The Human Culture and the diaspora of Life
Ideas
Science Must Push Copyright Aside
Many journal publishers appear to believe that the purpose of scientific literature is to enable them to publish journals so as to collect subscriptions from scientists and students. Such thinking is known as 'confusion of the means with the ends'. Their approach has been to restrict access even to read the scientific literature to those who can and will pay for it. They use copyright law, which is still in force despite its inappropriateness for computer networks, as an excuse to stop scientist...
Eravamo pronti
Le sfide portate dai Governi alla libera circolazione di idee in Internet si giocano su tre tavoli. Il primo riguarda la difesa della libertà d'espressione in Internet. [...] Una seconda sfida riguarda la libertà di pubblicazione. Per anni è stato un gioco da ragazzi aprire il proprio sito personale, avviare con entusiasmo la newsletter della nostra associazione culturale o un newsgroup dove condividere barzellette, o discussioni tematiche sul signor Rothbard, o per protestare contro la globaliz...
Aesthetics of Programming. Interview with Mark Napier
The symbolic structure of language allows us to navigate in a map of the world rather than the world itself. [...] Language is a very powerful tool that allows us to create a map of our physical experiences and then navigate in that map, and by so doing we can communicate complex experiences and actions to others, even long after we die, if we write them down. Most of the time we can't separate the map from reality. It *is* reality as far as we can tell. [...] Software is very similar to this. I...
DOT Force e la lotta al divario digitale
Solo pochi anni fa, nel pieno dell'entusiasmo per l'enorme sviluppo e diffusione delle reti informatiche, dagli Usa era giunto un monito importante: difficilmente, anche nella migliore tra le ipotesi, le reti sarebbero state utilizzate da una percentuale maggiore del 65 per cento della popolazione. [...] Questa disparità di accessi è andata via via trasformandosi in una realtà che oggi appare ancora più netta del previsto, allontanando gli auspici che guardavano alle reti come a un'opportunità p...
Harvesting the Net: Memory Flesh
About three years ago I started investigating what the human genome was attempting to make. I found it almost impossible to sift through the emerging public discussion around it; it was and still continues to be a subject that stages a certain type of information warfare. But it kept making the papers and getting a lot of media attention with inflated projections of its potential. [...] Harvesting the Net: Memory Flesh [...] contains the original source material discovered through my time-based ...
Live ASCII Streaming of Video
One of the experiments in using Internet technology in representing video material is ASCII streaming, in which illusion of the motion is brought to experience by moving ASCII text based images, within the fixed raster matrix on the screen. ASCII streaming does not try to bring Internet multimedia streaming close to "broadcast quality", but goes into totally different direction: representing video as the sequence of moving images composed of ASCII letters.
Transidiomen
Dopo due secoli di sovranità delle nazioni, ora la supremazia politica, sociale e culturale passa nelle mani degli organismi internazionali [...], delle corporazioni multinazionali, delle holdings di aiuti umanitari, delle varie forze di pronto intervento militare. In questo contesto cambia il regime di appartenenza, non più - o non solo - legato ad una terra, una lingua, un popolo, bensì ad un'area cosmopolita [...], ad un linguaggio globale, ad una comunità diasporica, corporation o organismo ...
Social Software
It is, of course, possible to consider the ontological evolution of software from a perspective of complex social structure. It can be argued that any given software is a dynamic of data relations that combine in interesting ways to emerge increasingly complex strata of information interactions. And although these interactions are computationally discrete, they are never completely predictive, for algorithms operate as perturbations within the consensual domain of software's interactions with it...
MP3, la battaglia continua
Otto delle quindici tracce presenti nel nuovo album "A tribute to Jim Reeves" del cantante country americano Charles Pride sono apparse la scorsa settimana su una pagina Web "privata" di Yahoo!. La cosa sembrerebbe del tutto comune visti i tempi che corrono, se non fosse per due ragioni. La prima è che i brani erano già disponibili online prima dell'uscita del cd, previsto per venerdì scorso; secondariamente, le copie risultavano protette da un sistema antipirateria fresco fresco, messo a punto ...
Conversions
Net art is about *conversions*. Why conversions? Perhaps because net art needs data like paintings need pigment, and converting data from one form to another gives net artists the basic materials they need for artmaking. The conversions stem also from our fascination with transformation, a type of digital alchemy where the use of an intermediary substrate (ones and zeros) lets artists convert IP addresses to colors, video to ASCII text, HTML to animation, and so on. In recent months net art has ...
No more TV
No more TV. I am not suggesting the negation of the attributes of the device as an instrument of communication, of social interaction, of *democratization* of the cultural experience: instead, I propose a radical discussion about the mechanisms that regulate its *real* existence in a "*free* market" context (the existing one, to be precise), seeing that the possibility of its effective social existence ever being contemplated again is virtually nil, except perhaps occasionally (in isolated circl...
Invisibility/corporeality
The other day I was having a discussion with someone about dance making and interactive systems and the 'transparency' issue as regards the receptivity of an audience to the aspects of the work that might be invisible. What is being considered *invisible* in this context is the mapping from input to various forms of output - and this mapping is essentially the consequence of someone providing the instructions for the computer, telling it what to do.
Interview with Tom Betts/NullPointer
NullPointer has recently released a beta-version of a new web visualisation application, WebTracer. [...] The application deals with sites and pages as molecules and atoms, the resulting cellular structures reflect the information structures of the web. I find that the representation of the many shells and layers that guide our exploration and expliotation of cyberspace can help to reinforce the awareness that all information systems are guided by a great number of defining elements. The Hardwar...
Interview with Jeffrey Shaw
The integrity of the original artwork is only fully intact in the imagination of its creator. Even its translation into the physical is a depreciation forced by the contraints of materiality, and exposure of the artwork to the social leads to the complete degradation/reconstruction of the 'original' by its intepretors and manipulators. On the other hand it is only in this social vector that the artwork becomes a cultural artifact and assumes a historical significance. The 'original spirit' must ...
The Bandwidth Dilemma
A brief look into the political economy of bandwidth could help. The question of internet speed is and will always be determined by economics and (cyber)geography, as the maps show, not per se by the technology used at the consumer's end. Speed on the internet is moody and in constant flux, not only depending on one's investment in hardware, locality and available connectivity. Speed is subjective and cultural experience. A whole range of unknown factors can bring the undisturbed surfing to a su...
L’informatica sotto l’Euro
Il campione è molto ampio, circa 16 mila persone intervistate fra novembre e dicembre dello scorso anno, in media circa mille unità per Paese membro. L’argomento è il computer: chi e quanto lo usa, cosa ne fa, con quale competenza. Il Benchmark Report di cui vi stiamo parlando è un complesso lavoro di ricerca commissionato dall’UE, volto a saggiare periodicamente (un paio di volte l'anno) il livello informatico dei cittadini dei Paesi facenti parte l'Unione. I risultati sono decisamente interess...
Do Little Kids Belong on the Net?
Do computers affect children in a positive or negative way? Let me suggest that there is something funny even about the question itself. Professor Seymour Papert of MIT, a pioneer in the field of computers and education, has argued that asking this kind of question is an example of what he calls "technocentric thinking." [...] It is more correct to ask whether teachers and/or parents are using computers in ways that are beneficial to their children or harmful to them. As well, it is reasonable t...
Il Progetto GNU – The GNU Project
Stime recenti valutano in dieci milioni il numero di utenti di sistemi GNU/Linux quali Debian GNU/Linux e Red Hat Linux. Il software libero ha creato tali vantaggi pratici che gli utenti stanno approdando ad esso per pure ragioni pratiche. [...] L'interesse per il software, però, sta crescendo più in fretta della coscienza della filosofia su cui è basato, e questa disparità causa problemi.
[Estimates today are that there are ten million users of GNU/Linux systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and ...
Cool Business: Etoy’s toy wars
etoy represents the "next generation" in artistic business: smart and web-based, elitist and creative. Net art, activism, traditional art and marketing strategies as well as youth culture subversion meet in the etoy corporation concept. etoy appropriate not art, but business visuals. In addition they make use of the anarchic impudence of the youth culture. What Felix Stalder in his Telepolis article called bad boy attitude is the typical dandy attitude of the aesthetically acting individual. Eto...
Interview with Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik has been labeled the "father of video art." What is much less known is that he was not only the creator of the much-abused term "telecommunication superhighway," but also among the first to use telecommunication satellites for artistic exchange. His satellite performances "Good Morning Mr Orwell," "Wrap around the world" and "Good- bye Kipling" brought together artists such as David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Charlotte Moorman and others to perform together. T...
Company image e company identity
Anche un'impresa ha un'immagine e un'identità. Questa affermazione può sembrare scontata, ma ci pone comunque di fronte a degli interrogativi di una certa portata quando riflettiamo sulle implicazioni della comunicazione in rete (Internet e intrantet) nella costruzione e nel mantenimento dell'immagine e dell'identità di un'impresa (company image e company identity per usare i termini di uso corrente nella letteratura). Per esempio, è ancora possibile sfruttare il controllo dell'informazione per ...
Ripples and Puddles
In the decades following the first universal robots, I expect a second generation with mammallike brainpower and cognitive ability. They will have a conditioned learning mechanism, and steer among alternative paths in their application programs on the basis of past experience, gradually adapting to their special circumstances. A third generation will think like small primates and maintain physical, cultural and psychological models of their world to mentally rehearse and optimize tasks before ph...
A Report on The International Festival of Multimedia Urban Arts
This multimedia and digital art festival is an ambitious and visionary undertaking organized by the Pierre Schaeffer Center (CICV) of France and funded by the French Ministry of Culture. Over 350 artists from 41 countries descended upon the village of Belfort, France. Here's the tally; 6 theater pieces, 63 installations, 30 performances, 20 cd-rom presentations, 37 internet sites, 70 videos, and 30 animations. Check out the tip top web site to get an idea of the breadth of work presented. The fe...
Nuovo Mercato/3. Quando la sicurezza dell’investitore latita
Il recentissimo appello alle aziende della Consob, organismo addetto al controllo per tutto quello che passa in Piazza Affari, ad informazioni più complete e aggiornate nelle notizie diffuse attraverso la rete evidenzia una piaga scoperta in verità già da tempo: gli investitori possono essere tratti in inganno (e di fatto lo sono) da documentazioni societarie carenti se non fuorvianti presenti nelle pagine dei siti web ufficiali dedicati all'informazione finanziaria, troppo spesso dediti in real...
Nuovo Mercato (NM)/2. Know-how, questo sconosciuto
Già, listino tecnologico. Ma cos'avranno mai di tecnologico i biglietti da visita della Poligrafica San Faustino, quotata anch'essa al NM? E come mai una società come Prima Industrie di Collegno, operante nel settore degli automatismi industriali, è stata cortesemente messa alla porta dalla SEC in occasione del tentativo di sbarco al Nasdaq, ben precedente alla planata su NM?
E lo chiamano Nuovo Mercato
E' stato denominato Nuovo Mercato e parrebbe, almeno in apparenza, una specie di Nasdaq all'italiana, vale a dire uno spazio dedicato esclusivamente a titoli più o meno tecnologici. Recentissimo per costituzione e ancora relativamente piccolo quanto a numero di società (40) e capitalizzazione, NM non solo ha destinato agli investitori italiani gioie (poche) e dolori (qualcuno in più), ma è stato anche protagonista a Piazza Affari di enormi movimenti di capitali e di un paio di storie davvero sen...
Digitized Bodies – Virtual Spectacles Project
The work of sound artist Atau Tanaka. His Corporeal performance November 24 illustrated lucidly Donna Haraway's insight about bio-medical technological advancements giving birth to "couplings between organism and machine" in A Cyborg Manifesto. On stage, Tanaka explored the gestural articulation of the body as an electronic musical instrument, with the help of his BioMuse, a neural musical instrument controller that he has been performing with since 1992, during his graduate work in computer mus...