Posts tagged politics

Captives of the Cloud by Metahaven for E-Flux

“E-Flux this month includes an essay by Metahaven (Part 1 of 3) on cloud computing, international law, and privacy. ‘Citizens across the world are subject to the same Patriot Act powers’ the US has over its citizens’ as data stored overseas by US companies is still subject to US surveillance. The US also excersizes ‘super-jurisdiction’ in cases like the seizure of Megaupload, which was a Hong Kong-based company, the DOJ accused of “willful conspiracy to break US law” due it’s global user base. Furthermore, ‘all top-level domain names’ registered through VeriSign are subject to  US seizure, even if operated entirely outside the country. The essay continues, looking at examples of Apple’s App store censorship of Drones+, Google+ and Facebook real name policy, and other examples of the ‘cloud as a political space’”

Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 . San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973. First printing. Contains the priceless and still relevant quote from Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”

Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 . San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973. First printing. Contains the priceless and still relevant quote from Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.”

Panic of the Plutocrats

“It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent…Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced ‘mobs’ and ‘the pitting of Americans against Americans.’ The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging ‘class warfare,’ while Herman Cain calls them ‘anti-American.’ My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.”

William Egginton's ‘Quixote,’ Colbert and the Reality of Fiction

“In his contribution to The Stone last week, Alex Rosenberg posed a defense of naturalism — ‘the philosophical theory that treats science as our most reliable source of knowledge and scientific method as the most effective route to knowledge’ — at the expense of other theoretical endeavors such as, notably, literary theory…We especially revere the genius of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world, but I’d like to focus on the genius of another writer, a Spanish one, Miguel de Cervantes, who shaped our world as well, and did so in ways that may not be apparent even to those aware of his enormous literary influence…in writing those volumes Cervantes did something even more profound: he crystallized in prose a confluence of changes in how people in early modern Europe understood themselves and the world around them. What he passed down to those who would write in his wake, then, was not merely a new genre but an implicit worldview that would infiltrate every aspect of social life: fiction.”

Is a Museum a Factory?

“Andy Warhol’s Factory served as model for the new museum in its productive turn towards being a “social factory.” By now, descriptions of the social factory abound. It exceeds its traditional boundaries and spills over into almost everything else. It pervades bedrooms and dreams alike, as well as perception, affection, and attention. It transforms everything it touches into culture, if not art. It is an a-factory, which produces affect as effect. It integrates intimacy, eccentricity, and other formally unofficial forms of creation. Private and public spheres get entangled in a blurred zone of hyper-production.”

Fear and Favor

“A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ but you’re actually just extras in a remake of ‘Citizen Kane.’”

Dysfunctionality in Digital Art - Marie-Laure Ryan between play and politics: “All in all, we should not pass a global judgment on the predilection of new media for dysfunctionality: some of it may be an easy cop-out, some of it may be a cocoon, out of which a beautiful butterfly will emerge some day (interactive narrative? AI-based projects such as Façade?); and some of it is a cocoon so well-crafted, so amusing, so original, that it makes us forget about the butterfly (the most successful ludic applications). Here however I am adopting the point of view of the reader, and this may be beside the point for digital writing. If we take Barthes’s conception of writing as “an intransitive verb” literally, what matters most in new media art is not reading but writing - the fun of inventing new games with machines, language and code, and the fun of participating in a community of like-minded authors. .”

Dysfunctionality in Digital Art - Marie-Laure Ryan between play and politics: “All in all, we should not pass a global judgment on the predilection of new media for dysfunctionality: some of it may be an easy cop-out, some of it may be a cocoon, out of which a beautiful butterfly will emerge some day (interactive narrative? AI-based projects such as Façade?); and some of it is a cocoon so well-crafted, so amusing, so original, that it makes us forget about the butterfly (the most successful ludic applications). Here however I am adopting the point of view of the reader, and this may be beside the point for digital writing. If we take Barthes’s conception of writing as “an intransitive verb” literally, what matters most in new media art is not reading but writing - the fun of inventing new games with machines, language and code, and the fun of participating in a community of like-minded authors. .”

Teabonics

Signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests. They all feature “creative” spelling or grammar. This new dialect of the English language shall be known as “Teabonics.”