One of the four main themes of the N5M3 is the 'Post-Governmental
Organisation', a title that is meant more polemically than
descriptively. The 'PGO' label raises the question of the practical,
political and ethical impli cations of strong, potentially global,
independent organisations. The theme will be approached from different
critical, analytical and ironic perspectives in a public debate, and
the PGO Design-Show ("Get Organised!").
gruesse von ELEKTRO
From: Pit Schultz
Status: RO
Techno: Psycho-Social Tumult
In a statement issued to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the so-called "John Doe" behind the biggest information leak in history cites the need for better whistleblower protection and has hinted at even more revelations to come.
Titled "The Revolution Will Be Digitized" the 1800-word statement gives justification for the leak, saying that "income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time" and says that government authorities need to do more to address it.
Conceptual Overview
The products we purchase are the inventory of our lives. To chain
stores, this inventory is cataloged through the Universal Product
Locator symbol (UPC). The UPC symbol is known as a barcode. Barcodes
are now found everywhere in our world, extending outside of product
inventory into our comic books, our science fiction, our films, and
even our tattoos. These codes represent the fears of literally becoming
numbers or becoming digital that are in many of us. These are not fears
we wish to dismiss. The RE-CODE.COM project brings together the
tactical media actions of the Carbon Defense League and the video and
performance hijacks of Conglomco in a way that takes online action
outside of the box for real world instigation. Looking at the heavy
reliance on digital systems in chain stores utilizing the UPC barcode
system, we see a problem or a virus in the system. The virus is the
human. We are the nightmare of the digital to some extent. We are the
squeaky wheel.
What we've learnt from the Net and how we can extrapolate it to all spaces of struggle.
(Some thoughts geared towards action, compiled for the Radical Community Manager courses that we organise at X.net)
It's time to create the pop stars of activism,
the idoru of communication guerrilla,
it's time to threaten and charm the
masses by the ghosts coming from the
net, to play the myth against the myth,
to be more nihilist than infoteinment!
- etoy -
Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison, Anarchist Hacker Jeremy Hammond Uses Allocution to Give Consequential Statement Highlighting Global Criminal Exploits by FBI Handlers.
ReadI am interested in a certain sense of wanting to be "in" something: to participate in it, to connect with it, to synchronize with it, to be caught up with it, rather than to visually possess it. The desire to be attuned to something that is happening, or that might happen at any moment -- not necessarily as a conscious thought, but as a vaguely felt expectation. The desire to move toward something that is (or might be) happening, in order to absorb its force, touch it, taste it, surrender to it -- rather than simply to observe it.
Read[Originally published in: The New York Times Book Review, 28 October 1984, pp. 1, 40-41.]
"We have to be very attentive and united at a state level to fight
against what is a threat to democratic authority and sovereignty,"
-
French government spokesman Francois Baroin speaking out against
wikileaks releasing US diplomatic cables.
"Governments of the
Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from
Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of
the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereignty where we gather."
- A Declaration of the Independence of
Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow
Tactical media are the field being worked by artists adopting a positive attitude towards contemporary digital technology, in a critical, innovative spirit. Media artists reveal a preoccupation with aesthetics as a concept, not with a particular style. This trend is part of the creation of a new language for the communications network era, a user language which is successful as art because it transmits an effective activism. Media activists are a hybrid of artist, scientist, theoretician and political activist that shuns labels and categorizations. Their creations are characterised by integration of user and machine in the work itself, so that interactivity has an important place within it. The concept of tactical media allows Art with a capital and grassroots political activism to be combined and, in this sense, we could include in it the tactical struggle that is part of anti-globalisation movements. Media activists point to the power of tactics as a means of breaking down the barriers between mainstream values and alternative ones, between professionals and amateurs and even between people who are creative and those that are not.
ReadThe No One is Illegal campaign has two goals: to attain concrete victories for immigrants and refugees and to develop the communities' own capacity to attain justice and dignity for themselves and their families. We strive and struggle for a world in which no one is forced to migrate. We also strive and struggle for a world where people can move freely in order to live and flourish in justice and dignity.
ReadPresence in the mediated environment of digital networks is probably one of the most complex phenomena of the new types of social interaction that have emerged in these environments. In the current phase of radical deployment (or penetration) of the Internet, various attempts are being made to come to terms with the social dynamics of networked communication spaces. It seems that traditional media theory is not able to contextualise these social dynamics, as it remains stuck on a meta-level discourse of media and power structures (Virilio), hyperreality (Baudrillard), or on a retrograde analysis of media structures deeply rooted in the functionality and structural characteristics of broadcast media (McLuhan).
ReadLONDON - Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files - more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods.
Read1.
The record industry is in the process of being outflanked by
means of the very processes that it has come to rely upon. Since the
60's its continual efforts to create new needs has meant that it
nurtured an everchanging musical soundscape that is now mutating at
such a pace that it cannot keep track long enough to harness these
musical evolutions in the direction of profit. That fact that it
doesn't achieve this harnessing has the remarkable effect of making the
'new' last longer! A longevity that comes from our always being able to
place ourselves amidst a continual re-definition of these sounds. Even
in terms of format, the profit-orientated shift to a CD market which
may have meant that back-catalogues could be re-sold has also worked to
deliver an on-line tap of musical history at the same time that vinyl
pressing has become cheaper. These and other factors feed into the
accelerating mutation that in turn creates a dissatisfaction with what
the industry can offer.
More than talking about changes that can be expected in the media landscape because of the developments and the influence of on-line streaming media, it is more consequent and important to consider (and act up on) the influence that these facilities already have in this particular area and the way in which information and communications as a whole have changed and will continue to change because on-line streaming media.
Read"Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the "indignados" protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a "cyberspace" detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around "occupied" places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park."
Arthur Kroker, Canadian media theorist and is the author of 'ThePossessed Individual', 'Spasm' and 'Hacking the Future'. Over the pastyears he, together with Marilouise Kroker, were often in Europe andmade appearances at Virtual Futures, V-2, Eldorado/Antwerpen, etc.Recently, they have also been discovered in German-speaking countries.Both are noted for their somewhat compact jargon, which made theirmessage appear to drown somewhat in overcomplex code. But "DataTrash"`(1994) changed all that. The long treck through the squashydiscourses had not been in vain. Firmly rooted in European philosophy,yet not submerged, Arthur Kroker has found his topic: the virtual class.
The formal political system today faces a new geography of power.
Globalization and the new technologies have contributed to the
shrinking of state authority and the explosion of a whole series of new
actors engaged in governance activities.
The current phase of the world economy is characterized by significant
discontinuities with the preceding periods and radically new
arrangements. This becomes particularly evident in the impact of
globalization on the geography of economic activity and on the
organization of political power. There is an incipient unbundling of
the exclusive authority over its territory we have long associated with
the nation-state.
Right in time for the 1998 German elections, Christoph Schlingensief decided to found his own party with the futuristic-sounding name CHANCE2000 - motto: Vote Yourself!