Re: <nettime> Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

hi brian, jaromil, felix,

i am taking felix's lead here to respond to this part of your message...I am not familiar with the writers, but was taken with your review of them, Brian, anyway!

Brian wrote:

I am curious if other people see the same problems, and if there are theorists and practitioners resolving them...

I have been reading a most fascinating and well executed book by Sofiya Nobel - called 'Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism' (2018) - she is also author of The Intersectional Internet)

I thought to recommend her work on racism in cyberculture because I feel that internet discussions are frequently extremely abstract in terms of "culture" or even "political economy"

Nobel focuses her analysis upon Google search (ordinary users use of search as an authoritative medium from which wto get their information)

Nobel's compelling outlook --- precisely because it has been observed and analysed before - is to point at the "commercialism" of google search...and its paths and collecting and connections to ads - then to destroy it based upon negative information effects, upon "users".

This may seem obvious because everyone has done google or is done googling.

but these days memory, fantasy, and reality are being manufactured into screenal myths by the powerful -- and as she states powerfully via these commercial search engines,

so "the obviousness" of the problems of commercial representation has historic meaning when looking back....at the critique of commercial television and its stereotyping ads. same forces of capital at work, just with more power, computing power, and new screens and lots of them.

Nobel treats the user subject as television critics did their viewers; those viewers prone to corporate brainwashing and stereotypes with which these authoritative (just google it) screens are laden.

She goes further to explain the regimes of search and how they embolden markets such as porn and ethnonationalism when 'keywords' ('black girls' or 'black crime against whites') can be bought and sold to boost search results.

also obvious...but worth following as a chain of events.

I insert this book here to suggest the inclusion, not of "economies" or "ecologies" but communities/publics - since populations of users differ; and means for access differ; and media/intermedia/analytical literacy differs also

i may not be understanding the focus here, but i can recommend her book as a critical perspective.

https://safiyaunoble.com/

molly

On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 3:53 AM Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org> wrote:

dear Brian,

many thanks for this review! I admit would never had the time to read through the articles and less than ever spot the tension you highlight, your dedication makes it possible for many of us to follow interesting debates as this one. I guess we are all familiar with Morozov's ideas by now, certainly more than Strom's...

On Thu, 30 Jun 2022, Brian Holmes wrote:

> This is much better than Morozov: it cuts straight to the chase, rather than beating around the theoretical bush. Strom is saying that the new standard model of contemporary capitalism emerges when technoscience is applied to produce and condition the environments in which business operations are carried out and consumer choices are made. This is a classic cybernetic strategy: to become the master of a feedback loop you do not attempt to directly control all the participating nodes. Instead, you create and continuously adjust the framework in which those nodes interact.

reading what you write here really strikes a chord in me, to the point I'll shamelessly put forward a link to my much dumber and less theoretical witnessing here, from the shores of practice: https://medium.com/think-do-tank/lead-or-follow-the-dilemma-of-ict-industry-for-the-coming-decade-4f83ee1851bc

what I propose is to look at this "small simulation" of what is happening already since some years in the free and open source (F/OSS) world, around the landmark acquisition of RedHat by IBM and following the politics of the Linux Foundation in imposing (by means of lobbying) new immature software components like systemd as a "standard".

> So to wrap it up, the "standard model" of contemporary capitalism is definitely not a firm selling advertising widgets. Nor even less is it a mere parasite feeding on *your* boundless creativity. Instead, the standard model now entails an expansive "mode of practice" that actively builds, monitors and adjusts the productive/communicative frameworks in which the individual's tastes and productive potentials will be expressed, actualized and satisfied, ideally with no leftover energies of dissent.

in F/OSS too, this is not done anymore by competition, like 20 years ago at the time Ubuntu desertified the artisanal GNU/Linux distro panorama with its "global philantropy" approach. Today this is done by
1. taking control of the "standard making literature" and processes
2. turning competition into an R&D playing field to "test standards" and "fail fast" (cit. startup economy) at the expense of those who play

this is not anymore about an oligopoly of unfair competitors, but a standard establishing presence steering the playing field. the hegemony on point 1. is crucial and it can be compared to other contexts (try s/standard/law/). The standard making entry point is not anymore based on technical expertise, but is fenced by lobbying and a steep price to be paid by active presence through the meanders of democracy (the literature) something that only very big organizations can afford today in terms of labor and seniorship.

> Still, one large and timely question remains unasked: What are the Googles and Amazons and all their political allies going to do in the face of an emergent governing logic that is not cybernetic at all, but instead, aims at ideological and police control of individual bodies characterized by sex, class and race? In short, what is cybernetic capitalism going to do about the new fascism?

they are going to pose as a democratic presence in the rooms of power, while being assured they will be gaining power over guinea pigs who were once competitors and nation states since standards and conditions of infrastructure access are in their full control and laws just follow (with the golden exception of anti-trust laws). For instance see the "kind move" by APPL and GOOG to offer access to the BTLE infrastructure on their phones for the techno-fascist initiatives of "corona-pass" applications. Those were ultimately of no use to defend anyone from the syndemic crisis, while pouring emergency funds in the pockets of the tech industry, and activating a number of state actors for the R&D of technologies that are now "mature enough" (both technically and legally) to be used by their original gatekeepers.

ciao

--

Denis "Jaromil" Roio https://Dyne.org think &do tank
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