Google against extremism (AYM related)

Remember AYM (Movements.org) and one of its founders, Jared Cohen? He has a new project, fighting violence extremism. That is, Google, a corporation, is participating in a political struggle against what it (or the US State Department) considers violent extremism:

Neo-Nazi groups and al Qaeda might not seem to have much in common, but they do in one key respect: their recruits tend to be very young. The head of Google’s new think tank, Jared Cohen, believes there might be some common reasons why young people are drawn to violent extremist groups, no matter their ideological or philosophical bent. So this summer, Cohen is spearheading a conference, in Dublin, Ireland, to explore what it is that draws young people to these groups and what can be done to redirect them.

Technology, of course, is playing a role both in recruiting members to extremist groups, as well as fueling pro-democracy and other movements--and that’s where Google’s interest lies. "Technology is a part of every challenge in the world, and a part of every solution,” Cohen tells Fast Company. "To the extent that we can bring that technology expertise, and mesh it with the Council on Foreign Relations’ academic expertise--and mesh all of that with the expertise of those who have had these experiences--that's a valuable network to explore these questions."

Cohen is the former State Department staffer who is best known for his efforts to bring technology into the country’s diplomatic efforts. But he was originally hired by Condaleezza Rice back in 2006 for a different--though related--purpose: to help Foggy Bottom better understand Middle Eastern youths (many of whom were big technology adopters) and how they could best "deradicalized." Last fall, Cohen joined Google as head of its nascent Google Ideas, which the company is labeling a "think/do tank."

This summer’s conference, "Summit Against Violent Extremism," takes place June 26-29 and will bring together about 50 former members of extremist groups--including former neo-Nazis, Muslim fundamentalists, and U.S. gang members--along with another 200 representatives from civil society organizations, academia, private corporations, and victims groups. The hope is to identify some common factors that cause young people to join violent organizations, and to form a network of people working on the issue who can collaborate going forward.

"With more than 50% of the world’s population under the age of thirty and the vast majority of those characterized as 'at risk,' socially, economically, or both, an oversupply exists of young people susceptible to recruitment by the extremist religious or ideological group closest to them in identity or proximity," Cohen wrote on the blog of the Council on Foreign Relations, the event’s co-host.

One of the technologies where extremism is playing out these days is in Google’s own backyard. While citizen empowerment movements have made use of YouTube to broadcast their messages, so have Terrorist and other groups. Just this week, anti-Hamas extremists kidnapped an Italian peace activist and posted their hostage video to YouTube first before eventually murdering him. YouTube has been criticized in the past for not removing violent videos quick enough. But Cohen says the conference is looking at the root causes that prompt a young person to join one of the groups in the first place. "There are a lot of different dimensions to this challenge," he says. "It’s important not to conflate everything."

Web Creator Tim Berners-Lee: Internet Access Is A Human Right

Web Creator Tim Berners-Lee: Internet Access Is A Human Right: "We're living in a world where Internet access should be as readily available as water, according to the man who helped create the web, Tim Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee, who made his comments at an MIT symposium on 'Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything,' noted that people have become so reliant on the web that it should be a right to have access to it, as reported by Network World.

'Access to the Web is now a human right,' he said. 'It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.'"

Second paper topics. Papers due on April 22.

Be sure to read the instructions carefully.

Deadline: Papers are due on April 22 at 5:00. I do not accept late papers--no exceptions. You must submit a paper and electronic version. Paper versions are due in my office at 5:00 on April 22. Electronic versions must be sent to my email address: jdean@hws.edu. Again, you must submit both versions (submitting just one does not count and you will get a "0").

Format: Papers must be typed, double-spaced, with a title page, citations (recognized academic form), and page numbers. The paper version must be stapled in the upper left corner. Papers should be 6-8 pages long (5 is too short; 9 is too long).

Style: Papers must have a thesis, that is, a primary claim for which you argue on the basis of your reading of the texts assigned for the class. The thesis must appear in your first paragraph. The assignment is to write an essay on one of the topics listed below. The essay should answer the question the topic poses. In answering the question, the essay should draw from (and cite) the relevant course materials (as well as materials from your presentation if you choose that question). You are welcome to email me your thesis in advance to make sure you are on the right track. I can only answer queries made before noon on April 20.

Assessment: The criteria for assessment (not in rank order) are 1) the format requirements; 2) the cogency of the thesis; 3) the quality of the argument; 4) the quality of the writing; 5) the depth of engagement with the course readings; 6) the understanding of the readings demonstrated in the paper. I am looking for papers that take a position and present strong, well-supported arguments for it. I am also looking for papers that show improvement and development since the beginning of the course.

Questions (choose 1):

1. Terminator 2 depicts a future of sentient machines. Mark Andrejevic envisions a present wherein interactivity disempowers citizens politically while at the same time telling them that they are active and involved. Given the empirical examples we've discussed in class (Movements.org, open source software/development, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia), which vision seems most likely? Are the ways of dealing with (preventing? overcoming?) these two futures the same? Why or why not?

2. Franco Berardi argues that in semio-capitalism, "human minds and flesh are integrated with digital circuits thanks to interfaces of acceleration and simplification. . . " Explain Berardi's thesis. How is it like or not like a vision of Terminators? How is it like or not like the vision of hive mind or singularity Lanier criticizes? Is Berardi right? Why or why not?

3. Franco Berardi contrasts connection with conjunction. Explain these two concepts. What do they entail for the connective generation? Use these concepts to analyze Facebook and/or Twitter.

4. Write an essay in which you compare and contrast Dean and Berardi. Be sure to consider whatever being and the connective generation as well as their discussions of the change in the symbolic/decline of symbolic efficiency.

5. Write an essay that uses one of the theoretical pieces we've read this term (Terranova, Dean, Andrejevic, Berardi) to explore more analytically the empirical material you covered in your class presentation. (These papers will be graded in terms of the depth/detail of your analysis).

6. Franco Berardi describes our world of digital networks in terms of a series of psychopathologies. Yet he also suggests that information technologies are liberating. Which side of his story is more convincing? Why? Are both sides present in our contemporary setting? How or in what sense?

7. Franco Berardi suggests that the connective generation (the generation that learned more words from machines than from their mothers) lacks empathy and desire. He even suggests that art and poetry are captured in semio-capitalism, unable to oppose semio-capitalism. Why does he think this? What are the implications of this claim? Is he right?

Celebrity and the refusal of work (I prefer to sleep)

I've been thinking about Ryan's remarks on celebrity [check out Ryan's clarification of his point]. Elements of celebrity that are appealing include money, doing what one wants, and, "being almost like a kid again" (I think that is pretty close to a direct quote). In a way, then, the desire for celebrity is a desire for freedom (autonomy). It is also a desire for recognition (to be known to others).

Is it possible that the desire for recognition ends up trumping the desire for freedom? Or that the desire for recognition functions in such a way that it can be manipulated and so substitute for or displace the desire for freedom (we might think here about the entrepreneurs quoted in the Friedman article; as they explain, successful social media uses people's desire for affirmation, people's need to prove they exist).

What if we focus on the desire for freedom? Bifo describes the desire for freedom as a refusal for work: "I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep."

Might then the celebrity form be a form of our alienation, our unfreedom? If we were free to sleep when we wanted, free not to work, would we be likely to fantasize about the freedom of a select few?

HACKING MONOPOLISM TRILOGY - Face to Facebook

HACKING MONOPOLISM TRILOGY - Face to Facebook:
"There are other common themes in the projects. In all of them we stole data that is very sensitive for the respective corporations. With Google it was the 'clicks' on their AdSense Program; with Amazon we started to steal the content of entire books, and with Facebook we stole a huge amount of public data profiles. In all the three projects, the theft is not used to generate money at all, or for personal economic advantage, but only to twist the stolen data or knowledge against the respective corporations. In GWEI it was the shares obtained through the money created by the Adsense program; in Amazon Noir it was the pdf books distributed for free; and in Face To Facebook it is the collection of profiles moved with no prior notice to a dating website.

All the projects, indeed, independently claim that some of the corporation’s 'crown jewels', including their brand image and marketing approaches, can be hacked, focusing only on their established strategies and thinking in a 'what if?' fashion"

Radical Philosophy - Commentaries - March/April 2011

Excerpt from an interesting discussion of Wikileaks. I encourage you to read the whole piece, available at the link:

Radical Philosophy - Commentaries - March/April 2011

"Years ago, Julian Assange considered solutions for an unusual problem, the kind of thing cryptographers discuss: how can you make sure a message only becomes readable at a certain time, not before, such that no human frailty or mechanical error interferes with the schedule? He came up with three answers, which display his knack for odd lateral thinking, an unremarked gift that turns up throughout his work. One solution: encrypt the message, and then broadcast the key to the code out into space, to ‘distant astral bodies’, as he puts it, and wait for it to be bounced back. You can publicize the body, the distance, the coordinates; the satellite dishes of Earth will be oriented at that hour of that day to pick up the bounce and your message will be read. Another solution is quite baroque, with space probes passing a key stream between them, ‘using space as the storage medium’, before sending decrypts back to Earth. The last is by far the most elegant solution, the most difficult to realize, and in some ways the cruellest."