Independent Media

Lecture at the Istanbul Conference on Freedom of Speech Noam Chomsky The title of one of our earlier sessions was Cogito, “I think.” That may serve as a useful reminder that even more fundamental than the right of free expression is the right to think. And that has not gone unchallenged. Right here for example. I suppose the most famous case is that of Ismail Besikci, who has endured many years in prison on the charge of having committed “thought crimes.” And even worse, for having dared to put his thoughts into words, in his documentation of crimes against the Kurds in Syria, Iran, Iraq — and finally Turkey, the unpardonable offense.
Institute for Anarchist Studies Newsletter, Fall 2010 Dear IAS friends: In the midst of the circus of witchcraft, sexual liaisons, allegations of socialism, barter medicine, and human brains in mice that is electoral politics, and throughout the ongoing horrors visited on people and ecosystems by capitalism and war, the IAS has persevered in its small way to encourage a broader and deeper debate. We see people every day engaging in projects that give life and meaning to the possibility of another world. Through book tours, support for radical authors, conferences, and collaboration in the work of other organizations, we connect in solidarity with people who are forging ties of real and free community.
Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise Dossier on Europe, Education, Global Capitalism and Ideology Volume 3, Dossier 2: On Europe, Education, Global Capitalism and Ideology Edited by Marina Grzinic The Dossier on the topic of Europe, education, global capitalism and ideology is part of de-coloniality at large (of which WKO is an outlet) and the established - as well as of growing - network of decolonial researchers, scholars, intellectuals, artists and activists, made the publication and distribution of the Dossier possible. Marina Grzinic asked a new generation of writers from a European context coming mostly but not exclusively from the former Yugoslav area and Austria, as well as from the United States, Latin America, and the second generation of African Diaspora in Austria, all formed within the (west) European humanity system, to re-question its foundation and to implicate a process of straightforward decoloniality, antiracist politics, critique of anti-Semitism and slavery in the present global world of capitalism on all its numerous levels (from theory, epistemology, art, social and the political).
"The End of Capitalism" Lewis Lapham and Lynn Parramore [This is the second installment of "The Influencers," a six-part interview series that Lynn Parramore, the editor of New Deal 2.0 and a media fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, is conducting for Salon. She talked to Lewis Lapham, the former longtime editor of Harper’s and the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly, about the nature of American-style capitalism — its beginning, its historical manifestation and, possibly, its end. Q: Historically, what do you see as the dominant characteristics of America? A: It’s faith in the spirit and mechanics and moral value of capitalism. It is a country of expectant millionaires. You have the notions of risk, of labor put to a productive use, deferred pleasure — ideas that come out of our Puritan ancestry. And Puritans, by the way, were also venture capitalists. The plantation in Plymouth, and then in Massachusetts Bay, was intended to bring money to its investors in London. Capitalism is the promise — it’s the bet on the future. It’s the hope of a new beginning over the next ridge of mountains, around the next bend in the river. It gives the common man a chance. That’s in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The original wording was: life, liberty and property. But happiness and property were almost synonymous in the Calvinist mind!
Pirate Bay Down, Police Raids Across Europe thing.co.uk Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden. Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two

"There Is No Information, Only Transformation"
An Interview with Bruno Latour
By Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz

[From Hybrid Workspace, Documenta X, Kassel, August 16, 1997]

Bruno Latour (Paris) is a philosopher, specialized in the anthropology of
science and technology. He is a professor at the Centre of the Sociology
of Innovation at the l'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris.
He is called "one of today's most acute, if idiosyncratic, thinkers about
science and society." Amongst his books, published by Harvard University
Press, one can find "We have never been modern", "Aramis, or the love of
technology" and "The Pasteurization of France". His Documenta lecture can
be seen or heard at: http://www.mediaweb-tv.de/dx/0816/gaeste_frame.html

Geert Lovink: At the moment there are two concepts of the computer: an
abstract, computational machine, based on mathematics and language.
Opposed to this we have the future computer as an image processing device,
an interactive television set. How do look at this distinction between the
language based machine versus the image based medium?

Bruno Latour: I do not believe that computers are abstract. There is a very interesting article, 'On the Origin of Objects' by a computer philosopher called Brian Cantwell-Smith, in a book about digital print.

He made the comment that the fact that there is (either) 0 and (or) 1
has absolutely no connection with the abstractness. It is actually
very concrete, never 0 and 1 (at the same time). The distinction you
suggested is slightly misleading. The origin of this (distinction) is
lying in the notion of information. There is only transformation.
Information as something which will be carried through space and time,
without deformation, is a complete myth. People who deal with the
technology will actually use the practical notion of transformation. From
the same bytes, in terms of 'abstract encoding', the output you get is
entirely different, depending on the medium you use. Down with
information. It is a bad view on science and a bad rendering of
contemporary critique of images, all this fight against the
naturalization.

What’s Left: Materialist Responses to the Internet
Mark Poster

Forum Building Digital Commons and Collaborative Communities
29th–30th October 2011, Barcelona, Catalonia & Online

http://www.digital-commons.net

Building Digital Commons and Collaborative Communities is a new initiative aiming to bring together individuals, collective and organizations from different Free and Open Collaborative Communities, Digital Commons Initiatives and Researchers in the area to identify ways to support and learn from each other and collaborate in order to promote together digital commons.

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