Kurzer Text zu Assange/Wikileaks anlässlich des Filmstarts in Zürich. Es geht mir hierbei nicht um ein Psychogramm (was ich aus der Distanz gar nicht leisten kann und will), sondern um die Verdienste und Sackgassen von Wikileaks als Form der Journalismus.

Seit August 2012 sitzt Julian Assange als politischer Flüchtling im Asyl in einem 20 Quadratmeter grossen Raum in der ecuadorianischen Botschaft in London, die in einem unscheinbaren Appartement im Stadtteil Knightsbridge untergebracht ist. Dieser Raum dient als Schlaf-, Wohn- und Arbeitszimmer, als Konferenzraum für Besucher und als globaler Hauptsitz von Wiki­leaks, dem umstrittensten Medienunternehmen der letzten Dekade. Die Strafuntersuchung gegen Assange in Schweden wurde zwar in der Zwischenzeit eingestellt, die britische ­Regierung erklärte allerdings umgehend, dass sie Assange wegen Verletzung der Kautions­bedingungen gleich verhaften würde, sollte er die Botschaft verlassen.

World-Information Institute in cooperation with springerin and WERK X:

Friday 10.11. 2017, Petersplatz 1, A-1010, Vienna

Lectures, Discussion, Screenings, Performance 18h – 24h

Boundaries between humans and machines are blurring. Complex assemblages from biological agents, communicating objects, technical protocols, and automated decision-making processes become “hypernormal hybrids”. In the mechanical logic of this augmented reality, however, the dimension of the social is not to be grasped. Between super-empowered individuals and the “obsolescence of man” this results in unpredictable turbulences. How to identify the fault lines of these hybrid systems and what options of human action remain?

18:00 – 19:00
Prisoners of Reason: S. M. Amadae

Moderator: Christian Hoeller

19:30 – 21:00
Animal & Machine Intelligence: Stefan Woltran,Susana Monsó

Moderator: Felix Stalder

21:00 – 24:00
Screening/Performance: Napalm Tree, ca.tter & mstep, Boris Kopeinig, Plak, u.a.

Videoinstallation: Painted by Numbers

Hosted by Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder

* * *

This was written in the context of the research project"Creating Commons". And while the paper I'm commenting on is not particularly good, it's symptomatic for a lazy-left critique of the commons and thus warrants the comments.

Ossewaarde, Marinus und Wessel Reijers (2017): „The illusion of the digital commons: ‘False consciousness’ in online alternative economies“, Organization 24/5, S. 609–628. (paywalled)

From the abstract:
“Digital commons such as Wikipedia, open-source software, and hospitality exchanges are frequently seen as forms of resistance to capitalist modes of production and consumption, as elements of alternative economies. In this article, however, we argue that the digital commons cannot by themselves constitute genuine forms of resistance for they are vulnerable to what we call ‘the illusion of the digital commons’, which leads to a form of ‘false consciousness’.”

This is both an interesting and annoying article. It's interesting as it details how „sharing“ can be put into the service of profit-driven centralization. It's annoying because it uses a small number of cases to make sweeping claims that feel more than a little disingenuous.

For example, while Wikipedia and Open Source Software are mentioned in the first line of the abstract, they play no role in the subsequent analysis. That focuses entirely on three “hospitality exchanges”: Airbnb, Couchsurfing and BeWelcome.

Herr Stalder, was bedeutet es, wenn wir immer mehr Entscheidungen an Algorithmen delegieren?

Entscheidungen sind nie singulär. Eigentlich sind es Prozesse, eine (Teil-)Entscheidung führt zur nächsten. In diesen langen Entscheidungsketten können immer mehr, aber nie alle Schritte an Algorithmen delegiert werden, es sind immer auch Menschen involviert.

TECHNOPOLITICS sets up a CURATED KNOWLEDGE SPACE that offers a discursive framework for exploring the genesis and current configuration of the information society.

The main visual element of the TECHNOPOLITICS TIMELINE is a large-scale print that traces the evolution of our shared techno-cultural realities. The Timeline’s 500 entries draw attention to different events and genealogies from the fields of art, culture, media, politics, economy, technology, and social life that have been relevant for the shaping of the information society.
The project’s common objective is to investigate from a critical, explorative standpoint the heterogenic historical processes that are structured by techno-economic paradigms. A workshop and discussion program focuses on trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural conversations to connect these processes to the cultural forms of the respective historical moment and place.

Der Vortrag an der Republica 17, hat zwar den selben Titel, die dieser hier, nähert sich jedoch der Frage, welche Algorithmen wir brauchen, auf andere Weise an.

Zusammenfassung in zwei Tweets :)

Fantastic, wide-ranging and free flowing lecture on the Algorithmic Condition by Mireille Hildebrandt. She covers issues such as

Der Jahrtausendwechsel erschien vielen Zeitgenossen, auch mir, als großes Nicht-Ereignis. Nicht nur das angekündigte Chaos der Computersysteme wegen des berüchtigten Millenium Bugs blieb weitgehend aus. Auch sonst war der 1.1. 2000 kaum vom 31.12. 1999 zu unterscheiden.

[This was initially written for nettime, where many others joined in to complete the picture of a life well lived.] [Update, early March: We turned the many memories and remembrances into a small publication.]

Armin Medosch died yesterday, on the day two months after being diagnosed with cancer. I'm sure many people on nettime knew him very well. He was a true pioneer of the media arts and network culture scene in Europe. Indeed for much longer than even nettime exists.

I first learned of Armin not as a person, but a legend. In the early 1990s, he was one of a band of artists of an unqualifiable streak who roamed the Baltic sea on the Kunst-Raum-Schiff, MS Stubnitz. An 80m former freeze & transport vessel of the GDR high seas fishing fleet, they had re-purposed as a moving center for experimental electronic culture. He curated and organised exhibitions and symposia in Rostock, Hamburg, Malmö and St.Petersburg. The project was incredibly evocative, even for someone like me who had never seen the ship, because it fused many of the ideas that would come to define network culture, namely nomadism, a total disregard for established culture institutions, DIY and an exploration of the wild wastelands opened by the breakdown of the Soviet system, after 1989.