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Knowledge is Naturalhttp://www.artisopensource.net/2012/08/04/knowledge-is-natural-a-workshop-about-diy-energy-and-augmented-reality-in-natural-environments/For Knowledge is Natural, we will be in the beautiful woods of the south ofItaly to explore the possibility to re-appropriate sensibilities andknowledge about natural environments, using DIY, sustainable energysources, Augmented Reality, Natural Interaction, Ubiquitous Technologiesand the re-discovery of human relationships and emergent, peer-to-peercreativity.Knowledge is Natural, August 19-25 2012, in Societing's 3rd Summer Schooltitled "Transmutation, the Next Mediterranean Way".The Summer School is created by the Mediterranean Societing Academy, CentroStudi Etnografia Digitale, Universit?? degli Studi di Milano, Universit??degli Studi di Salerno, AOS ??? Art is Open Source???.The workshop will last 3 days.We will work within nature. Our lab will be an innovative camp in which wewill give life to novel forms of collaborative study and relation,throughout the day. The woods will be our classroom.We will build a DIY sustainable energy source.We will learn how to use it to power up laptops, smartphones and customelectronics.We will create various forms of in-wood peer-to-peer networks in bothtechnological and non-technological ways, allowing us to exchangeinformation, publish it in natural environments and propagate it onto theInternet.We will disseminate digital information in nature, harvest it, share it onthe web and on social networks.We will augment reality, in analog and digital ways, creating accessible,usable, inclusive and interconnective practices.We will observe human and non-human activity in nature, using networks andcustom electronics.http://www.societing.org/summer-school-2012/http://www.societing.org/2012/08/knowledge-is-natural-la-realta-aumentata-nel-bosco/

The latest injection of the fake New York Times op-ed article may be signaling a new wave of (ab)use of an inherent architectural feature in today's "world wide web": the wide adoption of end-user MLM schemes (aka "social networks", the world's biggest Tupperware parties) means that most references to web pages now go through end-user's hands.In other words, the links controlled by the web site operator (say, LA Times of MSNBC) are less frequently used directly - instead, they are passed to others via end-user intervention. During this intervention the link can be changed or faked.Impersonating a site's page while subtly changing or skillfully faking content is a relatively trivial copy/paste operation. No one checks slight misspellings in the URL.This means that it is easy to snatch a piece of media outlet's 24/7 footprint. That real estate is the only real value the outlets have. It does not matter if the output is truth or lies. What matters is the 24/7 control of the narrative. Just look at the reactions to the above mentioned op-ed forgery: everyone agrees that it was fake, but that does not matter. What matters is that the captive, rightfully-owned audience was imprinted with a wrong content. The damage has been irreparably done. Perhaps 0.01% of NYT's 2012 real estate has been lost forever. This has been duly noticed by all parties.It is interesting to see how this develops. There is no immediate technical remedy available to media site operators - no one is touching the original web site. The rogue hosted page can be anywhere in the world. Few hours of effort, combined with networking, can be more effective than occupy-ing for days.What will likely happen is that MLM sites will develop "link antivirus" technology, but the window will stay open for many months.

Researching BWPWAP: The Reinvention of Research as Participatory PracticeCall for Participation for International Research Conference and PhD Workshop to be held at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, 22-24 November 2012.Organised by:Digital Aesthetics/Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus UniversityreSource transmedial culture berlin/transmediale festivalCentre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of LüneburgWe hereby invite proposals for participation in a research workshop around the 2013 theme of the transmediale festival, BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was A Planet). We are addressing researchers with diverse backgrounds interested in opening up some of the paradoxes of contemporary digital art and culture. Although the workshop is primarily aimed at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers who are pursuing research without institutional support.The workshop aims at researching concepts and phenomena that, in the light of the festival's thematic framework, have become destabilised by network culture and digital media (see below). Thematically, these may include – but are not restricted to:/ techno-cultural displacement and invention/ fragility of networks/ disruptive potential of artistic practice/ paradoxes of digital art and culture/ organisation after networks/ participatory research practices/ research beyond academia/ network epistemologies/ networks after social networksBWPWAPIn referring to the cancellation of Pluto's planetary status in 2006, BWPWAP (Back When Pluto Was a Planet), the 2013 theme of the transmediale festival, interrogates techno-cultural processes of displacement and invention, asking for artistic and speculative responses to new cultural imaginaries. Back When Pluto Was a Planet, life might have seemed more innocent, yet whole cultural imaginaries, like planetary systems, may change overnight, and technical and cultural paradigms along with them. The festival will take this fragility of culture as a point of departure for exploring the disruptive potential of technological development and artistic practice. Can we act like BWPWAP and at same time redefine present and future cultural practices, inventing networks out of place and out of time?This conference and workshop, which precedes transmediale, asks how BWPWAP can be interpreted in the context of research culture that has been significantly destabilised by network culture and digital media. If Pluto didn't exactly fall prey to an epistemological break or a scientific revolution, but rather to a mundane administrative procedure – a redefinition of what constitutes a planet and the invention of the category "dwarf planet" – then what does this say about contemporary research culture? Is research today occupied more with mundane acts of recategorisation, and – after Bologna – with what Lyotard already called performativity? Or does it still engage the kind of marvel and wonder that so many ascribe to Pluto and that BWPWAP captures as a cultural term? If BWPWAP captures a time when transmedial culture was researched outside academia, how does network culture and digital media then contribute to and transform research culture, forcing it out of its closet and, if not into the solar system, then at least beyond the academy?BWPWAP, network culture was already becoming subsumed by social media and more recently mobile media. Networking and other strategies within software and net culture have become enmeshed with everyday life and big business. Research culture was visited by a similar fate: conferences reduced to networking events to foster cultural capital, and scholarly communications reduced to impact factors measured by grant givers. In light of this, what complicity can be constructed, with or without Pluto, between network and research cultures? Can digital culture save research from itself, and vice versa? What kinds of technological and artistic practices are suggested by BWPWAP and might produce rhizomatic effects for research and digital culture?WORKSHOP EVENT AND PROCESSIn the context of developing a platform for knowledge exchange, and research across the arts and sciences, transmediale and research groups at Aarhus and Leuphana universities have established a partnership to foster new forms of collaborative research, peer-review, publication and performative knowledge dissemination. The international research conference and PhD workshop takes transmediale's thematic framework as a broad starting point, and is a chance for researchers to share ideas and development processes across and beyond the time/space of academic research paradigms. The challenge is to salvage what there is to be salvaged from network culture and digital media for research, and vice versa.The workshop forms part of a series of events initiated by reSource transmedial culture berlin, which is an initiative of transmediale based on continuous network knowledge development and community involvement around the festival throughout the year. The event itself will be an interdisciplinary conference and workshop where PhD students and other participants can engage with members of the three participating institutions and invited international guests. One aspect of the conference will be a writing workshop wherein new digital writing practices and forms of collaborative writing will be explored. Ahead of the conference, invited participants will be asked to take part in an online discussion and collaboration process as an experiment in the peer production of knowledge. After the conference, participants will be involved in the production of a peer-reviewed research newspaper – itself an experiment in new forms of scholarly publication, and to be presented and distributed at transmediale 2013.The event follows on from similar events organised in 2012 and 2011 at Universität der Künste (Berlin), and Aarhus University, respectively. For the publication resulting from the last events, visit the following.http://darc.imv.au.dk/worldofthenewspaper.pdfhttp://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfacesPARTICIPATION AND SUBMISSIONWe invite proposals that take diverse perspectives to open up some of the paradoxes of contemporary thinking and anachronisms of practices that employ communications technologies. In the selection of participants, we are looking to assemble a diversity of research traditions and disciplines represented, including 'practice-based research'. The aim is to develop participants' individual research projects as well as foster networking. PhD students can be awarded 5 ECTS for their participation. Although the workshop is primarily aimed at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers who are pursuing research without institutional support.We are seeking proposals consisting of a biography (500 characters), a statement on current research/description of PhD project (1000 characters), and an abstract for a short presentation (1500 characters). The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2012.Here you can submit your proposals.http://www.transmediale.de/node/18472/--------------------------------------------------------More info:http://darc.imv.au.dk/http://www.transmediale.de/resourcehttp://www.leuphana.de/inkubator/digitale-medien.htmlPartners: Hybrid Publishing Lab, Segmented Media Offerings and Post-Media Lab as part of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg Digital Media Incubator

G'morning!SURVEILLANCE CHESS (2012)Hijacking CCTV Cameras in London___________________________________________________________Equipped with an interfering transmitter !MediengruppeBitnik hacks surveillance cameras in pre-Olympic London andassumes control. The artist collective replaces real-timesurveillance images with an invitation to play a game ofchess. The security staff's surveillance monitor located inthe control room becomes a game console.HTTP://CHESS.BITNIK.ORG_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________London. On the brink of the Olympic Games. A tube stationin one of the most surveilled public spaces in the world.!Mediengruppe Bitnik intercepts the signal of a surveillancecamera: Business people making their way to the Underground,a man in a suit looking for the right exit. From the left,a woman with a yellow suitcase walks into the frame of thesurveillance camera. She opens her suitcase and activates aswitch. This is the moment when Bitnik takes over. The CCTVoperator experiences total loss of control. The surveillanceimage drops out, a chess board appears on the surveillancemonitor and a voice from the loudspeakers says: «I amcontrolling your CCTV camera now. I am the one with theyellow suitcase.» The image jumps back to the woman withthe yellow suitcase. Then the image switches to the chessboard.«How about a game of chess?», the voice asks. «Youare white. I am black. Call me or text me to make your move.This is my number: 07582460851.»_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________SURVEILLANCE CHESS - THE VIDEOhttp://chess.bitnik.orgABOUThttp://chess.bitnik.org/about.htmlWATCH THE VIDEO ON VIMEOhttp://vimeo.com/46236909WITH LOVE FROM ZURICH.!Mediengruppe Bitnik

Original to:http://kafila.org/2012/08/13/how-to-start-a-riot-out-of-facebook-yousuf-saeed/bwo Sarai Reader List/ authorHow to start a riot out of FacebookYousuf SaeedI am utterly shocked and pained to read about the violent rally that manyMuslims took out at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on 11 August 2012 in protestagainst the recent communal carnage in Assam and Burma. More than theaccidental death of two men and 50 injured in yesterday’s protest, whatalarmed me was the public anger targeted on the media for “not reportingabout the violence against Muslims in Assam and Myanmar”. Several vans ofTV channels and their equipment were smashed or burnt besides a number ofpolice vehicles destroyed. Of course, the authorities are still probing asto who really began the violence in an otherwise peaceful rally (and weare open to the results of such a probe). But my worst fear came true withthis assertion of one of the protesters in a newspaper report: “Why is themedia not covering Burma and Assam? We learnt about the incidents fromvideos posted on the Internet.” This seems to be a very disturbingstatement on various accounts. Of course, the media can sometimes bebiased, and the Muslims do feel victimised by it all the time. But are therandom videos and images posted on the Internet any less biased ormisleading?Some of you may have recently noticed a number of gory and blood-soakedimages being forwarded and shared on various social networking sites likeFacebook and Twitter that claim to show the dead bodies of “20,000 Muslimsbutchered in Burma in the hands of Buddhists” along with the assertionthat the world’s media is silent about the plight of Muslims in Burma andso on. Most of those images are really disturbing, capable of makinganyone’s blood boil. Some show mounds of rotting dead bodies and a fewBuddhist monks standing near them. Some even looked digitally temperedwith to enhance their anti-Muslim violence. But there was no sign of wherethese images were sourced from. A couple of them even had Jama’t-e Islami,Pakistan, stamped on them. But if, as the people posting them claim, theworld’s media is silent about the Muslim carnage in Burma, how did theseimages and the disturbing news come from Burma in the first place? Wheredid they find them before posting? I asked this question to many friendssharing these images and they didn’t have a clue. They simply believed inwhat they saw. In fact, from the Internet these pictures were picked up bymany Urdu newspapers from Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi and printed withinflammatory titles and headlines. Many new caricatures and info-graphicsstarted appearing on Facebook ridiculing the “peaceful” image of Buddhistsor the “silence” of Burmese leader Aung Suu Kyi on the carnage of RohingyaMuslims and so on.Many of us were sceptical of these images and knew something was wrong.Some images do show the facial features of the victims to be Mongoloid,but that doesn’t prove they are from Burma. In any case, most RohingyaMuslims are not clearly Mongoloid – some look like Bangladeshi. With someinvestigation it was revealed that almost none of the gory images titled“Muslim slaughter in Burma” were actually from Burma. They came fromdifferent sources, mostly showing people killed in natural disasters inChina, Thailand and even self-immolation attempts by Tibetans. The bestinvestigation of these fake pictures was made by Faraz Ahmed in a blog ofthe Express Tribune newspaper from Pakistan (“Social media is lying to youabout Burma’s Muslim ‘cleansing’”), where he busted the myth about 3-4 ofthe most circulated of such images, tracing their origins in China,Thailand and Tibet. One image actually shows Buddhist monks crematingthousands of people killed in a Chinese earthquake. In fact, a few imagesof dead bodies or people escaping from violent situations are clearly fromplaces like Syria or Africa. The only authentic images of the affectedRohingya Muslims are those showing them in the boats waiting to enterBangladesh. Nevertheless, many of our Muslim friends in India, Pakistanand other places continued to post and share such fake and fabricatedimages, adding more and more vitriolic comments on them to spread hatredagainst Buddists. I and a few friends even tried to bust these postings bywarning them about the fake pictures, but our efforts had little impact.I must clarify that I am not denying the killing and persecution ofMuslims in Burma. I did some research as to what exactly happened and howmany Muslims were really affected. Contrary to the popular belief that theworld’s media and human rights fraternity is silent about Burma’s Muslimcarnage, I did find a lot of detailed reporting and analysis of the humanrights violation (including from Al Jazeera, BBC and New York Times,though very little from India), which ironically very few protestingMuslims may have read. The most comprehensive report on this has beenbrought out in August 2012 by the American organisation, Human RightsWatch, titled, “The Government Could Have Stopped This – SectarianViolence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State” (.pdf here). This57-page report states that it was communal violence between RohingyaMuslims and ethnic Arakan Buddhists which took the life of 78 people(according to government figures) – a number that includes bothcommunities. Many villages of both communities were torched and over100,000 people were displaced from their homes. But there is clearly nomention of 20,000 or more Muslims butchered as claimed by many onFacebook.Of course, none of the protesters read these detailed and balancedreports. For them the fake pictures of blood and gore were provocativeenough to come to the streets. This is not the first time that socialnetworking has been used to a large extent to bring people on the streets.We have seen more revolutionary uses of Facebook in the case ofoverthrowing of regimes in Egypt and other Arab countries. But to start acommunal riot using visual rumours is not the most desirable uses of theInternet. If you study social networking sites deeply, especially if youhave a wide range of ‘friends’ including the possible rumour-mongers, youmay find postings that are deliberately trying to provoke in one way orthe other. Just yesterday I found on Facebook a photo showing cut-up andmutilated body parts of two dead women lying in a forest, with a captionsaying “Wake-up Hindus. These are bodies of Hindu girls who were raped andkilled by Mullahs”. Of course, this image has been “liked” and shared bythousands of people throwing choicest of abuses on Muslims. But no onetried to reason out that there is no proof that the picture actually showsdead Hindu girls – there is not even any indication of where and when thispicture was taken. But for a new generation of net-savvy youngsters (someof whom may have come to Mumbai’s streets yesterday), simply seeing onFacebook is believing. I shudder to think that such rabble-rousing use ofthe Internet might increase especially when some people realise that suchan action can have practical repercussions. We have seen that in almostall communal riots, people deliberately initiated nasty rumours just to“have some fun”. But in the past, rumours spread in localised areas byword of mouth, whereas today it is possible to spread hate-filled messagesover large areas of the world within seconds. The spread of Burma’s fakeimages has even allowed the Tehreek-e Taliban of Pakistan to issue athreat to Burmese people, and it needs to be taken seriously.We don’t know if there is a ready solution to this menace. Censorship ofthe Internet as suggested by some (especially in the Indian government) isclearly not the answer since that may suppress even some of the harmlesscontent. But what is definitely required is advocacy amongst net-users onhow to read online content more critically. Unlike in the moreconventional media such as newspapers, TV or radio, its possible today foranyone to ‘track-back’ any content posted on the Internet to see where itoriginated from. For instance Google’s reverse image search allows youtrack who may have originally posted a certain image and who manipulatedit later. Just a few days ago an Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitungpublished a photo showing a Syrian couple with a baby escaping from abombed building. Later, it turned out that they had cut-out the couple andthe baby from an earlier photo and morphed it on the image of a ruinedbuilding, just for the effect! Hence, media manipulation by big and smallplayers is here to stay. The only way one can avert possible riots andviolent mobbing is to stop believing (and forwarding) everything that isposted online and investigate how true a picture is, and most importantly,where it came from.(Yousuf Saeed is a Delhi-based independent filmmaker and author, workingon themes of peace and shared cultural traditions in south Asia.)

Google Starts Punishing “Pirate” Sites In Search ResultsAugust 10, 2012https://torrentfreak.com/google-starts-punishing-pirate-sites-in-search-results-120810/Google announced today that it will lower the search engine rankings of websites that receive a high number of DMCA takedown requests, independent of whether the linked content is lawful or not. The algorithm change is the result of extensive lobbying efforts by Hollywood and the major music labels, and could severely degrade the rankings of websites such as The Pirate Bay, FilesTube, and even YouTube.yFor years entertainment industry groups have lobbied search engines to penalize sites that link to a high number of copyrighted files, and today Google has given in to their demands.The search engine will soon take into consideration the number of DMCA takedown notices it receives against sites to determine the ranking of those websites in its search results.“Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results,” Google’s Amit Singhal writes in a blog post.Earlier this year Google decided to publish all takedown requests online as part of their transparency report, and they will now use this data as part of their search algorithm. This means that websites for which Google receives a high number of valid takedown requests will be penalized.The top receivers of these notices over the past year were filestube.com, extratorrent.com, torrenthound.com, bitsnoop.com and isohunt.com. They can expect to appear lower in future search results and will therefore receive less traffic through Google searches. Whether Google will downgrade YouTube, where (tens of) thousands of videos are routinely disabled because of alleged infringements, is unknown at this point.Google stresses that it doesn’t know whether content is authorized or not, so removal of pages from its search results will only take place following a valid DMCA takedown notice.“Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law,” Singhal writes.“So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner.”One of the main problems with Google’s new ranking is that perfectly legitimate content on sites with a high number of takedown requests will be degraded as well. Taking YouTube as an example, millions of relevant and legal search results will be degraded simply because there are a high number of “unauthorized” videos posted to the site.Adding the high number of bogus DMCA notices which Google sees as valid, many sites may also be punished for the faulty takedown requests that copyright holders send. That’s worrying to say the least.For Hollywood and the major music labels Google’s announcement is a clear win. In fact, it was one of the three demands they handed out to Google, Bing and Yahoo last year during a behind-closed-doors meeting.The other two demands were “prioritize websites that obtain certification as a licensed site under a recognized scheme” and “stop indexing websites that are subject to court orders while establishing suitable procedures to de-index substantially infringing sites.”Whether Google will also adopt these suggestions remains to be seen.

bwo INURA ml / authorA new piece on the Occupy Wall Street and right to the city movementsthat may be of interest:"We Are the 99%" - The Slogan and the Reality¬¬A new blog #17, dealing with the Occupy Wall Street movement and theRight to the City Alliances, as representative of the 99%, who is inthem and who in the 1%, why historically they have arisen now, how theyhave changed since their beginnings, and what their future demands andstrategic possibilities and dangers might be.The essential points are that the theoretical 99% are much less than 50%in practice, that transformative systemic change is not on the agendatoday, that that realization has become acknowledged, particularly sincethe defeat of 1968, that the Occupy and RTTC movements are recognizingthat fact and moving to individual transformative changes, with dangersand, given good outreach, real potentials for new transformativestrategies.Blog #17, at pmarcuse.wordpress.com, is structured as follows::I."We Are the 99%" - The Slogan and the Reality(also blog 12)A.Structure of the Argument.B.Table of ContentsC. The value of the 99%/1% formulation.II.Who are the 99%? The Exploited, the Discontented, the Oppressed.(also blog 13)A.The directly exploited, (labor +).B.The discontented (Occupy +).C.The commonality of the 99%II.Who is the 1%(also blog 14)A. How is the 1% defined?B. The Tea Party and the 1%IV. The Right to the City and Occupy: History and Evolution. (also blog 15)A.History: Rise, Defeat, and New Life of the Resistance MovementsB.The Death and Life of the Right to the City Movement1.Right to the City One: The ideological concept.2.Right to the City Two: the liberal version3.Right to the City Three: Alliance on Individual Issues.4.The Future: The Dangers AheadV.The Four Faces of the Occupy Movement1.Occupy One: Class Targeted Discourse.2.Occupy Two: Physically Taking Over Spaces.3.Occupy Three: An Umbrella Function.4.Occupy Four: Occupy as Process.5.The future: The Dangers AheadVI.The Future: Strategic Implications (also blog 16)A.TransformationB.Concrete Individual Demands, but Aimed at the Whole.C.Unity: The Right to Occupy the City.D.Transformative education, ideology: culture.E.Ideology and ValuesF.Patience for the Long HaulG.Transformative StrategiesTHE ENTIRE ARGUMENT IS TOGETHER IN BLOG #17, WHICH CONTAINS THE FIVESMALLER BLOGS (but is therefore substantially longer -- 48 pages).They are all at pmarcuse.wordpress.comComments very welcome.Peter Marcuse

[Another quantitative study of cultural history, like Moretti'sGraphs, Maps, Trees (2003) or Lev Manovich's work in culturalanalytics. Fascinating stuff, if I only knew what to make of it. Thefigures, for example, are really beautiful, though, for me, entirelyincomprehensible. Ah, the joys of visualization. Felix ]Jockers, Matthew, Stanford University, USA, mjockers-FGKo4X94FMn2fBVCVOL8/A< at >public.gmane.orghttp://tinyurl.com/9khetrlOverviewIn literary studies, we have no shortage of anecdotal wisdom regardingthe role of influence on creativity. Consider just a few of the mostprominent voices: - 'Talents imitate, geniuses steal' - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900?).1 - 'All ideas are second hand, consciously and unconsciously drawnfrom a million outside sources' Mark Twain (1903). - 'The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with hisown generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of theliterature - has a simultaneous existence.' T. S. Eliot (1920). - 'The elements of which the artwork is created are external to theauthor and independent of him.' Osip Brik (1929). Anxiety of Influence - Harold Bloom (1973).Whether consciously influenced by a predecessor or not, it might beargued that every book is in some sense a necessary descendant of,or necessarily 'connected to', those before it. Influence may bedirect, as when a writer models his or her writing on another writer,2or influence may be indirect in the form of unconscious borrowing.Influence may even be 'oppositional' as in the case of a writerwho wishes to make his or her writing intentionally different fromthat of a predecessor. The aforementioned thinkers offer informedbut anecdotal evidence in support of their claims of influence.My research brings a complementary quantitative and macroanalyticdimension to the discussion of influence. For this, I employ the toolsand techniques of stylometry, corpus linguistics, machine learning,and network analysis to measure influence in a corpus of late 18th-and 19th-century novels. MethodThe 3,592 books in my corpus span from 1780 to 1900 and were writtenby authors from Britain, Ireland, and America; the corpus is almosteven in terms of gender representation. From each of these books, Iextracted stylistic information using techniques similar to thoseemployed in authorship attribution analysis: the relative frequenciesof every word and mark of punctuation are calculated and the resultingdata winnowed so as to exclude features not meeting a preset relativefrequency threshold.3 From each book I also extracted thematic (or?topical') information using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei, Nget al. 2003; Blei, Griffiths et al. 2004; Chang, Boyd-Graber et al.2009). The thematic data includes information about the percentages ofeach theme/topic found in each text.4 I combine these two categoriesof data - stylistic and thematic - to create 'book signals' composedof 592 unique feature measurements. The 'Euclidian' metric is thenused to calculate every book's distance from every other book in thecorpus. The result is a distance matrix of dimension 3,592 x 3,592.5While measuring and tracking 'actual' or 'true' influence -conscious or unconscious - is impossible, it is possible to use thestylistic-thematic distance/similarity measurements as a proxy forinfluence.6 Network visualization software can then be used as a wayto organize, visualize, and study the presence of influence amongof books in my corpus.7 To prepare the data for use in a networkenvironment, I converted the distance matrix into a long-form tablewith 12,902,464 rows and three columns in which each row captures adistance relationship between two books. The first cell contains a'source' book, the second cell a 'target' book, and a third cell themeasured distance between the two. After removing all of the recordsin which the target book was published before, or in the same yearas, the source book,8 the data was reduced from 12,902,464 recordsto 6,447,640. This data and a separate table of metadata were thenimported into the open source network analysis software package Gephi(2009) for analysis and visualization.Networks are constructed out of nodes (books) and edges (distances).When plotted, nodes with less similarity (i.e. larger distancesbetween them) will spread out further in the network. Figure 1 offersa simplified example of three imaginary books.Figure 1 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 1: a sample network with edge numbers representing measureddistances between nodesWhile it is not possible to show the details of the entire networkhere, it is possible to display several of the most obviousmacro-structures. Figure 2, for example, presents a zoomed outview of the network with book nodes colored according to dates ofpublication.9Figure 2 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 2: The 19th-century novel network colored according topublication dateThe shading of nodes and edges according to publication date revealsthe inherently chronological nature of stylistic and thematic change.The progressive darkening of the nodes from east to west allows us tosee, at the macro-scale, how style and theme are changing and evolvingover time. 10Also seen in this image is a 'satellite' of books in thenorthwest. This satellite represents a 'community' of novels that arehighly self-similar but at the same time markedly different from thebooks in the main network cluster. 11When the network is recoloredaccording to gender (figure 3), a new axis can be seen splitting thenetwork into northern and southern sectors along gender lines.Figure 3 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 3: The 19th-century novel network colored according toauthor-genderThis visualization (Figure 3) reveals that works by female authors(colored light gray) and male authors (black) are more stylisticallyand thematically homogeneous within their respective gender classes.As a result of this similarity in 'signals,' female-authored bookscluster together on the south side of the main network, whilemale-authored books are drawn together in the north.12 These two'views' of the network allow us to begin imagining the largermacro-history of thematic-stylistic change and influence in the19th-century novel. What is not obvious in this macro-view, however,is that a great many of the individual books we have traditionallystudied are in fact 'mutations' or outliers from the general trends.Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, clusterscloser to the works of male authors, and Maria Edgeworth's Belindahas a signal that does not become dominant for forty years after thedate of Belinda's publication. Also absent from the macro-view arethe individual thematic-stylistic 'legacies'. Using three measuresof network significance (weighted in-degree, weighted out-degree andPage-Rank), 13I will end my presentation with the argument that JaneAusten and Walter Scott are at once the least influenced (i.e. mostoriginal) of the early writers in the network and, at the same time,the most influential in terms of the longevity, or 'fitness,' of theirthematic-stylistic signals. The signals introduced by Austen and Scottposition them at the beginning of a stylistic-thematic genealogy; theyare, in this sense, the literary equivalent of Homo erectus or, if youprefer, Adam and Eve

[Another quantitative study of cultural history, like Moretti'sGraphs, Maps, Trees (2003) or Lev Manovich's work in culturalanalytics. Fascinating stuff, if I only knew what to make of it. Thefigures, for example, are really beautiful, though, for me, entirelyincomprehensible. Ah, the joys of visualization. Felix ]Jockers, Matthew, Stanford University, USA, mjockers-FGKo4X94FMn2fBVCVOL8/A< at >public.gmane.orghttp://tinyurl.com/9khetrlOverviewIn literary studies, we have no shortage of anecdotal wisdom regardingthe role of influence on creativity. Consider just a few of the mostprominent voices: - 'Talents imitate, geniuses steal' - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900?).1 - 'All ideas are second hand, consciously and unconsciously drawnfrom a million outside sources' Mark Twain (1903). - 'The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with hisown generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of theliterature - has a simultaneous existence.' T. S. Eliot (1920). - 'The elements of which the artwork is created are external to theauthor and independent of him.' Osip Brik (1929). Anxiety of Influence - Harold Bloom (1973).Whether consciously influenced by a predecessor or not, it might beargued that every book is in some sense a necessary descendant of,or necessarily 'connected to', those before it. Influence may bedirect, as when a writer models his or her writing on another writer,2or influence may be indirect in the form of unconscious borrowing.Influence may even be 'oppositional' as in the case of a writerwho wishes to make his or her writing intentionally different fromthat of a predecessor. The aforementioned thinkers offer informedbut anecdotal evidence in support of their claims of influence.My research brings a complementary quantitative and macroanalyticdimension to the discussion of influence. For this, I employ the toolsand techniques of stylometry, corpus linguistics, machine learning,and network analysis to measure influence in a corpus of late 18th-and 19th-century novels. MethodThe 3,592 books in my corpus span from 1780 to 1900 and were writtenby authors from Britain, Ireland, and America; the corpus is almosteven in terms of gender representation. From each of these books, Iextracted stylistic information using techniques similar to thoseemployed in authorship attribution analysis: the relative frequenciesof every word and mark of punctuation are calculated and the resultingdata winnowed so as to exclude features not meeting a preset relativefrequency threshold.3 From each book I also extracted thematic (or?topical') information using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei, Nget al. 2003; Blei, Griffiths et al. 2004; Chang, Boyd-Graber et al.2009). The thematic data includes information about the percentages ofeach theme/topic found in each text.4 I combine these two categoriesof data - stylistic and thematic - to create 'book signals' composedof 592 unique feature measurements. The 'Euclidian' metric is thenused to calculate every book's distance from every other book in thecorpus. The result is a distance matrix of dimension 3,592 x 3,592.5While measuring and tracking 'actual' or 'true' influence -conscious or unconscious - is impossible, it is possible to use thestylistic-thematic distance/similarity measurements as a proxy forinfluence.6 Network visualization software can then be used as a wayto organize, visualize, and study the presence of influence amongof books in my corpus.7 To prepare the data for use in a networkenvironment, I converted the distance matrix into a long-form tablewith 12,902,464 rows and three columns in which each row captures adistance relationship between two books. The first cell contains a'source' book, the second cell a 'target' book, and a third cell themeasured distance between the two. After removing all of the recordsin which the target book was published before, or in the same yearas, the source book,8 the data was reduced from 12,902,464 recordsto 6,447,640. This data and a separate table of metadata were thenimported into the open source network analysis software package Gephi(2009) for analysis and visualization.Networks are constructed out of nodes (books) and edges (distances).When plotted, nodes with less similarity (i.e. larger distancesbetween them) will spread out further in the network. Figure 1 offersa simplified example of three imaginary books.Figure 1 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 1: a sample network with edge numbers representing measureddistances between nodesWhile it is not possible to show the details of the entire networkhere, it is possible to display several of the most obviousmacro-structures. Figure 2, for example, presents a zoomed outview of the network with book nodes colored according to dates ofpublication.9Figure 2 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 2: The 19th-century novel network colored according topublication dateThe shading of nodes and edges according to publication date revealsthe inherently chronological nature of stylistic and thematic change.The progressive darkening of the nodes from east to west allows us tosee, at the macro-scale, how style and theme are changing and evolvingover time. 10Also seen in this image is a 'satellite' of books in thenorthwest. This satellite represents a 'community' of novels that arehighly self-similar but at the same time markedly different from thebooks in the main network cluster. 11When the network is recoloredaccording to gender (figure 3), a new axis can be seen splitting thenetwork into northern and southern sectors along gender lines.Figure 3 http://tinyurl.com/9khetrlFigure 3: The 19th-century novel network colored according toauthor-genderThis visualization (Figure 3) reveals that works by female authors(colored light gray) and male authors (black) are more stylisticallyand thematically homogeneous within their respective gender classes.As a result of this similarity in 'signals,' female-authored bookscluster together on the south side of the main network, whilemale-authored books are drawn together in the north.12 These two'views' of the network allow us to begin imagining the largermacro-history of thematic-stylistic change and influence in the19th-century novel. What is not obvious in this macro-view, however,is that a great many of the individual books we have traditionallystudied are in fact 'mutations' or outliers from the general trends.Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, clusterscloser to the works of male authors, and Maria Edgeworth's Belindahas a signal that does not become dominant for forty years after thedate of Belinda's publication. Also absent from the macro-view arethe individual thematic-stylistic 'legacies'. Using three measuresof network significance (weighted in-degree, weighted out-degree andPage-Rank), 13I will end my presentation with the argument that JaneAusten and Walter Scott are at once the least influenced (i.e. mostoriginal) of the early writers in the network and, at the same time,the most influential in terms of the longevity, or 'fitness,' of theirthematic-stylistic signals. The signals introduced by Austen and Scottposition them at the beginning of a stylistic-thematic genealogy; theyare, in this sense, the literary equivalent of Homo erectus or, if youprefer, Adam and Eve

Dear nettimers,about a year ago we published an anthology called 'Generation Facebook'. It contains ground-breaking theoretical papers and essays by leading international scholars such as Saskia Sassen, Geert Lovink and Mark Andrejevic. It is used widely in university teaching, received critical acclaim by the press and is deemed invaluable by media activists. So what's the catch? Right now, the book is only available in German.We think that this outstanding collection deserves an international audience. We also think that the contributions should be freely available in an Open Access format. Since we don?t have the means to make this happen all by ourselves, we decided to ask you (a.k.a ?the crowd?) for support to:a) cover the production costs for an Open Access version that is freely available right from the beginning.b) finance translations of texts that originally were contributed in German.If you think this is a project that is worth your attention (and maybe even your money), please take a look at our funding website:http://www.indiegogo.com/generation-facebookYou can find more information about the German version on our German publisher?s website:http://www.transcript-verlag.de/ts1859/ts1859.phpPlease help us to spread the word and to turn this into a successful experiment; please forward this email to anyone potentially interested and any mailing lists you see fit.All the best,Oliver Leistert & Theo R?hle(editors 'Generation Facebook')

Why the 3D printing revolution won’t happen in your garageBy Ryan Whitwam on August 22, 2012 at 8:03 am-> extremetech.com / http://tinyurl.com/cvv2cslNo one can deny that 3D printing is really cool from a purelytechnological standpoint. The idea that physical objects can berapidly fabricated from digital files is fascinating, and could changethe world. However, it’s very possible that we’ve all gotten so caughtup in the 3D printing hype that our collective hopes have been undulyraised. 3D printing is going to spur a legitimate manufacturingrevolution; just not in your home.It is true that the technology is rapidly coming down in price. Youcan get a MakerBot these days for about $2000. In the next few yearsthis kind of consumer 3D printer could get down to a few hundredbucks if you buy smart on Black Friday. Just because something isaffordable, though, doesn’t mean people actually have a use for it.The overwhelming majority of homes don’t need a 3D printer, and that’snot really going to change. Most of us barely even use our 2D printersanymore! If you look at the kinds of objects being printed in theselow-cost 3D printers you will see art projects, semi-professionaldesign work, and knickknacks. Printing an MP3 player shaped like acassette tape might be neat (I think so), but it’s not an example ofpractical at-home use.In the next few years, I suspect we’re going to see disillusionmentwith the idea of owning a 3D printer. The machinery will be cheaperand more capable, perhaps integrating a larger array of materials, butmost people still won’t have a real use for them. If you don’t wantone now, you probably won’t want one in a few years.PrintingThere’s always the hope that 3D printing will provide a way tofabricate replacement parts when something breaks or wears out. Thismight even come up for you occasionally, but how often? A few times ayear? It’s probably not worth keeping a 3D printer in the house forthose rare occasions. We live in a world where the things we buy areincreasingly becoming non-repairable; just look at how much harder carand computer repairs have become. You won’t be able to fix as manythings in the future, but 3D printing might have a role in makingthose non-repairable items in the first place.The way this technology changes everything isn’t in your garage,but in local manufacturing. When 3D printing hits the point thatcomplicated items can be easily created, that’s how it’s going to beused in industry. Yes, this technology will trickle down to the futureequivalent of the MakerBot, but it won’t ever be as good as what youcan get if you head down to your local professional 3D printer orhardware store.Don’t feel too down — 3D printing isn’t going anywhere as the insanelevels of hype die down. You’ll be able to buy them and printincreasingly neat stuff as time goes on. However, at-home 3D printingwill remain the domain of enthusiasts. Most people will be perfectlyhappy to buy items that were printed elsewhere with higher qualitymachinery than they themselves have the desire or inclination to run.Cheaper high-quality products will make it to stores thanks to 3Dprinting, and you will probably be able to get custom items printedfor a pittance. We don’t need to treat 3D printers like personal StarTrek replicators for the technology to change the world.

The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch Prince Friso medical ethics and the ordeal of social inequalityAugust 24, 2012 by Tjebbe van TijenThe illustrated and annotated/linked version can be accessed at The Limping Messenger with this short link:http://wp.me/pw0cu-1w3----------------[tableau" Irreversible Coma/When is Prince Friso Allowed to Die?; A tableau I published on July 7th. this year (1)]Prince Friso of the Dutch royal family has been now for 6 months in what is called PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE (PVS). (2)[tableau with diagram of different forms and stages of coma]The transfer to a UK hospital may pose legal problems, as procedures for ‘ending life’ in cases where there is no more chance of recovery is problematic in the UK – as we know of a recent case of a man that sought help for ending his life that had no future – and the formal refusal of a British court to allow ‘euthanasia’ in his case.The Netherlands does have a more liberal law in this sense.There are hardly any examples of people in PVS that regain consciousness, and even less that have any chance to function again as a human. Younger people stand statistically a bit more chance than middle age people like Prince Friso. In most cases ‘economics’ (the extreme high costs of keeping someone in such a permanent vegetative state) form the decisive argument for halting such treatment in a specialised medical ward.In the case of the Royal House of the Netherlands the financial means are not a problem, but this affluence creates an ethical problem.Recently a Dutch governmental medical advice commission did propose to scrap certain extreme expensive medications for a small group of special patients. This to cope with the ‘economic crisis’. This caused an uproar as life prolonging medication, even in cases of prolongation of life of weeks or months, should not be denied. Many spoke out in this way. From specialised medical staff to patient organisations and laymen. (2)Now how does the Dutch Prince who is kept in permanent coma in a British private hospital, fits in this discussion?Royals are human beings like any other, are they not? They do die after all like anybody else. Those who play their role in keeping monarchies alive, need to reflect also on the limits of prolonging life and the morals and ethics needed, there were we all have to face the sometimes paradoxical consequences of the ingenuity of modern medicine. (3)We have now witnessed a state of exemption since the avalanche accident in Austria this winter of half a year. However sad it is, also royals should come to a decision, that may be harder to take because of their wealth.The bereavement process of the family must have been frustrated and one wonders why the wife of Prince Friso has not had the courage to, or has been kept from, ending this ‘high tech’ medical ordeal.[tableau: Interview and photographs of Prince Friso and his wife Mabel and they way they enjoy London as the place were they work and live in the M magazine of Dutch daily NRC/Handelsblad May 2006. I did fade the Prince into an image of the brain surgery specialised Wellington Hospital where he is kept in coma now.]One hopes that Dutch Queen Beatrix who is used to control family affairs with an iron hand, will come to see that her hand is not the hand of God when she orders to pull the plugs out. It is time – also for a prince – to die.—–(1) 7/7/2012 News -tableaus by Tjebbe van Tijen: “When is Prince Friso Allowed to Die?”(2) ”Unlike brain death, persistent vegetative state (PVS) is not recognized by statute as death in any legal system. In the US and UK, courts have required petitions before termination of life support that demonstrate that any recovery of cognitive functions above a vegetative state is assessed as impossible by authoritative medical opinion.This legal grey area has led to vocal advocates that those in PVS should be allowed to die. Others are equally determined that, if recovery is at all possible, care should continue. The existence of a small number of diagnosed PVS cases that have eventually resulted in improvement makes defining recovery as “impossible” particularly difficult in a legal sense.[4] This legal and ethical issue raises questions about autonomy, quality of life, appropriate use of resources, the wishes of family members, and professional responsibilities.” [Wikipedia on PVS](3) Radio Netherlands Worldwide; 31/7/2012: “An emotional debate is underway in the Netherlands over the value of a human life. On Sunday, a Dutch health insurance body announced that it was recommending that certain expensive drugs no longer be covered.”(4) Radio Netherlands Worldwide 24/8/2012: An influential Dutch ethicist (Heleen Dupuis, former professor in medical ethics at the University of Leiden) has said that if Queen Beatrix’s son, Prince Johan Friso, had been hospitalised in the Netherlands after his ski accident, doctors would have already stopped his treatment.Posted in Dutch politics, Dutch Royal House: 21st Century View, Ethical questions | Tagged British law, Dutch law,euthanasia, irreversible coma, medical ethics, Persistent Vegetative State., Prins Johan Friso van Oranje-Nassau (1968-) Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/Tjebbe van TijenImaginary Museum ProjectsDramatizing Historical Informationhttp://imaginarymuseum.orgweb-blog: The Limping Messengerhttp://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/

The importance of the Anders Breivik verdict reaches beyond NorwayThe guilty verdict, which declares Breivik sane, means the hard rightcannot distance itself from his rhetoric of hateTad Tietzeguardian.co.uk, Friday 24 August 2012There are many reasons to welcome the verdict in the trial of AndersBehring Breivik: that he is sane and legally responsible for the murder of77 people – mostly members of the Norwegian Labour party – on 22 July lastyear.The guilty verdict recognises the monstrosity of Breivik's acts, carriedout in pursuit of his political beliefs. It also delivers the outcomewanted by the majority of Norwegians, in particular because it means hewill spend no fewer than 21 years – and most likely life – in jail.Justice has been done to the fullest extent possible under Norwegian law.To understand the full import of the outcome, however, one needs to lookto the wider realms of politics and society. The trial was dominated bythe question of Breivik's sanity for more than just procedural reasons.Once it was realised a white, middle-class Norwegian man was the culpritand that he'd left a sickening but coherent 1,500-page manifesto for allto read, the race was on for some on the right to depoliticise Breivik'sacts. The problem was that his politics were not just similar to theirown, but often drawn directly from their statements, cut and pasted intohis tract. In many cases the only difference was that he took theirlanguage of a war of civilisations to its logical conclusion in violence.It wasn't just harder rightwingers such as Melanie Phillips, Mark Steynand Pamela Geller who tried to deny the connection, but many more moderatewriters and politicians. This should not be surprising, as Breivik'sopposition to Muslims, multiculturalism and a "cultural Marxist" fifthcolumn was never far from the surface in the mainstream discourse of thewar on terror. Norway, for all its famed tolerance, continues to be anactive part of the Nato occupation of Afghanistan.The main form this depoliticisation took was the medicalisation ofBreivik's actions in terms of psychological or psychiatric pathology.Within days, everyone from forensic psychiatrists to the London mayor,Boris Johnson, felt the need to put Breivik in a diagnostic box.Occasionally, even reportage of his personal history and psychology wentto ludicrous extremes to seek his motives in anything but what he actuallysaid. This reached its pinnacle with the first court-ordered psychiatricreport, which found him to be suffering from "paranoid schizophrenia" onthe basis of clumsy and inappropriate interpretation of ideas andbehaviours common in far-right and online gaming subcultures.Outrage over the findings led the court to take the unusual step ofcommissioning a second report. This one paid more attention to hispolitical milieu, as well as his behaviour in jail, and found him sane –at most exhibiting signs of a personality disorder. Friday's verdictconfirms this conclusion and denies to Islamophobic ideologues the comfortof a clear line of sanity separating their influence from Breivik'sactions.The verdict is doubly important as an intractable economic crisis acrossEurope provides opportunities for the advance of the far right. Virtuallyall of these rightwing parties disowned Breivik's actions while singlingout in their own propaganda the same groups he targeted. At one extreme,Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has seen its electoral support rocketto 7%, even as its thugs carry out violent attacks on migrants in thestreets of Athens. But much wider networks of extreme rightwingerspopulate the internet and organisations of the populist right, exactly thespaces in which Breivik's ideology and commitment to action were formed.Friday's verdict thus not only delivers justice, it also clarifies theconnection between his crimes and how dangerous rightwing ideologies haveinfiltrated an apparently "sane" mainstream discourse. It is a problemthat cannot be expunged simply by labelling it as mad, but must be tackleddirectly as the political threat to freedom and democracy it is.

Hi, Nettimers --It should come as no surprises that over the last few years, a growingnumber of people have sent crowd-funding announcements to this list.It hasn't been a steady rise, and the frequency is hardly significant

I wrote a review of an online performance staged during Transmediale this year. Here is an excerpt and link:"It is important to note that this is part of a larger trend, a move from active performances of identity, to identities assembled through unconscious passive data retrieval systems. In recent years, we’re taking the time to describe ourselves less, and allowing the systems we use to characterize us based on our actions more. Through tracking us, these systems learn about us, and fill in the blanks automatically."The Unconscious Performance of Identity: A Review of Johannes P. Osterhoff’s “Google”http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/aug/22/unconscious-performance-identity-review-johannes-p/Best,//Owen Mundyhttp://owenmundy.comhttp://givememydata.com

re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Willem van Weelden <w.v.weelden-/NLkJaSkS4VmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org> martin hardie <martin.hardie-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Keith Sanborn <mrzero-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Murray Simpson <m.k.simpson-ZIY3QdMYOTyFxr2TtlUqVg< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Subject: Re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch Prince Friso medical ethics and the ordeal of social inequalityFrom: Willem van Weelden <w.v.weelden-/NLkJaSkS4VmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org>Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:14:35 +0200Hi,Deplorable, inappropriate, outrageous and utterly stupid are the =qualifications that come to mind by involutarily reading your (Keith, =MP, Martin, Murray) contributions to the discussion on the issue of the =Prince.If you consider yourselves to be a beacon of high morals in a fascist, =state ruled world that does not seem to care about individual choice =about the prime issue of life and death, with all your corny references =to Agamben (he would spit in contempt on the way you are using his 'bare =life' thesis), ill researched finds on the web (thank you Karin for =correcting that!!), to put it into a similar moral tone : 'you should be =ashamed of yourself'!!! If this is all you can offer than for me the =only conclusion is that you are all bored to death, and should be =granted euthanasia immediately, as you are all suffering severely from =an incurable 'Discursive Theory Disorder' (DTD), as you demonstrate =obscenely any lack of true love of life.=20choke on that!best,willemOn Aug 28, 2012, at 11:22 PM, martin hardie wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 08:18:21 +1000Subject: Re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch PrinceFrom: martin hardie <martin.hardie-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>"These people were *in the actual process* of dying, ..."hence there life was not worth livingOn 29 August 2012 08:14, Willem van Weelden <w.v.weelden-/NLkJaSkS4VmR6Xm/wNWPw< at >public.gmane.org> wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Keith Sanborn <mrzero-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch Prince Friso medical ethics and the ordeal of social inequalityDate: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:35:20 -0400This is the redaction I was referring to:http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/holland-background/This version is substantially different from how you summarize it. Do you th=ink this is misrepresentative of the report?KeithOn Aug 28, 2012, at 4:07 PM, Karin Spaink <karin-P+5UVmBCxVisTnJN9+BGXg< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:umbers are closer to 6,000 involuntary terminations of lifeemmelink. And these people - known as 'the Remmelink thousand" - weren't kil=led. These people were *in the actual process* of dying, and were so far gon=e that they could no longer express any wishes. In about 400 of these cases,= these people had stated explicitly earlier on that they would want euthanas=ia. And that was *before* the euthanasia law passed.=20 <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Murray Simpson <m.k.simpson-ZIY3QdMYOTyFxr2TtlUqVg< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> The Vegetative Prince Will Not Wake Up: Dutch PrinceDate: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:29:35 +0000On 28/08/2012 22:22, "martin hardie" <martin.hardie-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> wrote:But, surely, you are side-stepping the issue of actually determining alife as 'not worth living', as though that were some given fact. Thecentral issue of biopolitics is not the extermination of lives not worthyof life, but the very positing of biology as the fundamental principle ofgovernance.MurrayThe University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Re: sibylla ti theleis digest [4x: van Weelden, hardie, sanborn, simpson] Keith Sanborn <mrzero-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org> Murray Simpson <m.k.simpson-ZIY3QdMYOTyFxr2TtlUqVg< at >public.gmane.org>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Subject: Re: <nettime> sibylla ti theleis digest [4x: van Weelden, hardie, sanborn, simpson]From: Keith Sanborn <mrzero-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org>Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:25:43 -0400Fair and balanced in your "analysis," like Fox News. I think this is anissue worth discussing especially in the US where the far right is tryingto scare people away from even a watered-down health care system by talk of"death panels." If you think the information I found is disinformation youcd add to the discussion by correcting the disinformation but this appearsto be beneath you. Too bad. Here in the USSA, where only recently hasphysician-assisted suicide been introduced, by prescription, it hasapparently not been terribly popular. My reaction to Martin's claim wasskepticism though off-list. The link I found portrayed this situation inHolland in a way I thought uncharacteristic, so if there is a critique ofthe use of this report, it wd be helpful if you gave it. Clearly yourresponse of covering the issue in saliva on behalf of Agambem is verylittle helpful. KeithOn Aug 29, 2012, at 2:03 PM, nettime's_ferryman <nettime-fO7mttO5ZDI< at >public.gmane.org> wrote: <...>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -From: Murray Simpson <m.k.simpson-ZIY3QdMYOTyFxr2TtlUqVg< at >public.gmane.org>Subject: Re: <nettime> sibylla ti theleis digest [4x: van Weelden, hardie,Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:56:54 +0000Much as I'd like to reply, I've very little idea from your rant what youactually think.Let me put my main concern with the discussion in a nutshell. Some peopleseem to think that a 'life unworthy of life' is an obvious, given thing,easily determinable. Personally I think it's a deeply dangerousbiopolitical construct. Am I to take it you disagree with that and thinkthat there are indeed lives that are unworthy?Murray <...>The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hello! See below the info on the Open Knowledge Festival (Sept. 17th – 22nd 2012, Helsinki) an international event to build a free and open movement/society this year. Cheers! MayoOPEN KNOWLEDGE FESTIVAL (September 17th – 22nd, Helsinki) The event of the year to build a free and open movement/society http://okfn.org/New to OKFestival? We are delighted to invite you to this year’s event in Helsinki, Finland – a series of hands-on workshops, talks, hackathons, meetings and sprints organised by a wide range of open knowledge communities around the globe. OKFestival 2012 combines the themes of our annual Open Government Data Camp (OGDCamp) (http://okfestival.org/open-government-data-camp/) and Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) (http://okfestival.org/open-knowledge-conference/) into a week of action and inspiration organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Finnish Institute in London, Aalto Media Factory along with hundreds of Guest Programme Planners. With over 400 tickets already reserved by participants from more than 40 nations, OKFestival is the one of the world’s largest open knowledge events to date – and we want you to join us.FESTIVAL PROGRAMMINGThe 2012 theme of OKFestival is Open Knowledge in Action, looking at the value that can be generated by opening up knowledge, the ecosystems of organisations that can benefit from this, and the impacts that transparency can have in our societies.This year’s schedule (http://okfestival.org/schedule/) is diverse, with over 13 guest-planned Topic Streams:* Open Democracy and Citizen Movements http://okfestival.org/open-democracy-and-citizen-movements/* Transparency and Accountability http://okfestival.org/transparency-and-accountability/* Open Cities http://okfestival.org/opencities/* Open Design, Hardware, Manufacturing and Making http://okfestival.org/open-design/* Open Cultural Heritage http://okfestival.org/open-cultural-heritage/* Open Development http://okfestival.org/open-development/* Open Research and Education http://okfestival.org/open-research-and-education/* Open Geodata http://okfestival.org/open-geodata/* Open Source Software http://okfestival.org/open-source-software/* Data Journalism and Data Visualization http://okfestival.org/data-journalism-and-visualisation/* Gender and Diversity in Openness http://okfestival.org/gender-and-diversity/* Business and Open Data http://okfestival.org/business-and-data/* Open Knowledge and Sustainability http://okfestival.org/open-knowledge-and-sustainability/Program includes:* A series of hackathons and coding jams including a Green Hackathon with CESC, a hackathon wherethe cultural heritage stream teams up with open science, and an introductory coding jam with RailsGirls Finland.* A variety of participatory sessions from hands-on open hardware workshops in Finland’s first FABlab to the world’s first Art of Open Data Cooking workshop to sessions on the School of Data.* A set of in-depth meetings on different topics related to openness, from developer meetups about Open Source software with Finland’s OpenMind conference, to sessions on the Open Government Partnershipand a new EU Citizens’ Initiative, to a live broadcast between innovation hubs in Finland and Africa.* An increasingly-imminent list of Featured Speakers from the Gapminder Foundation‘s Hans Rosling to Member of European Parliament Anneli Jäätteenmäki to the World Bank‘s Carlos Rossel to the Free Software Foundation‘s Karsten Gerloff to Climate Change Capital‘s James Cameron.DATES & ACCOMMODATIONOKFestival 2012 runs from Monday 17th to Saturday 22nd of September. We offer both day and week tickets, with week tickets covering all three of OKFestival’s action-packed Core Conference Days (http://okfestival.org/schedule/) from Tuesday 18th September to Thursday 20th September. A variety of Satellite Events (http://okfestival.org/schedule/) are also running before and after the event, with a summary and debrief day on Friday 21st September. From Couchsurfing with Finnish locals (http://www.couchsurfing.org/activity/view/5IO0U5) to hotels in downtown Helsinki, there are many affordable travel and accommodation options (http://okfestival.org/accommodation/) available to make your stay in Finland a great one.REGISTER TODAYTickets are available online (http://okfestival.org/early-bird-okfest-tickets/) - reserve yours now to join the largest open knowledge crowd of the year in Finland. Tickets are selling fast and our list of confirmed festival attendees (http://okfestival.org/festival-attendees/) continues to grow, with participants from Jyväskylä to Guyana.GET IN TOUCHHave questions for our Topic Stream planners or the Core Organising Team? Want to get involved by proposing a satellite or evening event? Feel free to contact our Guest Programme Planners via email (http://okfestival.org/contact/) and get involvedon Twitter (http://twitter.com/okfestival), on our Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/OpenKnowledgeFestival) and on the public Flickr Pool (http://www.flickr.com/groups/okfest/pool/). We look forward to meeting you in Helsinki this autumn!«·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·»«·´¨*·¸¸« Mayo Fuster Morell ».¸.·*¨`·»«·´`·.(¸.·´(¸.·* *·.¸)`·.¸).·´`·»Research Digital Commons Governance: http://www.onlinecreation.infoFellow Berkman center for Internet and Society. Harvard University.Researcher. Institute of Govern and Public Policies. Autonomous University of Barcelona.Ph.D European University InstituteE-mail: mayo.fuster-tSBZotL4Eu8< at >public.gmane.orgTwitter/Identica: LilarojaSkype: mayonetiPhone United States: 001 - 8576548231Phone Spanish State: 0034-648877748Berkman Center23 Everett Street, 2nd FloorCambridge, MA 02138+1 (617) 495-7547 (Phone)+1 (617) 495-7641 (Fax)Personal Postal Address USA:The Acetarium http://www.acetarium.com/265 Elm Street - 4Somerville, MA, USA02144The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, distribution, forwarding, or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited without the express permission of the sender. If you received this communication in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.

By Christina Bonnington and Spencer AckermanAugust 30, 201http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/drone-app/It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send usersa pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one ofAmerica’s many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere.The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,”according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.It’s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away,says Josh Begley, the program’s New York-based developer. Thecompany’s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Storekeep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application thataggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia“not useful.” Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo.And now, there’s this crude content problem.Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn’t present grisly images of corpsesleft in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when astrike has occurred, going off a publicly available database ofstrikes compiled by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism,which compiles media accounts of the strikes.iOS developers have a strict set of guidelines that must be adheredto in order to gain acceptance into the App Store. Apps are judged ontechnical, content and design criteria. As Apple does not comment onthe app reviews process, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly whyan app got rejected. But Apple’s team of reviewers is small, siftsthrough up to 10,000 apps a week, and necessarily errs on the side ofcaution when it comes to potentially questionable apps.Apple’s original objections to Drones+ regarded the functionalityin Begley’s app, not its content. Now he’s wondering if it’s worthredesigning and submitting it a fourth time.“If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally justan aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley says.A mockup of developer Josh Begley’s drone-strike app for iOS.Begley’s app is unlikely to be the next Angry Birds or Draw Something.It’s deliberately threadbare. When a drone strike occurs, Drones+catalogs it, and presents a map of the area where the strike tookplace, marked by a pushpin. You can click through to media reports ofa given strike that the Bureau of Investigative Reporting compiles,as well as some basic facts about whom the media thinks the striketargeted. As the demo video above shows, that’s about it.It works best, Begley thinks, when users enable push notificationsfor Drones+. “I wanted to play with this idea of push notificationsand push button technology — essentially asking a question about whatwe choose to get notified about in real time,” he says. “I thoughtreaching into the pockets of U.S. smartphone users and annoying theminto drone-consciousness could be an interesting way to surface theconversation a bit more.”But that conversation may not end up occurring. Begley, a student atClay Shirky’s lab at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program,submitted a threadbare version of Drones+ to Apple in July. Abouttwo weeks later, on July 23, Apple told him was just too blah. “Thefeatures and/or content of your app were not useful or entertainingenough,” read an e-mail from Apple Begley shared with Wired, “or yourapp did not appeal to a broad enough audience.”Finally, on Aug. 27, Apple gave him yet another thumbs down. But thistime the company’s reasons were different from the fairly clear-cutfunctionality concerns it previously cited. “We found that your appcontains content that many audiences would find objectionable, whichis not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” thecompany e-mailed him.It was the first time the App Store told him that his content wasthe real problem, even though the content hadn’t changed much fromBegley’s initial July submission. It’s a curious choice: The App Storecarries remote-control apps for a drone quadricopter, although not oneactually being used in a war zone. And of course, the App Store housesinnumerable applications for news publications and aggregators thatdeliver much of the same content provided by Begley’s app.Wired reached out to Apple on the perplexing rejection of the app, butApple was unable to comment.Begley is about at his wits end over the iOS version of Drones+. “I’mkind of back at the drawing board about what exactly I’m supposed todo,” Begley said. The basic idea was to see if he could get App Storedenizens a bit more interested in the U.S.’ secretive, robotic wars,with information on those wars popping up on their phones the sameway an Instagram comment or retweet might. Instead, Begley’s thinkingabout whether he’d have a better shot making the same point in theAndroid Market.

(Hello Nettime. This essay is a footnote within a larger essay proposinga future computing infrastructure based on 3-value logic versus binary,as it is today. The result would be moving from an NAS-based model ofnetworking and cloud computing toward an AI-based 'data furnace' model.The issue centers on the question of language as a barrier & limit tosuch development due to the lack of logical accounting of truth withincommunication, where a corresponding condition of babel is ideal forsustaining computers and search engines of today as its rationale,perhpas equivalent to global networked player pianos which requiresmusic roll scores to continue being made to maintain its operations,even if people no longer play the instrument or are in control of it.The blackbox condition of technology today, reliant upon this language.In essence it is the nature of the Sokal Hoax yet extended into theEnron techniques of unaccountability. The corruption of language andmathematics becomes a technology, perhaps equivalent to hacking andcracking the economy, political system, and societal dynamics via suchtechniques which functionally govern it, yet displace people in theprocess who are no longer constituents within the communications.)