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Armin Medosch | 1 Dec 14:41
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The Brave New World of Work

Hi, 

This text (below) is a first draft, trying to identify key topics for an
inquiry into the new organisation of labour. It starts with a historic
analysis and then explores the notion of Post-Fordism. Specific sections
are devoted to cognitive capitalism, the creative industries,
informational capitalism and the split between manual and mental labour.
It ends with a modest proposal for an alternative path of development. 

The motivation guiding this text is to provide some foundational ideas
for a working group on labour, online and IRL in Vienna. To be honest, i
am unsure if it makes sense to publish such an unfinished piece. the
chance however, to get some feedback, critique and comments outweighs
the anxiety about putting something out at such an early stage.

Introduction

The human species cannot exist without work. Even if automation is
driven to absurd limits, there will always be a rest of socially
necessary labour. Labour is essentially the work of self-creation of the
human species. And insofar this is true, there is no fixed or permanent
understanding of labour and the social relationships which it is part of
and which it creates. Therefore a reassessment of labour in the 21st
century is urgently necessary. 

We are interested in an inquiry inte the new organisation of labour not
because we are obsessed with work. We also do not privilege in our
analysis the wage-labour relationship. The question of labour of course
implies forms of non-labour or what Marx called 'reproduction'; it
implies idleness, affective labour, the labour of love, learning,
(Continue reading)

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Brian Holmes | 2 Dec 02:53
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The Decade to Come: Ten Years After Seattle

[This short text was written for the show, Signs of Revolt, organized in 
London by Tony Credland and others, as a chance to reflect on the ten 
years that have passed since the Seattle WTO meeting and the global 
counter-movement that arose against it. See http://signsofrevolt.net. 
The same text with a few pictures and links can be found on my blog:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/the-decade-to-come
Best activist ciaos for the next two weeks and the next ten years, BH]

***

The Decade to Come:
Ten Years After Seattle

It was the heyday of globalization, the high point of the Internet boom 
and the last gasp of the New Economy: the WTO ministerial in Seattle was 
meant to celebrate the advent of a corporate millennium extending "free 
trade" to the furthest corners of the earth. Nobody on that fall morning 
of Tuesday, 30 November 1999, could have predicted that by nightfall the 
summit would be disrupted, downtown Seattle would be paralyzed by 
demonstrations and a full-scale police riot would have broken out, 
revealing to everyone what democracy really looks like and plunging the 
city into five days of chaos. Nobody, that is, except the thousands of 
protesters who prepared for months to put their bodies on the line and 
shut down the World Trade Organization - as well as their hundreds of 
thousands of other bodies across the world who learned the potentials of 
the networked society by participating in the far-flung renewal of 
leftist, anarchist, social justice and ecology movements that began in 
the wake of the Zapatista uprising five years before. The 30th of 
November was their day, our day, a tumultuous day in the streets, 
inaugurating a movement of movements whose resistance had become as
(Continue reading)

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Patrice Riemens | 2 Dec 07:01
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On the Swiss referendum and law proposal against minarets

On the Swiss referendum and law proposal against minarets

Just like that of any other sovereign (*), the room for decision-making by
that particular Swiss one, namely the People itself, is not unlimited. It
is constrained by historical legacy, (f)actual context, and constitutional
precedent. The substantial majority of both the People and the cantons
(57,5% and 19 out of 23 respectively) that carried the last popular
'votation'
(referendum) purporting to ban the erection of minarets will not remain
without aftermath, but it will in all likelihood remain without any legal
effect. With it, the Swiss people have expressed both a wish and a
malaise. A malaise cannot be remedied without attacking its causes, and a
desire cannot be realized without addressing and acting upon all its
consequences. As it now stands, the purported law cannot be embedded as a
simple amendment to the Swiss constitution, since it contradicts a fair
number of its fundamental clauses. To make it into actual law would entail
a wholesale rewrite of the federal constitution in a very illiberal sense,
as it would selectively restrict or even abolish liberties and rights that
are considered both essential and mandatory. This in its turn would
contravene a large number of international conventions and treaties to
which Switzerland is signatory. These would need to be rescinded,
effectively turning Switzerland into an outlaw and pariah state. It is not
very likely that such is the profound desire of the Swiss people, but if
so, the same People will need to be invited for a fresh, much more
far-reaching referendum, whose outcome, we may hope, would be very
different from last Sunday's.

Presently the Federal Council (government) has stated that "the wish of
the People will be respected". But the Federal Court of Justice will quash
the proposal, as it has done before with popular legislation that was
(Continue reading)

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Geert Lovink | 3 Dec 16:38
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David Gugerli on Data Management as a Signifying Practice

(Dear nettimers, the videos of most of the presentations at the INC  
conference Society of the Query are now available online at
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/query/videos/ 
. Konrad Becker, who was there to launch the Deep Search book,  
announced a next search event in Vienna, in May 2010, if you wish the  
fourth in a series of events in Europe on this topic. Here at INC  
we've discussed to turn the blog of the Amsterdam event into a more  
permanent location where interested can find, share information on the  
politics, aesthetics and culture of 'search'. If you're interested to  
join this collaborative blog, please write to Marijn at  
networkcultures.org. Below you'll find the text of David Gugerli on  
the theory and history of databases. Enjoy! Geert)

Data Management as a Signifying Practice
David Gugerli, ETH Zurich
November 13, 2009, Amsterdam

Edited by: Baruch Gottlieb

Databases are operationally essential to the search society. Since the  
1960’s, they have been developed, installed, and maintained by  
software engineers in view of a particular future user, and they have  
been applied and adapted by different user communities for the  
production of their own futures. Database systems, which, since their  
inception, offer powerful means for shaping and managing society, have  
since developed into the primary resource for search-centered  
signifying practice. The paper will present insights into the genesis  
of a society which depends on the possibility to search, find, (re-)  
arrange and (re-)interpret of vast amounts of data.
(Continue reading)

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Patrice Riemens | 3 Dec 07:07
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Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO

bwo Asiasource3 participants list

Facebook paves its way to IPO

I didn't know facebook some two years ago. Now it is going to offer its
shares in the stock exchange. In layman term, it means that facebook now
has some value that the owner may offer to sell portion of previously a
no value company with users paying nothing.

"A Facebook IPO may attract the same level of attention as Google Inc.?s
share sale in 2004. Google sold 19.6 million shares for $1.67 billion in
August 2004, giving the company a market value of $23 billion."

The more and more users will only create facebook more power and the
richer it will be, not by gaining income from users but from people who
want to invest by buying shares from the stock exchange. In this case,
the New York stock exchange.

"Facebook, which has more than 300 million users, has raised more than
$600 million from investors since it was founded more than five years
ago. Its most recent infusion came this spring from Russian Internet
investor Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million in
exchange for a 2 percent stake in the company, valuing Facebook at $10
billion. "

In short, actually we the facebook users are working for the company or
its owner by getting more friends acquainted and accounted as new
recruited facebook users.

The same goes with google wave, the more users it has, the more powerful
(Continue reading)

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olia lialina | 4 Dec 10:40

Digital Folklore, To Computer Users with Love and Respect

Dear nettimers,

Below is the introduction to the freshly published Digital Folklore
reader, edited by Dragan Espenshied and myself. The publication contains
essays and projects on online amateur culture, DIY electronics,
dirtstyle, typo-nihilism, memes, teapots, and penis enlargement -- a
praise of "low" computer culture.

http://digital-folklore.org/

forever yours
olia

Do you believe in Users?

    We are all naive users at some time or other; its nothing to be
    ashamed of. Though some computer people seem to think it is.

    Ted Nelson, Dream Machines, 1974)

In an ideal world, we would love to skip this introduction – or at least
the most difficult part of it, where we, as authors have to define the
term used in the book's title.

Isn't it enough to put a unicorn on the cover, throw a bit of Comic Sans
over it and announce a chapter on LOLCATS in the table of contents? You
would know what we mean.

But sharing our fascination with amateur digital culture is only half of
the business at hand. The Grand Plan, to which this book is only a tiny
(Continue reading)

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Brian Holmes | 4 Dec 13:07
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Search and be searched (another data signifying practice)

Following Geert's post on the Search conference (sounds great by the 
way) I think it could be interesting for people to read this:

"Slight Paranoia: Security and privacy analysis." by Christopher Soghoian
http://paranoia.dubfire.net

I found this text rather enlightening, in a gruesome sort of way. In the 
text that Geert posted, David Gugerli writes: "As a consequence of the 
implementation of relational databases and other enterprise application 
software which reside upon such databases, the entire corporate world of 
the late 20th century has become subject to the manager’s disposal and 
command." It would seem that the corporate world extends to your most 
intimate conversations, and the manager clearly has to include the cops. 
Gugerli's paper is brilliant, and the coincidence to which he points, 
between the invention of the relational database and the literary 
theories of combinatory systems is extremely interesting (though more 
understandable when you know how steeped in cybernetics the French 
literary theorists really were). The only thing I don't quite get is why 
he objects to Deleuze's word "control," which suggests the continuous 
probing and testing of information, along with direct intervention to 
reroute the course of events and the destinies of individuals. As seen 
in the paper linked above. The direct tie-in to the search event could 
be this quote:

"The reason we keep [search engine data] for any length of time is one, 
we actually need it to make our algorithms better, but more importantly, 
there is a legitimate case of the government, or particularly the police 
function or so forth, wanting, with a Federal subpoena and so forth 
being able to get access to that information."
-- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, All Things Considered,
(Continue reading)

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Michael H Goldhaber | 4 Dec 10:04
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Re: Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO

In other words, because the Facebook service is free for users, we are  
working for the company. But if users paid for the service, as say  
with telephone service,  we would not be working for the company? This  
is illogical. We are no more working for Facebook than for any other  
service we use.

One may criticize capitalism, but still try not to be nonsensical.

Best,
Michael

On Dec 2, 2009, at 10:07 PM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> b.
>
> "Facebook, which has more than 300 million users, has raised more than
> $600 million from investors since it was founded more than five years
> ago. Its most recent infusion came this spring from Russian Internet
> investor Digital Sky Technologies, which invested $200 million in
> exchange for a 2 percent stake in the company, valuing Facebook at $10
> billion. "
 <...>
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marc garrett | 4 Dec 17:28
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Re: Handoko Suwono: Facebook paves its way to IPO


Hi Michael,

It seems to me that it is not capitalism at issue here, more those who 
introduce frameworks in the guise of something else - a wolf in sheep's 
clothing. You do not necessarily have to be capitalist to exploit 
others, but it helps :-)

marc

> In other words, because the Facebook service is free for users, we are  
> working for the company. But if users paid for the service, as say  
> with telephone service,  we would not be working for the company? This  
> is illogical. We are no more working for Facebook than for any other  
> service we use.
>
> One may criticize capitalism, but still try not to be nonsensical.
>
> Best,
> Michael
 <...>
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marika | 3 Dec 01:05

INTERNET / ANONYMITY


***english below***

-

INTERNET / ANONYMAT
ateliers / débats / performance

-> http://rybn.free.fr/generale

Après-midi d'ateliers pratiques, discussions et performances,
samedi 5 décembre de 14h au soir à la Générale, 14 avenue Parmentier,
M° Voltaire
Entrée libre

-

ATELIERS de 14h à 18h
GnuPG, GNUnet, Weave, TOR, Darknets,

Apprendre à maîtriser son environnement de connexion et de navigation sur
internet : conserver son anonymat, se connecter n'importe où, sécuriser son
site, crypter ses mail, écouter le réseau, ces choses que tout le monde va
devoir s'approprier ou se réapproprier avec les nouvelles législations sur les
usages d'internet.

Une telle boite à outils permet notamment d'affiner notre rapport au réseau. Il
s'agit aussi d'ouvrir cette session à des réflexions et discussions autour des
enjeux des lois récentes ou en projet et les conséquences sur nos libertés.
(Continue reading)

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Gmane