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Joss Winn | 19 May 2013 01:46
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Moishe Postone

Does anyone on this mailing list follow the work of Moishe Postone? I am
trying to think about how his reading of Marx's Capital can ground a
critique of 'hacktivism' and other hacker/geek related social movements.
In particular, his book:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GwDxsHOxd84C

and his article on anti-semitism:

http://josswinn.org/2013/05/writing-craft-and-method-postones-notes-on-the-german-reaction-to-holocaust/

There is much to admire about his approach, but in particular, the way
it leads to a critique of social movements that fetishise the concrete
over the abstract.

A number of writers have referenced Postone's work, but I have yet to
find anyone writing about technology and society really sustain any
engagement with this work. It is not easy to extend the logic of his
argument to everyday life, but it seems to me like such effort could be
very fruitful.

cheers
Joss
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wolfie christl | 17 May 2013 17:14
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Facebook as a Facebook Game


Dear nettime,

we´re a group of developers, open source evangelists, activists,
theorists and artists - mainly based in Vienna, Austria. Please consider
the following game as a contribution to an "immanent net critique".
We´ve been working hard on that for the last 2 years.
http://datadealer.com

"Privacy? Screw that. Turn the tables! Become a data dealer and get all
the dirty details on your friends, neighbors and the rest of the world.
Learn how to trick your users and make cash with their personal data!"

"Data Dealer" is a critical online/impact game about digital culture and
collecting, processing and selling personal data.
[to play it Facebook is not required]

In the digital age virtually everything we do is recorded, monitored or
tracked in some way. Nearly every device we use today is connected to
the Internet. Due to the rapid evolution of ICT the collecting,
processing and exploitation of personal data has become part of all
areas of life. Emerging businesses in the fields of social media, mobile
applications and online marketing specialized in making commercial use
of personal data.

In "Data Dealer" players run all kinds of companies and online ventures
- from dating sites, mobile apps to search engines and their own social
web. On the way to becoming the world's most powerful data tycoon, they
obtain data from a variety of sources – whether legal or illegal - and
ruthlessly sell it to insurance companies or human resources
(Continue reading)

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allan siegel | 17 May 2013 08:17

the disappearing middle class and snake oil salesmen

hi there,
well, to tell the truth, after reading just the infamous (so it seems) Jaron Lanier interview it is not his
shabby analysis that is shocking, i.e. "Of course jobs become obsolete. But the only reason that new jobs
were created was because there was a social contract in which a more pleasant, less boring job was still
considered a job that you could be paid for. That’s the only reason it worked. If we decided that driving
was such an easy thing [compared to] dealing with horses that no one should be paid for it, then there
wouldn’t be all of those people being paid to be Teamsters or to drive cabs. It was a decision that it was OK
to have jobs that weren’t terrible." Duh! What ahistorical rubbish; seems that these kinds of
prognostications a great for those swimming in the kiddie pool (the shallow level of political discourse
in the MSM) where Marx is still a dirty word (something like polio before Jonas Salk). Hard to figure out
what the future might look like when one's image of the past is so limited.

allan
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Edward Shanken | 16 May 2013 09:01
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Re: What if a work of net.art sold for $34 million?


My aim is to place in tension two different sets of values: those of
the commercial art world (CAW) and those of telematic art (TA). To
this end, my question proposes a scenario in which a work of art that
does not satisfy CAW's basic conventions (e.g. as Florian notes, ease
of exchange, signature, etc.) rises to the top of the heap in terms of
market value. One might argue, following Stallabrass (nod to Matthias
Kampmann<https://www.facebook.com/matthias.kampmann.75>'s Fb comment),
that any artworld in which an artwork - be it an abstract painting
or a telematic network - attains values in the tens of millions of
dollars reifies neoliberal ideology and its inherent commodity (and
luxury) fetishism. In the first Fb response, Caroline Seck Langill
shrewdly suggested that "the money would be distributed like the
artwork."

And why not? There are economies in which the creation and
hording/multiplying of wealth for its own sake is not valued as highly
as sharing, gifting, and ritual expending. Yves Klein understood
that over 50 years ago in his brilliant challenge to CAW "Immaterial
Pictorial Sensitivity Zones." This work could only be acquired through
an exchange of gold (cast in the sea by the artist), for which s/he
attained a certificate of authenticity, which was valid only when
burned.

Returning to ease of exchange, signature, etc., the basic conventions
of CAW are not neutral qualities or formal characteristics. Rather,
they embody deeply held ideological commitments, just as the basic
conventions of Ascott's TA embody deeply held ideological commitments.
So what are the implications if these worlds collide and CAW ends
up valuing most highly (and putting its money where its mouth is)
(Continue reading)

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nettime's avid reader | 15 May 2013 09:21

Black hat, white hat, green hat hackers


http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/

Last week I [Moxie Marlinspike] was contacted by an agent of Mobily, one 
of two telecoms operating in Saudi Arabia, about a surveillance project 
that they’re working on in that country. Having published two reasonably 
popular MITM tools, it’s not uncommon for me to get emails requesting 
that I help people with their interception projects. I typically don’t 
respond, but this one (an email titled “Solution for monitoring 
encrypted data on telecom”) caught my eye.

I was interested to know more about what they were up to, so I wrote 
back and asked. After a week of correspondence, I learned that they are 
organizing a program to intercept mobile application data, with specific 
interest in monitoring:

     Mobile Twitter
     Viber
     Line
     WhatsApp

I was told that the project is being managed by Yasser D. Alruhaily, 
Executive Manager of the Network & Information Security Department at 
Mobily. The project’s requirements come from “the regulator” (which I 
assume means the government of Saudi Arabia). The requirements are the 
ability to both monitor and block mobile data communication, and 
apparently they already have blocking setup. Here’s a sample snippet 
from one email:

     From: Yasser Alruhaily <…….. .. . <at> mobily.com.sa>
(Continue reading)

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allan siegel | 15 May 2013 08:56

the middle class doesn't exist


"Twenty years ago, class was not in the vocabulary of Swedish pundits and mavens. Class was something that
belonged to the past. Today, however, it is back with a vengeance. Recently the Swedish Occupy movement
"Allt åt alla" (Everything for Everyone) organized a bus "safari" through exclusive Stockholm suburbs
to take a look at the millionaires' villas there and "fuel class hatred". Every leading newspaper has
already had its own "class debate". Class is simply everywhere in Swedish society. 

"Anyone who wants to understand both the age in which we live and the future will have to talk about class,"
write editors Malena Rydell and Mikael Feldbaum in Arena. But not just any class. The cover of the new issue
spells it out: "The middle class doesn't exist." The slogan is from poet and pundit Göran Greider's "54
theses for a new class awareness", a manifesto for a new Left packed with sound bites such as: "Treat the
very word class as a teenager: it grows; it's unruly; it doesn't obey; it stuns you." Or: "Today's working
class is mainly female." 

The thesis of the death of the middle class is simple and not peculiar to Sweden: every time you try to define
the allegedly most important contemporary social formation, this "middle class" breaks into two,
writes Greider; one part that serves the economic power and another that has more in common with blue
collar workers and unemployed, with the sans papiers and the precariat."

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2013-05-08-eurozinerev-en.html
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Dan S. Wang | 14 May 2013 20:48
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Re: Digital Politics <--> Digital Economics


Mark, Flick:

On the question of whether and how is ³democracy² relevant to an
understanding of Chinese politics, I lean towards Mark¹s views.

To add to them, Flick¹s characterization of the CCP as a ³supreme² ruler, I
must say, is far from the reality (and as for its ³legitimacy,² at the level
of the citizenry most Chinese people got over that a couple of generations
ago‹they haven¹t even been able to buy it back). The CCP bans Facebook,
fights with Google, dictates to Yahoo, and stages their elections precisely
because their actual control over the society is so tenuous and slippery.
When the power of the Chinese authorities shows itself in terms of
suppression of the citizenry, it is invariably blunt-force, clumsy, and
indiscriminate. One might say the brutality is a culture of their
government, but understand that the domestic sphere is in non-stop crisis
mode. It¹s called the Art of Governing 1.3 (more likely 1.5, based on food
consumption stats) billion: stomp it out, whatever it is.

I have access to Facebook in China; anybody with a VPN does, ie lots and
lots of people. It¹s a leaky society. Wu Hung told me that he and his
schoolmates listened to Beatles records during the 1966-69 period of the
Cultural Revolution, while ³foreign² and ³old² stuff all around them was
being smashed and burned, because China is so big and unruly that they can¹t
keep everything out. Shortly after, he and his mates were sent down to the
country...again, leakage and then blunt force.

It¹s not about understanding and tolerating their different values, but
rather acknowledging that China has its own historical trajectory (that we
all are now tied to), and that for them and their problems parliamentary
(Continue reading)

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Patrice Riemens | 14 May 2013 23:26
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Re: Jaron lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class


Mark - and others,

Whatever the name of the (class) beast, or the nature of the (digital)
technology, my only interest is to have the vast majority of the people
have a decent, interesting, enjoyable, and healthy life - from birth to
death. The present dispensation does not provide for that. Period
Technology will not provide for it by itself. Period. And the economy,
pace ideologists to the contrary, is not a natural or meteorological
phenomenon. Period. So back to politics, fissa!

Cheers from the craddle of machiavelism,
p+5D!
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Eugenio Tisselli | 14 May 2013 18:13
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The eyes of the milpa

Dear nettime,

Here is a tiny step towards gathering the collective of humans and non-humans...

"The eyes of the milpa"
Families from Santa Mar?a Tlahuitoltepec, Oaxaca (Mexico) use mobile phones to create an online
community memory about everything that grows in their fields.?

http://ojosdelamilpa.net

Los ojos de la milpa (The eyes of the milpa*) is a community memory that captures, through images and voice
recordings, a moment of transition in these complex times. It all takes place somewhere in the mountains
of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico, in a community where the elders tell stories to the youth about how
maize was planted many years ago: without fertilizers or sophisticated technology. The young ones
listen as they witness how maize can no longer grow without chemical fertilizers, nor survive without
synthetic pesticides. This is a place where the precious pace of the passing seasons coexists with a
growing pressure to produce more, to extract from the earth not only nourishment, but also more and more profit.?

But there are newcomers in the milpa: in the community of Santa Mar?a Tlahuitoltepec Mixe, Oaxaca, peach
trees have recently made their appearance. This is thanks to the MIAF system (Milpa Intercropped with
Fruit Trees), an agroforestry management proposal developed by researchers from the Postgraduate
College of Agronomy at Chapingo, Mexico. In addition to traditional crops such as maize, beans and
squash, the MIAF system introduces fruit trees in the milpa to satisfy a number of needs. By forming a live
barrier, they help to protect the soil from erosion caused by runoffs, a major problem in Tlahuitoltepec,
where arable land is mostly found on hillsides. The trees contribute to carbon sequestration, an
important strategy in the context of climate change. Finally, they also strengthen the
  livelihoods of farmers and their families who eat or sell the fruits, in this case peaches. However, new
knowledge, skills and technologies come together with these
 benefits, involving a tough learning process, an increase in the amount of required labor, and the danger
of a greater dependency on external inputs.?
(Continue reading)

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Edward Shanken | 14 May 2013 08:24
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What if a work of net.art sold for $34 million?

What would the world be like if Roy Ascott's "La Plissure du Texte" (1983)
sold at auction for $34.2 million instead of Gerhard RIchter's ?Abstraktes
Bild?? In what sort of world (and artworld) would that be possible?

I asked this question a couple days ago on Facebook and it has generated
some interesting responses, which I'd like to share in order to get more
feedback on this little mind experiment from Nettime readers.  Here are a
few responses, anonymized but in order, so far:

1. And that money would be distributed, like the artwork.

2. It would be a world in which people would be much more aware of the
importance of play, just imagine 'playtime' at work, crawling around,
turning over your desk, pretending it is a spaceship in which your
colleagues begin a journey! A moment to delve into the inner narratives of
the symbolic. It would be a world in which creativity was valued more than
it is feared.

3. Good call. I really like this "what the world would be if" starting from
an art auction, you are suggesting a way out the decadence in the art world
and the impotence of art production. Thanks for this uplifting imagination
exercise.

4. Well, the Richter they can carry home. What would they be carrying home
with 'La Plissure ..."?

5.  I'm not sure it would mean a darn thing. Art sales in the tens of
millions are so far out on the thin tail of the bell curve that they say
very little about the mean. I do wish folks would stop picking on Richter
though. He's a great artist, and it's not his fault the wealthy have
(Continue reading)

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Jim Ying | 14 May 2013 08:25
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Regarding Asia/Cn/Hk domain name & Internet Keyword

Dear Manager,

(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward this to
your CEO,Thanks)

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal
with the domain name registration in China and Asia. We received an
application from Tianhong Ltd on May 10, 2013. They want to register "
amsterdamtime " as their internet keyword and China/Asia/Hongkong
(CN/ASIA/HK) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name
conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so
we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or
business partner in China or not?

Best Regards, 
Jim
General Manager  
Shanghai Office (Head Office) 
3002, Nanhai Building, No. 854 Nandan Road, 
Xuhui District, Shanghai 200070, China 
Tel: +86 216191 8696 
Mobile: +86 1870199 4951 
Fax: +86 216191 8697 
Web: www.ygregistry.cn
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Gmane