| integer on Mon, 17 Apr 2000 02:45:32 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Cyber [ouch] culture in the Age of tart.mania |
>As Geert's essay eloquently outlines,
`Geert` + eloquent +? perm!t zom 1 2 fa!nt theatr!kl!
eczampl : Geert eloquence = "now go to Hell"
amuzant++
>the state of Internet-centric culture
>today is characterized by three concurrent trends.
>First, and most
`art teor!e` l!f 4rmz = = 01 pathet!kue kunt!nuum ov fenomenal regurg!taz!e
publ!ka
>spectacular, is the recent downwards slide of the financial markets,
>particularly for Internet-related stocks.
Felix Stalder <stalder@fis.utoronto.ca> zerf bagatela
= ma! u!sh 2 uake 4rom dze lo.tekk korporat zponzord ztupor +?
jetzt = ma! komput d!f betu!n fel!x ztalder + Peter Huber + Geert
[sol du = ur prntz as!gnd name tag = ultra !kk]
temperatur. pa!n. !r!taz!on + preszur.
blue
blue
blue
ultra blue
temperatur. pa!n. !r!taz!on + preszur.
dze ep!thel!um ov dze pup!llae.
dze zueet.zalt!.zour.+ b!tr taztez
dze l!ngual branch. komme ca
=cw4t7abs = dze futur regardlesz
uat 01 dez!rz. korporat fasc!zt konglomeratz eczplo!teurz--
geht n!cht mehr.
chaos in economies
x = cx(1 - x) is known as the standard logistics difference equation.
it models among other things the way in which the population of a
product grows within its potential market. in this context,
the constant c is an amalgam of two factors. the first represents
productivity - the number of product units which can be realised by one
unit
of human effort. this is amplified by production technology.
the second represents the number of product units which
can be sold into the market by one unit of human effort.
this is amplified by communications technology. however it is
diminished by competition. the population of a product within a market
is thus held in balance by a mechanism similar to
that which holds life-form populations in balance with their environments.
nature yields bounteously the needs of life in return for human labour.
in the absence of war. oppression and exploitation
all could therefore live in comfort and well-being.
the value of c provided by nature (let us suppose it's around 1.3 or
1.4) is more than adequate for the needs of mankind.
it creates an economy with a smooth productivity curve.
but the human life-form then started to develop technology.
first tools then the wheel. then machines. then automation.
computers. communications and mass-media.
the smooth sigmoid reached to ever-greater heights.
once c passed 2.34 the curve started to 'ring' as it reached the top.
that is - production over-shot and then fell back to its stable rate.
the ringing became more pronounced until at c = 2.9 it
gave birth to an almost steady (albeit shallow) rhythm of boom/bust
which western economies have gradually seen emerge from the end of world
war 2.
nevertheless the ratio between boom and bust
gradually fades away (proving every time of course that government
economic policy
is working!?). but technology keeps on advancing driving productivity and
marketing reach ever higher and further.
the result is that the ratio between boom and bust gets larger but now
ceases to fade away. as c increases further so does the boom-bust ratio
until eventually its rhythm becomes more complex. we will probably leave
the
20th century with many national economies booming and busting to this
mesmerising 'waltz rhythm'. but of the future? what does the new
millennium hold in store for national economies? in a word: chaos.
technical progress will not stop. on the contrary, its
rate of progress will accelerate. the boom-bust cycle will probably soon
be following the profile of c = 3.68.
chaotic economic cycles are unlikely to hurt national economies or
these who control them. however, they will ruin and
destroy the economic lives of ordinary people.
that is - unless the rules of engagement between the
individual and the body-corporate are substantially re-engineered.
c!ao.
eusocial.com -> superb source for korporat fascist antibodies.
pre.konssept!n
meeTz ver!f1kat!n.
3.MASCHIN3NKUNST
ecdysone@eusocial.com
17.hzV.tRL.478
e
|
| +----------
| | <
| >
e
kompared 2 lo.tekk regurg!taz!on ov model c!t!zn
tep!d taztez : komme ca
>When technology stocks sank on Apr. 4, margin traders had reason to panic. But lots
>of others began to worry, too, about the economy and their jobs. Just ten years ago
>the Japanese stock market peaked, with the Nikkei just shy of 40,000, then plunged to
>20,000, where it remains today. Japan's economy flatlined for a decade. Should
>America expect ten flat years of its own if the Nasdaq collapses from 4000 to 2000?
>No. Expect instead that the GDP will continue to rise, employment will remain robust
>and inflation will stay tame. People will just have to stop daydreaming about
>retiring at 42, that's all. The dreamers will have to keep right on working
>productively instead.
>
>Japan's bubble was inflated by confidence in the country's industrial planners and in
>its hermetic club of aging corporate shoguns. Not just stocks but real estate floated
>into the bright blue yonder. "Japan in 1989--that was a property bubble," MIT
>economist Jerry A. Hausman observed. "The Ginza was bid up to ten times the value of
>Fifth Avenue." But the confidence was misplaced. The shoguns weren't that smart after
>all, and they failed to stay ahead of the rapid evolution of trade and technology in
>the 1990s.
>
>Our exuberance--rational or otherwise--is built on some hard and real technology. We
>have billions of new microprocessors, millions of new miles of fiber-optic glass and
>a vast new infrastructure of wireless communications. The U.S.-installed base of PCs
>has doubled since 1995. The Intel microprocessor inside most of those PCs: up
>eight-fold (in logic gates) and five- to tenfold (in speed) since 1989. Lines of code
>in Windows NT: up almost fivefold since 1993. Commercial cell sites: up fourfold
>since 1995. Traffic on the Internet: rising tenfold every year or two.
>
>Wherever the stock market may journey, U.S. output of silicon logic gates, lines of
>software code, terabits of Web traffic and base pairs of genes sequenced is going to
>keep right on growing. We won't stop using e-mail or e-tickets or ATMs, or buying
>books online. The Web's extraordinary power to streamline transactions is here to
>stay. So is the work force that has learned how to use it. The technology, and our
>ever-improving ability to put it to productive use, will continue driving real gains
>in living standards. "That's why we've been seeing the most rapid productivity rise
>since the oil shocks of 1974," says Hausman.
>
>What about all that money being poured into dot-coms? Will investors ever get it back
>in dividends? We'll find out. But whether they do or not, that sector is just a slice
>of our capital markets. E-commerce companies raised $3.2 billion in initial stock
>offerings last year; other kinds of tech outfits raised $33.5 billion, according to
>Renaissance Capital. Will competition drive most of the future gains from technology
>off the corporate balance sheet and into the pockets of consumers? For macroeconomic
>purposes it doesn't much matter. Indeed, it doesn't much matter to anyone whose
>economic future is evenly balanced between "shareholder" and "consumer." The gains in
>efficiency and convenience that the Internet has thrust into our economy belong to
>America either way.
>
>Peter Huber
ma!ntenant fel!x stalder bagatela
>Less spectacular but also widely
>noted
ja +?
>is a change of attitudes of the once fierce and brave libertarian
>technologists.
uuuuuuuuu
>The 10th Computer Freedom and Privacy (CFP) was the latest
>and, perhaps, strongest sign that Larry Lessig's message "The internet has
>no nature and does not take care of itself" [1] is being accepted as the
>new common sense, superseding last decade's credo that "the Internet views
>censorship as a damage and routes around it" (John Gilmore). Lastly, and
>not spectacular at all, is the growing disillusion with cyberculture and
>its liberating promises among cultural innovators.
>
>Underlying these trends is a common theme, one that I believe is positive.
>The common theme is that of a growing understanding that the Internet
>itself is not a social space in any meaningful way. Or, at least not one
>that can be considered in isolation. Outside of the Internet and it's
>overblown rethoric, this is pretty obvious. The social space of print is
>not the book, but the library and the school; the social space of film is
>not the movie itself, but the cinema and the film festival; and, the social
>space of TV is the living room and the studio, not the tube itself. The
>consequence of this view is the regaining of a lost sensibility: ultimately
>important is only what constitutes that part of the social space that human
>beings inhabit, the space outside the computer networks.
>
>Consequently, there is no "new economy" that magically transcends the laws
>of gravity by balancing consistent and systemic operational losses with
>ever increasing stock evaluations. Ultimately, fundamentals matter, that
>is, what people actually do, rather than what they would like to believe.
>It boils down the fact that the laws of capitalism are indeed, well, laws.
>There is no such thing as the "long boom", and the "law of increasing
>returns" does not mean that we are all going to get automatically richer,
>but describes the dynamics of monopolies.
>
>Similarly, technologies are not autonomously evolving in a predictable way.
>There is no way that we can let the Internet alone. If we would, it would
>simply disappear, one server crash after the other. And if the Internet is
>not an organism, then it is a built environment, with all the lame old
>questions of who builds it, for what purpose and with which consequences.
>In a way, what happens with the Internet is not so much commercialization
>than gentrification where high-income owners drive out low-income tenants
>(with artists playing their usual role as "avant-garde"). Such problems
>cannot be addressed by the lone hacker genius, but, god forbid, by the
>concerted, deliberate action of a lot of people (a vision that Withfield
>Diffie, hesitatingly, outlined at this year's CFP). In other words, social
>issues remain social issues, and even on the Internet, censorship is a
>social and not a technical problem.
>
>Consequently, the fact that we can "re-invent" our identities online, and
>that "cyberspace knows no distance" is of little meaning if it goes hand in
>hand with an increasingly harsher meat-space reality in which culture is
>down sized and reduced to "shocking" exhibitions put together by
>advertisement execs and the immediate taming through commodification of
>every even remotely original idea.
>
>This does not mean that the Internet is not important and that we should
>simply abandon it as a strategic site for intervention. Media matter, but
>they do so in very specific ways. Geert deplores the demise of
>sophisticated interface design, but what that indicates is simply that the
>interface doesn't matter all that much. What is most important of the media
>is not what is in the media, but the way media re-organize life around
>themselves. What they get people to do, or not to do, is what is most
>important. Isolated media are a contradiction in terms, they mediate
>between people, but they do not substitute them. It's the difference
>between having this post read by someone or indexed by a crawler. It's not
>a simple either/or, either people or machines. I'm all in favour of
>crawlers, since they will help more people to find this message, but unless
>someone does take the time to read it and to think about if it matters for
>his/her own life, for what they do, all the indexing in the world is
>meaningless.
>
>What the Internet really promises is to change the way people organize
>themselves and coordinate their actions. The Anti-MAI campaign, Seattle
>last fall and now Washington, but also the dynamics of Clinton-Lewinsky
>scandal are glimpses of things to come.
>
>It seems that what we begin to learn is that the real message of the
>Internet is not artificial intelligence but new forms of social
>intelligence. And, perhaps, that doesn't need fancy interfaces.
>
>Hands up, how many of you read this through a telnet connection?
>
>
>
>
>
>[1] Lessig, Lawrence (1999). Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York:
>Basic Books
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------
>Les faits sont faits.
>http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/~stalder
ja +? ars s!ne sc!enta n!h!l ezt.
_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold