Colbert Launches 'The Colbuffington Re-Post' And Rips Hole In The Blog-Time Continuum

Colbert Launches 'The Colbuffington Re-Post' And Rips Hole In The Blog-Time Continuum:

"Stephen Colbert blasted the Huffington Post on his show two nights ago: 'HuffPo is famous for its extensive, comprehensive coverage of things other people have produced and put on the internet.'

This included HuffPo's posting of multiple Colbert clips -- which infuritated Colbert, who wasn't getting his share of the 'huffbucks' for it.

So until he got paid, Colbert launched his own news aggregation site, the 'Colbuffington Re-post' -- which is just the Huffington Post with a new title on it. 'It's like a Russian nesting doll of intellectual theft,' said Colbert. Visit it online!

To make the whole thing ever more dimensional, yesterday the Huffington Post posted about the Colbuffington Re-Post, which was then reposted by the Colbuffington Re-Post. Trying to explain all the reposting and repackaging, Colbert said he was about to 'rip a hole in the blog-time continuum,' taking us to a 'bizarro-parrallel Huff-verse, where bloggers are paid for their work.'"

Observations from protests in Wisconsin

Here are some observations circulating on the nettime discussion list (long running list that focuses on networked communication and politics; Geert Lovink was one of the initial organizers). It might be interesting to draw from Terranova to analyze/think about the points made.

1)   At this point the battle is being fought both in the square and in the media, and the two theaters go together. Control of the narrative must be kept from the right wing noise machine and that means telling the story from the square, with the authority of being here, of seeing and hearing how things are unfolding, of having the confidence that comes with lived experience to tell the dittoheads, very simply, that they are ignorant, clueless, and don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

2)   The presence in the square has attained the scale of a movement. Very literally, there are too many pockets of action within the space and time of the square happening for any one person to know. Walking around today, within minutes I witnessed the noisy rally inside the rotunda, the incoming UW student march of 1000s along the State Street side, and the union rally in front of television cameras on the East Washington side. People in the thick of each cluster were oblivious to what was happening in other parts of the square. Not to mention, this was at around 12:30 pm. There had already been a large rally organized by the AFL-CIO at 10 am. Jesse Jackson will speak at 5 pm, and there will be evening rallies, as well.

3)   It is the unity of the senate Republicans versus that of the Democrats. Who will divide and conquer first is the question. I’m sure Walker is scheming to buy off one of the Dems, promise that one senator everything in order to get him to sell out the rest, because one vote is all he needs to reach a quorum. On the other hand, there are Republicans spooked by the size and tenor of the demonstrations, and they know that Walker may have overreached to the detriment of their own careers. Targeted pressure will determine the fate of this bill.

4)   The reaction is underway, though with how much strength is unknown. A Tea Party organized counter event is scheduled for Saturday noon. Word is spreading for progressive forces to show in overwhelming numbers. If the counter bodies are many—say 5000—there will be tension. If they are pathetically small—say 500 or less—then we must take full advantage and tell the story as proof of the inarguable majority strength of the progressives and the absolute corporate whoredom of the GOP. Provocateurs cannot be ruled out, and given the dirty tricks of the right ever since the ’08 election, probably ought to be expected. People attending need to know who they are with. A little paranoia in times of crisis is not such a bad thing.

5)   The movement has a longer term concrete goal, that of recalling Scott Walker. Wisconsin’s recall process is not an easy one. The big challenge is the time limit. From the day the recall effort gets officially filed, we’ll have only 60 days to gather signatures in a number set as a proportion of the total votes in the last gubernatorial election. The current battle lays the groundwork for that effort better than anything else could have done. Many signs among demonstrators make reference to the option, and there are people coordinating already, in preparation for Walker’s first year anniversary, at which time the campaign can begin.

6) The creativity and humor has been impressive. Demonstrators are entertaining each other, showing each other their inventiveness, and making the square the place to be. That alone makes this a resistance of a different, more promising kind.

Questions from today (slightly altered)

1. In what sense  is the internet a grid or database? What does Terranova think the weakness is in this approach to the internet? Is she right? Why or why not?

2.  (Andrew posted the second question here.)

3. Terranova emphasizes that the open architecture of the internet comes up against divergence and incompatibility. How are these challenges met? And, what features or qualities does addressing divergence and incompatibility give to the internet?

4.  How does internet culture (turbulence, open architecture) produce problems for collective organization and groups? What specific sort of dynamics are involved in these problems?

Post-wikileaks (remediated from nettime mailing list)

The exploits of Anonymous to hack the systems of firms providing spying services to governments and corporations suggest that the WikiLeaks mini-era has been surpassed.

Much of WikiLeaks promise to protect sources is useless if the sources are not whistleblowers needing a forum for publication. Instead publishers of secret information grab it directly for posting to Torrent for anybody to access without mediation and mark-up by self-esteemed peddlers of protection, interpretationa and authentication, including media cum scholars.

Arstechnica descriptions of the how the Anonymous hack are the best reading of Internet derring-do yet and far exceeds the much simpler version of WikiLeaks carefully bruited as if precious but is not according to Daniel Domscheit-Berg's revelations.

AnonLeaks.ru is a remarkable advance of WikiLeaks. And promises much more by the same means and methods most associated with official spies -- NSA and CIA run the Special Collections Service to do exactly that kind of criminal aggression, along with black bag burglaries, surveillance and bugging. Contractors hiring ex-spies do much of this highly classified work as well and invent and supply the gadgets and front organizations required.

Not least of importance of the Anonymous hack and the many preceding it is the revelation of how commercial firms have been exploiting public ignorance of their spying capacity. That they are themselves vulnerable is a surprise to them, as it must  be to those who hire them and, in the case of governments, provide legal cover for criminal actions.

This is not news, to be sure, for it has been alleged and reported on for decades but mostly in technical journals and conferences where offerers strut their malwares to buyers of perfidium. Imagine that instead of the many iterations of Wikileaks now appearing to receive and publish documents, that more of the Anonymous-type hacks simply steal the family jewels of the spies, officials, lobbyists and corporations believing they own the territory in order to show the extent of their secret predations on the public.

The digitization of vast archives of government, commercial and non-governmental organizations to facilitate their hegemony provides a bounty to be hacked repeatedly despite attempts to prevent it by vainly inept cybersecurity agencies and firms.

The cyber officials yell, hit the Internet Switch. Too late, too late. Anonymous controls the switch.  Sure, Anonymous can be compromised with sufficient hostile and friendly inducements, but so can the predators, perhaps moreso the latter.

I like that venerable Anonymous and the promise it offers as the Nymous authoritatives of secrecy frantically attempt to ban its privilege.

For the WL era dutifully enshrine Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, give them Medals of Freedom as icons of what led  to the rise of Unnamables worldwide.

I commend Ketih for that unbreakable domain name.

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Question on Terranova chapter 1

Terranova emphasizes that a cultural politics of information, "as it lives through and addresses the centrality of information transmission, processing, and communication techniques" extends beyond the distinction between signal and noise (19). It encompasses a wide array of objects and interfaces, choices and designs, that organize our perceptions and influence the transmission and receipt of information/signals.

What aspects of contemporary life come to mind? Come up with a vivid, detailed example to illustrate Terranova's point. Be sure to attend to what she calls the "level of distracted perception . . [that] informs habits and percepts and regulates the speed of a body by plugging it into a field of action" (19). It might help if you begin from a schematic account formulated in terms of Shannon's diagram and then add to and enrich that schematic with more atmosphere and detail.

After you have a detailed example in mind, consider the political implications. You might need to think about the political implications for whom: for police, surveillance, or state apparatuses? for those seeking to resist or change a political formation? for the general field or norm that establishes the base point or expectations for political action (that is, the level of everyday habit and normal life)?

Hive Meltdown Imminent (from Fractal Ontology)

An excerpt from Warning, Hive Meltdown Imminent (you might ask yourself how the ideas here could serve as critique of Lanier): 

Michel Serres never fails to remind us of something simple and indispensable. It is that all relationships are founded upon noise. In the beginning, there is noise, not silence. Even the simplest words arrive much later; and, at any rate, our words are still noise. The din and clamor of the many is sometimes frightful; and Serres’ work can be singularly terrifying. But Serres’ reminder is highly rational, even a joyful reconsecration of science.

Serres delights in showing us old meanings of new words, and vice versa; but it particularly to this word, noise, and its French cognate, parasite, that he gives unique expressivity and sonorousness. One of the primary meanings of noise in his work is chaos: the pure multiplicity behind things, without any pre-existing order or organization. All our knowledge is an organization of unorganized noise; noise is being-in-itself. In this context noise can also mean static, a cross-signal or lawless irruption, witnessed in the chaotic permutations introduced by chance into a flow of information, perhaps even from another physical system entirely. Static can also mean stationary, the white noise which persists even in the stillness of non-existence: in this sense noise also stands for the ever-present background noise, the racket and din of human and inhuman machines, over which it is often necessary to speak loudly in order to make oneself heard. Noise means that no system is without turbulence for very long, that there is always chaos, multiplicity and deviation; in short, there is always a parasite, always background noise, always depth and darkness beyond order and disorder. No system is an island, without relations, above the sea; but there are islands of ordered relations upon an ocean of noise. The universe is turbulence, but — and this is the strange and subtle turn — the converse is not true: turbulence is not universal, but local. It is absolute and relative at once: the violent sea becomes calm, a top falls, an earthquake ends. Still there are always larger forces, larger closed systems tumbling into chaos. Every system is an image of a system free from turbulence, an abstract or virtual composition. But reality is always chaotic, always in minimal deviation from every possible model: everything is in motion; everything falls.

An infinite multiplicity of divergent forces in motion, turbulence as the inner being or struggle for a deeper order to become actual: we begin to get a picture of Serres’ trembling, self-organizing world. In many ways we are somewhere not far from Deleuze; the similarity in some ways is quite plain: they share an undying passion for creation (of concepts) and convergence (of disciplines); they both evoke “strange” or overlooked but profound continuities between the present and the past; finally, they share a deep-rooted curiousity for minor expressivities, for hidden multiplicities, and for indeterminacy.

Emptiness (on the end of bookstores)

From The Last Delta-T: a post about the closing of bookstores (by Stephen Marsh)

Emptiness.

—

The Borders in my town has been in the process of closing for a few weeks now. I first heard about it when I came back to California for Thanksgiving break; at that point, the store had a 30% off sale on everything in store and up to 50% or so on bargain materials. When I went back today to pick up some holiday gifts, the sale had turned into a 40% off on everything to 60% for bargain stuff. They're replacing it with a new medical building.

I'm a big fan of print culture. I really love bookstores and libraries. They've always felt like a source of comfort for me. I can't really imagine using an e-reader because I'm so attached to the tactile sensation of pages, especially worn pages, beneath my fingers. I get finicky about the contrast, size, and typeface of the print on pages. I like certain publishers more than others because of that. Et cetera.

Which is why it was so weird to go into this bookstore in its death throes. People swarmed. Shelves were empty. The area around the Children's section, which included the Biography section and the Philosophy section, was corded off with police tape. All of the sorting was haphazard; the sections weren't well labeled and the staff clearly hadn't bothered to alphabetize everything when they moved it. There were signs taped onto some of the columns in the store, printed on brightly-colored paper, with things like "A mind is a terrible thing to waste!!" on them throughout. Most of the shelves themselves had yellow index-cards at the top indicating that they had been sold to one person or another; others had signs with prices on them, several of which had been Sharpied-out once or twice and reduced. Sections once-familiar were jammed with books that I remembered from other parts of the store.

The experience was profoundly unsettling. I felt like a vulture at times, picking off the scraps of the place at its end, exploiting the sale prices and joining the mass in hastening the store's demise. There was a profound sense in me that something there had been lost, that an order with which I was familiar had been discarded in the end times, that things I remembered and memories that I had did not apply to the building in which I was standing. Something was off. I wasn't sure what. But, the emptiness was palpable; cold and staid.

It's probably cliché by now to bemoan the death of the local bookstore. Other people have done it with prettier prose. And I'm conflicted about how much that outweighs the ability of people to have greater access to cheaper books now than before. But there will for me always be a sadness in watching bookstores, even corporate ones, die one by one. There's something about physical places that gives them a soul of their own. Memories are built in them, they become like old friends. Friendships, romances, periods of life alight and dissipate. Especially for bookstores, they are places of communal thought and learning. Their presence says something profound about the values a culture and society holds and the things we as people love, with all of our hearts and souls.

What do we lose, irreparably and forever, when a place dies?

I picked something up for me on the way to the cash register. The store's last copy of Paradise Lost.

Network Culture (1)

Some analysts and commentators refer to the present an information age. At the same time, others emphasize confusion, saturation, and excess. For them, networked communication brings with it not so much information as it does noise. Terranova's discussion begins from the premise that these two insights are two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same network culture. Her goal in this book is to conceptualize this abundant, accelerating culture. She thinks that it is possible to analyze it, to grasp what makes it unique, without getting bogged down in specific applications (like blogs or Facebook) or in cultural differences (whether those are generational or linguistic).

Accordingly, in the introduction she emphasizes that our current setting is one of a global culture characterized by multiple channels and a single informational milieu (p. 1).

When we look at contemporary culture (and/or the internet) we easily get overwhelmed by multiplicity, singularity, commonality, uniqueness, differentiation in scale, as well as interconnectivity. All these amplify and inhibit the emergence of commonality and antagonism. For Terranova, this means that network culture brings with it possibilities for transformation (particularly political transformation) that might go in directions of capture or closure but could also portend openness and emergence (hint for understanding the text: Terranova's basic strategy is to set out a position or idea, locate its limits, and then find within the position or idea an option or alternative that it opens up). The book explores these directions (in fact, much of the discussion is aimed at activists and theorists, to try to get them to recognize that the setting of politics isn't the same as it used to be--network culture brings with it a new combination of culture, power, and communication, p. 9).

Its first exploration focuses on the idea of information. The term is frequently repeated. Yet this repetition tends to confuse everyday notions of information with some of the insights of information theory. For example, folks generally think that information refers to content and that it is "immaterial" (an idea in our heads rather than stuff in the world). Terranova rejects these assumptions (p. 7), doing so via a discussion of three key insights from an important 1948 paper on information theory by Claude Shannon). She emphasizes the difference between signal and noise, information's dependence on uncertainty (or entropy), and the connection between information and nonlinearity (as in powerlaws). Each of these aspects of information will have repercussions (be correlative to) for what she calls the cultural politics of information (p. 9).

Shannon's Diagram

Engagement