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Benjamin Geer | 1 Oct 13:27
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Re: ICT&S Researchers: Towards Critical Internet Theory

On 29/09/2007, Thijs <thijsv77@...> wrote:
> […] In contrast to most post-modern nation states, Islamic
> fundamentalism offers the kind of warm hearth for which many shaken
> Western souls might yearn

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that words like
"fundamentalism" and "terrorism" offer the kind of warm hearth for
which many shaken Western souls might yearn: the ability to lump
together a wide range of social phenomena that they don't understand
under a few convenient labels taken from American and European
history, such as American Protestant fundamentalism and the French
revolutionary Terror of the 1790s.

Here are some possible alternatives (which I'm sure could be
improved):

Al Qaeda: Salafi nationalist guerilla network
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood: Sunni reformist party
Hamas: Sunni Palestinian nationalist party and militia
Hizballah: Shia Lebanese nationalist party and militia

Two things leap out of this sort of classification: the need to know
something about Islam in order to know what the Arabic words mean,
and the need to take nationalism seriously as a force that motivates
opposition movements.

Ben
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Patrice Riemens | 1 Oct 11:13
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(Free) WiFi blues ... Fon and Meraki (fwdfyi)


Following a previous posting on the (near) demise of MuniWifi in the
USA, there is now an interesting discussion going on on the wsfii list
about various WiFi facilitating schemes, esp FON and Meraki. Gregers
Petersen gives (immo) a good round-up:

> it's totally different , FON is selling people bandwidth ,

Fon is not selling people bandwidth - Fon is not an ISP. Fon is
selling/giving away routers so that people can attach 'hotspots' to
their existing broadband connection (typically offered by an ISP
without any ties to Fon, and hereby also compromising the contract
with the ISP then it is probably not allowed for a private individual
to share her/his internet-connection with a generalized public). At
the same time - this gives Fon an excellent way of keeping a tap on
peoples internet use, then Fon has in the default situation complete
control over the system running on the router (which phones-home very
often). Furthermore, you as a user/owner of such a Fonera, can then
choose to offer the access for free or change money for it ....

> Meraki is selling a service for managing your Free (or not) mesh
> hotspots.

Yes - Meraki is selling a router (and giving away the software to
manage it). The Meraki solution is slightly more open (with ssh access
and an official serial connector). But, I still believe the end result
is quite similar to what Fon is doing (though I have to admit that
Meraki has changed it's position quite dramatically across this year -
going from being a small open 'startup', to a much more closed company
attempting to create a 'blackbox' solution). Both parties, Fon and
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pavlos hatzopoulos | 1 Oct 08:51
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Beyond colonialism: Israeli/Palestinian space

*Eyal Weizman interviewed by Konstantin Kastrissianakis (on his new
book, Hollow Land)*

http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=194

** *Konstantin Kastrissianakis: *In your recently published
book, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation
<http://www.versobooks.com/books/tuvwxyz/w-titles/weizman_e_hollow_lan
d.shtml>you provide a multilayered understanding of what the spatial
dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are. Architecture and
planning are revealed as strategic tools in the conflict, could you
elaborate as to how this is so?

*Eyal Weizman:* The book is looking at the various means of spatial
dispossession and control that Israel has built in the West Bank and
Gaza. It attempts to read them not only as an index of government
top-down planning, but, instead, to see the ways in which they are
reflecting conflicts and contradictions and how they mirror the play
of various independent or semi independent organizations, whose
actions are 'architectural' in as much as they have solidified into
form. What this book tries to go against, in a historiographic manner,
is the idea that there is a one to one relationship between state
ideology and facts on the ground. Until now, most of the research
on Israel-Palestine has looked at built realities as the output of
the intentions of a chief political or military designer. That the
relation of space and power is that organized centralised power
determines spatial organization. In fact, the relation between space
and politics is never like that; it is in fact responding to many and
diffused forces and influence, space is the product of conflicting
interests. Even if we are speaking from within the hegemonic Israeli
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Alexander Galloway | 1 Oct 16:31
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Notes on "Gaming"

Notes on "Gaming" (Oct 1, '07)

http://rccs.usfca.edu/bookinfo.asp?AuthorID=120&BookID=364

Has not Timothy Welsh paid the dearest tribute of all? Can one
really be writing on the as yet unknown? Is there even the faintest
approximation of "topics with no examples" in this text? If this is a
form of thought, is it not that special form of thought sought by all
and realized by none? One dreams of this. It is the "future future"
tense, a grammatical construction prohibited by the English language,
but nevertheless desired by so many. If one catches even a glimpse of
Welsh's "avant avant-garde" as it recedes ahead, always ahead--like
Socrates' winged soul in the Phaedrus which rises, rises only to peak,
in its most holy incarnations, over the precipice into the light
itself--then one's work is over in fact. In fact, over. The only act
left to perform is the final act itself: to expire, give up, draw with
and withdraw.

But there is always more to write. And in the "future future" there
shall will be more to write too. Hence what follows is a series
of omissions, extensions, and reformulations encountered in the
intervening gap between the time when the book was written (Spring
2005) and the present day (Fall 2007).

First let me address the so-called segregation effect. The segregation
effect has to do with vast movements within electronic media to
cleanse certain modes of signification from other modes. An example
from World of Warcraft (WoW) will illustrate this most easily. In
this game, a monument to the rise of ludic media in today's world,
one sees quite vividly the quest for a "world" without signification.
(Continue reading)

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Michael Weisman | 1 Oct 22:28
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Re: (Free) WiFi blues ... Fon and Meraki (fwdfyi)

Just for clarification, there is no demise, near or otherwise, of
wi-fi programs in the US. These stories are part of a careful program
of disinformation and proganda implemented by the PR firms employed
by the bitlords and their neferious minions. Although a couple of
programs are being adjusted because, surprise, it is not cost free to
build a city-wide wi-fi program and there needs to be someone to pay
for it, there is no serious threat to free wi-fi or public wi-fi in
the US. On the contrary, these schemes are more popular than ever, and
especially in underserved areas that would otherwise miss the digital
virtual boat (like New Orleans). see muniwireless.com for real news,
not fake news.

Mike Weisman   

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrice Riemens [mailto:patrice@...]
> Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 09:13 AM
> To: nettime-l@...
> Subject: <nettime> (Free) WiFi blues ... Fon and Meraki (fwdfyi)
> 
> 
> 
> Following a previous posting on the (near) demise of MuniWifi in the
> USA, there is now an interesting discussion going on on the wsfii list
> about various WiFi facilitating schemes, esp FON and Meraki. Gregers
> Petersen gives (immo) a good round-up:
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Eduardo Navas | 1 Oct 18:57

[NMF] Blue Monday Review

TEXT: Sumrell and Varnelis¹s Blue Monday. Book Review by Molly Hankwitz,
co-editor

http://newmediafix.net/daily/?p=1607

Blue Monday: Stories of Absurd Realities and Natural Philosophies
AUDC - Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis
Barcelona: Actar, 2007
175 pages
http://www.audc.org/blue-monday

AUDC¹s book, Blue Monday is a provocative preliminary probe into the fall
out culture of Empire from the perspective of architecture and urbanism.
Today, American cities are suspended in a peculiar moment of variability and
hybridization, and the book looks precisely at this aspect, yet from a
distinctly informed ³outside² perspective. How is architecture impacted by
networked technologies and what is, where is, where are we with respect to
³modernity?²

Geographer Ronald F. Abler, writing for Bell Telephone Magazine in a 1970
essay entitled ³What Makes Cities Important², argues that ³the production,
exchange and distribution of information is critical to [how cities¹]
function [...] cities are communications systems.² (1, Abler in Varelis,
2006) and this very notion, the notion of ³cities as communications systems²
seems to be the overriding thesis of the book. Bracketed thus, Blue Monday
offers us not one city, but urban space as a set of glimpses of urban
economies.

Several vantage points are thus undertaken from which to review and observe
the spectacle of the present. Varelis lays claim to a critical terrain from
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florian schneider | 2 Oct 13:32

Re: search engines on the move

hi!

i am just back from the conference at jan van eyck academy in
maastricht, the "forum on quaero" which - if i remember correctly -
initiated this thread on search engines.
[see also: http://www.kein.org/node/164 ]

it was a really intense and productive weekend highlighting the question
of the politics of the search engine from various different perspectives
such as privacy related issues, but also on conceptual,  theoretical,
political levels, in terms of design and architecture as well as
possible alternatives to the corporate technologies.

on sunday afternoon erik borra and joris van hoboken presented the
opensearch project http://www.open-search.net which proposes to build a
distributed, peer-to-peer, search-engine which i would like to add to
predrags list..

i am sure that the organizers of the event, the amsterdam based  design
research group metahaven http://metahaven.net are going  to make the
recordings and the outcome of the debates available  as soon as
possible and i am looking forward very much to any  chance to
follow-up this debate.

more soon!

florian

On Sep 27, 2007, at 4:02 PM, Predrag Ivanovic wrote:
(Continue reading)

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Brian Holmes | 2 Oct 11:20
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Re: [NMF] Blue Monday Review

It's funny that this book is published by Actar. Because it sounds a lot 
like an American variation on a book also published by Actar, in the 
year 2000, called Mutations, about mobility and change in postmodern 
Europe. The characteristic contribution to that book was by Stefano 
Boeri and the group Multiplicity, under the title USE: Uncertain States 
of Europe. If they had happened across a bunch of retirees in mobile 
homes, they too would have called them the Multitude.

Boeri & Co. certainly explore a networked condition, and to trace their 
ideas back to the postwar cybernetics produced, among others, by Bell 
Labs, would be legitimate and interesting. And they too, like the 
authors of this book, hail at least distantly from the "negative 
utopias" of Archizoom Associati and Superstudio, the Italian 
architectural theory groups of the 60s who tried to explore the new 
nihilistic voids of the consumer society, a little like man's first 
steps on the moon. But Multiplicity was also concerned with 
appropriation and cultural difference in a continental condition of 
shaky borders, and with the conflicts those miscegenations create on the 
ground.

It so happens I translated the Mutations book, and while doing so I was 
irritated by the pervasive and rather facile borrowing of concepts from 
the Autonomia thinkers (Negri, Virno, Lazzarato etc) who not only were 
not referenced (who cares, by the way?) but whose political engagement 
didn't survive the transition to the chic and glossy theory of urbanism. 
On the other side, I found Multiplicity's work absorbing, beautifully 
presented in the exhibition, and stimulating to this day in my 
understanding of and desire for cities and the overall urban condition. 
So now I'm wondering whether this is a productive vein of research, or 
just another formula in search of admirers?
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Nicholas Ruiz III | 2 Oct 17:17

October 2007 on -empyre- : "DNA Poetics"


DNA Poetics

Two words well placed, no? After Judith Roof's "The Poetics of DNA".
That DNA (hereafter Code) is perhaps, but a metaphor for a substance
(and/or protocol?) is what concerns us here, this month of October, on
-empyre-.

The Code is meaningful, we can agree. But of what meaning is it full?
Meaningful of biology? Meaningful of poetry? Should we speak of the
people's (public) Code? A corporatized (private) Code? Who is charged
with its derivation? With the responsibility of Code's proof?

Is there no Code, and only 'codes'? 

Pleas join us and perhaps we shall know better.

http://www.subtle.net/empyre 

==============================================================

Moderated by Nicholas Ruiz III (US) Editor, Kritikos

with special guests

Judith Roof (US) is professor of English and Film
Studies at Michigan State University. Her books
include All about Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third
Wheels, and The Poetics of DNA.
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Kazys Varnelis | 2 Oct 19:12

Re: [NMF] Blue Monday Review

Hi everyone,

I've been a lurker for a time, largely due to information overload,
but I suppose I should chime in now if I ever should. Many thanks for
posting the review, Eduardo.

Yes, its published by ACTAR, and Mutations certainly is one of their
biggest publications. But we hoped to do something quite unlike
that project. When we started, we weren't really aware of Boeri &
Co. but rather were stimulated by our disgust with the predominant
interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari in the architectural circles we
moved in, which seemed to be (roughly) "make money, go with the flow,
be evil!" a vapid interpretation and simplification of Koolhaas's
most base moments. Our interests (and if I have a critique of the
review, it's that it really should say Sumrell and Varnelis, not
Varnelis…since the text was by all means a collaboration) were to turn
back to Archizoom (not so much Superstudio) as a way of disconnecting
with an architectural present that we felt obsolete and just plain
wrong.

I should leave it up to others to decide if we suceeded, if this is
a productive vein of research or just another formula in search of
admirers (though how precisely our work could be copied productively,
is baffling to me).

But a few words... of clarification ... While a subtitle calls        
Quartzsite the capital of the multitude, we also immediately deny it  
in the next paragraph. Obviously, as you point out, if urbanists who  
draw references from Empire see Quartzsite, they will see it as the   
capital of the multitude. But, there can be no physical spaces that
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Gmane