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A N N O U N C E M E N TMedia SquaresOn the new forms of protest and their mediaSocial protest has become almost inseparably linked to a plethora of media images and messages distributed via internet, mobile phones, social media, internet video platforms and of course traditional media outlets such as newspapers, radio and television. A popular category to have emerged recently is the 'twitter-revolution'. In almost all cases (Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, London) the role of the platform turned out to be less than essential in retrospect. Protests mostly manifested on the streets and particularly the public squares ('Take the Square'). Deeply rooted blogger-networks did however play a mayor role, preparing the protests that have now been dubbed the "Arabian Spring'. And internet played a crucial role in the organisation and co-ordination of the European 'anti-austerity' prot ests (Spain, Greece, UK, Italy).This international seminar brings together theorists, artists, designers, activists and media specialists to develop a critical analysis of the new forms of social protest and their media dimension. The program is divided into two blocks. The first block focuses on an in-depth analysis of the evolving WikiLeaks-saga, while the second block will examine the remarkable string of protests in the Mediterranean region. These discussions will be interrupted at times by startling artistic interventions in current social and political debates.Participants in the program are: Daniel van der Velden (Metahaven), Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, INC), Aalam Wassef (Ahmad Sherif), Omar Robert Hamilton (Mosireen / Tahrir Cinema, Cairo) Nat Muller (independent curator), David Garcia (Chelsea College), Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges / Blog Theory), X.net Democracia Real Ya - Barcelona, Gahlia Elsrakbi (Foundland), Nadia Plesner (Darfurnica), Florian Conradi and Michelle Christensen (stateless plug-in), Sami Ben Gharbia (Global Voices - tbc).The seminar is part of an on-going research into Tactical Media, the fusion of art, media, politics and cultural activism, centred around the "Tactical Media Files", an on-line documentation resource of Tactical Media practices world-wide.[ www.tacticalmediafiles.net ]Doors open: 10.00Start Program: 10.30 uurEnd Program: 17.00 uurProgram Overview:10.30 - Opening / Introduction: Eric Kluitenberg (Tactical Media Files / De Balie)Part I - Repositioning WikiLeaks11.00 - 11.20 - Presentation: Daniel van der Velden (Metahaven)11.20 - 11.30 - Responses11.30 - 11.45 - Discussion11.45 - 12.05 - Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures)12.05 - 12.15 - Responses12.15 - 12.30 - DiscussionRespondents: Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges / Blog Theory), David Garcia (Chelsea College of Art & Design)12.30 - 12.45 - Artist presentation: Nadia Plesner - Darfurnica13.00 - 14.00 - Lunch breakPart II - Revolution in the Mediterranean14.00 - 14.20 - Presentation: Aalam Wassef (Ahmad Sherif)14.20 - 14.30 - Responses14.30 - 14.45 - Discussion14.45 - 15.05 - Presentation: Omar Robert Hamilton (Mosireen / Tahrir Cinema)15.05 - 15.15 - Responses15.15 - 15.30 - DiscussionRespondents:Ghalia Elsrakbi (Foundland), Nat Muller (Independent Curator), Sami Ben Gharbia (Global Voices - tbc)15.30 - 15.45 - Artist Presentation: Florian Conradi and Michelle Christensen (stateless plug-in)15.45 - 16.00 - Coffee break16.00 - 16.20 - Skype session with X.net Democracia Real Ya, Barcelona16.10 - 16.10 - Responses16.25 - 17.00 - Closing DiscussionLocation:De BalieKleine Gartmanplantsoen 10AmsterdamAdmission: 5 euro (no reductions)http://debalie.activetickets.com/ProgrammaDetail.aspx?id=24170Links:Tactical Media Files: www.tacticalmediafiles.netTahrir Cinema:www.cinerevolutionnow.com/2011/07/tahrir-cinema.htmlMosireen:http://mosireen.orgTake the Square:http://takethesquare.netDemocracia real Ya!:www.democraciarealya.es/manifiesto-comun/manifesto-english/stateless plug-in:http://statelessplugin.netNadia Plesner - Darfurnica:www.nadiaplesner.com/Website/darfurnica.php

Hey, an initiative to form an international Debtors' Party.http://bit.ly/nili7MPlease join.

Marx is Back: The Importance of Marxist Theory and Research for CriticalCommunication Studies Today
Call for Papers for a Special Issue of tripleC – Journal for a GlobalSustainable Information Society.
Edited by Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco

http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/CfP_Marx_tripleC.pdfFor inquiries, please contact the two editors.In light of the global capitalist crisis, there is renewed interest inKarl Marx’s works and in concepts like class, exploitation and surplusvalue. Slavoj Žižek argues that the antagonisms of contemporary capitalismin the context of the ecological crisis, the massive expansion ofintellectual property, biogenetics, new forms of apartheid and growingworld poverty show that we still need the Marxian notion of class. Heconcludes that there is an urgent need to renew Marxism and to defend itslost causes in order to render problematic capitalism as the onlyalternative (Žižek 2008, 6) and the new forms of a soft capitalism thatpromise, and in its rhetoric makes use of, ideals like participation,self-organization, and co-operation, without realizing them. Žižek (2010,chapter 3) argues that the global capitalistcrisis clearly demonstratesthe need to return to the critique of political economy. Göran Therbornsuggests that the “new constellations of power and new possibilities ofresistance” in the 21st century require retaining the “Marxian idea thathuman emancipation from exploitation, oppression, discrimination and theinevitable linkage between privilege and misery can only come fromstruggle by the exploited and disadvantaged themselves” (Therborn 2008,61). Eric Hobsbawm (2011, 12f) insists that for understanding the globaldimension of contemporary capitalism, its contradictions and crises, andthe persistence of socio-economic inequality, we “must ask Marx’squestions” (13). 

This special issue will publish articles that address the importance ofKarl Marx’s works for Critical Media and Communication Studies, what itmeans to ask Marx’s questions in 21st century informational capitalism,how Marxian theory can be used for critically analyzing and transformingmedia and communication today, and what the implications of the revival ofthe interest in Marx are for the field of Media and Communication Studies.
Questions that can be explored in contributions include, but are notlimited to:

* What is Marxist Media and Communication Studies? Why is it needed today?What are the main assumptions, legacies, tasks, methods and categories ofMarxist Media and Communication Studies and how do they relate to KarlMarx’s theory? What are the different types of Marxist Media/CommunicationStudies, how do they differ, what are their commonalities?
* What is the role of Karl Marx’s theory in different fields, subfieldsand approaches of Media and Communication Studies? How have the role,status, and importance of Marx’s theory for Media and CommunicationStudies evolved historically, especially since the 1960s?* In addition to his work as a theorist and activist, Marx was apracticing journalist throughout his career. What can we learn from hisjournalism about the practice of journalism today, about journalismtheory, journalism education and alternative media?
* What have beenthe structural conditions, limits and problems for conductingMarxian-inspired Media and Communication Research and for carrying outuniversity teaching in the era of neoliberalism? What are actual orpotential effects of the new capitalist crisis on theseconditions?

* What is the relevance of Marxian thinking in anage of capitalist crisis for analyzing the role of media and communicationin society?
* How can the Marxian notions of class, class struggle, surplus value,exploitation, commodity/commodification, alienation, globalization,labour, capitalism, militarism and war, ideology/ideology critique,fetishism, and communism best be used for analyzing, transforming andcriticizing the role of media, knowledge production and communication incontemporary capitalism?
* How are media, communication, and information addressed in Marx’s work?* What are commonalities and differences between contemporary approachesin the interpretation of Marx’s analyses of media, communication,knowledge, knowledge labour and technology?
* What is the role of dialectical philosophy and dialectical analysis asepistemological and methodological tools for Marxian-inspired Media andCommunication Studies?
* What were central assumptions of Marx about media, communication,information, knowledge production, culture and how can these insights beused today for the critical analysis of capitalism?* What is the relevance of Marx’s work for an understanding of socialmedia?
* Which of Marx’s works can best be used today to theorize media andcommunication? Why and how?
* Terry Eagleton (2011) demonstrates that the 10 most common heldprejudices against Marx are wrong. What prejudices against Marx can befound in Media and Communication Studies today? What have been theconsequences of such prejudices? How can they best be contested? Are therecontinuities and/or discontinuities of prejudices against Marx in light ofthe new capitalist crisis?
All contributions shall genuinely deal with Karl Marx’s originalworks and discuss their relevance for contemporary CriticalMedia/Communication Studies.
Eagleton Terry. 2011. Why Marx was right. London: Yale University Press.Hobsbawm, Eric. 2011. How to change the world. Marx and Marxism 1840-2011.London: Little, Brown.Therborn, Göran. 2008. From Marxism to post-Marxism? London: Verso.Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. In defense of lost causes. London: Verso.Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Living in the end times. London: Verso.
Editors

Christian Fuchs is chair professor for Media andCommunication Studies at Uppsala University’s Department of Informaticsand Media. He is editor of the journal tripleC – Journal for a GlobalSustainable Information Society. His areas of interest are: CriticalTheory, Social Theory, Media & Society, Critical Political Economy ofMedia/Communication, Critical Information Society Studies, CriticalInternet Studies. He is author of the books “Foundations of Critical Mediaand Information Studies” (Routledge 2011) and “Internet and Society:Social Theory in the Information Age” (Routledge 2008, paperback 2011). Heis co-editor of the collected volume “The Internet and Surveillance. TheChallenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media” (Routledge 2011, together withKees Boersma, Anders Albrechtslund, Marisol Sandoval). He is currentlywriting a book presenting a critical theory of social media.http://fuchs.uti.at 

Vincent Mosco is professor emeritus of sociology at Queen's University andformerly Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society. Dr. Mosco isthe author of numerous books on communication, technology, and society.His most recent include Getting the Message: Communications Workers andGlobal Value Chains (co-edited with Catherine McKercher and Ursula Huws,Merlin, 2010), The Political Economy of Communication, second edition(Sage, 2009), The Laboring of Communication: Will Knowledge Workers of theWorld Unite (co-authored with Catherine McKercher, Lexington Books, 2008),Knowledge Workers in the Information Society (co-edited with CatherineMcKercher, Lexington Books, 2007), and The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power,and Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2004). He is currently writing a book on therelevance of Karl Marx for communication research today.

Publication Schedule and Submission

Structured Abstracts for potential contributions shall be submitted toboth editors (christian.fuchs-piBFEvCI7BY< at >public.gmane.org, moscov-ee4meeAH724< at >public.gmane.org) per e-mail untilSeptember 30th, 2011 (submission deadline). The authors of acceptedabstracts will be invited to write full papers that are due five monthsafter the feedback from the editors. Full papers must then be submitted totripleC. Please do not instantly submit full papers, but only structuredabstracts to the editors.
The abstracts should have a maximum of 1200 words and should be structured by dealing separately with each of thefollowing five dimensions: 
1) Purpose and main questions of the paper
2) Description of the way taken for answering the posed questions
3) Relevance of the topic in relation to the CfP
4) Main expected outcomes and new insights of the paper
5) Contribution to the engagement with Marx’s works and toMarxian-inspired Media and Communication Studies

Journal

tripleC (cognition, communication, co-operation): OpenAccess Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society,http://www.triple-c.se 

Focus and Scope:Critical Media-/Information-/ Communication-/Internet-/InformationSociety-Studies
tripleC provides a forum to discuss the challenges humanity is facing today.It publishes contributions that focus on critical studies of media,information, communication, culture, digital media, social media and theInternet in the information society. The journal’s focus is especially oncritical studies and it asks contributors to reflect about normative,political, ethical and critical implications of their research.

Indexing:Scopus, EBSCOHost Communication and Mass Media Complete, Directory of OpenAccess Journals (DOAJ)
Open Access:tripleC is an open access journal that publishes articles online and doesnot charge authors or readers. It uses a Creative Commons license(Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License) that allows reproduction ofpublished articles for non-commercial purposes (without changes of thecontent and only with naming the author). Creative Commons publishingposes a viable alternative to commercial academic publishing that isdominated by big corporate publishing houses.

Congratulations to the Pirate Party having won an astounding 8.9% in theBerlin elections.As I wrote two weeks ago, this is their moment of relevance, the emergenceof Information politics as a mainstream political topic. Having 15Piratenpartei representatives in the local government will certainly be ofdirect material benefit to activists fighting against software patents, fornetwork neutrality, online security and privacy, etc, and that is adevelopment to be celebrated.Modern politics has become a politics of identities and causes. Majorparties construct identities, these identities function as LegitimizationBrands, not so much tied to specific social outcomes, but rather tospecific personalities, representations, framings and forms of apology.People vote for a Party because that's the kind of person they identifyas: the kind of person that votes for that party and imagines themselveshaving the essentialized, yet drifting, characteristics the party marketsas their image. Party membership is just another consumer identity.The interests of the State and it's ruling class doesn't change fromelection to election, and the elected politicians of the ruling party's jobis to represent the policies demanded by the ruling class to the peoplethat support them. The election is a market survey, designed to identifywhich Legitimization Brand will most effectively deliver public support.The political policies of the major parties are formed byway of thecampaign contributions and lobbying of the holders of the major economicpower, not by the interests of the voters whose support they deliver.Political resistance is limited to activist movements, which occasionallymanifest as minor parties, the Greens and more recently the Pirate Partyare such manifestations.As minor parities, they are not integrated into the ruling class system,but rather represent the social power of movements around specific causes.These parties retain relevance to the degree that they are primarily therepresentatives of the activist social movements they emerged from, whenthey grow beyond being minor parties, like the Greens have in Germany, theybecome integrated into the ruling class, and begin representing rulingclass interests.The reason this happens is that as representatives of causes, they have nomass appeal.The social power they can mobilize, although often visible and noisy, isnot enough to propel them beyond the political fringes, yet maybe enough toattract attention from the same economic powers whose contributions andlobbies animate the major parties, and are thereby transformed intoLegitimization Brands, like the other major parties, trading in the supportof their now expanded constituencies so long as their legitimacy survives.The masses are not interested in causes, at least not enough to mobilizearound them.And for very good reason, understanding complex causes likeenvironmentalism and information politics seem complex and abstract topeople, more concerned with their everyday lives. Activist campaigns oftenfocus on the misdeeds of corporations and States. Most people feelunqualified to comment on it, and are therefore not so compelled to try tounravel the storms of claims and counter claims, accusations and apologies,all the rhetoric that drives such polemics. These are not their concerns,forming an opinion on such issues does not help in the daily challengesthey face in their private lives. And the solutions presented are notclearly implied by their own conditions, thus they are happy to have theseconcerned administered for them, which the Legitimizing Apparatus is happyto do.What's missing from modern politics is, well... politics.The traditional parties formed around the emerging power of differenteconomic classes. Specifically from the interests of those who derivedtheir incomes from the different Factors of Production, namely Land,Capital, and Labour.Conservatives are called conservatives not because they have delicatesensibilities when it comes to sexuality or have regressive views of genderand racial roles, but because they wantwd to "Conserve" the system ofNobility, where elite families retained power and led society. Which, dueto there superior genetic heritage, they where, aledgedly, uniquely able todo, and as they had done for centuries.The primary economic power of the Conservatives come from those thatcontrolled the land.The Liberal are called Liberalis, not because they emerged as movement ofpeople who believed in being a little less uptight and a little lessxenophobic, but rather because they represented the emerging Capitalistclass, they believed that the State, meaning at that time, the Nobility,should let them conduct their businesses as they see fit, and not intervenein the marke.The primary power of the Liberals came from those that controlled capital.As Capitalism triumphed, and Feudalism disappeared, Liberals andConservatives became not so much representatives of different classes inconflict, but rather competing brands to market the interests of Capital tothe masses. Both parties represent only slightly differing views on howmarkets and governments aught to be run, and in whose interest.Labour Parties began as dissenting, activist parties, formed by groups ofpolitical intellectuals such as the UK Fabians, and began as minor partiesthat had grown out of the workers' movement.Yet, the workers' movement was different from the types of causes we haveseen emerge more recently.The workers' movement was not fuelled by intellectual appeals to abstracttechnical concepts, and was not focused on the reported conduct of remotecorporations or states, but on the direct conditions and interestsexperienced by workers, and workers where legion.Their cause was not based on morality or belief, but on the conditions oftheir daily lives. What's more, the platforms where directly implied bytheir conditions, they where not administered beliefs, but known facts.Workplace safety, wages, working hours and other matters of direct interestto workers did not require subscribing to one ideology or another tounderstand.The workers movement, because of its class basis, did not need to rely oncampaign contributions and lobby to have power, because the workers wherethe masses.The power of the worker's parties came from control of labour.However, this language of Landlord, Capitalist and Worker emerged in quitea different era. The Power Loom was the driving force of industry, Nobilitycontrolled the land and the State, and being a worker in early industry wastorturous, inhumane, and importantly, most workers where direct-producers.The value they created took the form of stocks of goods that whereliterally taken from their hand and into the possession of the Capitalists,who became their owners and profited from their circulation, while theworkers where left with nothing more than that which their subsistencedemands so they could toil another day. Workers knew their class interests.The exploitation of labour was not a theory, but a felt, daily experience.There demands where not opinions, but terms of struggle.The workers' movement won many of these struggles. Working conditions andhours where improved as a result of fierce battles between workers andcapitalists. This began to make the demands of workers' parties lesspressing, more marginal and abstract, while theories of value and economydeveloped further, the immediacy of the issues fell away.More and more workers became non-direct producers, working inadministrative or technical fields that did not directly produce stocks ofgoods, appropriation of the product of the labour became not a felt andobserved experience, but yet another theory, something about which onecould have an opinion, but not something that was a uniting term ofstruggle.All the while the most oppressive and harsh conditions where relegated tothe margins of society or even to other ends of the world, with whom thegreat body of workers in developed society had no relationship at all, orif any, then as yet another cause.Politics has vanished and in it's place is a marketplace forlegitimization.The commodity has become the voter themselves, delivered to aconsciousness industry made up of parties, public relation firms and otheragents of economic power. Absent from organized opposition, Capital has reshaped society towardsit's own interests. Where the owners of productive assets have increasedpower and freedom, unchecked by any kind of political contestation, and themasses are subjected, administered, and controlled. Workers are justanother economic input, like energy and natural resources, who matter onlyenough to ensure reliable supply. Capital is spreading poverty, socialstratification, environmental degradation and war with impunity, checkedonly by the economic and natural limits of such outcomes, and able tosocialize or transfer the costs even when such limits are exceeded andcatastrophe ensues.To make politics relevant, to challenge and contest the interests ofCapital and to represent the interests of the masses we need workers toonce again unite in their common interests and make their social powerfelt.Yet, workers' politics is now failing because workers do not identify asworkers, and thus any appeal addressed to workers is unlikely to achieveresults. As the economy has moved on from the simple model of productionthat classical language was born in, so must the language of classpolitics. The workers are no longer direct witnesses to the product oftheir labour being ripped from their hands and hoarded by the Capitalist.Many people may hate their job, or their boss, but as the production ofvalue is more abstract and remote, they do not feel that their boss istaking anything from them, rather they feel they are being given something,their job and their paycheque, etc. It is not in the workplace that theappropriation is felt, but rather after work, when they go home to paytheir bills.We can't mobilize the masses as workers, but we can mobilize them asDebtors.Debt is not simply a cause to build awareness and support for, it is thefelt condition of the masses, who are struggling to pay their bills, whoare frustrated and angry and who demand representation which no mainstreamparty will give them.The Time has come for The Debtors' Party.Join the initiative to found an International Debtors' Party. So far, theresources are small, come help us build a movement. - Facebook group: http://bit.ly/debtorsfb - irc channel: #debt on irc.oftc.net - wiki: wiki.debtorsparty.orgWith your help, much more to come.Anybody is Berlin is welcome to come to Stammtisch tonight and say hi,this is in no way an official meeting of the Debtors' Party, just aninformal get together, but no doubt the topic will be present. Stammtischis at Cafe Buchhandlung, starting at 9pm. http://bit.ly/buchhandlungDebtors' of The World Unite!

*Call for Papers for an ephemera Special Issue on: Communism of Capital?*Issue Editors: Armin Beverungen, Anna-Maria Murtola and Gregory Schwartzhttp://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/communismofcapital.pdfDeadline for submissions: 29 February 2012Today, neoliberal capitalism is increasingly put into question. Whereas two decades ago business school gurus argued that the US was 'the most "socialist" country around' (Drucker, 1993: 6), today's self-appointed business leaders know they cannot do without a certain communism. George Soros, Bill Gates and others refer to themselves -- not without irony -- as 'liberal communists' (Z(iz(ek, 2008a). Recognising the evils induced by capitalism these patricians of the market proselytise market philanthropy to deliver many of the ostensible benefits of the communism of yore. Newsweek, reflecting on the national bailout of the banks in response to the financial crisis, declared: 'We are all socialists now' (Meacham, 2009). Yet, the one thing that seems beyond question in such projections of communism is capital itself.At the same time, theories of cognitive capitalism, immaterial labour and biopolitical production suggest that some kind of communism is already at work within capitalism. According to Hardt and Negri, immaterial labour 'seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism' (2000: 294). Similarly, Virno defines post-Fordism as 'the communism of capital', since it 'puts forth, in its own way, typical demands of communism (abolition of work, dissolution of the State, etc.)' (2004: 110-111). The contemporary enjoinments to pursue work that is authentic, ethical, spiritual, evoking and invoking the community, friendship and collaboration (Heckscher and Adler, 2006), chime in with invitations for employees in work organisations to 'just be themselves' (Fleming, 2009), thus delivering on some of the promises of communism. From a 'paleo-Marxist' perspective (Adler, 2007) we can surmise that concrete changes in technology and work organisation assure us some version of communism in substance, if not in form.However, such projections of work organisation rely on a commons in production without opening up production to a commons that will tear apart the dominance of capital. For Negri (2008: 157-180), the communism of capital is marked by new forms of capture of the creativity of labour. For Virno (2004: 110), communist demands and objectives have been subject to 'an insiduous and terrible interpretation', for example in the way that unemployment and precarity accompany overwork. For Holloway (2010), more fundamentally, it is the communal, communising and communistic doing that, in capitalism, exists in the mode of being denied. For Read, capital operates 'through the abstractions of money and labour, which are all the more effective in that they are not believed or even grasped' -- 'the cynicism of the productive powers of the general intellect today, is a cynicism without reserve, in which every aspect of one's existence, knowledge, communicative abilities and desires become productive' (2008: 146, 150). The question for Negri, Virno, Holloway and Read, then, is how to overcome this enclosure by capital.Yet even anti-capitalism seems to return only as communism of capital. As Z(iz(ek (2008b) and Fisher (2010) point out, capitalist realism already embraces a certain kind of anti-capitalism -- 'corporate anti-capitalism' is discernible in the products of Hollywood, such as Wall-E and Avatar, but also in the way that today it is acceptable or encouraged to express anti-capitalist sentiments at work (Fleming, 2009). Anti-capitalism as a signifier thus loses its radical edge, especially as it is contained within a parliamentary democratic politics (Z(iz(ek, 2008b: 184). Indeed, the more gushing the moralism against the evils of our age, the more certain the conclusion that capitalism is an eternal, natural system of social organisation.At this impasse we might be at once more sceptical and more hopeful. We might hedge doubts about the communism of capital in view of Groys' (2009) argument that language -- the basis of a communist politics -- will remain silent as long as the commodity form mediates it. We might question the communism of capital by insisting, with Ranciere (2010), on the politics of emancipation and not the logos of history as the purveyor of communism. We might deny its ethical claims by revealing the underlying 'ontology of profit' (Badiou, 2008: 47) -- that with capitalism as 'a system that hands the organization of our collective life over to the lowest instincts, to greed, rivalry and unconscious egotism' (Badiou, 2010: 96) the communism of capital is a simulacra of late capitalism. And if communism is 'not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself', then where are we to look for 'the real movement which abolishes the present state of things' (Marx and Engels, 1998: 57; emphases in original)?ContributionsFor this special issue of ephemera we invite contributions that address various aspects of what could be conceived as the communism of capital. We are especially interested in papers that try to cover the following interrelated areas of organisational inquiry.First, we are interested in contributions that seek to locate the attempts by capital to organise society as producers. For example, in what ways are social forms mobilised in the name of a discernible communism, and how do such dispositifs reproduce the dominance of capital? Based on postworkerist/autonomist thought, how or to what extent is production based on the common, and what kinds of political effects does this produce? Alternatively, drawing on the Lacanian/Hegelian tradition, how does anti-capitalist ideology work in practice in the organisation of work, and what negations and contradictions are involved?Second, papers could explore how capital organises consumption in society via affective, discursive and cognitive means. For example, how do contemporary ideas of corporate social responsibility, business ethics or leadership utilise ideas of communism? In what ways, and to what extent, do efforts to purvey capitalism as, essentially, a creature of communism lead to new ways of constructing (and consuming) the subjects of capital?Third, we welcome papers that interrogate how capital organises politics and the state. For example, there is a way in which the state, by over-coding existing codes and values, uses the terminology and imagery of 'community' to refer to ways of fragmenting and depoliticising its social responsibility in the face of escalating inequality, poverty and precarity generated by capital. How might we understand this apparent harkening to deep-seated, basic communalism in terms of the communism of capital, with the state presiding over the inscription of the social body as a renewed object of appropriation of capital?Finally, we welcome theoretical or empirical contributions that bring together or provide a cross-examination of some or all of the above areas of inquiry. For example, following Guattari and Negri's (2010) proposition of the pre-eminence of organisation, how might we move from the communism of capital towards the communism discussed by Marx and Engels in 1848? Or, in addition to the post-workerist, autonomist, Lacan- and Hegel-inspired approaches that we have discussed here, in what other ways might communism, beyond capital, today be thought or advanced?Deadline for submissions: 29th of February 2012Please send your submissions to the editors. All contributions should follow ephemera guidelines -- see http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm. In addition to full papers, we also invite notes, reviews, and other kinds of contributions

27 to 29 of October 2011 - Barcelona*Oxcars and FreeCultureForum 2011Networks for a R-evolution**Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it ;-).*http://whois--x.net/english/oxcars-and-freecultureforum-20112011 is the year when the consciousness of a global network hasemerged. The massive and strategic use of social and digital networkshas allowed the movement of citizen empowerment to step up a notch,and has facilitated a viral uprising of civil society in many partsof the world. The struggles to defend the Internet have shown to be afertile breeding ground for such uprisings.The #15M movement within the *#spanishrevolution* is organized online.By the same token, one of its biggest strengths is the feedbackprocess that happens between the network and the streets, between theinternet and the men and women gathering in streets and squares.*We have to continue promoting, facilitating and improving theefficient use of the Internet to achieve mobilization and directparticipation.*During the previous edition of the FCForum it was already discussedthat the intense struggles by civil society within the Spanishstate to defend the Internet against the Sinde Law (a law to stopdownloading) were the starting point for a larger action.*For 3 years now, the OXCARS and the FCForum*, held in Barcelona, haveprovided international meeting spaces in which to build and coordinatecommon tools for issues regarding free culture and the Internet. TheFCForum gathers the main organizations and active voices that areworking on such issues, while it is also an open space for all thosewho wish to understand, deepen and participate in the responses beforethe pressing challenges that face our connected societies.This year, the FCForum will focus, inevitably, on the experience ofthe 15M movement as a case study that can be exported to the globalarena.*The intention of the FCForum 2011 is for all participants to analyzeand build the best tools that the struggle needs at this point, bothfor its organization and for the impact it aims to have here in Spain,as case of study to be applied more globally.* * Some of the questionsthat we will discuss this year are:*Which tools and methods of online organization and communication haveallowed the emergence of the #15M movement? How can these practices beimproved? How have social networks facilitated a change in the respectshown between people from different groups? What dangers threatenthe neutral, open Internet which we know and want to preserve, atthe local and global levels? How has the Internet facilitated thecreation of new ways of producing and spreading culture? How can someof those methods become a way to avoid artists being used as an excuseto privatize the Web? What should we do with SGAE (the main managementorganization in Spain) now that its directives have been taken tocourt ;-)?*This gathering of 2 days will be preceded, as always, by the OXCARS,the biggest free culture event of all time. A great celebration offree culture that will serve as a warm-up event.*We believe it will be a very useful space for the empowerment of themovement.We welcome and await you all.This year we will be helped along in our discussions, amongst manyothers, by John Perry Barlow, who in 1996 lit the spark with his'declaration of independence in ciberspace', Alex de la Iglesia, whostepped down from his post as Director of the Film Academy in protestagainst the Sinde law, as well as many of the hackers and people whohave created tools to assist the actions of the 15M movement, such asthe network N-1.cc.*Three days to think about what the Internet has done for us, and what we can now do for it ;-).*LocationThursday 27th October, 20.30 Oxcars Sala Apolo - BarcelonaFriday 28th and Saturday 29th from 11h to 21h at the Rambla in front of Santa Monica and at Santa Monica, Drassanes metro stop*Site:http://www.2011.fcforum.net/Program:http://www.2011.fcforum.net/topics/English translation will be provide.*Please, help to disseminate the info.**http://oxcars11.whois--x.net/en/http://whois--x.net/english/the-oxcarshttp://whois--x.net/englishhttp://2011.fcforum.nethttp://fcforum.nethttp://www.facebook.com/LaEXnetTwitter at < at >fcforum_net (ingl?s)Identi.ca at < at >fcforum (ingl?s)Twitter at < at >X_net_ (castellano)*X.net**http://whois--x.net*

The Rise of Performance ArchitectureCamp-conference on Art/Urban StrategiesGrisar Park, Brussels, Todays Art festival, 22/09/11-01/10/11“Accepting architecture as cultural production, its performative dimensionmust also contribute to a critical role, that is, to architecture’scapacity to produce commentary regarding the ongoing transformations ofculture and society.In this sense, the notion of architectural performance implied here feedsdirectly upon the tradition of performance art.”Pedro Gadanho, “Architecture as performance”, revista Dédalo N°2, Porto, 2007“The main achievement of contemporary city planning is to have made peopleblind to the possibility of what we call unitary urbanism, namely a livingcritique of this manipulation of cities and their inhabitants, a critiquefueled by all the tensions of everyday life. A living critique meanssetting up bases for an experimental life where people can come togetherto create their own lives on terrains equipped to their ends.”Raoul Vaneigem, Attila Kotanyi, “Basic program of the Bureau of UnitaryUrbanism”, revue Internationale Situationniste N°6, Paris, 1961In the last decade, ephemeral architecture practices of numerousarchitects and artists collectives have been developing as a criticalanswer to the results of growing mobility in the recent neo-liberalcontext, using various performative tactics for “activation” of the localpotentialities for social change. The most interesting ephemeralarchitecture projects are fast-statement critical practices, collectiveactions towards the creation of temporary places for encounters in anever-changing urban environment.But, because these actions have to be strongly connected to longer-termlocal actions, they have to be transitory phases that call for a socialtransformation, for a next step. And in that sense, this is veryperformative. And this is where the performative action becomes a radicalsocial gesture that goes far beyond the production of an aesthetic object.These 3 days of conferences and performances will give the opportunity toarchitects, urban theorists, performance artists, philosophers andactivists to root the origins of contemporary performance architecture andto extend its potentialities regarding future art/urban strategies.But the conference will also be an activation step for MyCityLab Brussels,an ephemeral performance that call for longer-term actions in the BrusselsMIDI neighbourhood, this key platform of mobility in Europe. For thatreason a one-week workshop will bring architects, artists, urbantheorists, performers and volunteers to activate this camp-conference. Forcomplete information and workshop schedules please visit TodaysArt.be orMyCityLab.euConference 29 september 1st octoberConference speakers:29 September:Raum Labor [ DE ], Tor Lindstrand – Economy [ SE ], Umschichten [ DE ]30 September:Matteo Pasquinelli [ IT ], Bureau d’études [ FR ], Andrés Jaque [ ES ],Jozef Wouters [ BE ], Edurne Rubio [ ES/BE ]01 October:Anna Rispoli [ IT/BE ], HeHe [ FR ], Julien Beller – Exyzt/6b [ FR ], NaïmAit-Sidhoum – Zoom Architecture/Pied La Biche [ FR ], Cécile Martin [ CA], Jochen Dehn [ DE/FR ], Loreto Martinez Troncoso [ ES/FR ]Workshop 22-30 SeptemberWith: Raum Labor [ DE ], Jochen Dehn [ DE/FR ], Loreto Martinez Troncoso [ES/FR ], OST Collective [ BE ], Edurne Rubio [ ES/BE ], Cécile Martin [ CA], Ewen Chardronnet [ FR ]Curated by Ewen Chardronnetplease visit TodaysArt.be or MyCityLab.eu

BEHIND THE NEWS with Doug Henwood"Best Music on an Economics & Politics Radio Show"Village Voice Best of NYC 2005Freshly posted to my radio archive:September 24, 2011 I visit the Occupy Wall Street demos (my report in words and pictures is here) • Rohit Malpani, Oxfam advisor, on land grabs (see herefor report) • Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, debunks economicsit joins:---------September 17, 2011 DH on the income, poverty, and health insurance numbers • Margaret Flowers of PNHP on the health insurance mess and the state of single-payer • Maria Armoudian, author of Kill the Messenger, on the media and its relation to armed chaosSeptember 10, 2011 Mike Lofgren, former Congressional staffer author of this spirited farewell to his long-time party, describes the furious insanity of the GOP • Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers, andKathy Olmsted, UC–Davis prof and author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, on conspiriacism, esp the 9/11 kindSeptember 3, 2011 David Cay Johnston on how corps and the megarich get away with paying almost no taxes (his Reuters column on GE is here) • Adolph Reed on the Dems, the inflated threat of the Tea Party, and the diminishing usefulness of race as a political categoryAugust 27, 2011 Mark Brenner, director of Labor Notes, reflects on the state of labor as Labor Day approaches • Alexander Cockburn, occasional Nation columnist and co-editor of Counterpunch, on the media and the media criticism racketAugust 20, 2011 Max Ajl, the Jewbonics blogger, on why Israelis are in the streets and how talk of the Occupation is not welcome • Yanis Varoufakis updates the eurocrisis as it spreads westwardsAugust 13, 2011 Dacher Keltner of UC–Berkeley on the psychology of class and social interactions • David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, provides an anthropologist’s POV on money and debtJuly 30, 2011 Joel Schalit on Brevik, the European right, its attitude towards Israel, and Israel’s own right • Brad DeLong on the political economy of austerityJuly 23, 2011 James Galbraith on deficit hysteria and the single-volume collection of four books by his father, John Kenneth Galbraith, published by the Library of AmercaJuly 16, 2011 Amber Hollibaugh, interim director of Queers for Economic Justice, on the limits of same-sex marriage (see here for more) • Jeff Madrick, author of The Age of Greed, on the emergence of today’s icky economic orderJuly 2, 2011 Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos, talks about the effects of climate change amidst state collapse, plentiful weaponry, and neoliberalismJune 25, 2011 Abe Sauer, writer for The Awl, on what’s been going on in Wisconsin since the great February upsurge • Abby Rapoport of The Texas Observer on Texas gov Rick Perry • Jon Bakija, co-author of this paper, on how and why the rich have gotten richer---Doug HenwoodProducer, Behind the NewsSaturdays, 10-11 AM, KPFA, Berkeley 94.1 FM"best music on a show about economics & politics" - Village Voice242 Greene Ave - #1CBrooklyn, NY 11238-1398 USA+1-347-599-2211<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html>iTunes: <http://tinyurl.com/3bsaqb>Facebook group: <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Behind-the-News-with-Doug-Henwood/104198236341205>.

[This text was written for the emergency issue of the journal "Open"by the Dutch Foundation for Art and the Public Space (Stichting Kunsten Openbare Ruimte / SKOR) SKOR/Open is one of the arts organizationsto lose their funding in the Netherlands. The complete(Dutch-language) emergency issue of Open can be downloaded from:http://www.skor.nl/nl/site/item/open-noodnummer-over-de-nieuwe-politiek-van-cultuur.]# The fiction of the creative industries #The German artist Gerhard Merz said in 1991 that "creativity is forhairdressers".[^1] Professional artists and designers never had a highopinion of the word "creative" and the people bearing it on theirbusiness cards, from creative directors to creative consultants andcreativity trainers. An exception perhaps was Merz' colleague at theDusseldorf Academy of Fine Art, Joseph Beuys. Anticipating much oftoday's community art, he embraced the notion of creativity in itsbroadest sense and sanctioned any type of socially constructive workas art. And Merz, while making a sound point against romanticizedartistic subjectivity and the overall stupidity of the word"creative", was a highbrow art snob dismissing the lower crafts.To the uninitiated, the notion of the "creative industries" soundslike a corporate version of Beuys, but it isn't because it doesn'tinclude the hairdresser, cook or childcare worker either. It is a termwhose normative political power is in blatant contrast to its almostarbitrary definition. Linguists might call it a rift between theperformativity and the semantics of the word. Therefore, almost everyposition paper on the creative industries starts with impressiveeconomic figures. In the Netherlands, the most recent of these is"Creatieve industrie in topvorm", a report of the "Topteam CreatieveIndustrie" chaired by Victor van der Chijs, managing director of RemKoolhaas' bureau OMA. This paper had been commissioned by the Dutchgovernment. Secretary of culture Halbe Zijlstra has factually made ita government agenda and will follow its advice to move all previouspublic funding for design and fashion, new media arts and architectureinto a new sector institute for the creative industries.On the first pages, we learn that the Dutch creative industriesconsist of 172,000 professionals and an annual turnover of 7.1 billionEUR amounting to 2% of the country's GDP.[^2] The authors adopt agovernment definition of "creative industries" as the arts, media andentertainment and creative business services (essentiallyarchitecture, design, fashion and advertising).[^3] According to thisdefinition, media include publishing houses, film, TV and radio,gaming, mobiles and photography. Which makes one ask: Does a politicaljournalist from NRC Handelsblad or BNR Nieuwsradio know that he or sheworks in the "creative industries"? A publishing giant like Elsevier:creative industries? Is a mobile phone carrier like Vodafone part ofthe definition and business numbers? H&M store personnel? Why them andnot hairdressers, cooks or Tattoo Bob in Rotterdam?On the remaining sixty pages of "Creatieve industrie in topvorm", wedo not even read anything anymore on the publishing industries,television or radio, never mind the fact that economically, theyamount to a large part if not the bulk of the "creative industries" asdefined there. With such arbitrary inclusions and exclusions, andinflated business figures, the "creative industries" - a term inventedby Tony Blair's political advisors in the 1990s - remind of othereconomic bubbles from the same era: the dotcom industry and thefinancial sector.Industries are normally defined by their products: the food industryproduces food, the computer industry produces computers, theconstruction industry buildings, the healthcare industry health. Butwith the exception of the creativity trainers mentioned earlier, theso-called creative industries do not produce creativity. An architect,for example, does not work for the creative industries but as thecreative-artistic part of the construction industry. A fashiondesigner is the artistic part of the textile industry, a graphicdesigner the visual artist for the publishing and media industry, andso on.Often, "creative industries" have been an illusion created byglobalization: Nike and Apple, for example, were able to be seen as"creative companies" because manufacturing of their products had beenoutsourced to China. This does not mean that there is no computerindustry or a fashion industry anymore, but simply that theseindustries have turned into networks where labor is shared acrosscontinents instead of adjacent buildings. (Moreover, it isquestionable whether this mode of globalized production will besustainable, given the social, macro-economic and environmental damageit has done; aside from that, countries like China strive to alsodesign and market the products they manufacture in the nearfuture.[^4])The only "creative industries" that actually work as industries intheir own right are the ones originally - but disparagingly - called"the culture industry" by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the1940s: the film and the music industry. Their products are, accordingto Pierre Bourdieu's sharp revision of the term, "autonomous art" inthe sense that they are not being produced for an externalcommissioning party (nor as part of another industry's production),but have to find their own market after they have been produced.[^5]In Tony Blair's Britain, the coinage of "creative industries"coincided with the boom of Britpop and the British music industry. TheIndependent wrote in 2003 that "New Labour ill-advisedly prolonged itsBritpop period. Alan McGee [owner of the Britpop music labelCreation], along with Paul Smith, Richard Branson [owner of VirginRecords] and [television producer] Waheed Ali were appointed to ashort-lived and long-forgotten body called the Creative IndustriesTask Force".[^6]Today, there exist no genuine - large-scale, divided-labor,economically self-sustaining - film industries anymore exceptHollywood and Bollywood. The music industry nearly collapsed andradically shrunk in the early 2000s. In all developed countries, TVand radio audiences are becoming smaller and older. The newspaper andbooks publishing industry is in a deep crisis, the golden years ofadvertising are now celebrated as nostalgia in the TV series "Madmen".For media, communication design and performing arts professions, the"industries" model is one of the past, not the future.In all cases, the Internet and new media played a crucial role. Foryoung people, TV has been killed by YouTube, the music industry bymp3, DVD profits by bittorrent, newspapers by the web. But even moresignificant than these shifts of consumer technology was the digitalrevolution of production. Most musicians no longer need a recordlabel, but can master their music on a laptop. Thanks to the lastgeneration of inexpensive digital cameras, cinematic films can now beshot and edited at home by freelancers. Writers no longer needpublishers, but often are better off self-publishing viaprint-on-demand and e-books. In all these areas, "creatives" becomeallrounders. Division of labor is decreasing, not increasing, withmany industries, big agencies and highly staffed bureaus becomingdinosaurs of the past.This development first began in graphic design, with the revolutionfrom traditional typesetting to Macintosh- and PC-based DesktopPublishing in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, large-scale graphicdesign firms like Total Design, which defined Dutch Design in the1960s and 1970s, have disappeared. Innovative corporate graphicdesigners today operate like Buro Petr van Blokland + Claudia Mens, atwo-people company that - with its expertise in computer-programmedtypography - has designed house style and multilingual documents ofbig customers like Rabobank.like Tattoo Bob. The Dutch government seem to suggest that they shouldgo back to becoming Total Design. Among others, the "Topteam CreatieveIndustrie" praises Frog Design as a role model for the future Dutchcreative industries[^7] - a company once famous for its design of SonyTVs in the 1970s and Apple computers in the 1980s. When it's aboutmacro-economic numbers, the advice report inflates the "creativeindustries", but as soon as visions and policies are proposed, thefocus narrows down on design companies that fit the industrialparadigm.But industrial design and architecture, too, are changing through thekind of technological and cultural disruption that transformed mediaand communication design. With 3D printers and public FabLabs,material objects can now be printed like pages with laser printers. Asthe technology is becoming more accessible and affordable,non-professionals will design and print home products, an Open Sourcedesign sharing culture will be likely, freelancers - including thosein low wage countries working over the Internet - will be able toundercut the big players. With currently seven FabLabs from Groningento Arnhem, the Netherlands are on the cutting edge of thisdevelopment. No mention of it, however, in the "Advies TopteamCreatieve Industrie".I have intentionally refrained from moral judgment and humanistconcerns over the contemporary arts in the Netherlands in thisarticle. They have been voiced elsewhere in this issue. The suggestedpolicies harm non-profit arts; but they don't even do the commercialdesign and media world a favor. The "creative industries" vision ofthe "Topteam" and, by adoption, the Dutch government reads like aretro trip into "Madmen". On top of that, it is bizarre how a freemarket-advocating government acts like a central committee here.Business development master plans are being made like in China, publicarts money is repurposed for a commercial sector that, if it lives upto its own name, should pay taxes instead of taking them.If one looks at the "creative industries" meme globally, then oneencounters the same story again and again: the fiction of an industrybased on arbitrary definition criteria and blown-up business figures,made to persuade governments into funnelling public money (andincreasing public debt) into large-scale infrastructures;infrastructures that more often than not end up failing to meet thereal needs of an "industry" that, right because of new technologiesand globalization, really is a post-industrial patchwork of TattooBobs.[^1]: "Ich habe mich immer gegen Selbstverwirklichung in der Kunst undgegen Kreativität gewandt. Ich habe immer gesagt: Kreativität ist wasfür Friseure", Gerhard Merz in the documentary [_Measure ColorLight_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImwKc4_VQhs), 1991, statementat 3'41"[^2]: [Creatieve industrie in topvorm, Advies Topteam CreatieveIndustrie, 2011](http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/rapporten/2011/06/17/creatieve-industrie-in-topvorm.html),p. 4[^3]: ibid.[^4]: The latter point is also acknowledged in Creatieve industrie intopvorm, p. 2[^5]: Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Cambridge:Polity, 1993, p. 39[^6]: John Harris, [The Britpopyears](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-britpop-years-590079.html),in: The Independent, 7 May 2003[^7]: Creatieve industrie in topvorm, p. 2(This text may be copied and published without permission as long asits content isn't altered and this notice is preserved.)

My friend Iva Rad and I just finished a video about the ongoing Wall StreetOccupation which started last Saturday, September 17: NOBODY CAN PREDICTTHE MOMENT OF REVOLUTIONWe want to share insights into the formation of a new social movement as itis still taking shape in real time. The video was shot during the 5th and6th day of the occupation.This idea to take over a public square in New York's financial district wasinspired by recent uprisings in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and Tunisia whichmost of us were following online. Despite of the corporate media's effortto silence the protests, and Yahoo's attempt to censor e-mailcommunication, the occupation is quickly growing in numbers and spreadingto other cities in the US and abroad. Please forward our video tolike-minded people via email, facebook, twitter - and make the voices ofdissent circulate.Find the latest news, learn how to participate and support:https://occupywallst.org/Thanks for spreading!Iva & Martyna?---Martyna StarostaFilm DetectiveRed ChannelsSucide or Solidarity?Facebook: Valerie Solanas Reloaded

This email arrived in my inbox the other day, and, as it is likely ofgeneral interest to this group but not necessarily otherwise available in anon-email context, I thought I'd forward it here for the sake of archivingit on nettime as much as for general discussion. [ok fine, I partly justwant a bookmarkable URL so I can save it after I delete it from my inbox ;)]Apropos of this thread from February: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1102/threads.html#00032... and countless others about P2P, distributed web, DIY data, etc.I'll just say that I find it by turns incredibly naive, inspiring,irrelevant and hopeful ...cheers,R---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Dan and the Diaspora* team <team-cAfjTGCkfoUrOXury9/BIA< at >public.gmane.org>Date: Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 11:54 PMSubject: Diaspora* means a brighter future for all of us.To: [image: Diaspora] <https://joindiaspora.com> Dear rory -Thanks again for your interest in joining the Diaspora* community, and foryour patience. We?re working on getting your invite out to you as quickly aspossible, and we?re still committed to getting it to you by the end ofOctober. We?re pushing out hundreds of thousands of invitations as quicklyas we can -- thanks for bearing with us.As promised in our previous message, we want to tell you a little more aboutwhy we believe so strongly in Diaspora*'s mission: to build *a new andbetter social web, one that's 100% owned and controlled by you and otherDiasporans.**Diaspora*'s distributed design is a huge part of it.* Like the Internetitself, Diaspora* isn't housed in any one place, and it's not controlled byany one entity (including us). We've created software that lets you set upand run your own social network on your own "pod" (or server) and connectyour network to the larger Diaspora* ecosystem. You can have a pod all toyourself, or one for just you and your friends, or your family, giving youcomplete ownership and control over your personal social information(including your identity, your posts, and your photos) and how it?s allstored and shared. Or you can simply join one of more than 20 open pods.[1]This means *you can do what you want.* You can express yourself candidly,and be your authentic self. You can go by whatever name you like onDiaspora*. Pseudonyms are fine, and this both protects you (if you want tosay something your boss or your parents disagree with) and *opens the doorto real connection.* Here?s how one blogger and Diasporan put it:Maybe his kind words mean so much to me because T is someone I've metthrough a [pseudo]nym -- he got to know the real me's ideals and beliefs,and liked that person... A compliment from [him] is based on my ownsincerity, and thus, has a certain purity. It is untainted by perceptions ofhow I look, what I'm wearing, and so on. Given that, I value it especiallyhighly.[2]This kind of authentic connection brings back the *social freedom* that madethe Internet awesome in the first place. And this is just the beginning.You can make great connections with anyone in the Diaspora* ecosystem, notjust the people on your own pod, because the pods are linked together.You can also use Diaspora* as a home base for your outbound posts onFacebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, writing to them all from Diaspora*. In thefuture, you?ll be able to monitor your inbound streams from Diaspora* aswell.Yet our distributed design means *no big corporation will ever controlDiaspora**. Diaspora* will never sell your social life to advertisers, andyou won?t have to conform to someone?s arbitrary rules or look over yourshoulder before you speak.And because your information is yours, not ours, *you?ll have the ultimatepower* -- the ability to move your profile and all your social data from onepod to another, without sacrificing your connection to the social web. Overtime, this will bring an end to the indifferent, self-serving behavior thatpeople can?t stand[3] from the walled gardens that dominate socialnetworking today. When you can vote with your feet for the environment whereyou feel safest, the big guys will have to shape up, or risk losing you.We?re still building this move-your-profile capability, as well as other keyfeatures. It?s hard work, but *we?re building the future we want to see*,with incredible community support.Diaspora* is a genuine community effort. More than 160 people havecontributed to our code, putting us in the top 2% of all open sourceprojects tracked by Ohloh.[4] Hundreds more volunteers have translatedDiaspora* into 13 of the world?s spoken languages so far, with another 32translations in progress. Thousands of Diasporans have given us more than3,000 points of feedback. (We?re listening closely, and building thefeatures you?re asking for as fast as we can.) And of course, thousands ofdonors have helped pay for our development, and hundreds of thousands ofpeople -- including you -- are patiently waiting for access to try it out.Thanks again for your patience. We can?t wait to see you here, and to builda brighter future together.Sincerely,- Dan, Max, Ilya, Sarah, Yosem, and PeterWednesday, September 21st, 2011[1]: JoinDiaspora.com is just one of the pods within the Diaspora*ecosystem. Here?s a directory of some of the others that are open to newusers <http://bit.ly/oa6Gdc> (there are even more out there too, includingmany that are private, not open).[2]: Excerpts from this blogpost<http://fullofsecrets.livejournal.com/105666.html>by GaridinWinslow.[3]: "Report: Facebook Is Most Hated Social Media Company", Courtney Rubin,Inc. Magazine, July 20,2011.<http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201107/facebook-scores-poorly-on-customer-satisfaction.html>[4]: http://www.ohloh.net/p/diaspora/factoids/10029264 For general inquiries or support with your Diaspora account, please emailus at questions-cAfjTGCkfoUrOXury9/BIOG/Ez6ZCGd0< at >public.gmane.org

Dear friends,you might be interested in the information about the results of theRead/Write Reality workshop held in Cava de' Tirreni (Italy).http://www.artisopensource.net/2011/09/25/rwr-readwrite-reality-after-the-workshop-and-next-steps/During the workshop on ubiquitous publishing and augmented reality, an ARmovie and some experimental tools have been developed, exploring thephilosophical, technical, critical and strategic possibilities offered bythese techniques and methodologies.The AR movie will be published in the next few days, as well as all thedocumentation and software.All products and documentation are released under a GPL3 license.More info and updates on Art is Open Source---Salvatore Iaconesiprof. Cross Media DesignUniversity of Rome "La Sapienza"Faculty of ArchitectureDept. of Industrial Designsalvatore.iaconesi-H0WUfK1cM0SULHF6PoxzQNHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.orgxdxd.vs.xdxd-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.orgsalvatore-y3X80uy9D6AsV2N9l4h3zg< at >public.gmane.orgskype: xdxdVSxdxd---Art is Open Sourcehttp://www.artisopensource.net---FakePresshttp://www.fakepress.it

Re: <nettime> The fiction of the creative industries Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt-jc/NB3zmH+SzQB+pC5nmwQ< at >public.gmane.org>Re[6]: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt-jc/NB3zmH+SzQB+pC5nmwQ< at >public.gmane.org>Re: Re[6]: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Dmytri Kleiner <dk-Dx6v7Xh9zxSJDmoZTJKuotHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 23:25:04 +0200From: Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt-jc/NB3zmH+SzQB+pC5nmwQ< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> The fiction of the creative industriesHello,This is exactly the phantasma of the small single autonomous producer(The Beasty Boy's "Rhymin & Stealin" chorus) against the truth of an_existing_ big Creative Industry -- not in the plural but thought as oneworldwide factory of enemy-brothers. This Industry has the distributionchannels and the studios for bigger shows than a website only.Since the Creative Industry is not just the fiction or fantasy of somegovernmental managers and think tanks it will be and is a centralisedaction as re-action and in answer to the economy crisis today. This is aprocess, not just a factory or shop floor as one place in one time asthe concept of the sociological theatrical drama of a nation in trouble(here The Netherlands) tells us. The name of it is not important. Nameit Symbol Industry or Rotterdam or Berlin, it works. But it works onlyas long as the first sector of real productivity works, namely and e.g.the Automobile (and yet very creative) Industry and the Energy Industry,as this creative industry of the Uberbau (superstructure) totallydepends on the productivity sectors, just as the academical 'sector' issubsidised by the state form taxes, so from workers wages funds and thesocial art-groups are grant-aided for instance by the German GoetheInstitute, thus the state again.An irony is thatjust got the job in 1998/1999 to color the Foreign Office of Germany --very de-creative of course. A hairdresser for the state so to say.So it's all about the notion of annot, because of new technologies nonetheless anarchic but at the same timeplanned.And who still believes inMarleys (in the plural), can easily leave behind the stardom -- the restof the consumers is left behind to feed the stars with real tattoos ontheir skins.Matze Schmidt- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:24:18 +0200From: Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt-jc/NB3zmH+SzQB+pC5nmwQ< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re[6]: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.I think that's totally wrong. 'They' may know or feel (which is not thesame I insist) they 'are' debt, ore to be more adequate they are _in_debt not _the_ debt, but that's not their position as a worker. Theirposition as a civic debitor is this debt-position (pay back thecredits!), but as a worker (= producer of goods) they are only givingtheir lifetime to produce the profits and they are paying the taxes thatcreate the funds for paying the debts of banks or other emergency creditplans for the capital.the debtnotIt is the factory still and not the individual house or bank account(the individual finance economy). Althoug uprisings started often in thestreets and at the social place of having nothing but hunger, therevolutions which had been successful had to take over production as themain and key field.This model, "to convince them instead that non-capitalist provision ofhousing, education and medicine is the solution to the problems theyhave", remains in the avantgarde role and leads back to the problems ofe.g. the Bolshewiks had or created.One can learn of course form them, that problems are based in feltconditions (Kronstadt) but the solutions were never implied in feltconditions but in changed situations. The solutions now are implied inthe system of the crisis now, as one form of capitalism showing itselfas the debt. But the crisis is an overproduction crisis, every workerknows that, who has to build a car he can not afford. That's not complexor ideological. Instead the talk about the debitor is the lower or justmiddle class position-theory.And further, "they" don't have the problems, workers (and non-workers)reproduce them and are stuck. But I think the real line does not go indirection of convincing anybody of socialism (provision of housing,education and medicine) but the line soon goes into conflicts Mid Europehasn't seen for 70 years. Then or after this one can think of anon-capitalist ways of production.Matze Schmidt- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:12:20 +0200From: Dmytri Kleiner <dk-Dx6v7Xh9zxSJDmoZTJKuotHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: Re[6]: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form anOn Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:24:18 +0200, Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt-jc/NB3zmH+SzQB+pC5nmwQ< at >public.gmane.org>wrote:I guarantee no mass movement will be ever organised around such abstractarguments. Yes, of course control of productive assets is the goal. But first youmust had to mobilise the masses. You can't skip that step. And for this youneed consciousness. Something that you can not create, but must alreadyexist as a consequence of real conditions.So the only possibilities are Capitalism or Bolshevism?Mobilising a movement is not vangardist, ignoring the solutions implied bytheir felt conditions and forcing theoretically-grounded alternatives onthem is. The idea of a vanguard is that a small cadre does the thinking forthe masses, the idea of a mass line is different, that you take up theinterests and demands of the masses through the lens of theory.You are forgetting that almost no worker has "built a care he can notafford" since most workers in the Western economies are no-longer directproducers. As explained in the text.Perhaps. But in any case, the reintroduction of class struggle intopolitics through mobilising workers around the issue of Debt remains a pathto building social power. What specific solutions emerge is cookshops ofthe future territory. Best,- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Re: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form Michael Rogers <m---KK0ffGbhmjU< at >public.gmane.org> Dmytri Kleiner <dk-Dx6v7Xh9zxSJDmoZTJKuotHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.org> Dmytri Kleiner <dk-Dx6v7Xh9zxSJDmoZTJKuotHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:04:29 +0100From: Michael Rogers <m---KK0ffGbhmjU< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to formOn 26/09/11 15:49, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:Right, but the problem is how to convince someone of that. To convincesomeone to join the debtors' movement, you must convince them not onlythat they're currently a debtor, but also that they can become anunshackled worker. So you haven't avoided the problem (which youcorrectly identified, in my opinion) of convincing people that they'reworkers.Perhaps I've made an error of Marxist terminology by calling theunshackled workers "workers", but the point remains that if yourecognise your productive power in the present, you can recognise therole that power might play in a future society. Whereas if all yourecognise about yourself in the present is your debt, the question ofwhat role you might play in a future society remains open.And that's not a superficial problem: if there's no clear link betweenthe current condition (debt) and the solution, then there's also noclear reason to prefer one proposed solution to another. Everylegitimization brand (a wonderful concept, by the way!) can claim apiece of the debtors' movement.But a movement must also move towards something. Debt is a clearlyidentifiable condition, but it doesn't go anywhere. The workers'movement has both a condition (work under capital) and a goal (workwithout capital). What does the debtors' movement move towards?I've read the essay you posted here on the 20th of September - is thatthe original?Cheers,Michael- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:49:35 +0200From: Dmytri Kleiner <dk-Dx6v7Xh9zxSJDmoZTJKuotHuzzzSOjJt< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form anOn Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:04:29 +0100, Michael Rogers <m---KK0ffGbhmjU< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:We don't need to convince them that are workers, per se, we need them toact with class consciousness and support the interests of workers, forwhatever reason. And consciousness is not something that we are in a position to create, asthe consciousness industries working for those who oppose the unshacklingof workers, PR, Lobbies, parties, etc, have far more resources than thoseinfavour of unshackling workers.So, we need to work with the consciousness we find, not the consciousnesswe wish was there.Consciousness comes from conditions, not theories or opinions. Theconsciousness that transformed the working conditions in developed nationsand build the welfare state was not created by chartists charters orsyndicalist doctrines or the program of the communist manifesto, but by theworking conditions of the workers themselves.Yes, now the issue in rich nations is no longer working conditions, jobsare something you get, there is no concept of the appropriation of value,as the creation of value and the locale of appropriation is too abstractand remote for the masses of workers to contemplate, it's an abstraction,not a fact. What is a fact to them is precarity and financial strife, withDebt being it's measure. Class consciousness is currently based around personal Debt, thus that iswhat can be used to reintroduce class conflict into politics. If you don'tbelieve me, read the manifestos, signs and slogans of any recent movementor uprising, from the Strange-bedfellows Tent Cities of Tel Aviv, to theBlackberry Riots of London, to #occupywalltreet(tm). The topic Debt iseverywhere, ever-present, on the tip of every tongue. Especially debt fromthose goods that are not perceived as elective; Education, Housing andMedicine. There is wide spread feeling that Capitalism is unable toprovision these goods, and many people who would cary a placard saying ismuch have no clue what surplus value is, much less the alienation of labouror what it's abolition might look like. They demand representation! Andthat is what social power is built on, when classes unit and demandrepresentation.I say we go with it, and not go down the road of "Wait a minute here,before we start talking about Debt, can we all agree that the root ofaccumulation is the disposition of the means of production!" As much as Ipersonally adore political theory, and am happy to discuss it, let's notturn a potentially revolutionary situation into a reading circle.It's not up to us to pick and chose the basis of the consciousness thatleads the masses to come to the conclusion that capitalism has jumped theshark. The masses are crying out that, at least certain types of goods, cannot be provided by way of capitalism. Amazing! They are demandingrepresentation. This is an opportunity to push politics away from themoribund margins of identities and causes, to transcend the illusorypolitics of a legitimation marketplace, and perhaps to workers can move onestep closer to achieving their historic role, the abolition of classes, bybringing class back into politics. Not necessarily in the traditionallanguage, but in their own words.The first problem is not solution to the issue of debt, nobody with anypower has any interest of solving the issue. The first problem is forDebtors' to have representation, so that their interests are even presentat the negotiating table when solutions are discussed. As the original text says: "To make politics relevant, to challenge andcontest the interests of Capital and to represent the interests of themasses we need workers to once again unite in their common interests andmake their social power felt."That is the goal of the party. Provide representation for the interests ofDebtors.We do not need, and actually have no right to, impose an final destinationon the masses. We can speculate, not dictate. Throwing off the shackles ofour class conditions is the goal, the world that results is not up to usalone, and may well be one we can't even imagine. Let's get there and see.In the meantime, issues like student debt, housing debt and medical debtdeserve attention and can galvanize a mass movement.Best,

The Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT seeks tofill two positions(1) Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of ComparativeMedia Studies/Game Studies, MITMIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies in theSchool of Humanities, Arts and Social Science isseeking a tenure-track assistant professor of gamestudies to start in the fall of 2012. Candidates shouldhave a Ph.D. with a record of significant publication(or the promise thereof), research activity and/ordesign experience relevant to game studies. We seek acandidate who will connect the work of our GAMBIT andEducation Arcade research labs to the classroom, andwho can direct innovative and multidisciplinaryresearch. Relevant areas of specialization include thehistory, theory, sociology, psychology and criticism ofgames and play, and expertise in one or more of thefollowing areas: game design; game engineering; player,playing and assessment methodologies; user behaviorsand game economics; data analytics; and visual,narrative, and audio design. Fluency in a broader arrayof humanities-based media studies and experience ingame production will be considered a plus. Applicantsshould have teaching experience. Please submit a letterof application, C.V., three letters of recommendation,and work samples online by December 1, 2011 at:https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/1032. Hardcopies of works samples may be sent to Prof. WilliamUricchio, Director, Program in Comparative MediaStudies, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E15-313,Cambridge, MA 02139. MIT is an affirmative action,equal opportunity employer.(2) Tenured Associate/Full Professor, MIT ComparativeMedia Studies MIT's Program in Comparative MediaStudies seeks applications for a tenured Professorbeginning in September 2012. A PhD and an extensiverecord of publication, research activity and leadershipare expected. We encourage applicants from a widearray of disciplinary backgrounds. The successfulcandidate will teach and guide research in one or moreof the Program's dimensions of comparativity(historical, methodological, cultural) across mediaforms. Expertise in the cultural and socialimplications of established media forms (film,television, radio, audio and visual cultures, or print)is as important as scholarship in one or more emergingareas such as games, social media, media literacies,digital arts and culture, internet research, networkcultures, software studies, media industries, andtransmedia storytelling. The position involvesteaching graduate and undergraduate courses, developingand guiding collaborative research activities, andparticipating in the intellectual and creativeleadership of the Program and the Institute.Candidates should demonstrate a record of effectiveteaching and thesis supervision, significantresearch/creative activity, relevant administrativeexperience, and international recognition. CMS offersSB and SM programs and maintains a full roster ofresearch initiatives and outreach activities [seehttp://cms.mit.edu]. The program embraces the notion ofcomparativity and collaboration, and works across MIT'svarious schools, and between MIT and the larger medialandscape. Applications consisting of a curriculumvita, a statement of teaching philosophy andexperience, a statement of current and future researchplans, selected major publications 3 letters ofrecommendation should be submitted online by November1, 2011 at:https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/1036. Hardcopies of work samples may be sent to: ProfessorWilliam Uricchio, Director, Comparative Media Studies,MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, E15-313, Cambridge, MA02139 USA. MIT is an affirmative action/equalopportunity employer.Many thanks--Jessica TatlockComparative Media StudiesMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyE15-331617/715.5277jtatlock-3s7WtUTddSA< at >public.gmane.org

I've been watching and producing media for the Occupy Movement, and from my experience, there is a represented lack of focus in the media, which isn't entirely true when you get to the meetings. But this is democracy in action. What I want to do is just throw my two cents in and offer my suggestions for demands. Capitalism exhausts itself. After so long, the concentration of wealth becomes so egregious that it has to be overthrown and redistributed. In Jeffersonian terms, this is the revolution every 40 years or so, but in the States, this looks like the breaking of the monopolies in the late 1800's. What we need is a redistribution of wealth, protection of standards of living, and provisions for general welfare. Could these include:1: Institution of Pre-Reagan taxation levels, or perhaps even Eisenhower-era levels. Before Reagan, rates on the uppermost tiers were anywhere from 90% (Esienhoer) to far above #0+% for post-Reagan)2: Reinstate a 35% Capital Gains tax.3: Nationalize Medicine and Insurance4: Institute wage disparity legislation. For example, make it illegal for the top management to make more than 40 times that of the janitor, instead of 300 times.5: Demand that companies delink pensions from the Market, including TIAA-CREF for academics.6: Abandon Free Trade. Re-institute import tariffs to equalize labor valuation between the US and exporter nations.7: Institute labor tariffs upon outsourcing companies.8: Eliminate outcomes-based education and focus on a balanced curriculum with greater emphasis on arts and humanities.9: Greater public support for Culture.10: Demand a national mass rail infrastructure11: Demand more aggressive conversion to renewable energy forms.12: In times of surplus, either pay down the debt, or create a Federal nest egg for recessions.

bwo iac2009 listPls contact Melissa direct if you have good advice!Cheers, p+3D!---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------Subject: [Iac2009] my 4 days helping w/ tech at #occupywallst & questionsfor seasoned tech occupiers?From: "Melissa Gira Grant" <melissa AT melissagira.com>Date: Mon, October 3, 2011 05:40--------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi, all,I've been thinking of our Camp almost non-stop the past few days I've spentdown in the park near Wall Street. Like a lot of activists I know here inNew York, I was skeptical of what was going on in the protest, but startedshowing up just to see what it was all about. And then ended up staying. Andthen ended up volunteering.As it stands now, what's being billed as a very tech-savvy protest movementis struggling with its tech needs. After running around for a few daysshooting video and tweeting, today I joined the Internet Working Group tosee how I could be most useful, and I was surprised to find out how strainedthe occupation's tech infrastructure is. There's several competing websitesthat have more traffic than the "official" website (which ishttp://ganyc.net). An outside organization runs the official Twitter. Anally started the Facebook page, but we don't have admin access.Part of me thinks this is fine. Decentralizing the information going out ispart of our strength. But as media attention grows and the general publicwants to seek out information on the occupation, it's becoming a bit of aproblem.For folks who have been part of extended occupations and actions like this

#Thimbl, Social Media Week, < at >dsearls and Economic Fiction as aPerformative ArtworkThimbl[1] has been getting some attention lately, party because of my talkat Social Media Week Berlin[2], partly because of a Tweet by the legendaryDoc Searls[3].Despite being part of Transmediale 2010 and winning a distinction at thefestival, many people don't seem to realize that Thimbl is an artwork.It's a part of Telekommnunisten's Miscommunication Technologies seriesalong with such works as deadSwap[4] and r15n[5]. Miscommunication Technologies uncover the social relations embedded incommunication technology, creating platforms that don't often work asexpected, or work in unexpected ways.I suppose the fact that Thimbl is an artwork was a surprise to theorganizers of Social Media Week, and perhaps would be to Doc Searls aswell. Who, like many of the people in the audience an Social Media Weekmight be thinking. Huh? What makes this art exactly?The answer is surprisingly simple, it's art because it is carried out in anart context, at events like Transmediale, Hack.Fem.East, Sousevelance, andat places such Piet Zwart Institute and the Israeli Center for Digital Art.These works function as a kind of performative science fiction.Introducing the narrative of the political economy of the Internet into themedia arts community by way of interactive artworks in the form oftelephone and internet platforms, much like the Telekommunist Manifestointroduces the same topics in text. Among the core messages that we wish tocontribute to the media art dialogue is an understanding of howcentralization and decentralization relate to exploitation and freedom,respectively.Thimbl is an artwork, not really an alternative to Facebook, Twitter, oreven Identi.ca, as it was billed at Social Media Week, unwittingly by theorganisers, who where non-the-less quite pleased at the results, and withthe discusion it caused.Thimbl is about the need for decentralized social media, and illustratesthat this is something that has always been a part of the Internet, whilealso showing that it's not really so difficult to implement. Even though it's ambitions are symbolic, Thimbl actually works. Because it's decentralized, we can't know how many users it has, but youcan see the global timeline of all users that we do know about on our ownThimblSinging[6] instance. If you have a finger account on any server,anywhere, with a Thimbl-compatible plan file[7], you can use this site aswell, and start using Thimbl without installing anything from the Thimblproject on your own server. Or, you can grab the code and host a instance of ThimblSinging yourself.[8]If you prefer the command line, or want to script something, Thimbl-CLI[9]is available, as is the thimblr gem that comes with ThimblSinging. Even theGMail of Thimbl already exists; Phimbl[10], where you can just sign up andhave a Thimbl account. And PageKite[11] has added support for Thimbl too,meaning you can even easily self-host your Thimbl account, if you want too,perhaps even on your mobile device.So, if all this exists, why is Thimbl not a real alternative?Well, for one, we made it as artwork because it has merit as such wether ornot it becomes a viable platform, just like some ideas that emerge fromscience fiction become reality, and some don't, yet the predictive sciencedoesn't directly determine the merit of the work of fiction.However, that's not the main reason. Perhaps even calling it sciencefiction is misleading here. It's not Thimbl's technical viability that'sspeculative, but rather it's economic viability. Thimbl is an economicfiction. Making it work is not the greatest challenge, making it financially viableis. Thimbl does not provide investors with the ability to control it'susers or their data, and as Thimbl's Manifesto[12] states "This control isrequired by the logic of Capitalist finance in order to capture value.Without such control profit-seeking investors do not provide funds."For Thimbl, or any other platform with a simular vision, to become a realalternative to the capitalist financed platforms like Facebook and Twitter,we need more than running code, even more than a small, perhaps dedicated,user base. These assets are only enough to keep it going as a lively, yetmarginal underground medium. A fun platform for experts and enthusiasts,unknown and unknowable to the masses. To get beyond this and actually break the monopolizing grip of centralizedsocial media we need to match their productive capacities. We needfinancing on a simular scale. so that the development, marketing, andoperations budgets are comparable and sufficient to compete. That is whatis required to be a true alternative, not a symbolic one. Yet, Capitalismcan not provide such financing.Just like science fiction becomes reality when science transcends thelimitations that existed when it was imagined, for economic fiction likeThimbl to become reality economics will need to transcend the limitationsthat we currently face.We can write code, we can write texts, we can create artworks. But as asmall network of artists and hackers, we can't change the economicconditions we work in by ourselves.That is why Thimbl is an artwork; its message must transform society forits vision to become reality. It is a manifesto, written in code.If you want to see the project succeed, join us, grab the code and ideasyou want and run with them.As usual, I will be enjoying some drinks with friends at Stammtisch, ourweekly casual drinking night here in Berlin at Cafe Buchhandlung.[13].Please come by. [1] http://thimbl.net [2] http://socialmediaweek.org [3] http://twitter.com/#!/dsearls/status/119808351688335362 [4] http://deadswap.net [5] http://docs.telekommunisten.net/r15n [6] http://thimbl.tk [7] http://j.mp/dotplan [8] https://github.com/fguillen/ThimblSinging [9] https://github.com/blippy/Thimbl-CLI[10] http://phimbl.tk[11] http://pagekite.net/wiki/Howto/FingerAndThimbl/[12] http://www.thimbl.net/manifesto.html[13] http://j.mp/buchhandlung

Hello nettime,This was written for a hastily assembled edition of Transversal, online now,info. --dsw *Dan S. Wang I was brought to New York to make a few remarks about the Wisconsin Uprisingat the Creative Time Summit 3. Having just arrived in Manhattan, I foundmyself catching a cab to Liberty and Broadway, urged in by a New Yorkactivist friend who foresaw a Troy Davis protest march soon converging onthe Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park, a granite-blocked openspace in the canyon of the financial district. I made it there just in timeto see and hear the marchers bearing down on the occupied park. THE SYSTEM!IS RACIST!THEY KILLED TROY DAVIS! THE SYSTEM!IS RACIST!THEY LYNCHED TROY DAVIS! This was the chant in the air, in many voices as one, over and over. TroyDavis, an African-American man sentenced to death for a murder he had likelynot committed, had been legally killed by the State of Georgia less than 24hours earlier, in the face of an international effort to grant Davis a stayof execution. A hastily organized speak-out event in Union Square turnedinto an impromptu march. The energy crested when hundreds of enragedprotestors met up with the Occupy Wall Street activists in the park. It was Thursday, September 22, and the occupation was going into its sixthnight. Although to a careless observer it might look like all the samepeople, this was in fact an encounter of potential, between activist worldsnot quite in solid alliance. The marchers represented a part of the activistuniverse different than the Occupy Wall Street campers‹namely, the worlds ofdeath penalty abolition, wrongful conviction activism, prisoners¹ rightsgroups, punk anti-racism, human rights organizations, criminal justicereform work, and efforts to end racial profiling and police brutality.Though many individual activists are undoubtedly comfortable with differentways of thinking about particular social injustices, the death penaltyactivists do not usually frame their work against the problems offinancialized capital. This is necessarily true once you get beyond abstractanalyses and bumper sticker sloganeering and go into the concreteness oflegal challenges, policy work, and legislative reform. By contrast, the OWS encampment seemed to be populated mostly with youngpeople newly radicalized by the economic crisis, the debt burdens ofthemselves and their parents, the evident wealth gaps, and the fastwithering democracy in their country, all foisted upon them in theirformative years. I saw some graybeards scattered around the plaza, but itwas the early twenty-somethings, carrying with them the slightest vibe ofdesperation, who made up the core. The temporary presence of the Troy Davis constituency, self-identified ashaving been organized around and motivated by a political cause and movementwith its own discourse, history, political fronts, and priorities, raisedthe temptation to speedily conflate one dissenting, outraged, and righteoussegment of society with another. On that evening, the articulation of anequivalence seemed to be strangely and perhaps wisely resisted. Themomentary satisfactions of unity were shared through the aestheticexperience, the surge of feeling that went through the combined crowd,generated by the encounter between two groups of committed people, eachstanding for radical social change. It made sense; there was not much tosay, as neither group had any further recourse, at least not at that stage.What seemed most important was what in fact happened, that is, simply takingthe time to be together, to let communications run informally at themolecular level, person-to-person, until the enlarged crowd eventuallydissipated. This episode is worth recounting because it prefigured some ofthe complexities of Occupy Wall Street that we are seeing now, in the thirdweek. Over the weekend part of my mind stayed on Wisconsin, for two reasons,neither being the Creative Time gig. First, there was the inevitablecomparison with OWS‹I could not help this, as the Wisconsin Uprising is nowmy movement frame of reference, like it is for everybody from Madison, andpossibly for today¹s labor movement as a whole. Second, being invested inthe Wisconsin movement as a resident of that state, of course I followed thetwo breaking state political stories of that weekend: new coverage of theongoing FBI corruption investigation into the Walker regime, and the latestefforts by the regressives to rewrite mining regulations in face of citizenand indigenous tribal opposition. In regards to the first point, ie the comparison between OWS and theWisconsin Uprising, I tried to absorb the mood, setting, rhetoric, andactivist profile, and put all in relation to Wisconsin at the same one-weekpoint. Of the many differences, what strikes me now as probably the mostconsequential in terms of movement character and future evolution, is thecomparatively abstract target: ³Wall Street,² or ³the banksters² or the 1%.In Wisconsin we have a central figure, Governor Scott Walker, and a host ofbackground players (the Fitzgeralds, the Kochs, Paul Ryan, Alberta Darling,JB Van Hollen, etc), each of whom is a real person who can be personallytargeted. Most of them being public figures, their career trajectories, atleast, offer activists something by which we can measure our strength. WithOWS, the monster before us‹the banking structure, the corporate politicalsystem, and financialized capital in its entirety‹is so huge, global,faceless, out of control, and fundamentally rotten, that it is difficulteven for informed people to identify and prioritize specific aims, much lessindividual targets. As for the second point, it is important to understand that even though themassive mediagenic protests in Madison are long over, the movement continueson any number of specific, localized and continually unfolding fronts. Eachof these battles requires resources and prolonged attention. To lose focuson them is to lose the war, because it is in these localized theaters thatthe actual implementation of the regressive agenda happens. As OWS movesthrough a growth phase of insurgency in which well-articulated generalitiesattract participants, and in which people situated in very differentcontexts can recognize themselves and organize for parallel uprisings, theother side of follow-through political struggle‹the tediousness, dedication,and minutiae of in-depth, localized research, organizing, and action‹must beexpected and planned for. It is in the particular instances of policyexecution that the corruption from above touches the ground, that is to say,where it is most readily witnessed, exposed, directly confronted, andarrested. My feeling is, because OWS has from the beginning called into account asystem rather than persons or groups, compared to Wisconsin the movement hasmore long term potential for growth and endurance. This is for two reasons,one obvious and one less so. First, systems themselves are broad and endure,outlasting the reach and careers of any single, embodied villain. Though itis true that systems can crumble in amazingly short order, the conventionalwisdom says that, for example, the system we refer to as ³Wall Street² willoutlast Scott Walker¹s tenure as governor. As long as the target remains,the opposition, now sparked, may as well. The less obvious reason is also less positive in the short term. Theabstract truth of the OWS critique reaches a limit on the ground. That is tosay, the shared reality of living under a single system can fuel a massmovement only until that shared reality begins to fray in the unevengeography of capital. This problem is exemplified by the second pointrelated to Wisconsin above; who, outside of the people of northernWisconsin, knows or cares about the devastation of long wall mining nowlooming over the Penokee Hills? Every mining disaster, every homeforeclosure, every supermax prison is sited in a local context, againstwhich it casts its most heavily weighted shadow, rendering abstractionsabout systemic operations nearly moot. In Wisconsin it is already anachievement in translocal activism that many people in southern and urbanareas have come to recognize the system as it takes this particular form inanother part of the state‹and that is under the comparatively unifyingregime of the villain Walker. Thus the question for OWS‹and really any newUS left formation of national scale‹is how does the movement embed withinitself the function of articulation, as Laclau and Mouffe define that term,and apply it to these problems of translocal activism?* This was the underlying challenge I perceived in the Troy Davis march-turnedOWS rally. How is Wall Street and the market theocracy it has imposed on theworld readable in the Troy Davis travesty, and in prison-related issuesgenerally? How can the one be articulated as the other, but in a way thatpreserves routes into the untransferable realms of tedious and specializedcampaigns that define all of the specific, localized battles? These kinds ofquestions become more important as different constituencies, each with itsown history, demands, and ongoing campaigns, joins OWS‹an acceleratingdevelopment as the occupation as of now looks toward a fourth week. Clearly,grappling with the essential fluidity and unfixed nature of the discursiveidentities that make up the socialist terrain, within a movement context,presents short term challenges. Familiar fractures are being voiced withinOWS even as I write. But if properly negotiated, even partially, the currentinternal challenge also hints at a long term possibility we have not seen inthe US since Seattle: a terrain of understood alliances able to shift,divide, and reconstitute according to the uneveness of capital itself. Againas Laclau and Mouffe might say, we will in time have before us a field ofmoments, each one an instance and place of movement identity only readablein relation to others, from northern Wisconsin to Occupy Wall Street, to theworld. * ³Šwe will call articulation any practice establishing a relation amongelements such that their identity is modified as a result of thearticulatory practice.² Hegemony & Socialist Strategy, Ernesto Laclau andChantal Mouffe, p. 105.

http://thememorybank.co.uk/2011/10/04/what-do-the-tunisian-people-want-from-their-election/The governments of the Soviet Union and its East European dependencies fellin 1989-90 with almost no loss of life. How could the most powerful andcoercive bureaucracies the planet has ever seen collapse so quickly andutterly? They ruled in the name of equality through surveillance and fear,but their structures had been hollowed out. They no longer provided themeans of life and people filled the void with their own initiatives based onkinship, religion, locality, the black market and similar informalpractices.Tunisia is a small country of no obvious strategic significance, but inpost-colonial Africa and the Arab world, it pioneered the single-partystate. After his medical coup d??tat against Bourguiba, Ben Ali ruledthrough police violence and surveillance by the party. We are fortunate tohave available a wonderful dissection of the techniques of repressiondeployed by the Ben Ali regime. B?atrice Hibou?s *The Force ofObedience*(Polity, 2011) was first published in French in 2006, buther analysisshines a bright light on the Tunisian revolt and its aftermath.Ben Ali was removed by his own military commanders and nothing has yet beendone to dismantle the security state. The main problem was never Ben Ali?sabsolute power or even the rapacity of his extended family. It was thebureaucracy?s ability to reward obedience and to spread fear and anxietythrough the disruption of everyday practices, especially those affectingeconomic life. Each bureaucratic encounter, concerning taxes, a licence orwhatever, was made into a potentially destabilizing experience.The bare facts of the spark that ignited the Tunisian revolt are well-known.Mohamed Bouazizi was 26 years old and supported an extended family of eight.He had an unlicensed vegetable cart in Sidi Bouzid, a city 300 km south ofTunis. In December 2010 a policewoman confiscated his cart and produce.Bouazizi attempted to pay the fine, but she slapped him, insulted his fatherand spat in his face. His complaint was turned away by municipal officials.Within an hour, he returned to the headquarters, doused himself withflammable liquid and set himself on fire. His immolation spawned proteststhe next day which were dealt with brutally by the police, provoking riotson a small scale. President Ben Ali, in a gesture that many found repellent,visited Bouazizi in hospital shortly before he died on 4 January 2011. BenAli fled the country ten days later.It would be hard to find a more dramatic symbol of the politics ofdomination identified by Hibou. The violence, indifference and humiliatingbehaviour of officials are all there, but at the core of Mohamed Bouazizi?stragic death lies systematic destabilization of the economic life ofindividuals. It is not yet known how far the bureaucracy itself has beeninternally undermined or whether alternative informal structures havealready been built up in Tunisian society, as in the Soviet example. In anycase, the road to a genuinely democratic government is likely to be a longone, regardless of the election result.Even so, the most tangible consequence of the uprising so far is thatTunisians now feel more able to express themselves in public without fear,in contrast to grumbling in private before. What they want from any futuregovernment is a guarantee of their own social rights, especially as theyaffect everyday economic life. They want more open participation in thepublic sphere with justice and dignity. I was asked to comment on theconsequences of the election for redistribution. For sure, there are classand regional disparities to be redressed and economic problems for which thestate?s agency is indispensable. But economic democracy is the preeminentissue.What the Tunisians began has since spread, most notably within the Arabworld, but also with echoes in the London riots and the current occupationof Wall Street. According to the Trinidadian writer and revolutionary,C.L.R. James, in *American Civilization* (Blackwell, 1993), there is agrowing conflict between the concentration of power at the top of societyand the aspirations of people everywhere for democracy to be extended intoall areas of their lives. This conflict is most advanced in the UnitedStates. The struggle is for civilization or barbarism, for individualfreedom within new and expanded conceptions of social life (*democracy*) ora fragmented and repressed subjectivity stifled by coercive bureaucracies (*totalitarianism*).The media are often caught between the constraints of bureaucracy and thegrowing power and presence of people as a force in world society. Commentaryon the Tunisian election is no different. But what was started here byMohamed Bouazizi?s death less than a year ago could be as epoch-making inits own way as the fall of the Berlin wall or Nelson Mandela?s release fromprison two decades earlier.