Data should be free
Rob van Kranenburg
PDF [516 KB]
It is very simple people, data should be free. From privacy to
privacies, originality to originalities and some odd stuff. [1]
if i am gone and with no trace i will be in my minor place – Bonnie
Prince Billy
And as for the law well, “We have our very own Mademoiselle
de Keroualle to treat that question,” says I.
Or
Let’s hear it for some peace and quiet.
Or
What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa?
I don’t know. Let’s find out.
On April 3, 1:04 pm Wolfgang Woehl <tito@rumford.de> wrote [2]:
In response to Marc
MarC marc_contrib@ramonvinyes.es who wrote:
| |
> > I raise this issue because I’m starting
a musical project and I would like to never release any work
that could end like http://www.lokitorrent.com/ when the people
shares it, I would like to use other musicians works (and I
can’t afford to pay them for such work now) and I would
finally like to win fairly some money making good music (without
this
money I will never be able to buy decent instruments)
> > is it an utopia? |
Says Wolfgang:
| |
> Marc, I’m flabbergasted. This is 2005.
There’s no way you could prevent people from copying or sharing
things in the digital domain. DRM is a joke. The industry
that promotes it is a joke. The business model is gone, don’t
you know that?
> How can anyone *own*
music? How did Bach do it? How did Capitol Records do it?
The only way to make that claim to some extent real were
technical limitations
-- and those are gone for good.
> Coming up with something like G-C-E7 is a complex process, sure ;) Hell,
make it Bbmaj9-Gm7-F/C-C-D/C. But do you really intend to say this is yours?
That you invented this, put it into the world, out of the blue? Isolated from
everything you’ve ever heard or experienced in your life? Originality
someone? What is that?
Share your stuff and you will
get back more than you ever dreamed of. To make money it
is, in my experience, fairly
promising to put your family’s
estate
to sensible use or, in the lack of an estate, work. The clownesque, inspired,
spiritual,
grotesque, old-fashioned, great field of making music will probably get
you all *but* money.
• I’m a bit ashamed
to see that all this sounds quite patronizing. Excuse me,
Marc. This a patronizing day and it transfers.
> Wolfgang |
Let’s put our estate to work!
First of all we must conclude that Keynes was right:
| |
“At the outset of the Great Depression
in 1930 Keynes wrote an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities
for Our Grandchildren” in which he declared that the
economic problem, in the sense of meeting subsistence needs
of everyone in the rich societies, might be solved in a hundred
years. The issue would then become one of how to deal with
leisure as the work week declined to three hours a day, a
total of fifteen hours a week. At that point, he claimed,
a new moral code might develop to bring society “out
of the tunnel of economic necessity into the daylight.” Until
then, however, the world would have to stick to an alienated
moral code in which “fair is foul and foul is fair,” that
is, one based on the greed and exploitation associated with
the accumulation of capital.” [3]
|
Thanks Maynard! Only 25 years to go. Let’s speed it up!
Dirk Bruere knows what is wrong with Britain and the US of
A:
| |
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:40:08 +0000
From: Dirk Bruere <dirk@neopax.com>
Organization: Neopax
Sounds like Britain’s
view of hitech when I was at research labs in the late
70s.
The ‘suits’ could never take seriously anything us ‘geeks’
were talking about because we wore T shirts and didn’t mix
with the ‘right people’ at the right
clubs. I wrote a proposal in 1977 for an ‘electronic book’ for the GEC Hirst
Research Centre. Only found out years later that Alan Kay beat me to it.
Anyway, even then the place was called by New Scientist ‘The
graveyard of good ideas’.
Pinned that cutout on the notice board, but it disappeared sharpish. The
rest is the hitech history of the UK.
30yrs on, it seems the US is following in our footsteps.
The place where things are going to happen is China.
--
Dirk
http://www.theconsensus.org |
China:
| |
“When interviewed by the Zhongguo
Qingnian Bao (China Youth Daily), one of
China’s leading newspapers, Wu
Jianmin, former Chinese ambassador to France and currently president of the China
Foreign Affairs University, said that China’s diplomacy is transforming from
‘responsive
diplomacy’ (fanying shi wwaijiao) to ‘proactive diplomacy’ (zhudong
shi waijiao).” [4]
|
And Jamie? [5]
Jamie says – pockets full of pirate gygabites – that
it ain’t going to last long for IP to come tumbling down.
He speaks of lunches with top record company guys who confess to
him –smiling- they know this can’t go on for
ever, but until it crumbles good they will snatch every eurocent.
| |
In a hit-and-run accident, the airbag goes
off. The driver does not escape, because the airbag had a
GPS beacon that was triggered. [6]
“In Bolivia, a rural radio station uses the Internet
to answer questions from listeners - like the farmer who
wanted help dealing with a worm that was
devouring his crops. Working online, the station found a Swedish expert who
identified the worm, and broadcast the information on pest
control to the entire community.” [7] |
 [8]
Brian says:
This is not a pirate.
 [9]
And we agree. This is not a pirate.
I think we all can agree on this:
The decisive difference in techné between the young, vibrant,
alive nations such as China and India and the old, shivering, dying
nations of Europe is easily shown in two images.
In the new 754i BMW sedan the iDrive, also known as the miracle
knob “is designed, through a computerized console, to replace
more than 200 that control everything from the position of seats
to aspects of the navigation of the car itself to climate, communications
and entertainment systems.” In May 2002 15,000 7-series
were recalled. “BMW tried to do too many things at once
with this car, and they underestimated the software problem,” says
Conley, ex-CEO of EPRO Corp.“ Only two-thirds of hardware
has been unleashed by software. There are so many predecessors
and dependencies within software that it’s like spaghetti-ware.
It’s not that easy to get all these little components to
plug and play.” [10]
 [11]
That is what you get when you hide all axiomatic code, protocol
and procedural knowledge. If your car won’t start you have
to go to the nearest BMW Centre. If your neighbour’s car
will not start it is not advised to help him or her anymore as
the electric current for your power cables could damage the engine.
Imagine! Helping your neighbour is bad for your car.
Now take a look at this car in Delhi.
 [12]
We see the car, the engine and the tools to fix the engine, put
it in the car and….drive it. We see code, protocol and procedure.
Anyone with a mind to it can get to work on it. It is designed
to be visible.
Europe’s Future and Emergent Technology Programs as well
as the major corporate labs as the new EU vision of Digital Territory
have fallen unequivocally for pervasive computing (ubicomp, ambient
intelligence, things that think, i3, Disappearing Computer Initiative [13]) which for the first time in the history of technology sets
forth its own disappearance as technology as fundamental to its
success [14].
The result will be dumb interfaces that hide all keys to the
technology that drives it and consequently it will keep citizens
from being
able not only to fix it when it is broken but to build on it,
to play with it, to remake, remodel, reuse it for their own ends [15]. I believe this being able to negotiate stuff, stuff that
is axiomatic thinking embodied, is called: creativity.
| |
“Wireless,
computers and other innovations are quietly eliminating
huge barriers to development in poor
parts of the world.
All these benefits are coming
via motorcycle - Internet-enabled motorcycles. A wireless
network links computers in the village
to computer chips on each of
five motorcycles a fleet. Each vehicle has a transmitter that allows it to
upload and download e-mail and data via Wi-Fi, as it passes
by village computers. At
the end of the day the bikes return to a hub where they upload the information
received. The next morning they download e-mail and data from the hub and take
it out to the villages for transmission. Villages like Robib have been described
as “leapfroggers” communities or even whole countries in the developing
world, that are using information and communication technologies to leapfrog
directly from being an agricultural to an information economy. It’s a phenomenon
that combines technology high and low in innovative ways, and is generating
not only economic benefits but a new world of educational, social and political
opportunities.” [16] |
| |
The best-known
example is Bangladesh’s GrameenPhone,
which has established a network of pay-per-use cellphones
throughout the country. A similar network in South Africa
has created a network of over 1,800 entrepreneurs, operating “phone
shops” in over 4,400
Information gathered by cellphone lets farmers in Senegal
double the price they get for their crops, and herders in
Angola track their cattle via GPS. [17] |
Hey!
It is very simple people, data should be free.
We disambiguate the situation. Jamie says:
| |
“Serious problems are revealed in this
form of networked co-operation for traditional modes of organising
knowledge. While those who have most to lose spend a good
deal of time working out ways in which the value of an information
good can be preserved, it is becoming harder and harder to
separate one particular piece of information from the ‘common
good’, either conceptually or practically. Using laws and
technological impediments to preserve scarcity is therefore,
at best, a losing battle. Knowledge divorced from physical
media is non rivalrous by nature. Nothing short of legislating
away the internet itself, or reversing the switch to digital
media will re-establish the strong IPRs these measures seek
to enforce.” [18]
|
If we go to jail for IP, where are the jails to hold us?
There is no more stick.
Shuddha says:
Dear all, [19]
(apologies for cross posting to members of the Reader List
and Commons Law)
I have been spending some quality time recently enhancing
my tastes in music, augmenting my fledgeling itunes music
collection,
and
getting myself an education in the wilder shores of hip
hop, apart from collecting a few rare Glenn Gould recordings,
thanks to the
generosity of digital technology, a community of p2p
users and the internet. Now, as some of you must be aware,
this
is the kind
of activity that grandmothers and teenagers have faced
fines,
and prison sentences for. Naturally, this causes me some
anxiety, as
I cannot afford a fine, and have no intention of doing
time. The fate of millions of people like me, will be
decided in
the days
to come in the United States (and hence will set precedents
elsewhere) in the MGM vs. Grokster case that is now being
heard in the United
States supreme court. I append below, a report on the
ongoing legal battel, which appeared in the New York
Daily news
and is written
by Errol Louis.
What I found particularly striking in this report was
the image that it gives us of a US Supreme Court bench,
with
an average
age of 70 between them, arch conservatives as well as
committed liberals,
seeming to come together (which happens very rarely)
singing praises of the iPod, even as the lawyers representing
the
music and movie
companies that claim to speak for and to young audiences,
argued against technological innovation.
Enjoy, and now I must return to my musical self education
project
Shuddha
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music moguls on wrong side of copyright fight
Errol Louis
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/295250p-252770c.html
The Supreme Court bars reporters from bringing technology
into the main chamber where arguments get heard.
No cell phones,
laptops, tape recorders or cameras of any kind;
pen and pad are the only
tools allowed. A similar low-tech spirit governs
the court’s nonpublic work areas, including its nearly
computer-free law library. The
building only got Internet access two years ago.
But during a landmark technology case argued
before the court this week, MGM vs. Grokster,
the nine
justices, average age
70, almost
sounded like teenage gadget freaks, firmly wedded
to the high-tech wonders of the day. Justices
Anthony Kennedy,
David Souter
and Stephen Breyer all sang the praises of the
iPod.
To make the irony complete, lawyers representing
the youth-centered movie and music industries
came off
like tech-averse stiffs,
begging for legal weapons to battle a tidal wave
of digital innovation
that’s turning the business of culture upside
down.
Grokster, Morpheus and a handful of other companies
distribute peer-to-peer software that allows
computer users to swap
digital files of documents, images, music and
movies. Music files -
perfect digital copies taken from original CDs
- get downloaded 2.6 billion
times a month, and half a million movies are
downloaded every day.
The moguls who run America’s movie studios and
music labels failed to understand the digital
revolution would transform
their industries
- and were equally blind to market resentment
over constantly rising prices charged for mediocre
music
and movie fare.
Studios with the nerve to charge $10 a head for “Booty Call” or “Gigli” were
practically begging for audience retaliation. By downloading
movies for free, the public is telling Hollywood what such
piffle is really
worth.
Music labels that once invested time and care
to cultivate songwriters and musicians have been
swallowed
by profit-obsessed
conglomerates
that now rely on one-hit wonders by overhyped,
underdeveloped performers to meet quarterly Wall
Street targets.
Rather than waste money
on uninspired CDs, many listeners pick the hits
they like via Grokster and ignore the rest.
In the past, the entertainment industry bitterly
complained about - but ultimately survived -
the player piano,
the phonograph and
the VCR, although many users of these gadgets
routinely violate copyrights. The justices, who
have lived
through many of
these transformations, hammered the entertainment
business from the
bench.
Arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia complained
that making Grokster liable for free downloading
might cause
digital entrepreneurs
to be sued the day after going into business.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal who normally
disagrees
with Scalia,
wondered
how anyone could prove Grokster caused its users
to make illegal downloads.
The suits in the entertainment business should
brace for bad news when the decision comes down.
They may
actually have to
use the
one weapon needed to compete with Grokster: creativity.
Originally published on April 1, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Perhaps
we start negotiating our corporeal copyrights
while we are at it?
A group of prominent scientists announce the
creation of two open-source peer-reviewed online
journals
on biology and medicine.
They intend
to bring the best papers in the public domain.
Says Dr. Harold E. Varmus, chairman of the
new nonprofit
publisher, “Our
ability to build on the old to discover the
new is all based on the way
we disseminate our results.” [20]
How about a break?
A break with the old?
How about disseminating your results in 3D?
| |
‘To test whether people with dyslexia are
less able to link sounds to what they see, the researchers
asked 36 dyslexics and 29 people without the disorder to
sit in a darkened room and look at a series of closely-placed
lights, and indicate which light came first.’ ... ‘Indeed,
people discriminated better between the lights when they
also heard sounds. However, non-dyslexics only improved when
the sound appeared within 150 milliseconds of a light, while
dyslexics improved even after an interval of 350 milliseconds
between light and sound.‘These findings suggest that dyslexics
have an “abnormally large window of time in which they
combine visual and auditory information,” Wallace said.’
... ‘“We think (dyslexia) is even more fundamental than
language, and more global than vision,” Wallace said.’ [21]
|
How about breaking with the old?
How about breaking with the old ways of
protesting?
Boring!
| |
“If we get too wound up about what might
happen, especially at the march, then trouble will become
a self-fulfilling prophesy. If people keep reading they are
going to be dragged off by riot police, then they will be
less likely to take the family for a walk around Edinburgh
Castle to protest at how selfish we in the richest countries
are. Declining numbers will offer the stage to troublemakers.
Similarly, if the only alternative response reported from Perthshire is angsty
youths in gasmasks getting chased around the woods by FBI agents, then the chance
to push novel ideas, however kooky and prescient they turn out to be, will be
lost.
We should stop being obsessed by the potential for violence, because it will
only bring it on. Instead, we should prove we are capable of doing for politics
what we do for the arts with the Edinburgh Festival. Find a way to get the voices
of those outside heard, and then Scotland could redefine G8 summits for ever.” ruaridhnicoll@hotmail.com [22]
|
How very sensible!
Why not do it?
In SMART MOBS, Howard Rheingold documents
the role of text coordinating mass demonstrations
against
President Joseph
Estrada in January
2001. [23]
Everything is possible now. I wonder
why people can not see that.
Datamining is a very old practice. Before
people had computers to compute databases
with, they
read their
tea. Or better
the leaves left in the cup after they
had drunk their tea. Hmm!
“I first became interested in tea leaf reading when I was
about 19. My mother knew a woman who wished
me to perform a spell to help her. She was not a witch and did not practice magic,
but
she asked that I aid her with something supernatural.
Like
most honest witches, I did not expect or ask for any payment in return.
She was so thrilled with my work, however, that she presented
me with a gift: an antique teacup made especially for tea leaf readings.
The cup shape is plain, but the outside
and
inside of the cup is covered in small symbols and pictures carefully hand-painted
in
black. There were no instructions for
reading the symbols or how to use the teacup, so I looked around in books and
on
the internet
to see what I could find about reading
the leaves.” [24]
See what you can learn on the internet?
Best go learn reading tealeaves. You might
get some sense of your past.
How far does this combat zone stretch
really?
| |
“The Pentagon said it plans to equip
four quick-response public affairs teams with two-way videophones
in order to provide near-real-time visuals from combat zones.
The videophones, made by Scotty TeleTransport Corp. and using
Inmarsat satellite service, can send and receive video over
two simultaneous channels at speeds about twice as fast as
devices used by TV correspondents in Afghanistan. The videophones
would allow the public affairs officers to almost instantly
counter hostile propaganda, and set up videoconferences with
military commanders in the field. “We’re finally
getting a realization in the world that information is power,” spokesman
Lamp said Monday of the videophones. [25]
|
Now we are getting somewhere. There
seems to be a logical move from visualization
to bureaucracy:
| |
“The idea that ‘visualization’ is ‘the
first duty’ of any future ethics would strike many
senior managers in both public and private sector organizations
as odd, given that assessing the likely impact of a range
of potential courses of action in an environment of some
uncertainty is a crucial aspect of the work they perform.” (Paul
du Gay, 2000: 54).
|
Paul du Gay [26] explores the religious
and romantic genealogy of bureau critique
in the work
of Alasdair MacIntyre,
Zygmunt Bauman, and
Tom Peters, a geneaology that is focussed
on the fragmented role of the manager
and the
moral monoculture
of the
instrumentality supposedly fostered
by
bureaucracy. He questions the productivity
of claiming ‘the inner conviction
of the person of conscience’ as
an absolute principle to which all
personae are to be held accountable,
as “in highly differentiated
modern societies, plural spheres of
life have given rise to quite different
ethical personae that
are ‘non-reducible’. (59)
If this critique of the everyday experience
of a perceived rational instrumentalism
is coupled
with
a structural
social-cultural emphasis
on the value of change as something
that is valuable in itself, almost
even for
itself - then any
sphere of thought
and action
that is characterized by stability,
is in conceptual
and very real trouble:
| |
“‘Change’, in today’s
management terminology, is often represented as an unalloyed
good. Indeed, it has become a matter of serious criticism
to accuse an institution or individual of being incapable
of adjusting to ‘change’ or failing to grasp
its multifarious ‘opportunities’. Transformation
is the order of the day and those that cannot or wll not
accede to and thrive on its demands are history (Clarke and
Newman, 1997; du Gay, 1996).”
|
In this clash between entrepreneurial
management and administration, du Gay
makes a strong
plea for a powerful
public bureaucracy
as occupying the middle ground between
entrepreneurial politics and
the private sector.
These issues are at the heart of our
contemporary public domain. In Science
and Technology
in a Vulnerable World (2002), Lewis
M. Branscomb, claims
| |
“We must understand that the source
of our vulnerability to terrorism is not the terrorists themselves.
Our vulnerability is generated by our economic, social, and
political systems. Our vulnerability comes about through
something I call economic ecology. This idea holds that competition
in the market economy maximizes efficiency and stability
at the cost of resiliency. If you have a highly competitive
market economy, everyone is driven to greater efficiency.
But the public also wants stability. Stability, with
only small perturbations, is built into the system. But this
does
not work unless you have a peaceful, obedient society that
does not threaten to exploit these vulnerabilities. This
society cannot avoid threats to leverage that very hyper-efficiency.
One of our biggest problems is that the critical elements
of our infrastructure are deeply linked. When one part is
attacked, we see a domino effect on the other parts. The
three most obvious infrastructure elements are energy, communications,
and transportation. If you bring down any one of these three,
the other two are affected. For example, if you bring the
energy sector down, you cannot communicate and you cannot
travel. There is a lot you cannot do. Terrorists understand
that, and we must deal with this reality.”
|
Theorists must try to understand it too. A reevaluation of
bureaucracy and the bureaucrat as a cultural figure,
might be a productive beginning. As du Gay claims:
| |
“Perhaps it is time, once again, to
appreciate the ethos of bureaucratic office – albeit
in a suitably contextualized manner – as a positive
extension of the repertoire of human possibilities rather
than merely as a dehumanizing or disempowering subtraction.”
|
We do need to appreciate the ethos
of bureaucracy.
We do.
As:
“Economic development depends mainly on the emergence of
dedicated, talented, and honest national and regional
political leaders.” [27]
And this requires bureaucracy:
| |
“Sustained
economic growth requires, everywhere, the accumulation
of physical and human capital,
as well as the acquisition of technological capabilities.
This process does not occur in a historical vacuum, devoid
of the influence of powerful social and political factors.
Structure, institutions, and policies are critical determinants,
as is the availability of qualified technical and administrative
personnel.
Indeed, the availability of
a highly qualified bureaucracy in both South Korea and
Taiwan ˜ and before that in
their model country, Japan ˜ was a
necessary precondition for achieving rapid economic growth. By contrast, the
shortage in SSA (sub-Saharan Africa), of scientific, technical, and administrative
skills, such as those of engineers, natural scientists, managers, and technicians,
is a key reason why the East Asian “miracle” could not be reproduced
there.” [28] |
(and that is what’s wrong with
sub-Saharian Africa)
Building bureaucracy requires trust:
| |
‘In a report in this week’s issue of the journal
Science, Dr. P. Read Montague Jr. and colleagues at the BCM
Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, Calif., describe where and when trust
is formed between two anonymous people interacting via functional
magnetic resonance imaging in machines more than 1,500 miles
apart. They found that as the interaction continued, the
trust response occurred earlier and earlier in the subjects’
interchanges - until a decision about trust occurred even
before the latest interaction was completed.’ [...] ‘The
study was made possible by hyperscanning or hyperscan-fMRI,
a breakthrough that allowed Montague and his colleagues to
synchronize the scanning of two interacting brains.’ [29]
|
Trust requires love:
| |
‘In a springtime sort of story, researchers
say they’ve used advanced scanning methods to pinpoint the
region of the brain where feelings of trust arise.’ .. ‘Turns
out those emotions are nestled in the same area as the most
powerful springtime feeling of all -- love.’ [...] ‘“Love
is a primitive, basic, emotional affective state,” he
said. “So is trust. Trust is something that a child
has for its mother or a lover has for a lover.”’ [30]
|
Yes.
That is how simple it is.
Love brings trust. Love negotiates
trust.
Trust builds relationships.
Relationships are embodied
in people: middle
men. Love builds
trust, trust
builds bureaucracy.
Love
builds trust, trust builds
boredom.
Three cheers for boredom.
Let’s hear it for some peace and quiet.
Sleeping in the midday sun [31]
Tone it down, now
Tone it down
Tone it
down
now
Sleeping in the midday sun
and ah don’t you worry, you
can walk about in my dream
walk about in my
dream now
I will walk us
home
Notes
1) Input from the EU-India Workshop/IP
Conference, Sarai, Delhi January 2005, Ways of Working II, Ways
of Working
2, Appropriation and
Collaboration in Contemporay Arts Practice March 2005, London,
DC Tales, Santorini, june 2003. [back]
2) On the Reader List; Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 07:25:07 +0200
From: <ish@sarai.net>
To: A list for linux audio users <linux-audio-user@music.columbia.edu>
Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Commercial VS NonCommercial Creative
Commons
[WAS: Re: [linux-audio-user] more odd music]
List-Id: “A list on Media and the City,
Information Politics and Contemporary Culture” <reader-list.sarai.net> [back]
3) From: “ZESTEconomics Desk” <vipbat@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:03:16 -0000
Subject: [ZESTEconomics] The End of Rational Capitalism
The End of Rational Capitalism
By John Bellamy Foster
Guerilla News Network | March 17, 2005
http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/1464/The_End_of_Rational_Capitalism [back]
4) “Energy First.
China and the Middle East”,
by Jin Liangxiang,
Middle East Quarterly,
http://www.meforum.org/article/694 [back]
5)
http://www.jamie.com/ [back]
6) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 09:32:39 –0700 From: Steve Cisler <cisler@pobox.com>
To: nettime NETTIME-L@bbs.thing.net Subject: <nettime> Fear
drives tech market [back]
7) Alexandra Samuel, “How radio, cellphones,
wireless Webare empowering developing nations”. [back]
8) Brian Larkin and Jamie King searching for a
connection at Delhi Airport. [back]
9) Picture by Brian Larkin. [back]
10) From: Dewayne Hendricks dewayne@warpspeed.com January 16,
2003 “Consumer
Products: When Software Bugs Bite” By Debbie Gage http://www.baselinemag.com/print_article/0,3668,a=35839,00.asp [back]
11) http://www.roadfly.org/bmw/gallery/picture.php?path=25876,1;25871,1;-43,1;
Thumbnail
Browse Photos & Albums: “I-Drive in crazy mode” This
is what happenes when BMW puts an Idrive into a 745 li [back]
12) Photographs taken by author. [back]
13) The disappearing computer, - launched by Future and Emerging
Technologies, the European Commission’s IST Programme - is
a vision of the future: “in
which our everyday world of objects and places become ‘infused’
and ‘augmented’ with
information processing. In this vision, computing, information
processing, and computers disappear into the background, and
take on the role more
similar to
that of electricity (it. mine) today - an invisible, pervasive
medium distributed on our real world.” [back]
14) ‘Ephemeralisation’ was Buckminster Fuller’s term for
describing the way that a technology becomes subsumed in the society
that
uses it. The
pencil, the
gramophone, the telephone, the cd player, technology that was
around when we grew up, is not technology to us, it is simply another
layer of connectivity.
Ephemeralisation is the process where technologies are being
turned into functional
literacies; on the level of their grammar, however, there is
very little coordination in their disappearing acts. These technologies
disappear as
technology because
we cannot see them as something we have to master, to learn,
to study. They seem to be a given. Their interface is so intuitive,
so tailored to
specific tasks,
that they seem natural. In this we resemble the primitive man
of Ortega y Gasset:
“...the type of man dominant to-day is a primitive
one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.
The world is a civilised one, its
inhabitant
is not: he does not see the civilisation of the world around
him, but he uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man
wants his motor-car, and enjoys
it, but he believes that it is the spontaneous fruit of an
Edenic tree. In the
depths of his soul he is unaware of the artificial, almost
incredible, character of civilisation, and does not extend his
enthusiasm for the instruments
to the
principles which make them possible.” [14]
This unawareness of the artificial, almost incredible, character
of Techné – the
Aristotelian term for technique, skill – is only then broken when
it fails us:
“Central London was brought to a standstill in the
rush hour on July 25 2002 when 800 sets of traffic lights failed
at
the same time -- in effect locking
signals
on red.” [14]
Every new set of techniques brings forth its own literacy:
The Aristotelian protests against introducing pencil writing,
may
seem rather incredible
now, at the time
it meant nothing less than a radical change in the structures
of power distribution. Overnight, a system of thought and
set of grammar;
an
oral literacy dependant
on a functionality of internal information visualization
techniques and recall, was made redundant because the techniques
could
be externalised. Throughout
Western civilization the history of memory externalisation
runs parallel with the experienced
disappearance of its artificial, man made, character. An
accidental disappearance,
however much intrinsic to our experience, that up till now
has not been deliberate:
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear.
They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they
are indistinguishable from it.” [14]
[back]
15) How
hard it is to write about a world becoming strange, or new,
or spooky, after the dotcom crash, after the high hopes of increasing
productivity
through IT,
of readers and writers becoming wreaders, of liberty finally
around the corner: a product to be played out in all kinds of gender,
racial and cultural
roles,
a process to drive decision-making transparency in both offline
and online processes. Only to have woken up to the actual realization
of a highly
synergized performance
of search engines and backend database driven visual interfaces.
Postmodern theory, open source coding and multimedia channeling
promised the production
of a new,
hybrid space, only to deliver the content convergence of
media channels.
And yet, I claim that we are in the progress of witnessing
the realization of such a new space. In places where computational
processes disappear
into the
background - into everyday objects - both my reality and
me as
subject become contested in concrete daily situations and
activities. Buildings,
cars, consumer
products, and people become information spaces by transmitting
all kinds of data through RFID that are rapidly replacing
the barcode.
We are entering a land where the environment has become the
interface, where we must learn anew how to make sense.
[back]
16) From: Shalini Kala <skala@idrc.org.in>
Subject: [bytesforall_readers] ICT tools empowering developing
nations. Dear all:An interesting article in one of Canada’s
leading newspapers
on the role
ICT tools are playing in redefining growth paths of the
developing world in ways never thought of before. Shalini
PUBLICATION Toronto Star
DATE 2005.01.17
SECTION Business
SOURCE Special to the Star
BYLINE Alexandra SamuelHow radio, cellphones, wireless
Webare empowering developing nations. [back]
17) Alexandra Samuel “How radio, cellphones, wireless Webare
empowering developing nations”. [back]
18) The Dissolving Fortress, work in progress.
[back]
19) “Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:05:36 +0530
From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha@sarai.net>
Organization: Sarai
To: reader-list@sarai.net, commons-law@sarai.net
Subject: [Reader-list] Judges and iPods : MGM vs. Grokster
Reply-To: shuddha@sarai.net
List-Id: “A list on Media and the City,
Information Politics and Contemporary Culture” <reader-list.sarai.net>
List-Subscribe: <https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list>,
<mailto:reader-list-request@sarai.net?subject=subscribe> [back]
20) Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 17:52:10 –0600 From: Ian Pitchford
ian.pitchford@scientist.com To: evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [evol-psych] New premise in science: Get
the word out quickly, online. [back]
21) Dyslexics Unable to Coordinate Sight and Sound
// brain processing?
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=3791251§ion=news [back]
22)
“A summit for good Scotland has a chance to put
itself on the political map with G8”, Ruaridh
Nicoll, Sunday
February 27, 2005,
The Observer. [back]
23)
List-Archive: http://www.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l/ Date:
Sat, 18 Jan 2003 11:16:47 -0800 [back]
24) http://www.witch-crafted.com/tea.htm [back]
25) From: Marcel <Marcelrf@Bellsouth.net>
Mailing-List: list WFHSG@yahoogroups.com; contact
WFHSG-owner@yahoogroups.com
Delivered-To: mailing list WFHSG@yahoogroups.com
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:WFHSG-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 16:13:45 -0500 [back]
26) Title: In praise of bureaucracy,
Paul du Gay, Sage publications, LTD, 2000.
A book about bureaucracy and ethics throughout
which a plural Weber runs, more specifically – as du Gay writes in his Introduction – about
the ethos of bureaucratic office, is most
necessary for two reasons: a critical insight
into the nature of the current crisis of
the businessman
as a figure of authority (is it axiomatic
of capitalism or a particular historical
configuration?)
and
a critical insight into the nature of bureaucracy
as a fundamental key to issues of sustainability:
how can change itself be managed? How can
context be managed? [back]
27) Date: 2 Apr 2005 10:38:41 -0000
From: ZESTGlobal@yahoogroups.com
To: ZESTGlobal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ZESTGlobal] Digest Number 110
“What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa?”
From: “Aman Malik” <aman.malik@gmail.com>
Energy First ; China and the Middle East
From: “Aman Malik” <aman.malik@gmail.com>
“What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa?”
By Simon Teitel Daily Times | April 1, 2005
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page==story_19-3-2005_pg3_4 [back]
28) Date: 2 Apr 2005 10:38:41 -0000
From: ZESTGlobal@yahoogroups.com
To: ZESTGlobal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ZESTGlobal] Digest Number 110
“What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa?”
From: “Aman Malik” <aman.malik@gmail.com>
Energy First ; China and the Middle East
From: “Aman Malik” <aman.malik@gmail.com>
“What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa?”
By Simon Teitel Daily Times | April 1, 2005
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page==story_19-3-2005_pg3_4 [back]
29) Delivered-To: electronetwork-l-outgoing@openflows.org
Delivered-To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 09:36:20 -0600
Subject: ~e; EM observations #10
From: brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>
To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
Sender: em.list@electronetwork.org
Reply-To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
The trust game: Measuring social interaction
// em measure of mind
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=22096 [back]
30) Delivered-To: electronetwork-l-outgoing@openflows.org
Delivered-To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 09:36:20 -0600
Subject: ~e; EM observations #10
From: brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>
To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
Sender: em.list@electronetwork.org
Reply-To: electronetwork-l@openflows.org
The trust game: Measuring social interaction
// em measure of mind
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=22096
[and] Science Discovers Where Trust
Begins // em emotive-thought
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/03/31/
hscout524855.html [back]
31) John Cale singing on Buffalmo Ballet but I’m
listening to the Walkabouts. Walk about baby! [back]
|
