I cite

Vote for Corey Robin's Revolutionaries of the Right: The Deep Roots of Conservative Radicalism

Below, an excerpt from Corey's blog post. You can vote for it at 3 Quarks Daily (entry number 14)

Against so powerful a force as the Jacobins, and the revolutionary order they were inaugurating throughout Europe, prudence, half-measures, compromise, and moderation—all the meats and treats of the Burkean high table—would have to be pushed aside in favor of a more bloody repast.  In a series of rhetorically escalating epigrams, Burke called his conservative brethren to the most radical arms.

 Acquiescence will not do; there must be zeal.

 To destroy that enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to it should be made to bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that system exerts.

The madness of the wise…is better than the sobriety of fools.

Every little measure is a great errour.

These were not just rhetorical tropes; they were programmatic injunctions to the leadership of the old order, who Burke hoped would wage a counterrevolution of continental proportions against the Jacobinism plaguing Europe. (This is another great misunderstanding among the defenders of Burke: they see him as the man of the “little platoon,” of the local and the national as against the international. Not so. In face of the “general evil” that was Jacobinism, Burke wanted everyone to think of himself as a citizen of Europe.  England should realize that international affairs were domestic affairs and vice versa: “Nothing in human affairs was foreign to her.” ““No citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it.” Against those who wanted to take care of their little plots on their beloved island, Burke enjoined a great leap forward and across the English Channel.)

This was not to be an old-fashioned war of rules and constraints. Burke called for total war, of Sein oder Nichtstein, against not a country or a people but “an armed doctrine.” That doctrine had to be exterminated, for “if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.” Against even its most infinitesimal expression, no quarter could be given: “It must be destroyed or it will destroy all of Europe.”

I have dwelled so long on Burke in part because of the stature he holds, on the right and the left, as the founder of conservatism—and as the measure against which all contemporary conservatisms are deemed insufficiently conservative. But it’s not just Burke who makes these sorts of arguments in favor of ideological zeal and against prudential restraints. Nor is it in the face of an arguably lethal threat like Jacobinism that conservatives make them.

In the twentieth century, one finds a similar move in Friedrich Hayek, arguing against not the totalitarianism of Stalin but the democratic socialism of Britain and France and the liberal welfare state of the New Deal.

via coreyrobin.com

Not an alternative to demands: against the Liberty Square Blueprint #occupywallstreet

An alternative to the demands proposed by the demands working group at OWS is the Liberty Square Blueprint. This is not an alternative. On the contrary, it manifests a set of deep capitalist convictions, the merger of capitalism and new media characteristic of communicative capitalism.

Their vision of the world is one of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs--or, actually and specifically, of New York as a city of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (what happens to everyone else? where are the 99%? mining coltan and jumping out the windows of Chinese factories?).

Who wrote this? Folks from Google? It's cut from the same cloth as all those efforts to reduce this last year of revolution to the internet. Since that is clearly false, and when the actions are happening in our own cities we know how false it is, they are now trying to remake the occupation as a demand for more media. Please. It's not 1984. 

In this proposal, NY becomes the head, the pinacle, of a global movement of the networked elite. Admiring eyes gaze upon NY as a mecca--not much horizontally here. 

Really? You think that 99% of the people can be employed in media, communications, and design?You think that urban farming can feed NYC's millions? 

This is neither reform nor revolution--it's an imagination of oneself as the 1%. Notice: homelessness still exists; there is no demand or intention of housing for everyone. Notice: charity is important; there is no effort to eliminate inequality.

An excerpt from the proposal: 

Make NYC a functioning focal point for other people’s assemblies to dissolve and overcome the shadow government of big banks and corporations that is embedded hereDevelop an open source DIY Occupation kit for other occupations to reference and build upon.

Build the independent communications technology to coordinate occupations throughout the US and globe

Make NYC the Open Source Silicon Alley

Host an open source developers hackathon in a secret location to find the most intelligent and driven technologists most capable of dissolving the shadow govt and building the new community development structures.

Make NYC a pioneer of urban farming, renewable energy, grass roots urban/rural exchange, ethical and evidenced-based economics and indigenous leadership

Develop strong resource flows between upstate farms and the occupation

Use Occupy Wall Street as a platform to launch community-based green economy solutions that lift people out of poverty and restore our Earth

Pilot community currencies, barter, sharing, and local trade systems

Make Liberty Square carbon neutral

Make NYC a thriving ecosystem of community news, entertainment, and information-sharing supported by the people

Broadcast the first Occupy Wall Street TV channel with news, live stream, shows, Q&A and entertainment

Make NYC a leader of the People’s Internets

Make NYC a top supporter of public space for community action

Support the independent occupations of every borough in NYC.

Expand the occupation beyond outdoor spaces to indoor ones.

Make NYC the mecca for innovative community based organizational entities like L3C, not-for profit, NGO, charities etc

Make NYC the most progressive city for the chronically homeless

Make NYC a stronghold of pacifism

Support neighborhood peace and safe community initiatives

Make NYC a place that celebrates and respects diversity and lives up to its Melting Pot reputation

Make NYC a hub for harmonious religious, spiritual and non-religious practice

via www.freenetworkmovement.org

Wrong message: Dave Winer on #OccupyWallStreet

Not everything is included. It's politically imperative not to let Occupy Wall Street become an omnibus container for any and all political sentiments. Not every position should be welcomed, encouraged, or tolerated. How this plays out in the General Assemblies is an effect of the local cultures, the activists involved, the patterns of interaction. In NY, the power dynamics are already reflected upon in discussions and working groups. I expect this is also the case already in the other sites. In the same way that racism, sexism, and homophobia have no place in the movement, it should also be the case that libertarian, capitalist, and financialist attempts to interpret and guide the movement are rejected (how this occurs will vary with respect to specific site or context; for example, here on this blog, I am criticizing the view which is not the same as refusing to consider it; I consider it and I consider it wrong).

For a while I've been harping on the theme of the struggle over the meaning of occupy wall street, that is, over the exciting political space that people have opened up through their political intervention and its form as an occupation. Here are some of the dominant interpretations:

1.  The medium is the message, that is, the occupation of the square is the message. It is an opening to new practices, new modes of being together that are not scripted by any dominant narratives, structures, or systems. 

2.  Protest is message. This tends to be coupled with the idea that the message is obvious and doesn't need to be stated. It can be found in interpretations that emphasize anger and morality. Protesters are angry at a political system that bailed out Wall Street while Main Street was left to face as roughly 20 percent decline it our income over the last three years. These views tend to think that any political achievement of the movement will be minimal but that it expresses a moral register that may well have important political and social effects. 

3.  The message has (or should have or will have) a content and this content is primarily:

--an economic message about the utter failure of capitalism

--a political message about the utter failure of representational politics

--a combination of both of these

Views 1 and 2 are very attractive, particularly to those of us who have been emersed in communicative capitalism with its individualist and democratic ethos for so long. The new form of life is a breath of fresh air, an escape from screens and commercialism; it just feels right. Similarly, we are used to emphasizing feelings, affects, impressions. So number 2 meshes well with the ethical sensibility that has passed for politics at a time when actual political decisions and organizations have been so difficult. Yet 3 is crucial if OWS is to break with what we have, that is, if it is to be a new form of constituent power, a power that is a "direct initiative of the people from below." Views 1 and 2 reject that kind of constituent power, seeing instead a being beyond power or an ethics that may influence power but eschews taking or exercising it.

With that said, here is an example of the kind of interpretation of OWS that should be completely rejected. It comes from Dave Winer. He writes (my comments will be in italics): 

Occupy Wall Street is not part of any party. It's not left or right, although many of the people that are part of it look left. But if you look at the groups that are forming around the country, you'll see that it looks more like America than it does any single political discipline. If it works, it should be equally comfortable for a Republican who yearns for real representative government in the United States as it is for a labor union member, student or retiree.

If Republicans can be happy with Occupy Wall Street, then the movement is failing to make the gap between what is and what should be appear. If the goal of Occupy Wall Street is representative government, then it is failing to distinguish itself politically from business as usual. With these moves, Winer is trying to make the movement indistinguishable from the social as it is, with no economic or political division.

It should be the thing that we all agree on. The principle that Lincoln spoke of in the Gettysburg Address. A government of the people, by the people and for the people. Whether it perishes from the earth is the question. Imho. 

The point should not be the agreement of everybody but the forcing of the division that already exists. Winer is doing his best to erase antagonism, to replace it with a false unity. If everyone already agrees, there is no politics.

The 99 percent message is brilliant, but it's problematic. What if I were a member of the 1 percent (I might be). Would my participation be welcome?  

The slogan advances the opposition of the people to the elite that has exploited us and expropriated our labor and our future. No, exploiters are not welcome. But exploiters who want to participate in overthrowing capitalism, in ending the conditions that have given them an obscene percentage of the social surplus should be encouraged to do so. But only under the condition that they realize that the end of the game is eliminating the conditions that put them in the top one percent.

Is it measured by net worth or income? What are the actual numbers? 

This kind of pedantry lets us know that we are dealing with someone who is concerned primarily with protecting his claim position. No wonder he is afraid and is trying to convince folks that we all agree. We don't. 

Here's a test. Would Warren Buffett be welcome if he wanted to march? I don't think there's any doubt the Buffett is already part of the movement. But he's also part of the one percent.  

The march is not to protect Warren Buffett. What kind of obscenity puts the burden on the 99% of welcoming the obscenely rich? Where is the shame? 

Is this movement against success? If so, we have a problem. Because the self-reliance of Emerson is a core American value. And the ideal of opportunity for all. But the playing field must be level, and we must extend help to each generation as it was extended to previous generations. If you study the history of this country you'll see those are also core values. 

The unstated assumption is the success is financial success in the market and that markets should persist. Winer admits, then, that there is a problem here. The real name for that problem: class conflict. And all the rhetoric around self-reliance in the world won't cover that up.

I've heard some borderline ageist things. Not surprising. When I was young and we were marching in the streets, some people said Don't trust anyone over 30. I wasn't one of them, and I didn't believe it. But it was said. Ageism is the one "ism" that seems to be tolerated. I personally am not tolerant of it, and I call it out when I see it. On Twitter today, after I changed my icon to a tribute to the young Steve Jobs, a correspondent excused himself as being old (I'm guessing he thought I was younger than I am). I asked how old. He said he was born in 1958. I said he was the same age as my kid brother. I especially don't like ageism when it's accepted by people who are victimized by it. It reeks of segregation. It's unacceptable. It breeds fear. It's anti-inclusive. 

This is a prime example of the way that the rhetoric of inclusion is de-radicalizing, designed to prevent politicization. It's a rhetoric that preys on a reflect not to insult or exclude. Well, we have got to get over that. The issue isn't age--it is class. Winer is hiding behind age so as to move the point away from his anxiety about losing his position in the top 1%. 

via scripting.com

On tactical media: fail again?

Reading Lars Lih's monumental Lenin Rediscovered, I find myself drifting back and forth between 1898-1904 and the last ten years. More specifically, I've been wondering about the ways my account of tactical and participatory media under communicative capitalism may have been too one-sided. Here are two ways that I may have been wrong:

1.  Tactical media, particularly Indymedia and outlets like Alternet and Dissident Voice but also potentially including a wide variety of artistic projects and experiments, is important in providing alternatives to mainstream media. Without these alternatives, commercial media in all its idiocy would dominate not only news but also the cultural landscape. The crucial contribution of tactical media, then, is less the specific content of the items but its role in counter-hegemonic struggle.

2.  Participatory media is important as a critical practice against elitism. If anyone can produce interesting content, then financial monopolies over the production of this content make no sense. The more people participate in the production of content, the more they start to realize--through their very practice--the fundamental inequality and injustice of our contemporary arrangements.

How should I respond? Are these criticisms correct?

Perhaps I can undermine the apparent force of the first criticism by unpacking some of its assumptions. The most prominent, unstated, assumption concerns the 'role' of tactical media in counter-hegemonic struggle. That is, the assumption is that there is a role, that there is some kind of vaguely unified counter-hegemonic struggle. In other words, the criticism presumes a setting of antagonism where we know who the antagonists are.  Has this assumption made sense over the last twenty years? Or does it only make sense when one begins from concrete political commitments, such as communism and/or a Marxist analysis?

But maybe one would say that there has been a clear opponent in tactical media circles, namely, the mainstream media. This point, though, blurs political lines--the far right has been vicious in its attack on the mainstream media. The field of counter-hegemonic struggle, then, would be itself diffuse and variable, inclusive of religious fundamentalists of various stripes, feminists, libertarians, conspiracy theorists, communists, environmentalists etc.

So it's valuable to have progressive, anti-racist, feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-war, and Green media productions. These hold open spaces against the corporate mainstream. But these are helpful primarily for those who know what they are looking for, who know what they support and what they oppose. Alternative media provide information and point of view to those who know to look for it. In a turbulent media environment, a multitude of singular media productions don't function to win new hearts and minds but to keep the old ones from breaking or going crazy. (The previous post's link to the article on google's selective search results indicates that this selectivity and isolation is getting worse.)

But this is good (and hence my earlier criticisms fail to go far enough)! Fragmentation can strengthen partisan positions and make the other positions appear in all their stupidity. The criticism of blogs, for example, as amplifying extreme voices mistakes a strength for a weakness, and it makes this mistakes because it operates within a democratic imaginary rather than from a position of full acknowledgement of antagonism.

Alas, this is too quick. Why? Because it fails to see how fragmentation under neoliberalism becomes individualism, personalization, and even whatever being as every possible support or identification dissolves. Since the 90s (at least) fragmentation has gone designer and become intertwined with the injunction to be unique. The political forces that have successfully combatted these fragmenting, individualizing, and personalizing moves are precisely the forces that urge them on the rest of us: conservatives, the religious right, corporations, Republicans. So Grover Norquist can get Republicans to adhere in lockstep to the pledge not to raise taxes even as they do so in the name of freedom and individual choice. Folks like Palin go on and on about freedom and taking our country back and ending big government--and they create a unified message that they repeat constantly. Differently put, there is a fundamental asymmetry in the fragmentation and personalization that goes under the name of freedom: corporations act politically with more unity than the rest of us (Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce, lobbying groups for finance as a sector).

If the left would unify around anti Wall Street, anti-capitalist, socialist, and communist ideals, then tactical media could be understood as having a vital counter-hegemonic role.

What about the second criticism, the one about participatory media? With respect to blogging, the moment has passed. Blogs have already become to imbricated in capitalist media, over-flowing with adds, over-burdened by a neoliberalized approach to the attention economy (so, interlinked with Twitter, Facebook, and other outlets that increase page views). Facebook and YouTube should be a different case--people are fully aware that we provide the content. But the dominant mentality seems to be that we are fortunate that they are basically free. Most folks seem to think that giving up personal information and being subjected to ads is a fair enough exchange for the service.

Of course there are a number of small experiments with new platforms--and these then fall into the same fragmentation I addressed in my responses to the first criticism.

Maybe, though, a combination of these experiments and consciousness-raising, that is, emphasis on the new forms of exploitation that accompany mass social media, could have effects. So my mistake would be in treating as settled a terrain of practice that is turbulent. The very platforms that suck up our data give us opportunities to connect and redeploy them, potentially in the interest of taking them over (a provisional step before the revolution: Facebook users demanding shares in the company, organizing themselves to pressure for reforms--and I don't mean simply individuals liking or not liking particularly privacy features but collectives empowered to meet with corporate people on site features).

Unfortunately, the line of thinking in the previous paragraph does not follow the direction of developing critical practice. Perhaps because social media are systematically corrupting criticism and practice. Criticism is more than like or not like. Practice requires more than uploading photos and sharing links. Under current condition, anything more is coopted as free labor for someone else's profit.

The more this point is emphasized, the more the problem of unpaid net labor is brought to the fore, then the more the fundamental class division driving communicative capitalism appears, pushing forward the way the few are profitting from the many.

Dispersed and distracted

Dispersed, distracted, depressed. Weather? Term? Over-extension? I haven't done much on this blog besides remediate lately because of teaching and lecturing.

The good side of teaching is that I'm doing Capital for the first time in years (not the whole thing but more of it than I've done in the past). The challenging side of teaching is my digital networks class. It is completely labor intensive--extra layers of interaction on top of the regular class format, layers that are supposed to help students connect to and comprehend the readings but which don't seem to be having that affect. Together the two classes make me think about how much of a neoliberal subject I am, how I've incorporated the ideology that tells me that the more I am working the better I am, even when this is obviously false. I'm not better--I'm exhausted, disconnected, distracted, and confused.  Also, the amount of work I do doesn't influence my pay and I have tenure. So I work out a sense of commitment, professionalism, all those things that bourgeois ideology convinces us are important.

My 12-year old daughter said this to me on Sunday, "You are easily confused." I was like, "really, what do you mean?" She's like: "see, like I said, you're confused."

When there is time, I want to finish the "What is to be Done?" series, discussion Marx's account of commodities with respect to the contribution in communicative capitalism, and look more closely at the Alliance of Youth Movements material with respect to the mid-east revolutions. This is a big deal, I think. It makes me think of the Cold War. This was never only and completely a bifurcation and stand-off. There were cultural and economic exchanges, opportunities the US used to try to reach Soviet intellectuals. And of course there was the US push to present its consumer culture as the standard of progress and successful living. Is not the push to format the revolt against extreme inequality as a mediated exercise in democrat but our own repetition of this imperialism?

For now, though, I'll just repost my latest entry from my class blog.

Celebrities and corporations

New media theorists (like techno-enthusiasts) have accepted the idea that networked communications are characterized by distributed, peer-to-peer, personal, immediate, ubiquitous communication (the repercussion here is that the internet is not like television and not like cinema). The basic idea: people use their networked personal media devices to talk about themselves and to connect with their friends. People want to know what their friends are doing and they want to tell their friends what they are doing.

The basic debate among new media theorists has concerned the political, economic, and cultural impact of these practices. So, theorists have taken sides over whether these practices are democratic (or whether they have liberal or conservative tendencies), whether they enhance the economic prospects of most people (who can make money?), and whether the culture is more heterogeneous or homogeneous, stagnant or vital. 

Hearing comments in our class, though, I'm starting to wonder if our (new media theorists) basic assumption is wrong (or, another way to put this, I'm starting to think that my diagnosis of capture in affective networks is so right that no one even cares anymore or can even imagine that digital networks would function in any other way). Why? Because the default mode of (your? mainstream culture's? students?) thinking is in terms of corporations, celebrities, and consumption (or so it starting to seem to me based on comments in class). People seem basically to identify with the needs and desires of celebrities for celebrity and corporations for profit and consumers for consumer goods. For example, it never would have occurred to me think of Twitter as first and foremost a vehicle for the distribution and contribution of nuggets of celebrity, even as I recognize that the business of mass culture uses Twitter (and other platforms) to good effect (and even though I just saw the really great Justin Bieber where he uses Twitter to generate and connect with fans).

So, on the one hand, it seems that you assume that new media are primarily celebrity, corporate, consumer access devices. But I think there is another hand, that is, I think that you also assume that there is something vaguely democratic and free (liberatory) about networked media. If you think this, then it makes sense to worry about the effects/impact of the first hand (celebrity, corporate, consumer). But if you only think of new media in terms of the first hand, then you have to figure out what opportunities there are for critique, change, freedom, politics, etc. Differently put, if you think about new media only in terms of the first hand, you'll have to grapple with the repercussions for subjectivity. One site/cite for this is the notion of "whatever being" that I develop in chapter 3.

Bifo on Facebook

Facebook or the impossibility of friendship by Bifo

Financial capitalism and precarious work, loneliness and suffering, atrophy of empathy and sensibility: these are the themes that we may extrapolate from The social network the excellent movie by David Fincher.

The story that the movie is about is the creation and early diffusion of the social network Facebook: an enterprirse in the age of  financial semiocapitalism. But the focus shifts on the psychological side of the evolution of the Internet, in the framework of the info-acceleration and stimulus-intensification that the broad band has made possible. Love friendship affection – the whole sphere of emotionality is invested by the intensification of the rhythm of the infosphere surrounding the first generation which learned more words from a machine than from the mother.

 

Although the narration of the beginnings of Facebook, and the following legal conflicts and trials corresponds to the real story, biographical details (for instance the end of a love relation in the first scene of the movie) are not necessarily true, but they are useful for a full understanding of the affective side of social life of cognitarian labor force.

 

The main character of the film, Mark Zuckerberg may obviously be described as a winner: he is the youngest billionaire in the world, he is the owner of a company that in a few years has become well known worldwide with 500 million subscribers. Nonetheless it is hard to see him as a happy person, and he can be described as a looser if you think of his relation with women, and colleagues. Friendship seems impossible for him, and the success of his website is granted by the artificial substitution of friendship and love with standardized protocols. 

Existencial unhappiness and commercial success can be viewed as two sides of the same coin: Zuckerberg, in the Fincher movie is so skilled in the interpretation of the psychological needs of his generation because loneliness and affective frustration are his intimate psycho-scape.

 

Desire is diverted from physical contact and invested in the abstract field of simulated seduction, in the infinite space of the image. Boundless enhancement of disembodied imagination leads to the virtualization of the erotic experience, infinite flight from an object to the next. Value, money, financial excitement: these are the perfect form of the virtualization of desire. The permanent mobilization of psychic energy in the economic sphere is simultaneously the cause and the effect of the virtualization of contact. The very word “contact” comes to mean exactly the contrary of what it means: not bodily touch, epidermic perception of the sensuous presence of the other, but purely intellectual intentionality, virtual cognizability of the other. Hard to predict which sort of mutation is underway in the long run of human evolution. As far as we know this virtual investment of desire is currently provoking a pathogenic effect of fragilization of social solidarity and a stiffening of empathic feeling.

 

The genius of Zuckerberg essentially consists in his ability to exploit the suffering energy of the crowd, collective loneliness and frustration. The original idea of the website comes from two rich  Harvard’s twins named Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who want to hire him as programmer. Zuckerberg pretends to work for them, and actually takes hold of their idea, although he is much more able than they in linking the project to the psychical needs arising from contemporary alienation.

Did Zuckerberg steal the idea from those two undergraduates?  Yes and no. Actually in the Network it’s impossible to distinguish clearly the different moments of the valorization process, because the productive force of the net is collective, while profits are private. Here we find the irremediable contradiction between collective intelligence in the net and private appropriation of its products, a contradiction which is shaking the very foundation of semiocapitalism.  

This movie is an interesting view on life and work in the age of precarity. The word precarious

means aleatory, uncertain, unstable, and it refers not only to the uncertainty of the labor relation, but also to the fragmentation of time and the unceasing deterritorialization of the factors of social production.  Both labor and capital, in fact have no more a stable relation to the territory and to the community. Capital is flowing in the financial circuit and the enterprise is no more based on material assets, territorialized, but it is based on signs, ideas, information, knowledge and linguistic exchange. The enterprise is no more linked to the territory and work process is no more based on the community of workers, living together in the factory day after day, as it takes the form of ever changing recombination of time fragments connected in the global network. Cognitive workers do not meet in the same place every day, but stay alone in their connected cubicles, and answer to the requests of ever changing employers. The capitalist is no more signing agreements in order to exploit the productive energy of the worker during his overall working life.  He is no more buying the entire availability of the worker. He is hiring a fragment of available time, which is a fractal, compatible with the protocols of inter-functionality, and recombinable with other fragments of time.

Industrial workers experienced solidarity because they met each other every day and were members of the same living community, and shared the same interests, while the net worker is alone and unable to create solidarity because everybody is obliged to compete in the labor market and in the daily fight for a precarious salary. Loneliness and lack of human solidarity is not only characterizing the net worker, but also the entrepreneur. The border separating work and enterprise is confused, in the sphere of cognitive work. Although Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire, the way he is spending his work day is not dissimilar from the way his employees are spending their work day. They all are sitting in front of a computer and type on the keyboard.  

 

The main character of the movie - the Zuckerberg described by Fincher, has a friend, only one: Edouard Severin, who becomes the financer of the starting Facebook enterprise. When the success of the enterprise is guaranteed and demands new financers, Zuckenberg does not hesitate to betray his only friend.

This perfectly depicts the personal relations in the sphere of financial world, but unfortunately this is also depicting relations between workers. Although the movie speaks of a billionaire, it’s also telling the story of social condition of labor. The impossibility of friendship in the present condition of virtual abstraction of sociality, and the impossibility of building solidarity in a society that is turning life into abstract container of competing fragments of time.

 

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)

“Why wasn't I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.

via www.ftrain.com

and wood s lot

Finding the one

A month or so ago I posted excerpts from a paper I gave in London. The excerpts highlighted a particular aspect of expropriation and exploitation of the common in communicative capitalism, what I referred to as the expropriation and exploitation of the network.  The argument focuses on the winner-take-all or winner-take-most characteristic of some forms of contemporary production.

What I didn't know about at the time was the "America Competes Act:"

The law—its cringeworthy official name is the America Creating Opportunities To Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act—overhauls the way the federal government supports private-sector R & D, and one of the main ways the government hopes to support R & D is with prizes. Lots of prizes.

In the rest of this post, I repost a couple of paragraphs from my discussion of prizes, the one, and network exploitation, connecting them with the Obama administration's focus on prizes.

Interview with Doug Henwood (link to podcast)

December 18, 2010 Lucas Zeise, columnist with Financial Times Deutschland, on why Germany is taking such a hard line on the eurocrisis • Jodi Dean, keeper of the I Cite blog and author of Blog Theory, on what digital culture is doing to our minds, our politics, and our society

via www.leftbusinessobserver.com

Blog Theory at Goldsmiths (pdf)

Here is a pdf of the text: Download Dean--blog theory