatings from ISEA.But it seems a bit crowded and a very large thing, difficult to find your way out, so i will send you some news again.I will be there from 13 till 20 presenting the 17 september 1pm - 2,30pm one of the panels:"East & West" ???EAST VERSUS WEST??? The great development of digital media in Far East and more generally in the non/western (Europe/USA) cultures challenges the early asset of the digital cultures. What???s happening today? What???s the ???state of the art??? of relationships, exchanges between East & West, and differences in the digital global society?BEST AND SEE YOU IN ISTANBULLorenzo TaiutiMy phone number is 0039 339 5692752Registration to the Festival it's in Sabanci Centre. This is the actual place where panels are:Sabanci CenterLocation: Sabanci Center Room 2Location: Sabanci Center, LeventChair: Prof. Lorenzo Taiuti???EAST??? & ???WEST??????EAST VERSUS WEST??? The great development of digital media in Far East and more generally in the non/western (Europe/USA) cultures challenges the early asset of the digital cultures. What???s happening today? What???s the ???state of the art??? of relationships, exchanges between East & West, and differences in the digital global society?Dates: Saturday, 17 September, 2011 - 13:00 - 14:30Chair Person: Lorenzo TaiutiPresenters: Ekmel ErtanPresenters: Dia HamedPresenters: Venzha ChristPresenters: Willem VelthovenLocation: Sabanci Center Room 2Location: Sabanci Center, LeventWeb address and other info you could use :http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/east-westor http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/participants-presentersto name Lorenzo Taiuti Center AdresSabanc?? Center 4.Levent 34330, ??stanbul - T??rkiye Telefon+ 90 (0212) 385 80 80 Faks+ 90 (0212) 385 88 88The registration will start in the morning at 7:30 am on September 14, 2011. From September 15, 2011 the registration desk will be open at 8:00 am in the morning. Please bring with you a photo ID in order to gain access to the Sabanci Center and be registered.How to reach the Sabanci Center? Please look at this video: http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/location/sabanci-towersThe metro stop closest to the Sabanci Center is 4.Levent, which is a short walk away.

<http://www.benhammersley.com/2011/09/my-speech-to-the-iaac/> Last night I gave a speech to a meeting of the [10]Information Assurance Advisory Council, the UK's talking shop for government, law enforcement, security services, and private companies around the issues of cybersecurity and the like. The whole thing was under the Chatham House rule, so it's hard to write about, and most of the audience could have me killed. But here's the speech I gave. As I say at the beginning, it's very rare that I give a speech verbatim like this, but I had some very specific points to make. -- "This evening I am going to be break a habit of a lifetime, and use a prepared speech. Ordinarily, I come up on stage and have slides, and videos, and talk about geopolitics and killer robots and the future of the web. But tonight I've brought a written speech because I want to make a lot of points very carefully, and because you're all rather scary. The Q&A afterwards will be more relaxed. So. So, Hi. As Sir Edmund said, I'm a journalist, and technologist, and a writer and advisor to people. I'm a knowledge worker. I manipulate symbols for a living. To use the old phrase, I'm a futurist, and as the Californian thinker on such things, Kevin Kelly, recently wrote, Futurists have a dilemma, he said, as "Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable." So I won't be making that many predictions tonight. You'd never believe me. Instead I'll try to describe the world as I see it from my own experience. In the words of the author William Gibson, "the future is already here, just not evenly distributed". I'm going to try to fix that a little before the dinner gets cold. Now, earlier this year I give a speech in Geneva, where I painted a picture - perhaps an unfair one - of the world being split down the middle. Those who grew up before the cold war, and those who grew up after. My theme that day was that the world is currently run by a generation whose upbringing has left them intellectually unable to be deal with modernity. This isn't their fault. For someone to be in charge today, they're more than likely to be in their 50s or 60s. Which means that when the Berlin Wall fell they were most likely already steeped in an intellectual tradition that had bedded in quite far. But what happened after 1989 was, as we all know, devastating to that tradition. The end of the bipolar world - the end of history as Fukuyama had it - and the end of the relevance of 50 years of political and military planning. Instead, things got weird. Germany was reunited in 1990, and a few weeks later, on Christmas Day, the first web server was turned on. Nearly 21 years later, and the internet has destroyed and rebuilt everything it has touched. Hierarchies have been under attack from networks for 20 years now. History certainly didn't end, much to everyone's disappointment. We all know this. Everyone in this room has seen it happen, and from beautiful vantagepoints. Indeed, everyone in this room is probably of the generation of the people I'm talking about. You're all the same age, and upbringing, as the people that the digital generations are so upset with. Don't take it personally, but your peers are the sorts of baby-boomers that have been entrusted with the future, while they are obviously so deeply confused by the present. That's fighting talk, I know, but looking around, I think I might be ok this evening. You're all quite smart. Now, personally, I'm one of those terrible half-breeds. I'm 35, and so sort of third-digital-native, third-pathfinder. And despite the silly moustache and the tattoos, I'm also third-establishment - The Times, the Guardian, the BBC, Downing Street this afternoon, the FCO next week. UN fellowship, and the odd visiting lectureship, RSA, RGS and Chatham House. I may not look like, or even be, a good establishment man, but I can fake it. So, I've given myself a job. I've taken it upon myself to be the translation layer. The guy who tells the older guys what's going on with the younger guys, and explains to the younger guys why the weird decisions the older guys are coming up with are being made. And I look around here and I see people who do the same thing. This is good. In the time of revolution, and believe me this is a revolution - easily on a par with the renaissance, or the Enlightenment - the translator has a very important role to play. The communicator, the person who makes the facts palatable to all sides, is the only conduit through which real change can be made. And in this room today, there are nearly 100 of us. So this evening, let me help us remind ourselves of the facts at hand: As it's only through remembering the fundamental truths that we can really do our jobs. So let's start at the basics, and work on up. First. Moore's law. You all know it: the rule of the thumb that has computing power doubling for the same price every 18 months. It makes planning really difficult. Mostly because people don't see its relentlessness. For example, a two term Prime Minister today would end his term of office with an iPhone 64 times as powerful as the one he won the election with. (Or the same thing, but 1/64th of the price.) His policies, therefore, need to written with that future in mind, not the present. Good luck with that. Another example: a civil servant only gets to do really good stuff in their 40s. If they'd joined up straight out of Oxford, by the time they get a big chair, their desktop machine will be 1000s of times as powerful as when they joined. The same goes for storage, for network speed, and so on, as you know. This is all obvious for us, yes, but Truth Number One, is that anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen. We have to tell people this. Fundamental Truth Number two is that the internet is the dominant platform for life in the 21st century. We can bitch about it, but Facebook, Twitter, Google and all the rest are, in many ways the very definition of modern life in the democratic west. For many, a functioning internet with freedom of speech, and a good connection to the social networks of our choice is a sign not just of modernity, but of civilisation itself. This is not because people are "addicted to the video screen", or have some other patronising psychological diagnosis. But because the internet is where we live. It's where we do business, where we meet, where we fall in love. It is the central platform for business, culture, and personal relationships. There's not much else left. To misunderstand the centrality of these services to today's society is to make a fundamental error. The internet isn't a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life. And this way we live online brings us to the Fundamental Truth Number Three: That technology changes our expectations of each other. I collect these changes. I really like them. There are lots. A good example is about phone numbers. You might remember a time - I kinda do myself - where a phone number represented a place. That might be a hallway in a house, or a desk in an office, but it was a place - and there was a understanding that someone might not be at that place when you called. Weirdly, you used to be able to call people and find them in a strange state of being "not in". Schrödinger would have proud. Now, of course, a phone number is a person. If you call my number, whereever I am on the planet, more or less, I will answer the phone. Tomorrow I'll be in Amsterdam, and Friday I'll be in Athens, but that doesn't matter. Call me. I'll answer, partly because you all seem nice, but also because not answering one's phone has gained a completely new social significance over the past few years. If you're "not in" now, something may well be up. The point is that this switch of the meaning of phone numbers, from place to person, has created a complete change in social behaviour. New technology does that. It creates new norms. A newer example is that young children consider televisions to be broken. Why doesn't the touchscreen work? Why can't you pause things? Where, if we're being old fashioned, is the mouse? No Angry Birds means it's broken. These are gross examples, but there are more subtle ones. Let's take opinion. In about ten short years, we've gone from there being only a specialist class of people who could have opinions, to it being a standard feature of modern life. Ten years ago, your verdict about the meal in front of us could only have been shared with a few - your neighbours, your friends, your partner. The only opinion that mattered, that would have travelled, would be the professional critic's, distributed in print. The same goes for theatre, or television, music, or our views on the Prime Minister. Now, of course, there is a place to review everything. We assume that every meal we eat, every hotel bed we sleep in, every piece of culture we consume, is something we can have an opinion on, and have it be given the same importance as an opinion from anyone else. There are rating sites online for you to rate just about anything, legal or not, and the sheer weight of amateur reviews outdoes the professionals for authority most of the time. It's another example of a network beating a hierachy, and it's all pervasive in the national discourse. We are used to having our opinions matter, and so now, at the one end, politics is more shrill - more rabble-like - and at the other end, we have rioting. Indeed, a small part of the trigger for the London riots can be understood as the gap between the respect given to peoples's opinions by the internet, and the complete disrespect given by the government and the ruling elites. In this way, we are undergoing a renegotiation of the social contract because of the internet, and the data up on it. We have become more empowered, more self-actualised. We know what we create simply by existing, and we know its value. So, more than our opinions, we are used to, in fact, having our data matter. Don't be surprised at my meaning of "the social contract" here. People are more sophisticated in their understanding of media than you may think. We know what it means when a service is given to us for free: it means we're the ones who are being sold. And that's cool. The handwringing about teenagers exposing themselves on Facebook is based on the idea that they don't know why Facebook is so keen on that happening. Far from it. We understand the value of our data, we have done the sums and we judged ourselves in profit. If advertisers want to know my preferred brand of whisky, or be allowed access to my travel schedule, and these disclosures gets me Facebook for free, with all its associated social utility and delights, then fine. Fair play. The same for Tesco Clubcard, or Amazon recommendations, or whatever. We sell our data in return for a better world, and we do understand what we're doing. But this leads us to the next big social change. Just as we expect to be able to express an opinion - there is a growing expectation of being able to access all the other data in our world. Let's take architecture and public transport. I can easily monitor the public transport in London from my phone - and it actively changes the way I use the city. I make routing decisions in realtime, based on realtime data from public services. This is not just simply cool. It's a expectation I have to be able to do it. After all, I'm entirely used to giving people my data to improve their systems. I'm simply now expecting people to give me their data to improve my life. The freeing of public data over the past ten years has been driven by geeks, it's true, but their arguments were merely foreshadowing a general shift in the mindset of the population at large. The you-show-me-yours-I'm-already-showing-you-mine deal is the next big movement. Nevermind government league tables: we want everything. We expect everything. And we expect it on our own terms. I've been working through the social evolution of these technologies in this humanistic way for a simple reason. I need to make the point that this technology isn't a removable part of life. It is ever more interwoven both into the practicalities of our lives, as well as our very mindsets. Mindsets are good to talk about. You're all security people, and next week is the anniversary of the event which made security people completely lose their minds: 9/11. - Well, just as I'm empowered by the internet to be a restaurant critic, I'm also empowered to be critic of national security. So bear with me - The government, and the security industry, in this country and elsewhere, have spent the past ten years really blowing it. Time and time again there has been a demonstration of security theatre, or overreaction, or overstatement of the risks in hand. From liquids in airports to invading Iraq, no one believes this stuff any more. While there is no doubt that religious extremism, whatever the religion, has presented a risk to life, that threat has been so overstated as to render any other warnings, on any other subject - including the one in hand today - completely impotent. A world where Al-Qaeda can be described by the government as an existential threat to the UK, when it is patently not, is a world where warnings about updating your virus scanner because of Chinese cyberwarriors or Russian mafia will be ignored as yet more paranoid security bullshit. Despite the fact that it probably isn't. What's worse, is that the phrase "security precautions" has become a synonym for "pointless annoying thing to do because politicians are either stupid or oppresive". This is bad. But it's a very common belief. The speeches given after the London riots, about closing social networks down in times of national emergency were triply stupid in this respect. 1. They disregarded the centrality of those services in people's lives, which made people look out of touch with modernity. 2. They were technically dubious (which pretty much everyone who would have been affected well knew), 3. They reinforced the impression you get when you go through an airport, that this is all self-justification. In total it both makes one both feel less secure, and be less secure. Your challenge, then - your challenge as an industry - is to communicate the risks and threats we face, and the measures and trade-offs we can make, in a way that removes yourselves entirely from the framing of the past ten years. The internet equivalent of making everyone take our shoes off at the airport won't work. In fact, given that the efficacy of Richard Reid as a terrorist didn't depend on his being able to detonate his shoe at all - as arguably the downing of that flight would not have lead to the years of airport hassle and distress for millions of people - and simply in using our own overreaction against us, I'd be willing to take a bet that this sort of judo move would be something Anonymous would do, as they say, simply for the lulz. So we need to work on ways to communicate these issues both up and down. It's a design problem. A branding problem. It needs skills you find in advertising, or luxury goods, or pop music, not in politics or the military or espionage. And we need to educate. Not only in schools - though as Eric Schmidt of Google pointed out last week in Edinburgh, the state of IT education in this country, from primary school on up, is shameful - but also our political class. How many policy debates have you heard, from security to copyright reform, that have been predicated on technical ignorance? This is a threat to national prosperity itself far more severe than any terrorist organisation could ever be. It remains, in too many circles, a matter of pride not to be able to programme the video recorder. That's pathetic. But more to the point, we have to decide what sort of country we want to live in. As the 21st century sees us move every aspect of our lives onto the internet, the need for robust security measures is very great. But those security measures come with their own risks, and we need to draw a line in the sand. What are we protecting, if the protection itself means we become, in some small way, a police state? Despite the 9/11 anniversary, AQ isn't an existential threat. Neither, really, are the Chinese. But your industry, and the authorities you advise, might be. Not through malice, but simply through not understanding the place in society that data has taken. So my message to you this evening, is simple. While we have Q&A over pudding, while you have your day tomorrow, and every day from then on, remember that we are living through the greatest revolution ever seen in the potential for human achievement and human connection. We can ruin it at birth, or we can nurture it. And one day, in decades to come, we'll be asked about these years, and what we did at the birth of the internet era. The decisions you make today and tomorrow, will be the answer you will give to your grandchildren. Make it an answer you can be proud of. I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This ColumnBy STEVE LOHRhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/computer-generated-articles-are-gaining-traction.html“WISCONSIN appears to be in the driver’s seat en route to a win, as it leads 51-10 after the third quarter. Wisconsin added to its lead when Russell Wilson found Jacob Pedersen for an eight-yard touchdown to make the score 44-3 ... . ”Those words began a news brief written within 60 seconds of the end of the third quarter of the Wisconsin-U.N.L.V. football game earlier this month. They may not seem like much — but they were written by a computer.The clever code is the handiwork of Narrative Science, a start-up in Evanston, Ill., that offers proof of the progress of artificial intelligence — the ability of computers to mimic human reasoning.The company’s software takes data, like that from sports statistics, company financial reports and housing starts and sales, and turns it into articles. For years, programmers have experimented with software that wrote such articles, typically for sports events, but these efforts had a formulaic, fill-in-the-blank style. They read as if a machine wrote them.But Narrative Science is based on more than a decade of research, led by two of the company’s founders, Kris Hammond and Larry Birnbaum, co-directors of the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University, which holds a stake in the company. And the articles produced by Narrative Science are different.“I thought it was magic,” says Roger Lee, a general partner of Battery Ventures, which led a $6 million investment in the company earlier this year. “It’s as if a human wrote it.”Experts in artificial intelligence and language are also impressed, if less enthralled. Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, says, “The quality of the narrative produced was quite good,” as if written by a human, if not an accomplished wordsmith. Narrative Science, Mr. Etzioni says, points to a larger trend in computing of “the increasing sophistication in automatic language understanding and, now, language generation.”The innovative work at Narrative Science raises the broader issue of whether such applications of artificial intelligence will mainly assist human workers or replace them. Technology is already undermining the economics of traditional journalism. Online advertising, while on the rise, has not offset the decline in print advertising. But will “robot journalists” replace flesh-and-blood journalists in newsrooms?The leaders of Narrative Science emphasized that their technology would be primarily a low-cost tool for publications to expand and enrich coverage when editorial budgets are under pressure. The company, founded last year, has 20 customers so far. Several are still experimenting with the technology, and Stuart Frankel, the chief executive of Narrative Science, wouldn’t name them. They include newspaper chains seeking to offer automated summary articles for more extensive coverage of local youth sports and to generate articles about the quarterly financial results of local public companies.“Mostly, we’re doing things that are not being done otherwise,” Mr. Frankel says.The Narrative Science customers that are willing to talk do fit that model. The Big Ten Network, a joint venture of the Big Ten Conference and Fox Networks, began using the technology in the spring of 2010 for short recaps of baseball and softball games. They were posted on the network’s Web site within a minute or two of the end of each game; box scores and play-by-play data were used to generate the brief articles. (Previously, the network relied on online summaries provided by university sports offices.)As the spring sports season progressed, the computer-generated articles improved, helped by suggestions from editors on the network’s staff, says Michael Calderon, vice president for digital and interactive media at the Big Ten Network.The Narrative Science software can make inferences based on the historical data it collects and the sequence and outcomes of past games. To generate story “angles,” explains Mr. Hammond of Narrative Science, the software learns concepts for articles like “individual effort,” “team effort,” “come from behind,” “back and forth,” “season high,” “player’s streak” and “rankings for team.” Then the software decides what element is most important for that game, and it becomes the lead of the article, he said. The data also determines vocabulary selection. A lopsided score may well be termed a “rout” rather than a “win.”“Composition is the key concept,” Mr. Hammond says. “This is not just taking data and spilling it over into text.”Last fall, the Big Ten Network began using Narrative Science for updates of football and basketball games. Those reports helped drive a surge in referrals to the Web site from Google’s search algorithm, which highly ranks new content on popular subjects, Mr. Calderon says. The network’s Web traffic for football games last season was 40 percent higher than in 2009.Hanley Wood, a trade publisher for the construction industry, began using the program in August to provide monthly reports on more than 350 local housing markets, posted on its site, builderonline.com. The company had long collected the data, but hiring people to write trend articles would have been too costly, says Andrew Reid, president of Hanley Wood’s digital media and market intelligence unit.Mr. Reid says Hanley Wood worked with Narrative Science for months to fine-tune the software for construction. A former executive at Thomson Reuters, he says he was struck by the high quality of the articles.“They got over a big linguistic hurdle,” he observes. “The stories are not duplicates by any means.”He was also impressed by the cost. Hanley Wood pays Narrative Science less than $10 for each article of about 500 words — and the price will very likely decline over time. Even at $10, the cost is far less, by industry estimates, than the average cost per article of local online news ventures like AOL’s Patch or answer sites, like those run by Demand Media.NARRATIVE SCIENCE’S ambitions include moving further up the ladder of quality. Both Mr. Birnbaum and Mr. Hammond are professors of journalism as well as computer science. The company itself is an outgrowth of collaboration between the two schools.“This kind of technology can deepen journalism,” says John Lavine, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern.Mr. Hammond says the combination of advances in its writing engine and data mining can open new horizons for computer journalism, exploring “correlations that you did not expect” — conceptually similar to “Freakonomics,” by two humans, the economist Steven D. Levitt and the author Stephen J. Dubner.Mr. Hammond cited a media maven’s prediction that a computer program might win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 20 years — and he begged to differ.“In five years,” he says, “a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology.”Should it happen, the prize, of course, would not be awarded to abstract code, but to its human creators. # 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

< http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/msg00125.html > to: Nettime <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net> subject: Re: <nettime> Personal accounts of the bombings [4x] from: t byfield <tbyfield {AT} panix.com> date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 02:40:48 -0400<...>sucker. sorry, but... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28620-2001Sep14.html "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "it's been interesting to watch how coverage of this has developed.initially it focused on new yorkers, who were very sanguine aboutit all--none of the usual venom about revenge etc. increasingly, though, the networks have been fomenting a familiar litany: flag-waving, praying, us/them rhetoric. that's why my view of the 'con-nectedness' you extol is much, much darker. there were the initialwaves of americans who had direct connections to the city and itsinhabitants: their interests were pretty practical--'are you ok?'but then comes wave after wave of people who DON'T have any direct interest. and what do you know? suddenly we're inundated with spec-tacles of public piety, endless flag-waving, schmaltzy soft-focusslow-mo tears by candlelight, &c. this kind of bumpf was quite absent in the city in the wake of theevents. the only sign of it i saw was one of those ultra-aggressiveindy towtrucks with "REVENGE" written on its windshield in soap--and each time i saw it cruise by on tuesday (three times), it was met with a nice mix of censure and hilarity. but yesterday, after a few days of--i'm sorry, the best categories i know to describe this are from dolce^Wdeleuze and guattari: order-words, major lan-guage, molar blabla--i started seeing flags, lots of flags. quite different from the meditative disorientation that i felt all aroundmanhattan on tuesday, which was remarkable for its quiet sympathyand--to be quite frank--dissociation. new yorkers' neighborhoodyprovincialism served them very well; and the physical fabric of the city, which made the aftermath literally invisible except viathe prosthetics of the media, supported (or, if you prefer, *en-forced*) that dissociation. mostly what we had was a BIG cloud onthe skyline and more or less vague mental maps and addressbooks of who worked and traveled where. but it's very hard to orient one-self when the preeminent beacon vanishes: my topographical map justbecame the diagram of an archaeological dig.poised in the middle of it all--halfway between a nation that hasone way of trying to cathect with its love-hated sodom, OT1H, anda pretty solid grasp of how certain other parts of the world tryto cathect with *their* understanding of the gomorrah they love to hate, OT0H--i'm at a bit of a loss as to what to think or, even,how to think about it. every language has its kernel of legitimacy.the premasticated outpourings of a country whose main failure is the piss-poor job it does of translating its native genius (whichcertainly includes boundless generosity and kindness) into a gov-ernment of equivocating bullies and braggarts: their public pietyisn't my cup of tea, but, well, i'm an american, so i 'can take itin stride.' the contorted mix of drives and desires (also detournedby pedagogs and weenies into spectacularly fucked-up governance) that makes up northern africa, the mid-east, central asia, and anumbing matrix of diasporas and migrations: they've got some verygood points, too. personally, after almost 18 years of living here--just months shy of half my life--i've grown pretty fond of new york's 'deliriousness.' and, certainly, these events have given mea new appreciation for what's irritated me no end here, the micro-parochialism of neighborhood 'identities.' in a flash, or in fourflashes, those nanodistinctions gave the city's residents a bit of wiggle room, as it were, to NOT 'identify' in straitjacketed ways with the poor shlemiehls who--my theological undies are show-ing--were returned to dust unexpectedly. naif that i am, i hopedthat this absence of kneejerk responses might actually shape theensuing media frenzy.but it didn't. instead, these multitudes of atomized identities made it impossible for new yorkers to produce a coherent collec-tive discourse--except, of course, for the ones 'we' SELL to 'our'customers and clients, i.e., the rest of the country and world in the form of 'our' media.this was a (i hope) RARE opportunity for new york to export some of its worldliness in a way that might have made it much more diffi-cult for america to indulge itself in ritualistic drum-beating andblood lust. but no. once the dust settled, the battalions of mediadrones went back to work: the graphics whizzes concocted 'ATTACK ON AMERICA' banners, the copy-writers banged out manipulative litur-gies, the camera ops did their little lanzmannesque lingering shotson tearful people who lost people, the reporters fell right into line by dwelling on the WTC instead of the pentagon and playing along with the bin laden routine, the producers churned out their boilerplate scripts, and so on. the customer is always right. and america loves us for it.there's lots more to say, but words fail me. maybe i'll try againlater, but probably notr. the cadence of these events, the crashesand collapses, made this a very democratic spectacle: everyone hastheir own authentic real-time, if not firsthand, experience of it--and 'experience,' as we know, is the foundation of philosophy, am-erican-style. the collapsing building blossom on a thousand videos:goodbye zapruder, hello ESPN.cheers,t

bwo Sarai Reader List/ A. Mani--------------------------------------------------------------------------Read the full version at: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._HartExcerpt:"Obituary for Michael Stern Hart...Hart was best known for his 1971 invention of electronic books, oreBooks. He founded Project Gutenberg, which is recognized as one ofthe earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects. He oftentold this story of how he had the idea for eBooks. He had been grantedaccess to significant computing power at the University of Illinois atUrbana-Champaign. On July 4 1971, after being inspired by a freeprinted copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he decided totype the text into a computer, and to transmit it to other users onthe computer network. From this beginning, the digitization anddistribution of literature was to be Hart's life's work, spanning over40 years.Hart was an ardent technologist and futurist. A lifetime tinkerer, heacquired hands-on expertise with the technologies of the day: radio,hi-fi stereo, video equipment, and of course computers. He constantlylooked into the future, to anticipate technological advances. One ofhis favorite speculations was that someday, everyone would be able tohave their own copy of the Project Gutenberg collection or whateversubset desired. This vision came true, thanks to the advent of largeinexpensive computer disk drives, and to the ubiquity of portablemobile devices, such as cell phones.Hart also predicted the enhancement of automatic translation, whichwould provide all of the world's literature in over a hundredlanguages. While this goal has not yet been reached, by the time ofhis death Project Gutenberg hosted eBooks in 60 different languages,and was frequently highlighted as one of the best Internet-basedresources."_______________________________________________________________________

A MONUMENT FOR ALL RETALIATION VICTIMS OF 9/11September 11, 2011 by Tjebbe van TijenThis is mainly a pictorial comment which can be seen at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/a-monument-for-all-retaliation-victims-of-911/A MONUMENT FOR ALL RETALIATION VICTIMS OF 9/11let their names be written on water and float across all rivers and oceans…[photograph of hand writing on water][photograph of 9/1/ monument in New York] —* the first photograp is by 艺 术 家：火风（Huo Feng); the second by the ‘National September 11 Memorial’ organisation.Tagged: 9/11, commemoration of victims of mass violence, ephemeral monuments, retaliation victims of 9/11, writing on water Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/# 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://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

hi nettimers,responding to the post by Dmitri as well as all the recent comments on theMENA social revolutions,this paper about this radical Minnesotan project may interest thoseconcerned with free education, universities,popular education, the culture of knowledge and so on...http://umn.academia.edu/**EliMeyerhoff/Papers/257655/**Toward_a_University_of_the_**Commons_The_Experimental_**College_of_the_Twin_Cities<http://umn.academia.edu/EliMeyerhoff/Papers/257655/Toward_a_University_of_the_Commons_The_Experimental_College_of_the_Twin_Cities>

An illustrated and documented version can be found athttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/nijntje-het-copyright-konijntje-miffy-the-little-copyright-rabbit/[tableau with two Nijntjes and the hand of the designer]Nijntje/Miffy may sniff cocaine and be a terrorist has said a Dutch judge today in a courtcase where the creator of ‘Nijntje het copyright konijntje’ (Miffy the copyright rabbit) Dick Bruna (1927 -) had asked the court to forbid several Nijntje impersonations on the web. Dirk Bruna – for decades – is the Dutch champion and pioneer of licensing and royalties, censoring whatever urban culture derivation of his creation. Thus he has for long become the censor of the offspring of his own drawing board creation, or was it the late designer and founder of the merciless copyright exploitation bureau Mercis, Pieter Brattinga (1931 – 2004) that has aborted and killed most of the unwanted progeny of this imaginary rabbit? Pencil and eraser in one hand.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

The day after the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks a discusionbroke out on the theory list of the wonderful "Philadelphia Socialists"[1]group, triggered by a CunterPunch article that critiques 9/11 conspiracy theory[2].Cockburn's article includes this important point:"These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling classdevilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list."This is quite well said! Other than perhaps recommending a few other critics of political economy to go along with Marx, I couldn't agree more with Mr Cockburn!However, rather than continue this line of reasoning and give us a materialist analysis of the events of September 11, Cockburn instead diveshead first into the Conspiracy theory muck. Cockburn unleashes a bewildering number of arguments rooted in demolition logistics, airdefense and flight control procedures and the capacity and competency of intelligence agencies, the military and the United States Government, because unlike the wild-eyed Truthers, Mr. Cockburn, apparently, really does knows what happened. Really. He does.Not only are Cockburn's claims just as much riddled with bias and fallacy as those of the Truthers, but they also require us to make judgements based on subjects most of us can not possibly be very literate in. But even worse, he misses his own point, as quoted above.The trouble with Truthers is not that they are wrong, it is, exactly as Cockburn writes, that they locate class conflict as being a consequenceof some bad-apple politicians and organisations, and not in the crisis of capital accumulation.Let's be clear here, "Conspiracy Theory" is a bit of a misnomer. The official version of events is that an underground network of Islamists planed and carried out these attacks in secret.Isn't that a conspiracy?So, the issue is not so much whether or not there was a conspiracy, butwho was involved in it. Given the well documented inter-connections betweenintelligence agencies and terror networks it is clear that we can notpossibly know how far or wide the network spreads. Certainly, whether byplot or blowback, the events of 9/11 must be connected to anti-Sovietgeostrategy during the cold war. And clearly, governments world-wide haveseized the opportunity to impose counter-insurrectionist police states andto justify interventions and wars.Should we really be blaming the masses for being suspicious of the whole thing? Should we really be berating the masses about the malleability ofsteel at 1000 degrees centigrade, the ideal timing of demolition charges relativeto aircraft impact, and disputing how long it really ought to take air defense to intercept rogue aircraft? WTF? Can't we just stick to politics and leave the make-believe popular science posturing alone?The botom line is even if we could know "The Truth," we can't hold the powerful to account. They are not accountable to us. The illegal and immoral is commonplace in the administration of class war and empire. Knowing the incriminating details will not help us overthrow the class structure. The Truth will not set us free.Why should I care if the events of 9/11 where planned in Tora Bora, Camp David or a Starbucks on Madison Avenue? They are clearly the consequenceof the struggle for Capital accumulation, regardless of the operationaldetails.In order to prevent such events we need to build social power and abolish class. Instead of wasting our time telling people they are wrong aboutwhat "really happened" how about we argue that such conflicts would not happen in a society without classes, and that getting at "The Truth" is not so important as building this new society?In any case, we will certainly get to the bottom of it and figure out the "Real Truth" tonight at Cafe Buchhandlung[3]. Personally, I'm convinced itwas Colonel Mustard with the Candlestick in the Billiard Room.I'll be there at 9pm as usual.[1] http://phillysocialists.org/ [2]http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after...[3] http://j.mp/buchhandlung

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/09/14/mexico.violence/Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media usersBy Mariano Castillo, CNNPosters declare a young man and woman were killed for posting denouncementsof drug cartel activities. (CNN) -- Social media users who denounce drug cartel activities along theMexican border received a brutal warning this week: two mangled bodieshanging like cuts of meat from a pedestrian bridge.A woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from threedeep cuts on her abdomen. Attackers left her topless, dangling by her feetand hands from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. A bloodied mannext to her was hanging by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeplythe bone was visible.Signs left near the bodies declared the pair, both apparently in theirearly 20s, were killed for posting denouncements of drug cartel activitieson a social network."This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on theInternet," one sign said. "You better (expletive) pay attention. I'm aboutto get you."The gruesome scene sent a chilling message at a time when online posts havebecome some of the loudest voices reporting violence in Mexico. In someparts of the country, threats from cartels have silenced traditional media.Sometimes even local authorities fear speaking out.Bloggers who specialize in sharing news about trafficking have beenthreatened in the past, but this could be the first time users of suchsocial networks have been targeted.Investigator Ricardo Mancillas Castillo said he had not encountered athreat against Internet users in his four years based in Nuevo Laredo. Butthe signs of torture -- the cuts, the disembowelment -- were along thelines of what officials are used to seeing in drug-related violence.Mexico hangings a warning?In the case of the two victims on the bridge, their ears and fingers weremutilated, said Mancillas, who works for the public prosecutor's office.There are no witnesses, and it is a nearly impossible task to identify theperpetrators, he said.Thirty-six hours had passed since the bodies were found Tuesday morning,but no one had come to claim them and they remained unidentified, Mancillassaid.It will be nearly impossible to determine if the two victims actuallyposted anything about cartels on the Internet, as people don't usually usetheir real names online, he said.The placards threatened those who report violent incidents through socialmedia networks. It listed two blogs by name, Al Rojo Vivo and Blog delNarco.They were signed "Z," a possible reference for the Zetas cartel, whichoperates in the area.Blog del Narco is a website that deals exclusively with news related todrug violence in Mexico. Its creator remains anonymous.On the Al Rojo Vivo forum, where citizens can make anonymous tips, oneperson wrote: "Don't be afraid to denounce. It's very difficult for them tofind out who denounced. They only want to scare society."One Twitter user echoed that sense of defiance in light of the threats."Enough! If we shut up today, we will have lost the ground that we havegained. This is the time to show what we are made of," the owner of the< at >QuestoyQuelotro Twitter account wrote.In a statement sent to CNN, Blog del Narco said its site is not dedicatedto denouncing crime, as are other sites."In addition, we are not in favor or against any criminal group, we onlyinform as things happen," the statement said.More than 34,600 people have died in drug-related violence since MexicanPresident Felipe Calderon announced a crackdown on cartels in December2006, according to government statistics. Other reports have listed ahigher toll. The latest Mexican government tally was released in January.CNN's Rafael Romo and journalist Raul Llamas contributed to this report.

Hi everyone,the human rights organisation WITNESS has just released *Cameras Everywhere*, a new report about the relationships between video, technology, social media, privacy and human rights. The report, on which I am lead author and researcher, is is aimed at engineers, product managers, executives, VCs and other investors in the technology/social media sphere, as well as at NGOs, activists, policy-makers and donors/foundations, and is designed in part to bring those working in and funding these very distinct fields a little closer together. It makes specific and concrete recommendations of how to make technology and social media more protective of human rights - I hope you will find both the analysis and the recommendations thought-provoking and practically useful, and we welcome your feedback and responses. Of course, please feel free to share it with those you think should see it (though please be aware that at the moment it is only available in English.)The report can be downloaded at the WITNESS website, along with further information about the overall WITNESS Cameras Everywhere initiative at:http://www.witness.org/cameras-everywhereThere is also an interview with me about the issues covered in the report on the BBC Outriders website at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/outriders/2011/09/protecting_the_vulnerable_onli.shtmlIf you use, cite or blog about the report, or if you'd like to share your comments and responses with us directly, or if you'd just like further information, please get in touch with WITNESS at cameraseverywhere-ru4WdLTDV3BAfugRpC6u6w< at >public.gmane.org, or via Twitter (http://twitter.com/witnessorg), and please also feel free to contact me too.Best wishes,Sameer--work <http://www.macroscope.co.uk/> | twitter <http://www.twitter.com/sameerpadania>