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Reviews

Truth according to informational capital

6 March, 2023 - 15:38 by felix
my_publications
Reviews

Written for Computational Culture (forthcoming, #9, preprint with permission)

Review of Joque, Justin. Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence,  Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism. London and New York: Verso, 2022.

Datafication has been the hallmark of modern governance, all the way back to the definition of statistics as “science of data about the state” in mid-18th century Prussia. Creating reductionist regularity, abstracting from the infinite complexity of local, embodied experience, enabled a new scale and complexity by which the state could organize the life of its subjects, in pursuit of variable political agendas. In the mid-19th century, the philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) introduced a hierarchy of the sciences, with physics at the top for its mathematics-enabled generality, setting off mathematics envy in the social sciences (which he placed at the bottom of the ladder). This was most consequential in economics, but its reverberations are still felt in the recent creation of the “digital humanities”, quantifying the remaining, previously staunchly qualitative fields of knowledge. At the end of the 19th century, rapidly growing corporations, encountering their own need to extend the scale and complexity of governance practices, also turned to large-scale datafication (and automated data processing) to stave off the impending “control crisis” [1].

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Hagay Dreaming (review)

5 November, 2022 - 00:03 by felix
my_publications
nature
Reviews

This review was originally published at Digicult, 1.11.2022, also in Italian and Chinese.


image source: petra.servus.at

Hagay Dreaming, the most ambitious and radical work presented during Ars Electronica 2022 wasn’t even part of the festival proper. Rather, it was hosted in parallel by Stadtwerkstadt, an independent cultural venue in Linz. This “techno-fantasia guided theater of revival” has been initiated and schemed by Shu Lea Cheang, and written and directed by Dondon Hounwn, an artist working in installation and performance art, and a practicing shaman from the Truku tribe, one of the 16 recognized indigenous tribes in Taiwan.

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The Dawn of Everything (very short review)

6 December, 2021 - 12:35 by felix
Reviews

So, I finished reading "The Dawn of Everything", the new book by David Graeber and David Wengrow. In many ways, it's the perfect book for our dark historical moment. It's all about historical possibilities, yet not in the future, but in the past. Thus, an escape and an inspiration. It's an amazing read, so full of detail that's impossible to summarize. You really should read it yourself.

I'll just focus on the structure here. The book aims to deconstruct the dominant linear narratives of human culture, in which the "agricultural revolution" (which wasn't a revolution in the sense of quick and radical change) and the emergence of cities (again, a multi-directional (back and forth), rather than linear development) inexorably lead to inequality, domination, and "the state". There are two conventional versions of this story: the loss of freedom/equality (Rousseau, Hariri, etc) or the gain of civilization (Hobbes, Diamond, etc). Graeber and Wengrow argue, in dizzying archeological and anthropological detail, that both are wrong and severely curtail our imagination of social potential. Their baseline assumption is that humans since the neolithic are our cognitive equals. No more, but also no less intelligent than we are, hence also no less capable of making decisions about their own lives, individually and collectively. So, no more treatment of foragers as semi-apes living in small bands, unable to overcome supposed constants like Dunbar's 150 people group threshold (if it gets larger than this social stratification sets in).

A "carnival parade" of social forms

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Was liegt daran, wie gesprochen wird? Dividuelles Sprechen in Gerald Raunigs “Ungefüge”

24 September, 2021 - 11:06 by felix
my_publications
subjectivty
authorship
Reviews

Ungefüge_Cover“Was liegt daran, wer spricht?” Michel Foucault wollte bereits 1969 kein weiteres Mal das Verschwinden des/der Autor:in konstatieren, tat es dann aber doch wieder. Und etwa so lange dreht sich auch die Diskussion um Autor:innenschaft im Kreise, nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil auch die Kritik den/die Autor:in als Figur ins Zentrum stellt und wenn nur als Leerstelle, die es zu untersuchen gilt.

In einem der aussergewöhnlichsten Bücher der politischen Philosophie der letzten Jahre dreht Gerald Raunig Foucaults Frage um, ohne sie je direkt zu erwähnen. Als Problem erscheint nicht mehr der/die Sprechende, sondern die Sprache selbst. Denn es ist in der Sprache – als Struktur wie als Praxis – in der sich das Subjekt konstituiert. Dieses Subjekt ist heute dividuell, endlos teil- und wieder zusammensetzbar in der grossen Datenbanken der digitalen Konzerne, algorithmisch konstruiert, reibungslos und umfänglich verfügbar für smarte Strategien der Kontrolle und In-Wert-Setzung. Die hegemoniale Form, in der sich diesse Prozesse vollziehen, ist die Quantifizierung und das Ziel ist Optimierung.

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Mapping "Kultur der Digitalität"

11 January, 2021 - 13:57 by felix
Reviews

Zwei sehr schöne Maps meines Buches "Kultur der Digitalität sind mir zu Gesicht gekommen!

Die erste von Adriano Montefusco, via miro.com. Die zweite von Vinzenz Rast, handgezeichnet!

Danke. Definitiv übersichtlicher und leserlicher als mein Mindmap. pic.twitter.com/LSQhgwvlS6

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Micro Review: What Tech Calls Thinking

28 November, 2020 - 14:11 by felix
Reviews

1/ So, I read @adriandaub “What Tech Calls Thinking”, a book I was predisposed to like, not just because I’m interesting in the topic (a cultural critique of tech), but also it caters directly to people like me who believe in the value of higher eduction and critical thinking pic.twitter.com/zJ4F6Bzrs3

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Theo Röhle: Rezension von ”Kultur der Digitalität” (M&K, 64/4)

21 December, 2016 - 11:42 by felix
Reviews

Rezension von Felix Stalder (2016) ”Kultur der Digitalität”, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp

von Theo Röhle in Zeitschrift für Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft Jahrgang 64 (2016) Heft 4, S. 573. (veröffentlicht hier mit freundlicher Genehmigung von M&K)

Angesichts der Komplexität gegenwärtiger medialer Konstellationen bedarf es schon etwas Mut, den großen Wurf zu wagen und die ”Kultur der Digitalität" auf einen Nenner bringen zu wollen. Das Risiko, die Dinge verkürzt und verengt darzustellen, liegt auf der Hand. Und die meisten vermeiden es, indem sie ausschließlich auf bestimmte Aspekte, Entwicklungen oder Gegenstände fokussieren. Allerdings muss man sagen: Der Mut hat sich gelohnt. Der Band von Felix Stalder durchquert sehr unterschiedliche Felder, setzt sie auf teilweise unerwartete Weise zueinander in Beziehung und eröffnet gerade dadurch neue Perspektiven.

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Notes & nodes: society, technology and the space of the possible,
by Felix Stalder

Talks & Events

13.03. “Civilization, Technology and Consciousness” (Bitwäscherei, Zürich)
04.03. Civilization, Technology and Consciousness (Athens)
02.03. Civilization, Technology and Consciousness (Screening, Vienna)
28.02. Research Day (Zurich)
03.02. Structures of Belonging (Post-script to Commons to NFTs) /rosa (Berlin)
more

Projects & Institutions

ZHdK Logo

Zurich University of the Arts

Latent Spaces (current research project)

Creating Commons (previous research project)

World Information Institute (Vienna)

Technopolitics Working Group (Vienna)

Recent Books

Diaphanes, 2021 Polity Press, 2018 Suhrkamp Verlag, 2016 Buch & Netz, 2014 PML/Mute, Winter 2013

Less Recent Books

  • Vergessene Zukunft. transcript Verlag, 2012
  • Cultures and Ethics of Sharing / Kulturen und Ethiken des Teilens Innsbruck University Press, 2012
  • Deep Search. The Politics of Search Beyond Google Studienverlag / Transaction Publishers, 2009
  • Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity Press, 2006 and Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2012
  • Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. edited by Kuda.org, Futura publikacije, Novi Sad and Revolver - Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt a.M. (October 2005)
  • Making Money. Notes on technology as environment Ph.D. Thesis, Faculty of Information Studies. University of Toronto, 2001
  • README! ASCII CULTURE AND THE REVENGE OF KNOWLEDGE. FILTERED BY nettime, Autonomedia, NYC, 1999

    List of all books (according to worldcat)

Twitter Archive

Local archive of my 12.2K tweets (Oct 6, 2010 -  Nov 7, 2022)

Latest Posts (Mastodon)

Organizing

  • tdlr.nettime.org (Mastodon/Hometown instance, since Nov. 2022)
  • Leben Unter der Kurve. Sept/Okt.2021
  • Lecture Performance with Michael Taussig, 29.05.2019
  • Painted by Numbers A Discursive Installation on Algorithmic Regimes, ongoing
  • Algorithmic Regimes, Vienna, 25.09.2015
  • Digitale Wolken und Urbane Räume.Wien, Juni 2014
  • Netzpolitischer Konvent der österreichischen Zivilgesellschaft, 2013
  • Shared Digital Futures Conference, Wien 2013
  • Free Culture Forum, Barcelona, 2010
  • Deep Search II, Conference, Vienna, May 28 2010
  • World Information City Conference, Paris, 2009
  • Kunstfreiheit.ch, Schweiz, 2009
  • Deep Search. Politik des Suchens jenseits von Google, Wien, 2008
  • nettime-l, co-moderating, since 1998