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AIRLIFT YOUR DATA: alternatives for a blockaded internetJanuary 26, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated version with many documented links can be found at my blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/airlift-your-data-alternatives-for-a-blockaded-internet/Below is the text-only version:----------[tableau Berlin Airlift with airplane/Berlin Wall 1948 + copyright symbol: "LIFT THE BLOCKADE"]Newspaper heading these last days on the Dutch Stichting Brein (Foundation Brain) forces providers to effect an INTERNET BLOCKADE against Pirate Bay web sites“. The Foundation Brein received on January the 11, 2012 a court order that forces some of the big internet providers in the Netherlands (Xs4all and Ziggo at first, T-Mobile and UPC are on the list) to block internet services that Brein claims to be infringements of copyright and intellectual property. The blockade is aimed at sites of, and related to, ‘Pirate Bay’. The court order (1) mentions 24 internet addresses to be blocked. Already at court, Stichting Brein did make some changes in this blockade-list by taking off 4 addresses, that would take off-line web services that had little or no relation with Pirate Bay activities seen as infringements (one of them was a web site with educational movies for young people). It is in the same week that Dutch internet service providers (and 20 search warrants in eight other countries) have been forced to take the domain MegaUpload off line. The Dutch firm LeaseWeb – working for MegaUpload – saw 690 computer servers sealed (storing 15 of the total 25 ‘petabyte’ of data used by MegaUpload) by the Dutch Tax Authority (FIOD), executing an order of the American FBI. This series of events prompted a Green Left member of parliament (Arjen El Fassed) to ask questions to the Dutch government about this whole sale anti-piracy operations, whereby illegal and legal forms of data-traffic are not properly separated:“Operations like this cause huge damage to the freedom and openness of the internet.”I see as much Right as Wrong with CopyRight as it is practiced by the actual Media Content Industry – and Stichting Brein is – first of all – a tool of those corporate interests, though they like to pose as defenders of creative workers.There is much to debate about copyright: what it once was, what it became and how to rethink the idea of claiming ownership on things reproducible for the future. As our media have changed dramatically, the idea and practical application of ownership of content should also be open to change. The same firms that invent and produce – endless and more and more quickly outdated – hardware devices, are producing and monopolising the content to be displayed on them, making profits on both software and hardware. There are many creative alternatives for intellectual property of content and distribution of “profits” in the making, that go beyond the singular ‘big players only’ approach, where content creators have little to no say and the content consumers are only seen as cattle to be exploited. ‘Creative Commons‘, ‘The Future of Music Coalition‘, and many more… When analysing how profits are made and revenues are distributed fairness for those who actually do the ’creative work’, is hard to find.[Two piecharts: on the divide of the videogame industry (consoles, games, accessories for playing/gaming, rentals) and The Great Divide of the music industry with a band ending up with 13% of the revenues] Two recent examples that show how media industry both pushes and earns from selling hardware and software (content) and what the practice of sharing is when it comes to those actually producing 'intellectual property'. For sources see note (2)We are all aware of the ‘digital gluttony’ that has been wakened in us by constant propagated consumerism. One’s personal economy to get unlimited access to content may deprive others from income, but to what extent ‘personal piracy’ hurts ‘corporate business’ is up to debate. The history of piracy in publishing and distribution tells another story than what the lawyers of content business want us to believe. The title of cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book published in 2003 says it all: “Copyrights and copywrongs : the rise of intellectual property and how it threatens creativity.” In the chapter “the digital moment” he sketches the impact:The digital moment has also collapsed the distinction among three formerly distinct processes: gaining access to a work; using (we used to call it ‘reading’) a work; and copying a work. (…) Copyright was designed to regulate only copying. It was not supposed to regulate one’s right to read or share. But now that the distinctions among accessing, using and copying have collapsed, copyright policymakers have found themselves faced with what seems to be a difficult choice: either relinquish some control over copying or expand copyright to regulate access and use, despite the chilling effect this might have on creativity, community and democracy. (page 152-153)The worst thing of this court order in favour of Stichting Brein is the wholesale BLOCKING of parts of the internet by a simple court order. Today it is Stichting Brein, tomorrow it is Stichting Zwijn (Foundation Swine), the day after Sacherijn (Chagrin), or whatever other interest group or private party that tries to claim ‘digital ownership’ by appealing to a court. We will see the court rooms reserved for months by the ‘law industry’ making a buck on limiting ‘freedom of expression’. What should be individual court cases against personal law infringement, have now become generalised measures which affects ‘fair use’ as much as ‘unfair practice’. This is were the historical idea of copyright (which was born as a tool for state or church censorship in the early days of the printing press) comes back in an ugly form: BLOCKADE.What associations do we have with BLOCKADES? Depends who blocks whom for what and when and how. EEC BLOCKADE AGAINST IRAN, IRAN BLOCKADE AGAINST THE WEST, ISRAEL BLOCKADE OF GAZA, USA BLOCKADE OF CUBA, BLOCKADE OF WALL STREET, BLOCKADE OF WEAPONS FOR DICTATORSHIPS… So what is done to counter such kind of blockades I asked myself and the first thing that came to mind was the Airlift of goods to break the BLOCKADE OF WEST BERLIN (June 1948 – May 1949 the start of the Cold War) ….. The town of Berlin with an open West and East sector, was split in two and West-Berlin became an island surrounded by the DDR. Roads and railways were blocked and only trough a constant airlift of goods by the Allied Forces, West Berlin survived.So when providers delivering their goods through cables are BLOCKED we may ultimately (if it was only a symbolic gesture to drive home the point of control of means of expression) consider ‘airlifting’ our data be it through some obsolete unused satellites, or by short wave radio, refracted (bend) radio waves between earth and ionosphere, accessible all around the globe.THE FREE AETHER instead of THE BLOCKED INTERNET. In the last years before the downfall of the Berlin Wall, radio and computer amateurs in Hungary used radio-emission of data as a means of communication (partly so because to get a landline telephone connection in that country could take a decade or so). Such data-radio even played a role in the Hungarian support of the rising against the Ceaușescu regime in Rumania winter 1989. Dissidents all over the world have used short wave radio to get informed what was happening outside of their totalitarian nation, from the Soviet Union a few decades ago, to Cuba, still today. Radio-jamming was the answer, like digital blockades now, but jamming has always been limited to certain parts of the radio spectrum.[tableau showing the principles of shortwave radio and portable hand powered shortwave radio and laptop computer + radio modem: "networking for the pleasure of sharing"]Inventive usage of radio-modems and de-central data distribution protocols, could once more become popular. Centralised networks make it possible to censor, block, seize, filter, ban ‘top-down’. We may need to look back at earlier models of electronic information exchange and distribution. Like FIDOnet a worldwide amateur computer network of ‘bulletin boards’ based on a tree-structure up- and download system using telephone lines and modems. FIDO has been founded in 1984 and grew into a world wide popular communication system till 1994, the year that the internet – as we know it now – started. FIDO is still popular in the Russian Federation, as a secondary form of communication. Some see a new future for such ‘bottom-up’ ways of electronic communication (3). There are nowadays many more creative solutions to go beyond the centrally controlled cable and satellite networks, an overview would go beyond the aim of this short article, but let me mention just one other inspirational experiment of ‘netless digital network‘ (4), a citywide network that uses public transport communication systems as its ‘information carrier’:“… an independent communication tactic; invisible digital network that does not need wires or dedicated radio frequencies. alternative communication device that helps its users to avoid such controlled and observed space as the internet. free from governmentally owned medium channels (radio frequency ranges, emission power regulations), proprietary locked technologies and cable networks…”[tableau "Airlift Your Data"]It is of course not my proposed strategy to propagate a full change over from one way of electronic communication to another – adapted restrictions and controls soon would be invented for any generalised communication alternative – it is about over-dependency on one particular way of information access. By diversifying the communication systems we use, we may make ourselves more independent. Such a practice should also be stretched beyond electronic based systems.Homing pigeons as messengers maybe still be considered, however outrageous that may sound. May I recall here the combined use of micro-photography and pigeon carriers used during the Prussian siege of Paris (1870-71), with handwritten news protocols, photographed, tightly rolled up and tied to the leg of a pigeon, moving back and forward from Tours and Poitiers – far behind the German lines – to the besieged city of Paris. Sometimes balloons were used to transport the pigeons out the other way to find back their homing target in Paris. During the First World War pigeons have been in wide use also on the trenched battlefields in the North of France. There is even a monument in their honour in Lille. The Imperial War Museum in London does have a vitrine that show message carrier dogs running over the battlefield delivering messages and post between the trenches.I do not suggest at all that this should be repeated in exact the same way and under similar circumstances, but the basic principles is most inspiring: the combination of ancient (pigeon carriers) and modern (early days of photography) technology. Such an ‘intermediate’ technology usage is what I propose, it will safeguard free and independent communication for a future we can not know. It will be both fun and useful to start imagining and trying…[photograph of monument for pigeon carriers in Lille]= detailed footnotes and links.Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Interflugs[1] is a student managed lecture series organized at WestGermany[2], an underground event venue located in a former doctor’s office near Kottbusser Tor.The Interflugs series is initiated by students of Universität der Künste. The event was well attended, and discussion flowed freely as the crowd had many questions as well as views and interpretations of their own. The topic was "The Price and Value of Free Culture." Obviously, a question that's deeply relevant to artists looking to develop their practice in the age of digital reproduction and social media.Constanze Kurz and Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club presented the "Kulturwerkmark."[3]The Kulterwertmark concept is a developing model of democratic cultural production where fans of artists commit to a monthly flat rate to participate, and distribute this amount to individual culture producers by way of micropayments. Simular in principle to way flattr.com[4] operates.However, the Kulterwertmark envision this model a much broader social level, where the management of the system is not a private firm, but a foundation made up of the artists and the fans. And more ambitiously, the Kulturwertmark project hopes to get the approval of the major rights holders, such as the record labels and movie studios, to participate, indemnifying the subscribers for persecution for downloading and sharing cultural works, in exchange for money funded by the flat rate paid by the subscribers. The Project also hopes to get approval from other organizations that represent rights holders, such as regional collection societies like Germans notorious GEMA[5].Even more ambitiously, the project hopes to convince rightsholders and cultural producers to vastly reduce exclusivity periods provided by copyrights, to limit them to 15 years, instead of the current life-plus-x, and even provide an earnings expectation, which would waive copyrights on the work even earlier once a certain level of earnings have been exceeded. Also noting that even once a given exclusivity has expired for a given work, the producers of the work would continue to receive income, since income is directed by fans micro payments, not royalties.On one hand, there is a lot to support about the system, the collective funds provided by the subscribers flat rate create a kind of mutual capital, that can not only be used to support cultural production, but also cultural preservation and promotion.The system is inherently democratic, as members of the foundation, fans an artists control the system, and the remuneration of individual culture producers is subscriber-directed, by virtue of the micropayment system.The use of the micropayment system is an important distinction over other "cultural flat rate" proposals, since the subscriber directed micropayments eliminate the need to track usage and downloads , thus eliminating the surveillance needed to allocate payments in flat rate systems driven by downloads or views.However, the idea of rightsholders and their representatives buying into such a system is extremely dubious for the simple reason is that it only compensates them for the value of their current stock of cultural works, yet their business model is predicated on controlling the value of future cultural works, which a system that lacks user controls does not provide.The idea of a flat rate is nothing new to the cultural industries. Spotify and Nokia's partially eliminated "Comes With Music" service both offer all-you-can-eat subscriptions to music, and both have the support of the rightsholders. The rightsholders are not opposed to flat rates, what they are opposed to is exactly the democracy and user freedom that the Kulturwertmark seeks to provide.It's not just a question of getting fans to pay for music, it's much more of a question of being a position to control which artists fans will want to pay for. The labels don't see themselves as merely holders of existing rights, they see themselves as Star Makers. Their promotion, distribution and hype generating capabilities is what they want to protect. Platforms that don't allow them to promote their artists are of no interest to them, in fact they are a threat to them. For this reason they will happily allow a centrally private platform where user interactions and data are controlled to offer a flat rate, or even have access to some of their assets for free. So long as the platform delivers what they want most of all: Control. They require the ability to dictate which users can do what with what content on a central platform where their usage can be monitored, advertisements can be shown, search results manipulated and "sponsored," etc. Without such control they worry that the next generation of stars will not be their own, and that is what they fear most.Therefore, Kulturwertmark is a pipe dream. It makes the mistake that all the labels want is money. What they really want is to maintain what they already have: The ability to control culture.The many interesting ideas in the Kulturwertmark model can only have a future if they abandon the idea of attracting capitalist righstholders into the system, and instead focus on building a platform that can attract and sustain the next generation of cultural producers, who do not and will not transfer their rights to the labels.As I wrote in a Rap commission by the 2008 Oxcars: "If you really want to fuck the recording industry stop downloading their shit!"You can find the entire rap here: http://wp.me/p24fqL-1J[1] http://www.interflugs.de[2] http://berlin.unlike.net/locations/305905-West-Germany[3] http://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2011/kulturwertmark[4] http://flattr.com[5] http://bit.ly/wAeQM1

Artist Jillian Mcdonald has run into trouble with Vincent Gallo, who is represented at the Whitney Biennial this year. It is about her 2004 work, "To Vincent, With Love", http://jillianmcdonald.net/projects/tvwlinfo.htmlIncidentally, the Whitney actually has a version of this work in their Artport. I find this all very confusing.http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/february05.shtmlShe writes, "I just received a cease and desist letter from Vincent Gallo's attorney suggesting I added no creative material in making my video (which took me 8 months to make in 2004), To Vincent with Love. Also this letter claims I am causing him personal injury. It also demands I keep the letter confidential, and that we reach a settlement to be paid to Mr Gallo."I think that we should collectively work to keep this confidential for Mr. Gallo, don't you think?Andres

Dear nettimers,Here is a review of the excellent book of Josephine Bosma, Nettitudes: Let's Talk Net Art, which came out late in 2011, written for OPEN, Journal on Art and the Public Domain. It was a pleasure to write this review as this book finally offers a serious consideration of the Net Art phenomenon as an artistic and cultural genre, without overly ideological biases towards or against the contemporary arts world, nor framing it as a socio/political occurrence. The kind of book Net Art deserves and a useful contribution to a serious discussion of this artistic genre, in my opinion.Reproduced here with kind permission of the journal editors.Best wishes,Eric-------------- Review of Josephine Bosma's, Nettitudes: Let's Talk Net Art (2011)by Eric KluitenbergNettitudes, the new book by Josephine Bosma, is an important contribution to the often confusing and unbalanced discussion about the Internet and contemporary art. This contribution becomes especially clear from what the book does not do. First of all, Bosma does not try to offer a historical overview of the phenomenon that she calls 'net art'. She also indicates clearly why it is difficult to mark out this area unequivocally, for there are widely differing views as to how the interaction between the Internet and contemporary art should be interpreted. Indeed, net art must in the first place be seen in a broader context than that of contemporary art, because the development of this 'genre' cannot be seen separately from the various forms of network culture with which it sometimes partly converges or by which it is influenced. Moreover, Bosma does not wish to call net art a discipline or movement, as the entire terrain is too diverse and heterogeneous for that, and also has too much of a cross-disciplinary character. Nor is it a good idea to have net art purely coincide with the medium of the Internet, which itself can hardly be described. When the same problem is approached from an art theoretical point of view, limiting net art to a particular medium is also absolutely absurd. Bosma herself refers to Rosalind Krauss, the American art theorist, who in her famous essay 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field' argued that contemporary art has wrested itself from the yoke of the medium – it has entered an 'expanded field' in which every material or medium can be appropriated, but to which the 'work' can never be reduced.That does not mean that the medium as a category can simply be shoved aside. This would lead to a simplistic dichotomy between conceptualism versus materialism – a false contradiction, according to Bosma, which would only work counter-productively in trying to better understand the phenomenon she investigates. What is of primary importance for most of the works that fall under the term 'net art' is a good understanding of the network culture from which they spring: the interactions that artists have online with one another and with the public. Bosma furthermore points out that net art does not only refer to art that takes place in one way or another on the Internet and on the screen. It can also concern work that is directly inspired by the new realities that the Internet and online cultures create, but whose manifestation takes place entirely off-line, separately from the Internet.Therefore, the definition she uses to describe net art reads in its shortest form as: art that is rooted in or based on Internet cultures. This way, she prevents an arbitrary broadening of the concept, for only works which cannot be seen separately from the cultures that have developed around the Internet can legitimately be considered net art. With this definition, it is clear that the phenomenology, logic and structure of the Internet cannot be bypassed when coming up with an adequate description of net art. No more than can net art be reduced to a technological genre.According to Bosma, it is hard to give a good description of this heterogeneous and cross-disciplinary field and introduce some structure into the discussion, but not impossible. In order to get a grasp of the material, she introduces five key concepts by which the vast majority of the works that she calls net art can be understood: Code / Flow / Screen / Matter / Context. She uses 'Code' to look at work that primarily is aimed at the technical infrastructure and software that form the underpinnings of the Internet. This is the most abstract category, accounting for the fact that the Internet in fact rests upon a series of agreements set down in technical protocols. The fact that interesting artistic experiments are being carried out in precisely this inaccessible area indicates the depth of the artistic research behind those experiments. Bosma unlocks this hermetic area with a clear description of the classical project 'Web Stalker' by the British artist collective I/O/D. 'Flow' refers to the remote connections that are made through the Internet, with the emphasis on live performance and network installation art. While distance and spatial relations do not vanish in the digital network, the spatial logic and the forms of exchange (image, sound, information) that can take place in the new spatial configurations do change radically. These processes are manifested by the performative aspect, particularly live performance.'Screen' refers to the complex (technological) processes behind the fragile visual form of net art works. In these works, the semblance of a stable image is often undermined by the underlying process. Interaction with this type of work makes the viewer aware of the capacity of endless transformation that characterizes the digital image. 'Matter' investigates the role that the hardware, the physical machinery behind the 'immaterial' network, plays in net art – sometimes by literally putting these machines on stage, sometimes also by presenting absurd or faulty machinery.Finally, 'Context' is about the social and political context in which a certain category of net art works chooses an articulated position. Particularly this category of works been given a lot of attention by critics over the course of the years, but according to Bosma it is by no means representative of the entire field of net art. Nettitudes is divided into two sections. The first section frameworks the discussion on net art, gives definitions and discusses the positions of other theorists and art critics, such as Tilman Baumgärtel, Julian Stallabras and Rachel Green. Here, Bosma also introduces the concepts mentioned above in order to provide some structure and orientation for the discussion on net art. In the second section, she examines the various positions taken by artists and movements in network culture over the years. Then she goes into the thorny debate on the conservation of net art works. The book closes with a chapter on Internet-related sound art, a form that adds an 'intimate' dimension of its own to net art.Nettitudes is a breath of fresh air. An important and underexposed artistic genre is finally getting the serious attention it deserves. Nettitudes also offers a useful analysis for the further development of a critical and sound substantive 'discourse' on the exchange between the Internet and the production and reception of contemporary art.-------------- Originally written for: Open #22 - "Transparency. Publicity and Secrecy in the Age of WikiLeaks", Journal for Art and the Public Domain, Amsterdam, 2011.www.skor.nl/eng/publications/item/open-22-transparency-publicity-and-secrecy-in-the-age-of-wikileaksJosephine Bosma, Nettitudes: Let's Talk Net Art, Rotterdam, NAi Publishers, ISBN 978-90-5662-800-0, 272 p., € 23.50http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/studies-in-network-cultures/nettitudes-lets-talk-net-art/

Hooligans sport for ephemeral fameJanuary 27, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tijen in the Limping Messenger; for linked and illustrated version click here.http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/hooligans-sport-for-ephemeral-fame/------A Dutch MP has proposed to change the law to make it possible to make whole sale mass arrests…of what she classified in Dutch as “meeloophooligans”. This category should enter a special law on football now in the making.Now us Dutch do concatenate many words into one, so ‘meeloophooligan’ does split up in mee/with loop/walk and the now international word hooligan, though a decade or more ago in Dutch the word used was more descriptive: ‘voetbalvandalen’.For a short article commenting on this attack on principles of law and civil rights I made a graphic and today I felt compelled to look at the graphic again, taking away the superimposed text: “mass leisure / mass arrest”. I am now still pondering on how to translate the new Dutch word ‘meeloophooligan into English and if that term does justice to the social phenomenon of football hooligans.HOOLIGAN HANGERwould that work?, or would ‘hooligan hanger-on’ be better? The social classification ‘meeloophooligan’ itself is also in need of some scrutiny. Authorities always want to find out who is ‘the leader’ of a group of followers. There is a fundamental denial in law enforcement on the group dynamics of hooligans. In my observations the leader role can be taken on by anyone according to circumstances, a few seconds or minutes only. It is that ‘equal chance of short-lived fame’ during a brawl that must be the most attractive element of the mass leisure sport known under the name of: hooliganism.[tableau hooligans sport for ephemeral fame]

This is a visual object, so you can see it at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/sopa-pipa-acta-what-is-all-the-fuss-about/Posted in Consumerism | Tagged ACTA, PIPA, planned obsolescence of media industry, SOPA

From the brave new worldFatemah Farag <http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/1079>I am in Dubai. At the Atlantis Hotel, to be precise, where top Arabmedia professionals are meeting over aquamarine and orange carpets,under sea-shell motif chandeliers at the invitation of the Dubai PressClub. The occasiona is the Ninth Arab Media Forum.It is in many ways a surreal experience: sky scrapers break through thearid landscape, the Gulf waters are placid, shrouded in what seems to bea constant layer of steam; the still night air always carries hints ofsound that reminds one of Dubai's round-the-clock construction.Within the ballrooms where the conference is taking place, the theme is"Shifting Mediascape: Inspiring content, expanding reach." We kicked offthis morning with three workshops and those who weren't too interestedin the development of Kuwaiti media or the coverage of natural disastersfound themselves in the crowds that filled the "Citizen Journalism:Challenging the unnamed source" session with me.Anwar el-Hawary, chief editor of Al Ahram Al Iqtisadi magazine, heatedup the session by describing citizen journalism as a fad railroading themedia industry---almost as a threat that needed to be pushed back. OneSaudi journalist retorted that in fact the credibility of "traditional"media who were feeding their audience fabricated news was the threat tothe profession that needed to be pushed back.Throughout the session, I could not help but be surprised that"traditional" meant state-controlled mass media, whereas"non-traditional" meant blogs and citizen journalism. Participants actedas though these divides have not, in the last few years, been constantlyreworked within international journalism."Traditional" print media has moved to the internet. Its maincompetitors are now bloggers and social networks. It only follows thatto compete, "traditional" journalism must adapt the tools of the trade.This is not just about using Twitter, iPhones and other technicalaspects of the revolution that has taken our business over. It is aboutreconceptualizing how we work, what formats we use--like my bloggingnow--and what sources we can incorporate into our coverage.The hope is that this is a more democratic and, consequently, moreinformative format. And those media organizations that are serious aboutembracing this brave new world must put time, effort, thought, andresources into developing sophisticated guidelines to incorporating usergenerated content, training citizen journalists, and adapting the tradesof our profession.But in all of this we must never lose sight of the essential rules ofhigh quality journalism should never be compromised: honesty, balance,research, credibility, and ethics. These are the hallmarks of ourprofession at its best and they should never be compromised. Herein liesthe true nature of the challenge.http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/41012H.

Hi Everyone,A belated Happy New Year to you all! I’ve been busy over the holidays with the final edits to my new book, Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution is Diminishing, Dividing and Disorienting Us and I’m thrilled to announce that it will published in the US by St Martins Press and the UK by Constable Robinson in the first week of June, with markets including Brazil, China, Holland and Poland publishing translated versions later in the year. Review copies will be available later this spring, so please let me know if you’d like one. There are still some foreign language markets available, so let me know if are interested in acquiring overseas rights and I will send you a PDF of the manuscript.In addition to Digital Vertigo, I’ve been doing a lot of other writing, broadcasting and speaking. My “Keen On” TechcrunchTV show has been really fun - my four part interview with Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson being last month’s highlight. I’ve also begun to write for CNN, my first two columns being about Russia and CES. As always, I spent a lot of last year up in the air, flying over 200,000 miles to give speeches in many countries around the world including Oman, Singapore, Dubai, Russia, Thailand and most of Europe.January will be a busy travel month too, with me flying to London later this week. I’ll then be going to Munich to speak at DLD on Sunday and finally spending a couple of days in Davos at the end of next week. Please email me if you want to get together then or some other time later in the year.Wishing you a very happy and healthy 2012.Best regards,Andrew

17th CENTURY SPIN FOR FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE: Ithe illustrated and link-documented version can be foudn at: http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/17th-century-spin-for-francois-hollande-i/January 31, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tijen [tableau with François Hollande and Balthasar Gracián + maxime}17th CENTURY SPIN FOR FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE: Oráculo Manual of the art of prudence by Balthasar Gracián (1601-1658). Almost daily (on French news) we see the foolish triumphalist behaviour of one of the very few alternatives to the reign of Sarkozy, and his UMP, François Hollande of the SP. Mass rallies and visits to pre-arranged supportive crowds as if he has already acquired the presidential seat. Election to the royal position of French president is – sadly – first of all a matter of ‘rhetorics’ and not of a party program. Person comes before content. The 21st century SPINS of Hollande are in my view hopeless and lead him to electoral disaster. I recommend a more classic SPIN, the study of the classic ‘art of prudence’ and the best master remains Balthasar Gracian a 17th century priest at the Spanish court, who published a pocket book (hand oracle) from which I will quote in the coming election time. This is the first maxime, number xix (19):Arouse no Exaggerated Expectations on entering. It is the usual ill-luck of all celebrities not to fulfil afterwards the expectations beforehand formed of them. The real can never equal the imagined, for it is easy to form ideals but very difficult to realise them. (1)—–(1) English translation under the (alternative) title “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” done by Joseph Jacobs, [1892] in an on-line edition at Sacred Texts web site.The Spanish original text “Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia” is on-line also in HTML format at the Biblioteca VirtualTjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

Let's beat the cold (in Europe at least) and inaugurate February with a'radiant future' piece from our favorite Prawda (back for grabs atop thepaperdump container at the economics faculty of the university ofAmsterdam, despite the 'paid circulation' scandal of last November ...)Original to:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577140413041646048.htmlThe Coming Tech-led BoomThree breakthroughs are poised to transform this century as much astelephony and electricity did the last.By MARK P. MILLS AND JULIO M. OTTINOIn January 1912, the United States emerged from a two-year recession.Nineteen more followed—along with a century of phenomenal economic growth.Americans in real terms are 700% wealthier today.In hindsight it seems obvious that emerging technologies circa1912—electrification, telephony, the dawn of the automobile age, theinvention of stainless steel and the radio amplifier—would foster suchgrowth. Yet even knowledgeable contemporary observers failed to grasptheir transformational power.In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technologicaltransformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. Allfind their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and thewireless revolution.Information technology has entered a big-data era. Processing power anddata storage are virtually free. A hand-held device, the iPhone, hascomputing power that shames the 1970s-era IBM mainframe. The Internet isevolving into the "cloud"—a network of thousands of data centers any oneof which makes a 1990 supercomputer look antediluvian. From social mediato medical revolutions anchored in metadata analyses, wherein astronomicalfeats of data crunching enable heretofore unimaginable services andbusinesses, we are on the cusp of unimaginable new markets.The second transformation? Smart manufacturing. This is the firststructural shift since Henry Ford launched the economic power of "massproduction." While we see evidence already in automation and informationsystems applied to supply-chain management, we are just entering an erawhere the very fabrication of physical things is revolutionized byemerging materials science. Engineers will soon design and build from themolecular level, optimizing features and even creating new materials,radically improving quality and reducing waste.Devices and products are already appearing based on computationallyengineered materials that literally did not exist a few years ago: novelmetal alloys, graphene instead of silicon transistors (graphene and carbonenable a radically new class of electronic and structural materials), andmeta-materials that possess properties not possible in nature; e.g.,rendering an object invisible—speculation about which receivedunderstandable recent publicity.This era of new materials will be economically explosive when combinedwith 3-D printing, also known as direct-digital manufacturing—literally"printing" parts and devices using computational power, lasers and basicpowdered metals and plastics. Already emerging are printed parts forhigh-value applications like patient-specific implants for hip joints orteeth, or lighter and stronger aircraft parts. Then one day, the HolyGrail: "desktop" printing of entire final products from wheels to evenwashing machines.The era of near-perfect computational design and production will unleashas big a change in how we make things as the agricultural revolution didin how we grew things. And it will be defined by high talent not cheaplabor.Finally, there is the unfolding communications revolution where soon mosthumans on the planet will be connected wirelessly. Never before have abillion people—soon billions more—been able to communicate, socialize andtrade in real time.The implications of the radical collapse in the cost of wirelessconnectivity are as big as those following the dawn oftelegraphy/telephony. Coupled with the cloud, the wireless world providescheap connectivity, information and processing power to nearly everyone,everywhere. This introduces both rapid change—e.g., the Arab Spring—andgreat opportunity. Again, both the launch and epicenter of this technologyreside in America.Few deny that technology fuels economic growth as well as both social andlifestyle progress, the latter largely seen in health and environmentalmetrics. But consider three features that most define America, and thatare essential for unleashing the promises of technological change: ouryouthful demographics, dynamic culture and diverse educational system.First, demographics. By 2020, America will be younger than both China andthe euro zone, if the latter still exists. Youth brings more than a baseof workers and taxpayers; it brings the ineluctable energy that propelseverything. Amplified and leavened by the experience of their elders,youth and economic scale (the U.S. is still the world's largest economy)are not to be underestimated, especially in the context of the other twogreat forces: our culture and educational system.The American culture is particularly suited to times of tumult andchallenge. Culture cannot be changed or copied overnight; it is a featureof a people that has, to use a physics term, high inertia. Ours isdistinguished by incontrovertibly powerful features, namelyopen-mindedness, risk-taking, hard work, playfulness, and, critical fornascent new ideas, a healthy dose of anti-establishment thinking. Whereelse could an Apple or a Steve Jobs have emerged?Then there's our educational system, often criticized as inadequate toglobal challenges. But American higher education eludes simple statisticalmeasures since its most salient features are flexibility and diversity ofeducational philosophies, curricula and the professoriate. There is adizzying range of approaches in American universities and colleges. Good.One size definitely does not fit all for students or the future.We should also remember that more than half of the world's top 100universities remain in America, a fact underscored by soaring foreignenrollments. Yes, other nations have fine universities, and many more willemerge over time. But again the epicenter remains here.What should our politicians do to help usher in this new era ofentrepreneurial growth? Liquid financial markets, sensible tax andimmigration policy, and balanced regulations will allow the next boom toflourish. But the essential fuel is innovation. The promise resides in thetectonic technological shifts under way.America's success isn't preordained. But the technological innovationscirca 2012 are profound. They will engender sweeping changes to oursociety and our economy. All the forces are in place. It's just a matterof when.[Mr. Mills, a physicist and founder of the Digital Power Group, writes theForbes Energy Intelligence column. Mr. Ottino is dean of the McCormickSchool of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University.].....Liked it? Then you'll love Cory Doctorow's "Makers", available in 81 (!)instaltments on (and starting at):http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/07/cory-doctorows-lemgmakerslemg-part-1-of-81where he provides a brilliantly fictionalised 101 course of the new neweconomy (as visualised by the 'Californian Ideology - even if therevolution takes place in Florida...).And if you can't get enough of the 'real truth' in the Wall Street Journaland were suspicious about the climate change consensus anyway, enjoy whata cohort of 'distinguished scientists', allegedly speaking for an opressedmajority have to tell us: global warming is all humbug!http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.htmlNo Need to Panic About Global WarmingThere's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to'decarbonize' the world's economy.Have a nice day!Cheers,patrizio & Diiiinooos!

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1125318--email-exchange-between-reporter-transport-canada-removed-due-to-copyright-infringementORhttp://tinyurl.com/7jl6wk3Wendy GillisStaff ReporterTransport Canada says a copyright violation complaint it filed against Xtra.ca after the website published correspondence between a reporter and a media relations officer has nothing to do with the exchange.On Tuesday, Xtra.ca posted the complete on-the-record correspondence between Transport Canada and reporter Andrea Houston using Scribd, a publishing website that allows users to upload documents to its server and embed them in a webpage.http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/UPDATE_Conservative_MPs_laugh_at_concerns_that_trans_people_face_flight_ban-11450.aspxThe document in question outlined Transport Canada?s airline identity screening regulationsallowing air carriers to refuse to transport a passenger if he or she does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification presented. The regulations have prompted outrage in the transgendered community, and Xtra ? which specializes in gay, lesbian and transgendered news ? wanted to give readers complete access to Transport Canada?s information, said Matt Mills, editorial director for Xtra Toronto.But on Wednesday, Scribd removed the document, posting a statement that the document was ?removed due to copyright infringement.?Patrick Charette, the media relations manager with Transport Canada, confirmed Thursday that Transport Canada filed the complaint, but only because it contained the direct email and phone number of media relations officer Maryse Durette.Publishing contact information does not violate any Canadian copyright laws, and media officers? contact information is public information because they are public servants.But concern was that a service intended for media would be ?inundated? by calls from the public, Charette said.?The intervention that we did with Scribd yesterday had nothing to do with the content. We wanted to limit the distribution of direct phone number and email,? he said.?They could have called me,? Houston told the Star. ?I could easily removed that directly. There didn?t have to be a copyright violation filed. That was unnecessary.?Durette went to Scribd first because it was the middle of the night and she was concerned about getting calls, Charette said.Out of courtesy for the officers, it?s typically asked that email signatures containing direct contact information not be published, Charette said.Scribd did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the reason it removed a document that did not infringe on copyright.According to its copyright policy, complaints of copyright infringement can be made pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but the complainant must include a statement that he or she ?has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.?Charette said Scribd may have removed the document because the request came directly from the individual involved.The entire exchange between Houston and Xtra has now been copied and pasted into a document now posted on the Xtra.ca site. It provides only the general media line for Transport Canada.Xtra stands by publishing the correspondence pertaining to Transport Canada screening regulations.?Obviously, it?s a matter of public interest. We don?t feel in any way uncomfortable about reproducing this thing,? said Mills.--* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD?http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison* FLICK's WEBSITE & BLOG: http://www.flickharrison.com

Stadium ban for EU hooligans undermines civil rightsFebruary 3, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tijenthe illustrated and documented version with links can be found at:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/stadium-ban-for-eu-hooligans-undermines-civil-rights/[tableau with fused picture of football hooligans with different national police officers in uniform and an EU shield with the text "si vis pacem para bellum"]EUROPEAN FOOTBALL STADIUM BAN FOR HOOLIGANS… Ahmed Aboutaleb major of the City of Rotterdam rejoices today the European Parliament initiative for an European level implementation of banning locally convicted football hooligans from all EU stadiums. (1) This law initiative has been long in the making. An earlier document by the Council of the European Union “Resolution of the Council on preventing and restraining football hooliganism through the exchange of experience, exclusion from stadiums and media policy” dates back to the year 1997:The responsible Ministers invite their national sports associations to examine, in accordance with national law, how stadium exclusions imposed under civil law could also apply to football matches in a European context.However much I dislike football hooligans this is a juridical precedent which will have far reaching negative consequences for civil rights in general. Not only does it create yet another centrally managed person database that can be accessed by all EU police forces (like data on persons DNA, illegal migrants and so on) it is a further step in constructing a ‘central EU police force’ with all its inherent dangers. Such an EU-wide anti-hooligan law also means multiplied condemnation – for a big part of the European continent – on the basis of a local conviction.Together with actual proposals (in the Netherlands) for ‘whole sale mass arrests’, not only hooligan “leaders”, but also of their “followers” (‘meeloophooligens’ is the Dutch term), we can be certain that such an extra-national banning and black-listing power, will be abused in ways beyond our imagination. Once such a law and its enforcement has been put into effect, other ‘social distinct groups’ whose behaviour is classified as unruly can get the same routine treatment in the future. The Council of Europe document of 1997 cited above speaks of “preventing and containing of disorder”, so one need not to be surprised when other forms of ”disorder” will be handled in the long run in the same way. For instance, when we take in account the frequent attempts by politicians – defending employers interest - to criminalise strike actions, trade union activists could be databased and blacklisted with the same ‘anti-hooligan routine’.—-(1) It is interesting to note that the ‘hooligan-ban’ proposals in the European Parliament plenary session of February 2. 2012, was part of a bundle of all kind of measures related to sport listed in this order: – Promote sport for girls; – Blacklist hooligans; – Make doping a criminal offence; – Regulate sport agents; -Combine learning and training. The resolution – thus packaged – has been passed with 550 votes in favour, 73 against and 7 abstentions. In the section of hooligans is also this sentence: “MEPs also call on Member States and sports governing bodies to commit to tackling homophobia and racism against athletes.” Something problematic in the sense of ‘civil rights’ has been hidden inside a package of mostly emancipatory proposals.

Throughout Europe, we are witnessing massive transfers of resources fromthe public to the private sphere. The political responses to the crises aredefined by austerity measures and by cuts to social spending, drivingEurope further into recession.aware of the need for a different model of globalisation. From thoseresisting the privatisation of resources (for example in Italy with thewater referendum, and currently in Romania) to the recent occupations ofpublic spaces against neoliberalism (for example in the UK and Spain), thisis the moment to construct and alternative Europe which is not a product ofneoliberal politics, but the political expression of European citizens.Within this context, over forty organisations, networks and socialmovements from eight European countries will meet in the 600-seat ValleTheatre in Rome to organise a common front to construct an alternativeEuropean model. This three-day forum will focus on the construction ofcommon transnational campaigns on the thematics of the commons andguaranteed minimum income as well as the battle against precarity, alsoutilising the new method provided with the European citizens? initiative.The event will be a true opportunity to build European networks andcampaigns that will take concrete forms in follow-up meetings in Spain, theUK, Romania, Bulgaria and France in the following months to continue thework begun in Rome. The emphasis on concrete campaigns will be the startingpoint to engage in a reflection on the revision of the EU Treaties, topropose an alternative vision of Europe.The Rome forum is organised by European Alternatives, the InternationalUniversity College Turin, Teatro Valle, Centro Studi per l'AlternativaComune, Municipality of Naples, ARCI, Il Manifesto, Basic Income Network,Tilt, Rete della Conoscenza, Cilap-eapn, Altramente, Osservatorio Europa,MFE.----FORUM PROGRAMSimultaneous interpretation from and to English will be availableFriday 10th ? Opening assembly: An Alternative Europe is Possible17:00 International interventions to launch a new Europe in response toausterity, based on common goods, income and participation.Costas Douzinas (Brikbeck College), Maurizio Landini (Fiom), Ida Dominjanni(Il Manifesto), Ugo Mattei (IUC), Ovidiu Tichindeleanu (CriticAttac,Romania), Marcus Graetsch and Martin Schmalzbauer (Fels-Berlin,Occupy-Frankfurt), Lorenzo Marsili (European Alternatives), Jerome Roos(Roar), Claudia Bernardi (UniCommon), Franco Russo (Osservatorio Europa),Antonio Tricarico, Maria Pia Pizzolante (Tilt), Claudio Riccio (Rete dellaconoscenza).plus others to be confirmed20:00 Artistic program organised by Teatro ValleSaturday 11 ? Towards a European Charter of the Commons10.00: Opening10:00 - 13.30: Commons, Direct Democracy & Fundamental Rights in EuropeReclaiming the commons requires not only the reshaping of the democraticprocess as it stands today by offering an alternative to the model that hasprevailed under state and market models, but also the protection of accessto such resources as fundamental rights.First interventions by:Ugo Mattei (International University College Turin)Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck College, GB / Greece)Alberto Lucarelli (Assessore, Municipality of Naples)How to define the commons in different European contexts and build atransnational campaign. Intervention and participative roundtable with:Gilda Farrell (Council of Europe), Silke Helfreich (Commons Strategy,Germany), Paolo Beni (ARCI, Italia), Aitor Tinoco i Girona (Democracia RealYa / Universidad Nomada, Spain), Tommaso Fattori (Forum acqua), KrzysztofConpr (Fise, Poland), Renato Sabbatini (Rosa Luxembourg Foundation,Germany/Belgium). Ovidiu Tichindeleanu (CriticAttac, Romania). Ana M?ndez(Observatorio Metropolitano, Spain), Giuseppe Caccia (City of Venice), PierVirgilio Dastoli (Permanent forum of civil society), Nicholas Milanese(European Alternatives), Saki Bailey (International University CollegeTurin), Giuseppe De Marzo (Asud), Harry Halpin (University of Edinburgh),Open debate to follow13.30: Lunch break15.00-17.30: International Round Table & Working GroupsDifferent organisations will confront each other on the themes of themorning and work towards the elaboration of a common campaign and Citizen?sInitiative for a European Charter of the Commons.Translating the commons in different European contextsCreating a transnational network around the European Charter of the Commons- Legal & technical requirements of the ECI campaign- Roadmap & timeline: future steps towards the campaignFollowed by artistic performances organised by Teatro ValleSunday 12: Towards a European Minimum Income10.00: Opening10:30: Minimum Income in EuropeOn Sunday, a campaign on Minimum Income at a European level will bediscussed, as a solution to precarious working and living conditions.First interventions by:Luca Santini, (Basic Income Network)Francesco Raparelli (Centro Studi per l?Alternativa Comune)International participative roundtable with experts responding to openquestons on different aspects of minimum income, its relation to work,precarity, financial sustainability, knowledge, gender, and legality. With:Massimiliano Smeriglio (Assessore, Province of Roma), Riccarto Petrella(Italy / Belgium), Adrian Dohartu (GAS, Romania), Mariya Ivancheva (RedHouse, Bulgaria), Florence Morillon (Generation Precaire, France), Adri?Rodr?guez de Al?s-Moner (Universidad Nomada, Spain), Klaus Sambor (BasicIncome Network Austria), Adeile Oddo (Solidar), Alberto Cottica (Council ofEurope), Edgar Manjarin Castellarnau and Jose Luis Rey Perez (Red RentaBasica, Spain), Roberto Musacchio (AltraMente), Giuseppe Bronzini (BIN),Ilias Livanos (University of Warwick), Marco Furfaro (Tilt), NicolettaTeodosi (Cilap-Eapn)Open debate to follow.13:45 Lunch14.30 - 16:00: International round table on income: how to translatedemands for a minimum income in different European contexts and roadmaptowards the construction of a European campaign. Including:Translating minimum income in different European contextsCreating a transnational network around the demands for minimum incomeLegal & technical requirements of the ECI campaignRoadmap & Timeline: Future steps towards the campaign16.30 - 16.30: Conclusion: Launch of campaigns and shared roadmap for thenext months.FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:http://www.alternativacomune.eu/?p=284#more-284https://www.facebook.com/events/327663140601532/

original to: http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008434bwo: http://www.nationofchange.org/anonymous-our-future-1328106234Planet OccupyBy Nathan SchneiderImagining an Occupied worldI recently learned about a revolutionist pamphlet published last year inSpain called La Carta de los Comunes. It begins with an intriguingconceit. Set in 2033 in a magical-realist Madrid, it tells of a populationwhose bodies became physically hunched over in submission to a wealthyfew. At last, with their livelihoods nearly eviscerated, the people riseup and take over their city. They resurrect the medieval notion of thecommons, creating a domain of shared resources apart from the market andbureaucratic oversight. They learn to stand upright again. The pamphletthen presents a Magna Carta for their new society.I can't resist applying a similar futurism to Occupy Wall Street, thephenomenon whose origins I describe in the February 2012 issue ofHarper's. Even the most hopeful young occupiers are starting to realizethat their revolutionary dreams might take longer to achieve than asemester's leave from school -- and justly so. As I noticed during theplanning process, and have continued to see in the movement thus far, eventhose most centrally involved are constantly discovering for themselveswhere it is leading.The question of what Occupy Wall Street is really about has beennotoriously thorny from the outset. The movement's attempts to craftagreed-upon "demands" have generally fallen flat. Nevertheless, a set ofquite interesting but rarely discussed texts have withstood theconsensus-building process at local general assemblies. Reading themclosely, and with an eye to the praxis in the occupations themselves, Isee no quick-and-easy legislative, executive, or judicial patches for theproblems the movement means to confront. I came to think, instead, thatthe movement's lasting contribution could be something substantially moreambitious: a wholesale rethinking of political life, more akin to thepromulgation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen inrevolutionary France than, say, the introduction of afinancial-transaction tax or the revocation of the Supreme Court'sCitizens United decision in the United States. (Unlike the Declaration ofthe Rights of Man, mind you, the Occupy documents rarely refer toproperty, law, or patriotic sentiment. They don't even mention borders.)It isn't crazy to think the time has come to go back to the drawing board,politically. The constitutions of most Western nation-states were dreamedup during the late Enlightenment, long before anyone could foresee suchrealities as globalized mega-corporations profiting from chronic personaland national debt, Internet companies possessing more private informationthan the average diary, and undeclared wars being fought by droneaircraft -- which have all contributed to what Occupy Wall Street describesas a "feeling of mass injustice" in its Declaration of the Occupation ofNew York City, approved on September 29 and now available as an attractivepamphlet. Our familiar, Lockean governments have come to seem inept,powerless to oppose the incorporeal profit machines that can, as thedeclaration adds, "achieve the same rights as people, with none of theculpability or responsibility." The Declaration of the Occupation isaddressed not to governments -- no hope there -- but rather "to the people ofthe world," urging communities everywhere to "assert your power.""We are creating an exemplar society," states Occupy Boston's Declarationof Occupation. That being the case, let's attempt some Occupy sci-fi: Whatwould the world look like if the Occupy revolution were carried through tocompletion?"No one's human needs go unmet," continues the Boston declaration. PlanetOccupy, like last fall's occupations, provides food and shelter foreveryone, no questions asked. It also ensures health care, mutualeducation, childcare, legal representation, and a large, meticulouslycatalogued library. Sounds like a good social democracy -- except that, inthe words of Occupy Wall Street's Principles of Solidarity, the basic unitof political life is not the ballot box but "autonomous political beingsengaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy." Though theymight be wired to the teeth, the political beings of Planet Occupy carryout their democracy face to face, in well-coordinated small groups thatoperate by consensus. It's "participatory as opposed to partisan," addsthe Statement of Autonomy, suggesting that the aim on Planet Occupy is forall voices to be heard, rather than for one party to prevail over others.Those with "inherent privilege" defer whenever possible to others. Theconsolidation of power is discouraged, and resisted when necessary.Policing troublemakers becomes the job not of cops, but of assertive,well-trained listeners.The movement's documents contain fewer hints about Planet Occupy'seconomy. The Principles of Solidarity calls for "redefining how labor isvalued," which may look something like the worker-owned cooperativescurrently being developed at the Freedom Plaza occupation in Washington,D.C. Broadly speaking, human needs prevail over claims on profit.Companies are chartered for the public good, not private gain.Participatory democracy prevails in workplaces, neighborhoods, and otherproductive groupings. Many aspects of the economy -- food, especially -- remainlocal. This is necessary partly in order to preserve and sustain thenatural environment. Everyone on Planet Occupy knows, after all, that ifthey don't protect the planet, there will be nothing left to occupy.Even with its inhabitants' passion for local autonomy, though, PlanetOccupy is a globalized place. People and their ideas travel freely,creating new opportunities and partnerships wherever they go. Assembliesshare their plans and innovations over Interoccupy. (The movement'sconference-call network will have supplanted the original Internet, whichwas overrun by corporate advertising.) Following the urge in thePrinciples for "the broad application of open source," all ideas arecommon property, and these collective resources are, according to theStatement of Autonomy, valued more highly than money -- if money still existsat all. SOPA-style censorship in the name of ownership is not okay.Also not okay is using violence to resolve conflicts. Almost every Occupydocument makes some statement to this effect. Occupy Boston's Memorandumof Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples envisions "a new era of peace andcooperation that will work for everyone." When conflict occurs, as isinevitable, people resist injustice through "non-violent civildisobedience and building solidarity based on mutual respect, acceptance,and love," in accordance with the Principles. Every such struggle is bothlocal and global.Is this anarchist utopia realistic, or even desirable? It's at least alittle out there. Perhaps a lot out there. But the Declaration of theRights of Man, drafted while Louis XVI still had his head, wasn't easy tocomprehend in its time. The circumstances of our world exceed the politicswe're used to imagining for it, and the politics that are really necessarymight therefore seem impossible. "We have come to Wall Street as refugeesfrom this native dreamland, seeking asylum in the actual," explains"Communiqué 1," an article in the movement journal Tidal. "We seek torediscover and reclaim the world."<<Nathan Schneider is a writer living in Brooklyn. His story "SomeAssembly Required," which traces the birth of Occupy Wall Street, appearsin the February 2012 issue of Harper's Magazine. Schneider previouslyblogged for Harper's about the General Assembly process at Occupy WallStreet, and whether Occupy encampments should be covered by the FirstAmendment. >>

======================================================================Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Feb 6, 2012:flying blind means working without network or planningthis is flying blind. this is a broken network.what collapses is the software, the timing, the indicationthat things aren't going to continue in this fashion, that whatis here is irretrievableskies don't last foreverpain is what happens when the network collapses.then there is nothing but bangu, the drumthere's nothing else but absence, exhaustionthere's no inscription, emptiness or depletiondepletion is what happens when the words disappearwhen the words disappear, there is nothing more to be said.there are no hearers, no listeners. there is the blank wall.i am living in the blank wall.software collapses. these pilots are dead. these pilots have all died. they died NOW when the film was shot.these people can't stand up.these people are in the network.these people are out of the network, these people are the ends of it.if you want to know where the internet goes, it goes here, it ends here.it ends with these people HERE.it ends with their dance-distortion, their ecstatic dance-distortionbut the network, the network is goneso they fly apartif we knew what to say we wouldn't be so numb with painget your stem cells today! get your stem cells today!do you know your skin is your largest organ?MEN< YOUR SKIN IS YOUR LARGEST ORGAN>we apologize for that intrusion.you see, when you talk about your SKIN, you're talking about inscription, what can be said here, what's going on here, what's your history, you're still talking or at least you're yelling, you're doing something, you're not silent. but then -you're not just music either, you're something elseif you could hear me -I'd go so far as to make the claim that art has nothing to do with pain, at least abject pain, that pain from which there is no return. at that point, form and structure, inscription and discourse, disappear: so this presentation is an anomaly, senseless, this presentation cannot touch the subject AT HAND, it can only avoid the subject by necessity, it steers you elsewhere, as if there were something other than pain, as if there were AN OTHER.it's certainly not located in the virtual, no matter how distorted the bodies appear.they're appearances. they don't have the flesh, the interiority, tissuesthey don't live where you expect them tovirtuality always gets a black eye.the image always already disappears, it's this disappearance that permits the onset of pain. pain is the disappearance of the image; pain is welcomed by the disappearance.time seems to find its way into errors, give time enough time, and errors will appear.the errors are the first harbinger of pain, when time disappears; when you die, when you disappear, you will not know it, you will think your last thoughts, projects, that there is something in the corner of the roomgod has commanded your stem cellsgod has commended your stem cellspray to god. your stem cells pray to god."that requires a doing, not a speaking only"tenacity! determination! it's what ERIKA IS ABOUT!she has sons and daughters!sometimes we take a deep breath and organizeand then we are ready to begin again, but we find ourselveswithout limbs, we find outselves silenced by God and our mouthsare stuff with some unknown substance, we cannot breathe, we can only whisper, our whispers take us nowhere, there is a momentwhen we begin to know, just for a second, that our lives are ending,that we are on the way out, and that second is extended, as is theuniverse itself, until matter is blown apart, until nothing is left,perhaps isolated protons or electrons, memory will be gone when datais gone and data will be gone when the bases are goneI WILL END YOU I WILL FINISH YOU OFF I WILL ANNIHILATE YOU I WILL DESTROY YOU I WILL KILL YOU I WILL WOUND YOU I WILL CAUSE YOU UNUTTERABLE PAIN I WILL CREATE WOUNDS AMONG YOU AND PESTILENCE I WILL MURDER YOU AT MY WILL AND UNTOWARD DESIRE I WILL PERMIT MY WAYWARD BALANCE TO GET THE BETTER OF ME I WILL TURN AGAINST MYSELF I WILL TURN AGAINST ALL BELIEFS I WILL KILL YOU I WILL GIVE YOU UNUTTERABLE PAIN I WILL CREATE PESTILENCE AMONG YOUYOU SEE WHEN ONE DISAPPEARS ANOTHER APPEARS. THE SERIES IS FINITE, CONTROLLED BY ENERGY, BY CAPITAL, BY MATERIAL WEARING-OUT, DISSOLUTIONTHIS IS MY BODY IN REAL LIFE. THIS IS ALL THERE IS.IT CAN'T TALK AND IT CAN'T THINK. ITS PAIN WILL KILL IT IN THE END.NOW WE HAVE a new topic, one of the plague, of viral connections, memes gone wild, girls gone meme, language is a virus, we'll all make bacteria at eyebeam, the old animals and plants are disappearing but they're not patented (for the most part) and there's little room for them, they have to make way for newer models. so many shows to see!Anja in preparation for performance, a performance in itself, in other words, a tuning (temporary) for something active later on.but this is the performance that most interested me, this presentation which was not a presentation, this inscription which was not an inscription.these figures appear from injury, they appear from twisted programs capturing healthy bodies and turning them, detourning them, into their own unrecoverable other. so you see, as long as you can see, as long as your interest is held, something that might be described as an injury, one not so permanent, just there, held in abeyance for you, for your viewing pleasure, no worry, nothing is happening, but the virtual is always the real deferred.Anja again and I think Daniela, I am not sure.this is where intelligence comes in, the forgetting of namesi could disguise myself, i could write blindly into the vortex.every name is destined to disappear. the name is a token child of the gesture.sometimes pointing to something is nothing but muscle memory.these terms are shaped and ordered. for a split-second there is imposed structure.You see how I have to correct myself!the period makes all the difference.These movements are SPECIFIC and CHANNELED. Every performance is a different set and setting. every distortion is unique and problematic. every moment carries with it (of course!) its own demise.the real can't be deferred foreverthe real is always the future anterior memory of the real which is lost, a priori. that is where we live, within the a priori: what else would there have been?now I am a loss; should we look at Facebook?no.but I am always aware of the book.the ink and the book.and how we are disappearing.and how we continue to disappear.it is as if: there is never a greeting, a welcoming.there is never an origin, a beginning.but there is always an ending, a lamentation or mourning.there is always a loss and that loss is irretrievable.we do not exist for a length of time to recover, recuperate.we are always already under erasure, under the disposition of the ephemeral.i think of the number of virtual particles.i think of the eyes that have missed them, that have never counted.or exoplanets for example, and of course someone will say we are all living on exoplanets. just as we are all berliners or occupy wall streeters, just as we are all Other, and none of us are other, we occupy in fact not even to the limits of our body or our skin, we occupy only until some force or an Other appears or disappears in corrosion. we lie there.we lie there, and there is no closure or suture beyond that, beyond the placement.like the placement of the ruined book.which will never be attained.thank you!i am living in the blank wall======================================================================We are stardust'We are stardust' from which everything, all philosophy, proceeds, a timing and process that is always coming to an end. So we are vast, we are communal, every atom from another source, another distance, every atom silent as to history from which we draw only this, that history is silent, that our micro-histories go against the grain, are retardations, are the source of pain, of holding back, as if there were beginnings and demarcations evident in Being, and as if becoming were a universal law. We are stardust, we have already returned as such; at the edge of the universe our faces and bodies live and project, towards that Being and becoming, we are observers of the cinema of disappearance; it is ourselves we witness blurred out in the heat-birth of the early universe, it is ourselves that awaits the word of our dissolution.despair and inscription - every inscription an alignment of atoms and molecules, every description the appearance of a permanent rearrangement. Pain mutes this, pain is the only truth, of stardust, of the absence of accountability, of the onslaught of the unaccountable and unaccounted-for.We are stardust, and it takes this, in the middle of the night, this forth-coming, to proclaim what remains of philosophy; even the digital does not escape its material foundations ...It would say unto you, it is languor, it is sinking, it is neurasthenia that reveals and revels in, the truth, which is that of a longing, of which death and its escape form only a surface phenomenon. For this longing inheres, is inherent in the very project we set ourselves, which is that of coagulation, and beyond coagulation, form and inscriptive processes bearing the familiar fount of Aristotelian logics and laws of distribution, so that we may take account, so that we may be accounted-for - it is this accounting, this belief in accounting, that grants us meaning, beyond that of clean and proper reproduction, a meaning which for us means, that we are more than stardust, that we are surplus, beyond all accountancy.Such is the inauthenticity of our chaos, that engorged on signs and symbols, abjection rules in fact and fancy, along with the trope of the missing woman, just beneath the surface, beneath any surface whatsoever, that we believe we construct for ourselves, or that we believe we have found and foundered upon. We are stardust and we can never, always already never, reconstruct ourselves, our pasts, our histories, the groupings of our histories, the dualities of any two particles and their respective orbits, one among others, many among many. For I say unto you, we know not our own substance, and without this, our destiny falters, disappears; we live within the one remaining symbolic, that of the false memory of a permanent loss, which is a permanent loss. Thus I say unto you, it is said unto me, but it said by no other, other than what I am saying, to to no other, other than that I am hearing. We are stardust, we are nothing else besides.We are stardust, we are nothing else besides." We are stardustWe are goldenAnd we've got to get ourselvesBack to the garden[...]We are stardustBillion year old carbonWe are goldenCaught in the devil's bargainAnd we've got to get ourselves back to the garden "(Joni Mitchell)we are also a generationthat knows the truths about annihilationwhen meaning falls out and shatters on the groundwhen the ground calls out and dies on meaning's shatterwe are stardust we are leadenwe are walking ArmageddonWe are leaden; I say unto you we are borrowed time, we borrow the uncanny, we are borrowed dust, we organization information, information travels from dust to dust, information deteriorates, we erect potential wells, we are potential wells, potential wells are tunnels, we tunnel among us, we are always already under erasure, we are always already within the erasure of the sign of erasure. I say unto you, we are among the first to recognize there is no salvage. We await your planetary notice, this will come but among us all, the physics are impossible, inconceivable, the physics are the physics of stardust, the physics are the physics of death. This is within speech and without speech, the physics are the physics of death, and speech murmurs, the invasion of quantum noise, speech murmurs we are walking Armageddon."Ziggy Stardust may refer to:A persona adopted by David Bowie in the early 1970sThe Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie's1972 concept album"Ziggy Stardust" (song), a song from the albumZiggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (film), 1973 documentary andconcert filmZiggy Stardust: The Motion Picture, the soundtrack of the concert filmZiggy Stardust Tour, a concert tour to promote the studio albums ZiggyStardust and Aladdin Sane"(Wikipedia)======================================================================

Sex Work and Consent at < at >transmedialeTransmediale 2012 is over. R15N is closed again, until the next occasion. As usual, lots of great people  at the festival, and lots to talk and think about.On Saturday I attended the discussion "Commercialising Eros" with Jacob Appelbaum, Zach Blas, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, Aliya Rakhmetova and moderated by Gaia Novati. Aliya Rakhmetova, supporter of sex workers' right working as a co-ordinator with SWAN, gave an overview of her organization and it's campaigns defending the rights of sex workers, including campaigns to fight violence against sex workers. Jacob Appelbaum went over his experience working in the IT department of smut.com, a leading internet pornography company, which he left as a result of his opposition to exploitive pay inequality at the company which paid the performers far less that the executives at the company. Liad Hussein Kantorowicz talked about her work as live erotic performer at a internet pornography site, and performed her job on the stage for her online clients while the other panelists gave their presentations. Zach Blas gave an overview of the work of the "Queer Technologies" art collective.I enjoyed the presentations and discussions and applaud the panellists for their support of sex workers. One question stuck with me, I didn't expand upon it at the discussion, but I'd like to here.Several of the panelists referred to the issue of consent as a justification for sex work and a way of arguing against legal repressions of sex work, and against the opposition against sex work that some feminists and other have, as well as a way to distinguish sex work from rape. Sex work is distinguished from rape because it is consensual, and neither legislator nor moral campaigner has any place interfering with what consenting adults do. Yet, this argument is unsatisfying.Within the capitalist system, where workers and their families face destitution and homelessness unless they work, no work can be truly described as consensual. What's more the pretense of consent, is often used as justification for exploitation and to excuse the exploitive behaviour of employers. After all, the worker chose to accept the job. Yet, as the cliche goes, in context this choice is not much different than the one that a mugger gives you. "Your money or your life" is also a choice.Like all professions, there can be no doubt that many sex workers feel empowered by their work, and take great pleasure in it. However, there can also be no doubt, that many sex workers are directly or indirectly coerced into doing this kind of work, and face emotional and social trauma as a result."Consent" seems to justify not only the sex-work itself, since the sex worker consents to perform sexual services for a client, but the conditions of the sex-workers labour as well, since the sex-workers, like other workers, has consented to the terms of employment. Thus while consent may help us differentiate sex work from rape, it justifies the economic exploitation of the sex worker at the same time, since both the workers relationship with the client and the employer are ultimately consensual.I would prefer to see a stronger line of argument that says that sex work is a valid form of work not merely because it is consensual, but because it is valuable. Rather then a week liberal argument based on the sanctity of what consulting adults to, a strong social argument that argues that sex workers do necessary and beneficial work and should be protected and supported.Like the consent argument, the value argument also differentiates between sex work and rape, as rape clearly is not socially valuable, but unlike the consent argument it doesn't excuse the economic exploitation of sex workers, since such exploitation is not socially valuable.If we accept that sex work is valuable work that has a place in society, then we can focus on the health and well being of the sex workers directly, and acknowledge that many of them are not empowered consenting workers, but rather victims of coercion, trafficking and exploitation, often forced, unwillingly, into their work. Pretending that they have consented to their own exploitation is both delusional and disrespectful when it's quite likely that the empowered sex worker who takes pleasure in their work is the minority within an industry that recruits most of its workers by way of terror and desperation.The value argument also confronts the moral issues more directly, since the consent argument doesn't necessarily dispute the immorality of the work, it only argues that nobody that is not directly involved has any business with it. The value argument makes a much stronger social statement: that sex work is not just a private business between consenting adults, but a form of work that benefits society and, far from being immoral, is a vital part of human civilization and always has been, despite persecutions and prohibitions. And that such persecution and prohibition should stop, not simply because it interferes with liberal rights, but because it is wrong and harmfull.First we must reject capitalist ideological notions of consent, these do not help sex workers, only make them responsible for their own exploitation, and exploitation aint sexy. Once we see sex work as an essential form of work, we can fight for the conditions of these workers along with those of all other workers.I'll be at Cafe Buchhandlung for Stammtisch tonight at 8pm or so, I hope some transmediale folk who are still in town will join for a drink in celebration of a great event.Stammtisch is here: http://bit.ly/buchhandlung

This articles, composed of ten panels, fascinates me in its illustration of the somewhat clandestine; Information Week tends to remain corporate from top to bottom but makes for interesting reading."Mathew J. Schwartz 02/07/2012 Anonymous 'hacktivists' aim to expose what they call government and establishment hypocrisy. Take a closer look at the group, its offshoots, and its infamous attacks."http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/security/attacks/232600322?cid=nl_IW_daily_2012-02-07_html&elq=618b922918214eaeb02d72afd9040891- And take a look for a style of presentation based on listing "10 key facts" - a style adopted by any number of online magazines. Everything gets sewn up in the process, which is also entertaining and related (I think) to the hunt.- Alan

MOE-landers: statistical category as a basis for discrimination by Dutch PVV & VVD political partiesFebruary 9, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe fully illustrated (including videos) and documented version can be found as always on:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/moe-landers-statistical-category-as-a-basis-for-discrimination-by-dutch-pvv-vvd-parties/[tableau/détournement: Meldpunt MOE-landers, with elements of PVV web site]A ‘détournement‘ for the latest campaign of PVV/Wilders group targeting Middle & East European workers… what I see when I check out the Complain Web Site of the PVV.The word ‘MOE-Landers’ is a post Cold War invention, before there was the monolithic term ’Oostblok (East-block from the East germany/DDR all the way to Vladivostok in Siberia ). MOE is an ‘acronym’ of Midden Oost Europees (Middle East European), which is then glued to the word ‘lander’ (someone from a certain land or country).The word ‘MOE’ in Dutch means being tired. This is an interesting association as the MOE-landers may be coming to the Netherlands because the Ducth lower paid classes are tired (moe) of working for too low wages and in too bad circumstances. The Dutch entrepeneurs are of course the last to complain about willing Middle-East-Europe employees.Wilders and his PVV movement specialise in using generalised ‘statistic group names for humans’ as a basis for their pointing-a-finger-to-others politics. It is not just those belonging to a religious entity like Islam that are targeted by the PVV. The party of Wilders also points to other groupings of people, often groups that have been defined as a specific statistical category by the State Statistical Bureau (CBS). Autochtoon (Old-Greek: αὐτος; autos = “self” and χθων chthoon = “land/earth”) and Allochtoon (ἄλλος (allos) = other; + land/earth) are important ‘catchwords’ to be found in the ‘policy nets’ of the PVV. ‘Native’ and ‘alien’ to use other dividing terms, or simply ‘us and them’.Sub-categories – all neatly defined by the Dutch State Statistic Bureau – are singled out by PVV strategists for their populist campaigns, like the seemingly geographic notion of ‘Niet Westerse Allochtoon’ (non Western Allochtones). NWAers would be an acronym for this group, proposed to us as a non-adaptive foreign element in the mythically national entity of ‘echte Nederlanders’ (real Netherlanders) originating from ‘non Western countries. The last thing is such an general absurd notion that it will take a separate article (in the making) to explain it by showing tis category in maps. For the rest I need not detail here the fact that all nations exist only by the grace of migration. The ethnographer searching for a real aboriginal Dutch will have a hard time finding one.[Statistic of Middle and East Europeans in the Netheralnds 2007-2011: Middle and East Europeans in the Netherlands: (blue) not registered employee in the GBA (Gemeentelijke Basis Administratie Persoonsgegevens/Municipal Basic Administration of Persons Information); (brown) idem registered. Source CBS .]The singling out of MOE-landers as a target is not a new PVV policy. It fits in their long term structural policy of ‘the Netherlands for the Netherlanders’ (Nederland voor de Nederlanders). The definition of what a real Netherlander is according to the PVV remains kind of vague. I do not see a ‘jus sanguinis‘ (the fact of being born in a country) approach by the PVV as a basis for citizenship, as Dutch citizenship is something in the opinion of the PVV that can be taken away from first, second – who knows where it ends – generations of migrants, that in their view do misbehave. “Send them back to their homeland” is the adage.It is certainly not only the PVV who is campaigning against former East-blockers, East-Europeans or MOE-landers. The Liberal Party for Freedom (VVD) – the main power in government now – is in fact the main motor behind the PVV action against MOE-landers. The VVD minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Henk Kamp, proposed already a year ago to expel unemployed Polish workers, not withstanding European accords on free movement of employees. The number of problem cases of such economic migrants, as suggested by the minister last year, have been criticised and relativized by informed sources and members of parliament, accusing the minister of a party-politic election show over the backs of EU migrant workers.What we see is an orchestrated campaign whereby the PVV takes an extremist stand by actions like the call to complain on a web site about MOE-landers (anonymous and without check on double entries if wanted), while the VVD plays it more subtle and indirect. Minister Kamp has a personal campaign, often televised by the NOS TelevisionJournal, whereby he draws his double sided sword: threatening to scrap the welfare benefit of Dutch unemployed workers, if they refuse to do the jobs now done by the MOE-landers and because of this force the MOE-landers out of their jobs. Jobs often in the greenhouses of the agrarian export sector. Double sided sword, double side profit, also for the state.[screen shot of video: Minister Henk Kamp (VVD) of Social Welfare and Employment in a video during a working visit to horticulture firms in the Noord-Oost Polder, filmed by the Dutch State Information Service (RVD): "..if you can work and there is work, than you must work." Click picture to go to the RVD information page of this work visit. Kamp speaks about the number of unemployed Dutch workers in the region, being the same as the number of MOE-lander workers employed in the horticulture in this region. The horticulture entrepeneur explains that these MOE-landers can be called to work on short notice and for short time contracts only, whereas the Dutch looking for employment in the region are looking for an all around year job. Nobody seems to know the historically speaking distressing association that the Noord-Oost Polder (new land on what once was an inner sea) has consumed a lot of real 'forced labour' when it was laid bare and made into farmland during World War II.]The agrarian sector itself certainly does not embrace this proposal for a number of reasons: refusal or incapacity of the “real Dutch” unemployed to do this kind of work, because of what is not said in the VVD minister’s campaign, the not so brilliant economic and social conditions offered to workers employed in EU competitive factory greenhouses. In other words this industry thrives on seasonal migrant workers.The media performance of VVD and PVV is perfectly orchestrated these days, with Geert Wilders being attacked for his discriminatory MOE-landers campaign while Henk Kamp appears on television saying that it is up to any parliament fractions to take on measures and researches they deem necessary. What is discrimination for one, is ‘freedom of expression’ for another, according to Minister Henk Kamp being asked about his opinion on the complaint against the anti-MOE-lander campaign by the Polish ambassador to the Netherlands.The text below is a GoogleTranslation of the PVV new anti-MOE-lander campaign web site on February the 9th 2012 (it is an automatic translation of PVV prose, that is as much as I am willing to do about rendering their Dutch in some kind of English, it is enough to get the gist of it):“Reporting Central and Eastern Europeans Since May 1, 2007 there is free movement of workers between the Netherlands and eight countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries. At present the estimates to the number of people from these countries, which resides in the Netherlands, apart from 200,000 to 350,000 people. As one of the few parties, the Freedom Party from the beginning against the opening of the labor market to Poland and other CEE nationals. Given all the problems associated with the massive arrival of especially Poland, is that attitude materialized. Recently, the PVV whatsoever against further opening of the labor market for Romanians and Bulgarians voted. This massive labor migration leads to many problems, nuisance, pollution, displacement and integration in the labor and housing problems. For many people, these things a serious problem. Complaints are often not reported, because the idea that nothing is done. Do you have trouble of CEE nationals? Or have you lost your job on a Pole, Bulgarian, Romanian or other Central or Eastern European? We would like to hear. The Freedom Party has a platform on this website to your symptoms to report. These complaints, we will identify and offer the results to the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment. Submit your story here”Original web site for copmplaints by the PVV is here: http://www.meldpuntmiddenenoosteuropeanen.nl/ ———–EPILOGUEin Dutch by farmer Merijntje produced by farmers son Rinus van Wezel, a 8 minute discourse with birds singing in the background with the title:“Minister Kamp sends forced labourers to the horticulture”A long and well argued call to the minister that” forced labour tomato picking will be a disastrous undertaking”; Merintje describes what will happen with strawberry harvesting by workers that are forced and try to evade in all kind of creative ways to do such work. In all detail farmer Merijntje sketches the fanatic posture of VVD minister Kamp in his zealous campaign to have Dutch workers to pick Dutch fruits and the consequences it will have for those law abiding farmers like him. “Just imagine”, he says lifting his arms in the sky, “government falls because of strawberry picking.” The horticulture entrepreneur also knows his classics on prudent politics when he uses the metaphor of the need for the Minister to be “bendable… in the wind, bendable like the reed.” The European Union reality is better understood by farmer Merijntje, than Minister Kamp, when he comes to the plight of all those Bulgarian and Rumanian workers that are working as season helps with him, already for years, and he recalls the expectation they have to earn something once in a while in the Netherlands. Think about their families, their situation at home often without work.The contrast between the PVV and VVD campaigns and this discourse from this other side – literary in the fields – is enormous. I did hear recently similar reasoning by employers of MOE-landers.Still the level of payment, the working conditions and the social impact of this new kind of EU migration work must not be forgotten, which would also necessitate getting a better understanding of market prices, European and international competition, economic risks and profits that are or could be made. Still having looked at the case at hand of the public discrimination of “MOE-landers”, it seems to be such an anachronism with this high overtone of xenophobia and proposed authoritarian control of the labour market. Anachronism also of the formerly speaking ‘liberal’ ‘free market’ VVD party that – apparently – for electoral reasons plays a socially dangerous high risk poker game with their statistical based discrimination policy, switching to protectionism and outmoded forms of nationalism. Is the VVD still a liberal party? I doubt it.[link to YouTube movie with farmer Merijntje]# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

The Lived Logics of Database MachineryA one-day workshop organised by Computational Culture (http://www.computationalculture.net/)Date: Thursday 28th JuneLocation: Central LondonWith many of the most significant changes in the organisation and distribution of knowledge, practices of ordering, forms of communication and modes of governance taking shape around it, the database has remained surprisingly recalcitrant to anything other than technical forms of analysis. Its ostensibly neutral status as a technology hasallowed it to play a significant - yet largely overlooked - role in modelling of populations and configuring practices, from organisational labour through knowledge production to art.The importance of the database for gathering and analysing information has been a theme of many studies (especially those relating to surveillance) but the specific agency of the database as an active mediator in its own right, as an actor in constructing, organising and modifying social relations is less well understood.A one-day workshop, organised by Computational Culture seeks to rectify this state of affairs. We are looking for proposals for papers, interventions, poster presentations and critical accounts of practical projects that address the theme of the social, cultural and political logics of database technologies.Proposals should aim to address the intersection of the technical qualities of databases and their management systems with social or cultural relations and the critical questions these raise. We are particularly interested in work that addresses the ways in which entity-relations models, or structures of data-atomisation, become active logics in the construction of the world.  Historical contributions that tease out the connections between the database 'condition' and antecedent technical and theoretical objects (from indexes and archives to set theory), or which develop critical accounts of transparency are also particularly welcome.The focus of the workshop on the lived social dynamics and political logics of database technologies is envisaged as a means of opening up paths of enquiry and addressing questions that typically get lost between the ‘social’ and the ‘technological’:•How do the ordering of views, permissions structures, the normalisationof data, and other characteristic forms of databases contribute to thegeneration of forms subjectivity and of culture?•What impact does the need to manage terabytes of data have on knowledgeproduction, and how can the normative assumptions embedded in uses of dataand database technologies be challenged or counter-effectuated?•What conceptual frameworks do we need to get a hold on the operationallogics of the database and the immanence of social categorization torelational algebras?•Is there a workable politics available for exploring strategies of data management, the commonalities and differences of practices in different settings - from genome sequence archiving through supply chain management to medical records and cultural history?Abstracts of around 500 words should be sent to editorial< at >computationalculture.net by March 9th# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org

Critique, Democracy, and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society.Towards Critical Theories of Social Media.The Fourth ICTs and Society-Conference.Uppsala University. May 2nd-4th, 2012.Information about abstract submission (deadline: February, 29th, 17:00, CET; early submission is recommended) and further information:http://www.icts-and-society.net/events/uppsala2012/Opening Plenary:* Vincent Mosco (Queen’s University, Canada): Marx is Back, but Will Knowledge Workers of the World Unite? On the Critical Study of Labour, Media, and Communication Today* Graham Murdock (Loughborough University, UK): The Digital Lives of Commodities: Consumption, Ideology and Exploitation TodayWith plenary talks by Andrew Feenberg, Catherine McKercher, Charles Ess, Christian Christensen, Christian Fuchs, Gunilla Bradley, Mark Andrejevic, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Peter Dahlgren, Tobias Olsson, Trebor Scholz, Ursula Huws, Wolfgang Hofkirchner.This conference provides a forum for the discussion of how to critically study social media and their relevance for critique, democracy, politics and philosophy in 21st century information society.We are living in times of global capitalist crisis. In this situation, we are witnessing a return of critique in the form of a surging interest in critical theories (such as the critical political economy of Karl Marx, critical theory, etc) and revolutions, rebellions, and political movements against neoliberalism that are reactions to the commodification and instrumentalization of everything. On the one hand there are overdrawn claims that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile Internet, etc) have caused rebellions and uproars in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which brings up the question to which extent these are claims are ideological or not. On the other hand, the question arises what actual role social media play in contemporary capitalism, power structures, crisis, rebellions, uproar, revolutions, the strengthening of the commons, and the potential creation of participatory democracy. The commodification of everything has resulted also in a commodification of the communication commons, including Internet communication that is today largely commercial in character. The question is how to make sense of a world in crisis, how a different future can look like, and how we can create Internet commons and a commons-based participatory democracy.This conference deals with the question of what kind of society and what kind of Internet are desirable, what steps need to be taken for advancing a good Internet in a sustainable information society, how capitalism, power structures and social media are connected, what the main problems, risks, opportunities and challenges are for the current and future development of Internet and society, how struggles are connected to social media, what the role, problems and opportunities of social media, web 2.0, the mobile Internet and the ubiquitous Internet are today and in the future, what current developments of the Internet and society tell us about potential futures, how an alternative Internet can look like, and how a participatory, commons-based Internet and a co-operative, participatory, sustainable information society can be achieved.Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to:* What does it mean to study the Internet, social media and society in a critical way? What are Critical Internet Studies and Critical Theories of Social Media? What does it mean to study the media and communication critically?* What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?* How do power structures, exploitation, domination, class, digital labour, commodification of the communication commons, ideology, and audience/user commodification, and surveillance shape the Internet and social media?* How do these phenomena shape concrete platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc?* How does contemporary capitalism look like? What is the role of the Internet and social media in contemporary capitalism?* In what society do we live? What is the actual role of information, ICTs, and knowledge in contemporary society? Are concepts like network society, information society, informational capitalism, etc adequate characterizations of contemporary society or overdrawn claims? What are the fundamental characteristics of contemporary society and which concept(s) should be used for describing this society?* What is digital labour and how do exploitation and surplus value generation work on the Internet? Which forms of exploitation and class structuration do we find on the Internet, how do they work, what are their commonalities and differences? How does the relation between toil and play change in a digital world? How do classes and class struggles look like in 21st century informational capitalism?* What are ideologies of the Internet, web 2.0, and social media? How can they be deconstructed and criticized? How does ideology critique work as an empirical method and theory that is applied to the Internet and social media?* Which philosophies, ethics and which philosophers are needed today in order to understand the Internet, democracy and society and to achieve a global sustainable information society and a participatory Internet? What are perspectives for political philosophy and social theory in 21st century information society?* What contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities, and dialectics shape 21st century information society and social media?* What theories are needed for studying the Internet, social media, web 2.0, or certain platforms or applications in a critical way?* What is the role of counter-power, resistance, struggles, social movements, civil society, rebellions, uproars, riots, revolutions, and political transformations in 21st century information society and how (if at all) are they connected to social media?* What is the actual role of social media and social networking sites in political revolutions, uproars, and rebellions (like the recent Maghrebian revolutions, contemporary protests in Europe and the world, the Occupy movement, etc)?* How can an alternative Internet look like and what are the conditions for creating such an Internet? What are the opportunities and challenges posed by projects like Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, Diaspora, IndyMedia, Democracy Now! and other alternative media? What is a commons-based Internet and how can it be created?* What is the role of ethics, politics, and activism for Critical Internet Studies?* What is the role of critical theories in studying the information society, social media, and the Internet?* What is a critical methodology in Critical Internet Studies? Which research methods are needed on how need existing research methods be adapted for studying the Internet and society in a critical way?* What are ethical problems, opportunities, and challenges of social media? How are they framed by the complex contradictions of contemporary capitalism?* Who and what and where are we in 21st century capitalist information society? How have different identities changed in the global world, what conflicts relate to it, and what is the role of class and class identity in informational capitalism?* What is democracy? What is the future of democracy in the global information society? And what is or should democracy be today? What is the relation of democracy and social media? How do the public sphere and the colonization of the public sphere look like today? What is the role of social media in the public sphere and its colonization?The conference is the fourth in the ICTs and Society-Conference Series (http://www.icts-and-society.net). The ICTs and Society-Network is an international forum that networks scholars in the interdisciplinary areas of Critical Internet Studies, digital media studies, Internet & society studies and information society studies. The ICTs and Society Conference series was in previous years organized at the University of Salzburg (Austria, June 2008), the University of Trento (Italy, June 2009) and the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Spain, July 2010).# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime< at >kein.org