Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 194
March 27, 2014
Club of Friends: Timur Novikov’s New Artists and the New Academy
*I would go. Now more than ever, really.
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/club-of-friends/
Club Of Friends. Timur Novikov’s New Artists and the New Academy
2 April–25 May 2014
Calvert 22 Foundation
22 Calvert Avenue
London E2 7JP
Nearest Tube: Shoreditch High St / Old St / Liverpool St
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–6pm,
First Thursdays noon–9pm
Admission free
T +44 (0) 20 7613 2141
info@calvert22.org
www.calvert22.org
Twitter / Facebook
Artists: Sergei ‘Afrika’ Bugaev / Sergei Chernov / Sergei Dobrotvorsky / Alexei ‘Willie’ Feoktistov / Konstantin Goncharov / Georgy Gurjanov / Yevgeny ‘Debil’ Kondratiev / Oleg Kotelnikov / (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov / Irena Kuksenaite / Victor Kuznetsov / Yuris Lesnik / Stanislav Makarov / Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe / Oleg Maslov / Bella Matveeva / Andrei Medvedev / Ivan Movsesyan / Timur Novikov / Egor Ostrov / Vadim Ovchinnikov / Ivetta Pomerantseva / Inal Savchenkov / Kirill Sluchainy / Ivan Sotnikov / Joulia Strauss / Olga Tobreluts / Viktor Tsoi / Andrei Venclova / Igor Veritchev / Denis Yegelsky / Yevgeny Yufit
“The first UK group exhibition of work by the New Artists and the New Academy; two movements founded in St Petersburg by the artist Timur Novikov (1985–2002). The exhibition takes its title from the Club of Friends of V.V. Mayakovsky, which was founded by Novikov as an expression of the New Artists’ creative freedom in the context of perestroika.
“In 1988, as the impact of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost was gathering momentum in the former Soviet Union, an exhibition took place at Kulturhuset in Stockholm. It was titled Glasnost I Kulturhuset, New Artists from Leningrad, and was the first international show of the Leningrad avant-garde (the New Artists) in the West. The exhibition travelled in a smaller form to arrive finally in the UK at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool, where it acted as the backdrop to a performance by Popular Mechanics, an orchestra that created a synthesis of music and art under the direction of the experimental composer Sergei Kuryokhin. Twenty-five years later, this moment underpins the exhibition Club of Friends at Calvert 22 Gallery.
“The New Artists—Oleg Kotelnikov, Ivan Sotnikov, Vadim Ovchinnikov, Inal Savchenkov, Viktor Tsoi, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov and Sergei ‘Afrika’ Bugaev—broke away from the official Leningrad art scene and rejected formal art education in favour of a more open-ended system of self-education and multi-disciplinary relationships. First operating out of a communal flat in a former church in central Leningrad, and then from informal spaces such as Novikov’s ASSA gallery, the group held a series of influential exhibitions, gigs, screenings and parties throughout the 1980s.
“In 1989, during a critical time of political, ideological and economic transition in Russia, Novikov decided to radically change his aesthetic and founded the New Academy; electing to follow the Old Masters and seeking out an ideal past within European culture.
“The exhibition is curated by Ekaterina Andreeva and brings together painting, video, graphic and archival material to present the work and life of a generation of figures whose experiments in art, collective creative practice and sexual representation remain groundbreaking to this day.
“The exhibition is organised in collaboration with the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.”
Talks and events
Curator’s talk
Thursday 3 April, 7–8:30pm
Ekaterina Andreeva, curator of Club of Friends, discusses the exhibition in conversation with David Thorp. The exhibition will be open until 9pm as part of First Thursdays.
Panel discussion: From Stalin to Sochi
Thursday 8 May, 7–9pm
What is behind the recent political homophobia in Putin’s Russia? What is the background that led to Russia’s new law against ‘propaganda for homosexuality’? Dan Healey, Professor of Modern Russian History, Oxford University; Maria Dudko, Founder of the Moscow Experimental School of Gender Studies and Svitlana Biedarieva, PhD Researcher at the Courtauld Institute of Art, will discuss the current political situation in Russia with a focus on gender, sexuality and censorship. Chaired by Mark Nash.
Talk and live music event: Utyugon
Wednesday 21 May, 7pm
St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch
Free entry. Booking is essential.
Cultural historian and BBC broadcaster Alexander Kan discusses the history of the utyugon and charts the New Artists’ associations with the Russian rock band Kino, the Popular Mechanics orchestra and the New Composers. Followed by a live music performance on a custom-built utyugon, with Ivan Sotnikov and Aza Shade, lead singer of London-based no wave band Manflu.
Panel discussion: Art education in Britain and Russia in the post-communist era
Monday 26 May, 7–9pm
A panel discussion reflecting on points of commonality and difference within art education in Britain and Russia today.
Panellists include Dr Richard Noble, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Goldsmiths University of London; Joseph Backstein, founder and director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow); Olesya Turkina, curator, critic and tutor at Smolny College Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University.
About Calvert 22 Gallery
Calvert 22 Gallery is the only not-for-profit institution dedicated to presenting the contemporary art of Russia and Eastern Europe to UK audiences. We present a dynamic programme of exhibitions, talks and cross-disciplinary events with both emergent and established artists. Founded in 2009, Calvert 22 Gallery gathers the most active voices from the region to investigate current directions in artistic practice and theory relating to the ‘former East.’ Calvert 22 Gallery is an initiative of the Calvert 22 Foundation.
Desig Fiction: RoboWow
*Obviously it’s a played-for-yucks lampoon, but it’s backed-up with a remarkably elaborate fake gadget-merchandising website from the alleged parent company “RoboMow.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/robowow-robot-does-everything
http://www.robomow.com/en-USA/
March 26, 2014
Arduino Day Torino
*Hey, Arduino and Torino are two of my favorite things.
About Arduino Day
Arduino Day is a worldwide celebration of Arduino’s first 10 years. It’s 24 hours full of events – both official and independent, anywhere around the world – where people interested in Arduino can meet, share their experiences, and learn more.
Who can participate?
Arduino invites all Arduino user groups, makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs, associations, teachers, pros, and newbies to participate. Let’s make this the biggest birthday party yet!
What can you do during Arduino Day?
You can attend any event or organize one for your community.
It doesn’t matter whether you are an expert or a newbie, an engineer, designer, crafter or maker: Arduino Day is open to anyone who wants to celebrate Arduino and all the things that have been done (or can be done!) with it.
The events set up by independent organizers will offer different types of activities, tailored to local audiences all over the world.
Arduino Day!
Una giornata per festeggiare Arduino e la sua community
Il 29 Marzo arriva l’Arduino Day!
Il Fablab non poteva mancare per i festeggiamenti!
Toolbox Coworking ci ospiterà per tutto il pomeriggio, inoltre ospiterà tutti i workshop e le talk che si alterneranno a partire dalle 15:00 fino alle 19:00.
Assieme ai nostri makers, che saranno presenti per uno show&tell dei loro progetti, scopriremo quanto è facile lavorare con Arduino e soprattutto quando è fantastico far parte della sua community.
Hai impegni per Sabato 29 Marzo ?
Vieni a trovarci da Toolbox Coworking in
Via Agostino da Montefeltro 2
“Invasion of the Data Snatchers” — the American Civil Liberties Union contemplates the Internet of Things
*Wrangle, wrangle, wrangle!
*It’s important to hear this stuff out, so I’m data-snatching the whole thing from the ACLU and posting it here in its entirety.
*If you are non-American and a Snowden fan, you may be chuckling ironically at the very thought of electronic “American civil liberties,” but that doesn’t mean that the Internet of Things isn’t coming directly for you, you, you.
“Invasion of the Data Snatchers: Big Data and the Internet of Things Means the Surveillance of Everything
03/25/2014
By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project & Matthew Harwood, Media Strategist, ACLU at 11:18am
“This piece originally ran at TomDispatch.com.
“Estimates vary, but by 2020 there could be over 30 billion devices connected to the Internet. Once dumb, they will have smartened up thanks to sensors and other technologies embedded in them and, thanks to your machines, your life will quite literally have gone online.
“The implications are revolutionary. Your smart refrigerator will keep an inventory of food items, noting when they go bad. Your smart thermostat will learn your habits and adjust the temperature to your liking. Smart lights will illuminate dangerous parking garages, even as they keep an “eye” out for suspicious activity.
“Techno-evangelists have a nice catchphrase for this future utopia of machines and the never-ending stream of information, known as Big Data, it produces: the Internet of Things. So abstract. So inoffensive. Ultimately, so meaningless.
“A future Internet of Things does have the potential to offer real benefits, but the dark side of that seemingly shiny coin is this: companies will increasingly know all there is to know about you. Most people are already aware that virtually everything a typical person does on the Internet is tracked. In the not-too-distant future, however, real space will be increasingly like cyberspace, thanks to our headlong rush toward that Internet of Things. With the rise of the networked device, what people do in their homes, in their cars, in stores, and within their communities will be monitored and analyzed in ever more intrusive ways by corporations and, by extension, the government.
“And one more thing: in cyberspace it is at least theoretically possible to log off. In your own well-wired home, there will be no “opt out.”
“You can almost hear the ominous narrator’s voice from an old “Twilight Zone” episode saying, “Soon the net will close around all of us. There will be no escape.”
“Except it’s no longer science fiction. It’s our barely distant present. (((Being a guy who’s both a science fiction writer and something of a techno-evangelist, I get a warm, cozy, familiar feeling from cautionary rhetoric like this. This has been going on during my entire lifetime, and I’m quite an old guy nowadays. This is like being told that “atomic bombs are bad.” I’ve heard that during my entire lifetime, too.)))
“Home Invasion
“[W]e estimate that only one percent of things that could have an IP address do have an IP address today, so we like to say that ninety-nine percent of the world is still asleep,” Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, told the Silicon Valley Summit in December. “It’s up to our imaginations to figure out what will happen when the ninety-nine percent wakes up.”
“Yes, imagine it. (((I’m having a pretty good time just imagining the public debate between Catherine Crump and Padmasree Warrior, yet another woman in contemporary electronics who has an awesome name.))) Welcome to a world where everything you do is collected, stored, analyzed, and, more often than not, packaged and sold to strangers — including government agencies. (((If the “snatched data” isn’t held by government and isn’t held by corporations, who’s supposed to hold it? The Swiss? I bet they’d be willing. The Internet-of-Things snatched data is just one aspect of the snatched-data issue generally. If you’re a libertarian, do you really want ironclad Internet-of-Things Digital Rights Management? What DO you want? Time to figure that out!)))
“In January, Google announced its $3.2 billion purchase of Nest, a company that manufactures intelligent smoke detectors and thermostats. The signal couldn’t be clearer. Google believes Nest’s vision of the “conscious home” will prove profitable indeed. (((I hate to play devil’s advocate here, but maybe Larry and Sergey are two increasingly eccentric California dudes who really love weird, impractical, out-there gizmos.))) And there’s no denying how cool the technology is. Nest’s smoke detector, for instance, can differentiate between burnt toast and true danger. In the wee hours, it will conveniently shine its nightlight as you groggily shuffle to the toilet. It speaks rather than beeps. If there’s a problem, it can contact the fire department. (((But what happens if you’ve got the Facebook Oculus Rift strapped to your face and you can’t even see your omniscient Google Nest thermostat? Folks, I’m all for political alarmists — really, as a techno-evangelist, I know they’re always one pundit mood-swing away — but people are overlooking the broad comedy potential of the Internet of Things. Ever seen a Rube Goldberg cartoon, where everything including the cuckoo clock and the rocking chair are tied together with long steel wires? Well, the Internet of Things is just like that, except the wires are invisible and owned by somebody incorporated in Liberia.)))
“The fact that these technologies are so cool and potentially useful shouldn’t, however, blind us to their invasiveness as they operate 24/7, silently gathering data on everything we do. Will companies even tell consumers what information they’re gathering? (((Who’s got time to listen to that? Even clicking cookie permissions is a full-time job nowadays.))) Will consumers have the ability to determine what they’re comfortable with? Will companies sell or share data gathered from your home to third parties? And how will companies protect that data from hackers and other miscreants? (((My golden years are gonna be spent watching smarter and more energetic people tackling these huge questions, and mostly failing utterly. I’m gonna have a pretty good time of it, I think. With the PC revolution gone moribund, this is like the next carnival.)))
“The dangers aren’t theoretical. (((That’s right. You probably thought us sci-fi writers just make up stuff about flying dragons on pseudo-medieval planets, but no! That’s just what our techno-dazed clientele likes to read about when they get tired of fretting about their hardware.))) In November, the British tech blogger Doctorbeet discovered that his new LG Smart TV was snooping on him. Every time he changed the channel, his activity was logged and transmitted unencrypted to LG. Doctorbeet checked the TV’s option screen and found that the setting “collection of watching info” was turned on by default. Being a techie, he turned it off, but it didn’t matter. The information continued to flow to the company anyway. (((I really dig these seemingly irrelevant hacker anecdotes, because they’re commonly the source of major dark side criminal enterprises, five years later. I mean, some Russian bandit is reading this blog-post right now and he’s going, ‘Hey, an unpatched data flow in ten million G-7 consumer televisions? Wowee, that’s for me!’)))
“As more and more household devices — your television, your thermostat, your refrigerator — connect to the Internet, device manufacturers will undoubtedly follow a model of comprehensive data collection and possibly infinite storage. (And don’t count on them offering you an opt-out either.) They have seen the giants of the online world — the Googles, the Facebooks — make money off their users’ personal data and they want a cut of the spoils. Your home will know your secrets, and chances are it will have loose lips. (((I immediately want a smart house that’s actually and literally NAMED “Loose Lips.” Hey Cisco! You could buy me that house as a line-item, and I personally volunteer to live in it! Someone’s got to be the sacrificial hamster here. Really, I don’t mind a bit! Maybe it’s a *3DPrinted* house! Wow!)))
“The result: more and more of what happens behind closed doors will be open to scrutiny by parties you would never invite into your home. After all, the Drug Enforcement Administration already subpoenas utility company records to determine if electricity consumption in specific homes is consistent with a marijuana-growing operation. What will come next? (((Great question!))) Will eating habits collected by smart fridges be repackaged and sold to healthcare or insurance companies as predictors of obesity or other health problems — and so a reasonable basis for determining premiums? Will smart lights inform drug companies of insomniac owners? (((“Internet of Things Technology Assessment Think Tank”!! Yeah man! Hey, I know lots of cool people at Arizona State University! They’ve got main stream media outlets! With a billion bucks dropped on this nascent industry back in 2013, we could have one of these speculative policy think-tanks set up by Tuesday! We’ll do design-fiction videos that even the ACLU will think are funny!)))
“Keep in mind that when such data flows are being scrutinized, you’ll no longer be able to pull down the shades, not when the Peeping Toms of the twenty-first century come packaged in glossy, alluring boxes. (((“Surveillance marketing” is the neologism of the day for this phenomenon, because it needs one.))) Many people will just be doing what Americans have always done — upgrading their appliances. (((Unless it means upgrading to Windows 8, or something.))) It may not initially dawn on them that they are also installing surveillance equipment targeted at them. And companies have obvious incentives to obscure this fact as much as possible. (((I’m sorry to point this out, but this particular social struggle isn’t going to be won with any popular vote, or through mass consciousness-raising about the core issues. Maybe in Brazil, where they actually managed to vote for some new kind of Internet Bill of Rights this week. Everywhere else, the Internet of Things is gonna be fought out in the way DRM was fought out, the way crypto was fought out, the way broadband was fought out, the way the market share for operating systems is fought out, etc etc… The Internet of Things isn’t like gay marriage or marijuana legalization, it’s just too freakin’ technical for that.)))
As the “conscious home” becomes a reality, we will all have to make a crucial and conscious decision for ourselves: Will I let this device into my home? Renters may not have that option. And eventually there may only be internet-enabled appliances. (((And also, a huge demographic within all homes are minor children, or the elderly, or illiterate, or foreigners. These groups don’t make these imaginary, autonomous, fully-informed, political decisions that the galvanized activist always demands. So it’s pure rhetoric to assert that “we will all have to make a crucial and conscious decision.” No “we” won’t! It’s not even physically possible, and the parties concerned are by no means the same as the “we” who get it about what is happening.)))
(((It would be a huge deal if even one American user in a thousand made any such decision about the Internet of Things — you’d have user-groups boiling from coast to coast, it’d be like the EFF on steroids. I weary of hearing again and again that “we all” have to confront some issue or another. That’s a recipe for political defeat, it’s like claiming that “nothing will ever happen until everybody drops everything and devotes themselves to my single issue.” Have you never heard of Edward Snowden? He’s not a mass movement of ten million Snowdens. He’s one guy who is a “data snatcher” par excellence. THAT is what this kind of contemporary politics actually looks like in practice — if it weren’t for Snowden and his surreptitious, sneaky data snatching and leaking, this article wouldn’t even exist!)))
“Commercial Stalking
“The minute you leave your home, the ability to avoid surveillance technologies masquerading as something else will, if anything, lessen.
“Physical sensors connected to the Internet are increasingly everywhere, ready to detect a unique identifier associated with you, usually one generated by your smartphone, then log what you do and leverage the data you generate for insight into your life. For instance, Apple introduced iBeacon last year. It’s a service based on transmitters that employ Bluetooth technology to track where Apple users are in stores and restaurants. (The company conveniently turned onBluetooth by default via a software update it delivered to Apple iPhone owners.) Apps that use iBeacon harvest a user’s data, including his or her location, and sometimes can even turn on a device’s microphone to listen in on what’s going on. (((Big hit at SXSW this year, iBeacon.)))
“Another company, Turnstyle Solutions Inc., has placed sensors around Toronto that surreptitiously record signals emitted by WiFi-enabled devices and can track users’ movements. Turnstyle can tell, for instance, when a person who visited a restaurant goes to a bar or a hotel. When people log-on to WiFi networks Turnstyle has installed at area restaurants or coffee shops and check Facebook, the company can go far beyond location, collecting “names, ages, genders, and social media profiles,” according to the Wall Street Journal. (((Check out the new Disney RFID thing in the Disney parks, sister. Makes this scheme you mention look as homey as a cornbread muffin.)))
“The rationale for apps that track where you are is that business owners can use the data to tailor the customer experience to your liking. If you’re wandering around the male grooming section of a particular retailer, the store could shoot you a coupon to convince you to purchase that full body trimmer that promises a smooth shave every time. If customers enter Macy’s and zig right more often than left, the store can strategically place what’s popular or on sale in those high-traffic areas. This is basically what’s happening online now, and brick and mortar stores want in so they can compete against the Amazons of the world. (((Yeah, and imagine that you’re Target, and you sprung one of the biggest data-snatching leaks in world history because of some dark side Ukrainian twenty-something. You think brick-and-mortar stores have code as secure as Amazon’s? Think otherwise.)))
“Not so surprisingly, however, such handy technology has already led to discriminatory behavior by retailers. About a year ago, an investigationby the Wall Street Journal found that prices quoted by online retailers like Staples and Home Depot changed based on who the customer was. People who lived in higher-income areas generally received the best deals, which is a form of digital redlining. (((Yep, it sure is! In fact, I’m trying to think of ANY form of traditional social injustice that doesn’t have a digital equivalent yet, and I’m kinda coming up dry.))) In the future, count on brick and mortar stores to do the same thing by identifying your phone, picking up data about you, and pricing items according to just how juicy a customer they think you may be. (((Maybe you can go to the mom-and-pop store where they actually know you personally, and hate you for that reason.)))
“To be able to do this, retailers need companies that can provide rich data about our lives. That’s where a group of pioneering companies in the new universe of customer surveillance called data aggregators come in. Already a multibillion-dollar industry, aggregators like Acxiom, Experian, and Datalogix buy customer data from wherever they can — banks, travel websites, retailers — and turn it into Big Data. Then they analyze, package, and sell it to third parties. “Our digital reach,” saidScott Howe, CEO of the largest data aggregator, Acxiom, “will soon approach nearly every Internet user in the U.S.”
“Last December, the Senate Commerce Committee investigated the business practices of the nine largest data aggregators: what information they collect, how they obtain it, their invasiveness, and who they sell it to. The committee found that these companies collect information ranging from the relatively mundane to the incredibly sensitive, including names and addresses, income levels, and medical histories. They then sell it off without giving serious consideration to what the buyers might do with it. (((Now watch ‘em build a 99 cent app that sells that aggregated data to everybody who wants it, and watch political opposition magically melt away. This pretends to be a struggle over absolute, Constitutional principle, but as soon as computer power is popularized, all previous bets are off. That’s how cyberpolitics actually works — denounce it till you get your own hands on it.)))
“In the process, you could find yourself categorized as part of a group of “Mid-Life Strugglers: Families” or “Meager Metro Means” or “Oldies but Goodies,” which aggregator InfoUSA described as “gullible” people who “want to believe their luck can change.” Think of it as high-tech commercial profiling of the most exploitative sort. (((Especially if you consider the ACLU to be gullible people who thought they possessed civil liberties, then suddenly woke up to see that the NSA took ‘em all during the Terror, and are gamely persisting nowadays mostly in the hope that their luck will change. Sorry ACLU, but some Russian would have made that joke about you if I hadn’t.)))
“The result is the creation of a twenty-first century permanent record of your very own, which you are unlikely to ever be able to see because, as the Senate report warned, the industry operates under “a veil of secrecy” with little or no regulation. “Three of the largest companies — Acxiom, Experian, and Epsilon — to date have been similarly secretive with the committee with respect to their practices, refusing to identify the specific sources of their data or the customers who purchase it.” (((Sounds like an ideal case for some massive Snowden-style data-snatching, but who am I to recommend such a dire course of action.)))
“Congress’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, reviewed U.S. privacy law and found that citizens generally do not have the right to control the scope of information collected about them or limit its use, even when it pertains to their health or their finances. And if the information is incorrect — something you might never find out — there’s no U.S. law that requires data aggregators to correct it. (((And, so, what if they’re non-American data aggregators? That’d be a job for the “Global Civil Liberties Union,” were any such thing to exist, and if they had a World Congress to pass some laws about things that bothered them, or something. This is a great example of American net.activism arguing under the local lamp-post because it’s easier to look around there.)))
“Paul Ohm, a policy advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, calls these immense troves of personal information “databases of ruin.” He worries that, over time, these databases will include new waves of data — maybe from your conscious home or location information from commercial sensors — and so become ever more consolidated. Soon, he fears, “these databases will grow to connect every individual to at least one closely guarded secret. This might be a secret about a medical condition, family history, or personal preference. It is a secret that, if revealed, would cause more than embarrassment or shame; it would lead to serious, concrete, devastating harm.” (((And what if those databases actually show a ruined society? Everybody might be bankrupt. They might be entirely unable to engage in consumer activity. Who would pay to maintain these databanks under those conditions? You think the Greeks are getting their privacy invaded a lot lately? How about the Somalis? “The Internet of Mogadishu Things.”)))
“Sooner or later, with smart devices seamlessly using sensors and Big Data provided by data aggregators, it will be possible to pick you out of a crowd and identify you in complex ways in real time. If intelligent surveillance cameras armed with facial recognition technology have access to social media profiles as well as the information stored by data aggregators, a digital dossier of your life could be called up on-demand whenever your face is recognized. Imagine the power retailers and companies will exert over your life if they not only know who you are and where you are, but what your weaknesses are — whether that’s booze, cigarettes, or the appealing mortgage rate with the sketchy small print. Are we looking at a future where the car salesman really does know what he has to do to put us in that car? (((No, that’s not the future, because the traditional corner car salesman is rapidly getting disintermediated, but I take your point, sort of.)))
“Big Data is creating the possibility of a far more entrenched, class-based surveillance society that discriminates using our perceived successes and preys on our weaknesses. (((Technical solutionism versus social justice issues. This is why start-ups are the covert engine of massive income inequality, and this problem is gonna get more intense because people aren’t confronting it directly. The Internet of Things is one arena in which this will be fought out in future, but it’s far from the only one.)))
“The Great Outdoors
“Recently, Newark Liberty International Airport upgraded lighting fixtures at one of its terminals to a more eco-friendly alternative known as LEDs. It turns out, however, that energy efficiency wasn’t the only benefit of the purchase. The fixtures also double as a surveillance system of cameras and sensors that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is using to watch for long lines, identify license plates, and — its officials claim — spot suspicious behavior.
“With all the spying going on these days, this may not seem particularly invasive, but don’t worry, the manufacturers of such systems are thinking much bigger. “We see outdoor lighting as the perfect infrastructure to build a brand new network,” said Hugh Martin, CEO of Sensity Systems, a Sunnyvale, California-based company interested in making lighting smart. “We felt what you’d want to use this network for is to gather information about people and the planet.”
“Pretty soon, just about anywhere you are, when you look up at that light pole, it is likely to be looking back down at you. Or into your home or car. (((I expect to end my future days in an augmented ubiquity where computation flows through visible light sources mounted in ceiling lamps. That sounds pretty sci-fi and farfetched right now, but that’s my intuition. The reason this will happen is because it’s an eldercare solution. Surveillance that is co-equal with the electric lighting system is perfect for “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” So just go up to that previous scarifying paragraph, remove all the rhetoric that says “spying,” and insert new rhetoric that says “caring.” You’ll find that it works perfectly. And of course it’s both “caring” and “spying” because eldercare IS spying. So is baby care. These fellow human beings lack “privacy” because they’re not autonomous political participants, they are dependents. If you have “privacy” when you are two months old, you die.)))
“Other surveillance technologies are heading for the heavens. Persistent Surveillance Systems has developed a surveillance camera on steroids. When attached to small aircraft, the 192-megapixel cameras record the patterns of the planetary life they fly over for hours at a time. According to the Washington Post, this will give the police and other customers a “time machine” they can simply rewind when they need it. Placed strategically at the highest points of any town or city, these cameras could provide the sort of blanket surveillance that’s hard to avoid. The inventor of the camera, a retired Air Force officer, helped create a similar system for the city of Fallujah, the site of two of the most violent battles of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It’s just one example of how wartime surveillance technologies are returning home for “civilian use.” (((Real-time visual mapping with computer vision is not very “Internet of Things,” but it is very “Augmented Reality,” which is why I like to use the awkward term “augmented ubiquity” to describe what is coming in a couple of decades.)))
“Private surveillance technology is also destroying one of America’s iconic freedoms: the open road. License plate readers are proliferating across America. These devices snap a picture of every passing car. One company, Vigilant Solutions, already holds 1.8 billion license plate records in its data warehouse, known as the National Vehicle Location Service (NVLS). Anyone with access to this information could easily find out where a person has driven simply by connecting the plate to the car owner. And keep in mind that it’s up to the companies gathering them to determine just who can access the information — data of immense interest to private investigators and anyone else curious to track another person’s movements. (((You could remove those license plates, but it’s just as easy for Siri and her sisters to recognize the car from some unique pattern of scratches, dents, ACLU bumper stickers, etc.)))
“Like many businesses that trade in Big Data or construct massive databases, Vigilant is in regular contact with government agencies craving access to its meaty stores of information. (((I sure could do with some meaty Texas barbecue now… man, this snarky annotation is hard work!)))
“If You Build It, They Will Come
“In February, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) put out a solicitation to obtain access to a private license plate reader database for the purpose of “locating criminal aliens and absconders.” ICE claims that it wants to enhance officer safety by making it easier to arrest suspects away from their homes. When the mainstream media took notice and privacy advocates like the ACLU objected, new Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pulled the plugon the project.
“A big win? Don’t count on it, because police departments already have easy access to commercial license plate repositories. In the past, Vigilant has, for instance, allowed ICE to test its service free of charge. Police often pony up the cash to access such databases. As a quick experiment, go to Vigilant’s NVLS registration page, click on the drop-down menu beside “Agency name,” and scroll down. Trust us, you’ll get bored by the staggering list of police departments before you reach the bottom.
“Which brings us to an axiom of our digital age: law enforcement will exploit any database built, if it makes it easier to figure out what the rest of us are up to. Lucky for them, there’s a wealth of data out there and available. Experian, one of the largest data aggregators, told the Senate Commerce Committee that “government agencies” regularly purchase information from them. (((I can remember when people used to complain that American cops didn’t know anything about computers. This was considered some kind of big social problem in policing. Did you ever wonder what cops would look and act like once they were “digital natives”? Well, now ya know!)))
“Often, those agencies don’t even have to pay for the privilege of accessing our data. In many cases, such an agency can simply issue its own subpoena (not seen by a judge) and compel companies to turn over our sensitive data. The culprit here is known as the “third party doctrine,” which some courts have aggressively (and wrongly) interpreted to mean that any information disclosed to a third party isn’t really private.
“The danger of the rise of Big Data and the Internet of Things is straightforward enough. Whenever data is perpetually generated, collected, and stored, the result is going to be a virtual ATM of user information that government agencies can withdraw from with ease. Last year, for instance, local, state, and federal authorities issued 164,000 subpoenas to Verizon and more than 248,000 subpoenas to AT&T for user information, while issuing nearly 7,500 subpoenas to Google during the first half of 2013. (((It’s probably a neck-and-neck struggle to see who’s most hated by the American public these days — Congress or Comcast. If there’s any practical difference between them as institutions, that is.)))
“The Internet of Things means that, soon enough, the authorities will have yet more ways to learn yet more about us. (((Weirdly, those same authorities don’t seem to mind much if Americans die of preventable diseases, breathe poisoned air, get shot by one another or rot in prison. So maybe they’ll diligently learn the worst and most intimate secrets we have and then do nothing much, as usual.)))
“Big Data, Little Democracy?
“Here are two obvious questions for our surveillance future: Who controls the data generated by our devices? Without doing anything except buying and installing them, do we somehow consent to having every piece of data they generate shared with Big Business and sometimes Big Brother? No one should have to isolate themselves from society and technology in the ascetic mold of Henry David Thoreau — or more ominously, Ted Kaczynski — to have some semblance of privacy. (((Ted Kaczynski doesn’t even have a credit card record, nowadays.)))
“In the future, even going all Jeremiah Johnson might not have the effect intended, since law enforcement could interpret your lack of a solid digital footprint as inherently suspicious. This would be like a police officer growing suspicious of a home just because it was all dark and locked up tight. (((Well, yeah, that behavior is indeed mighty suspicious.)))
“When everything is increasingly tracked and viewed through the lens of technological omniscience, what will the effect be on dissent and protest? Will security companies with risk assessment software troll through our data and crunch it to identify people they believe have the propensity to become criminals or troublemakers — and then share that with law enforcement? (Something like it already seems to be happening in Chicago, where police are using computer analytic programs to identify people at a greater risk of violent behavior.)
“There’s simply no way to forecast how these immense powers — disproportionately accumulating in the hands of corporations seeking financial advantage and governments craving ever more control — will be used. Chances are Big Data and the Internet of Things will make it harder for us to control our own lives, as we grow increasingly transparent to powerful corporations and government institutions that are becoming more opaque to us. (((Then throw in a climate crisis that, say, drowns Washington DC just like New Orleans and New York City were drowned. Complete digital control combined with utter environmental chaos. Sounds pretty lively, eh?)))
“Learn more about privacy and other civil liberties issues: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. (((WHYYYYY are you on Faceboook???)))
Arduino-compatible MicroView
*The electronics geeks have really got the bit between their teeth nowadays.
*Look at ‘em effortlessly pulling down ten times the amount of money they wanted in
the ol’ Kickstarter here.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516846343/microview-chip-sized-arduino-with-built-in-oled-di
*”Maddy Schappi” is really a great name for a woman involved in contemporary popular electronics.
MicroView: Chip-sized Arduino with built-in OLED Display! from MicroView on Vimeo.
“Q. What is the MicroView?
“A. The MicroView is the first chip-sized Arduino with a built-in OLED display.
“Q. Who makes the MicroView?
“A. The MicroView was designed by Geek Ammo, and is manufactured by Sparkfun Electronics, in Boulder, Colorado USA. (((Okay, it’s not Ivrea, but who can’t like Boulder, Colorado.)))
“Q. Who is GeekAmmo?
“A. GeekAmmo is a company founded by JP Liew, and Madeline & Marcus Schappi. We specialize on building hardware that makes electronics accessible to everyone.
“Q. How did the team meet?
“A. The team previously met working together on Ninja Blocks.
“Q. What was the inspiration for the MicroView?
“A. As a prank JP our CTO sent Marcus our CEO a fake product photo of a chip with a built-in OLED display. Marcus was excited and wanted to buy it. Now wanting to completely let Marcus down, JP and Marcus set about making such a chip a reality, the result being the MicroView. (((Alert readers will note that this is a design-fiction prank that turned into a shippable product.)))
“Q. Will we be shipping internationally?
“A. Yes we will be able to ship orders all over the world.
“This is the first time you can see what your Arduino is thinking!” – Marcus Schappi (GeekAmmo CEO)
“We’ve always tried to make learning electronics easier, we started by creating an Arduino with LEDs on each output pin so you know when the pins are being turned on. We next built Ninja Blocks, an Internet of Things system that removes the impediments of needing to know electronics, networking and programming. To cap things off we asked ourselves how can we make this even easier, and with that came the MicroView.” – Marcus Schappi
“This is the first Arduino that can teach you electronics and Arduino. The MicroView comes preflashed with built-in tutorials that are displayed on its gorgeous organic LED display.” – Madeleine Schappi
“It’s exciting because it embeds the power of an Arduino, onto the size of a Chip” – Ted Esdaile-Watts (MicroView Industrial Designer)
“The users are going to love the smooth ergonomic surfaces on the underside which make it easy to remove the MicroView from a prototyping breadboard” – Braden Wilson (MicroView Industrial Designer)
“We’ve put an incredible amount of time into the MicroView Arduino Library, with only a couple of lines of code makers can dispay images, text, widgets, graphs and gauges.” – JP Liew (GeekAmmo CTO)
March 25, 2014
Transmediale 2014: Beautiful 0s and Ugly 1s, On the complexity and poetics of the digital
Published on Mar 25, 2014
On the complexity and poetics of the digital
With Olia Lialina and James Bridle
(((Olia and James are quite beautiful people, actually.)))
The capitalist smart city: parking fines, street lights and garbage.
*So: in tomorrow’s Cisco Smart City, you’re mercilessly hit-up for change no matter where you park your car, much of the town is dark far a lot of the time, and there’s somewhat less stink from the uncollected garbage. I think I can go with this. I actually find this prospect plausible.
http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/03/25/how-make-case-your-internet-everything-vision
(…)
“Heather Clancy: Level set for us: What specific applications do Cisco’s professional services team envision for cities? (((I love that phrase “level set for us.” I’ve got to find an opportunity to use that.)))
“Joseph Bradley: One of the core things that a city will ask us that we have to answer for them is, “How do I align cost with benefits?” Meaning that in a public sector environment, at the highest level, this case may make sense, but costs are concentrated, meaning they go to one particular player in the city, while benefits are diffused and go to many. So, the question becomes how do you get that actually initiated in a city, when the cost goes specifically to the city but the benefits go to retailers, citizens and other places. (((“How can we appease the rich guys who actually run the town?”)))
“So what we’ve done is to say, “When you think about that killer application or applications, you want to focus initially on those applications that actually align costs with benefits. And once you find an application that aligns cost with benefits, then you want to make sure that’s tied to a key city imperative.” (((“How can we rake in money without visibly raising taxes?”)))
“Clancy: So, where are good places to focus?
“Bradley: When you look at the items [that create] new revenue in a city, besides taxation, the second or third item that’s typically on there is parking. Parking is a great application area to focus on initially. That’s one area that we are heavily focusing on and investing in, and that is because it aligns cost with benefits. When you deploy a connected parking solution, you’re connecting a smart meter. That smart meter tells me space availability. If I apply analytics to that data, I can impact process, I can drive dynamic pricing. So, I know if there’s a San Francisco 49er game taking place, the meter is worth a heck of a lot more than 25 cents every 30 minutes. I can raise the price of that meter based on demand for that meter. … (((Not to mention the fines the town rakes in when the price jumps logarithmically. Then the out-of-towner victims indignantly refuse to pay for this jacked-up rip-off — but they get ticketed with unerring, unearthly speed.)))
“Smart lighting is another area of focus for us for the same reason: It aligns costs with benefits. When you deploy a smart lighting solution, the dark asset obviously is the light pole. The data that’s generated, it allows you to control when a particular light is working, the wattage being used, etc. You can correlate that to what’s going on. If traffic is low, you can reduce the light or turn it off completely, which allows [the city] to save costs. It also allows you to offer free Wi-Fi, basically, (((“Are you listening, Comcast?” “Yes we at Comcast are always listening, but don’t worry, we bought the US Senate already and Cisco can go straight back to dreamland”))) because once you pay for the lighting solution, the light is already connected and now that [asset] can offer free Wi-Fi. Then, you find that when there’s smart lighting, crime rates go down. When crime rates go down, property values go up. When property values go up, property taxes go up for a city as an example. (((Not to mention that surprising and sudden lack of all poor people within your city limits.)))
“Then you get into waste management. (((The ultimate urban good idea.))) If I connect that trash bin, it lets me know if it’s full or partially full. So that means if I’m one of those huge garbage power trucks going down the road that globally burn up a billion gallons of fuel a year associated with managing those garbage trucks, I can change the route I take based on if I need to pick up that trash or not. Just by connecting that trash bin and looking at changing routes, I can reduce 30 percent of the cost associated with waste management….”
Ten open source hard ware projects to allegedly save the Earth
“As Alastair Parvin of WikiHouse put it:
” “This increased access to knowledge is hugely important…it acts as the foundational infrastructure on which we can start to build a whole new economy.”
*Hey, I’m radically in favor of knowing how to do stuff. If you lack access to knowledge, obviously you can’t do much. I’d even be willing to try out living in a real, existent Wikihouse. I know I’d get some plywood splinters, but I wouldn’t mind a bit.
*However, there’s a colossal distance between knowing how to do something and the mass adaptation of that knowledge as an everyday part of our ethical, legal and social culture worldwide. That’s quite like the difference between knowing how to kiss, and feeding, clothing and sheltering a family of ten.
*Open Source is always promising to build a “whole new economy.” There’s a rather well-established open-source economy nowadays that’s neither whole nor new. Why keep saying this? It’s like promising Zen enlightenment without knowing that you still have to chop wood and carry water.
*The genuinely new development in Open Source is an open resistance to open-source by established power players. What’s especially new and different is the bitter, politicized, statehouse and working-class resistance to commercial Big Sharing efforts such as Uber and AirBnB. Distributing access to knowledge isn’t gonna be the problem any more — politics is gonna be the problem.
*The days when you could break-open system and have that seen as some harmless desktop hobby for leftie eccentrics with modems — those days are fading fast. Instead of being seen as Maid Marian the techie intellectual in Sherwood Forest, you’re increasingly likely to get stingingly denounced as a moonbat exploiter.
*In the meantime, though, you really should check out that open-source hardware car. Hey, I’ve been inside one of those. You can bolt it together in no-time flat and it’s like a steel dune-buggy. I hope you don’t kill yourself driving it, I also hope that you can somehow get it to pass legal inspection in your locality.
*As for cars somehow saving the Earth, well, look at a thermometer sometime.
http://www.shareable.net/blog/10-open-hardware-projects-to-save-the-earth
March 24, 2014
Augmented Reality: ISMAR 2014, “Augment Everything Everywhere for Everyone”
“Welcome
“Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) melt the barriers between virtual media, the physical world and our imagination by enriching our ability to interact with all three. New applications in diverse areas such as Engineering, Entertainment, Arts, Education Media and Humanities push the boundaries of science and technology. As the premier conference in the field, ISMAR is responding to this evolution by expanding the program scope. Two key areas of submissions are Science & Technology (S&T) covering emerging capabilities of MR/AR and the MASH’D program covering the human side of technology application, including real world explorations by Media professionals, Artists, Social Scientists, Humanity scholars and Designers (MASH’D).
“*** NEW EXPANDED SCOPE ***
“The theme of this year’s conference is to “Augment Everything Everywhere for Everyone”. ISMAR 2014 will cover the FULL range of technologies encompassed by the Mixed Reality spectrum, from interfaces in the real world to fully immersive experiences. This range goes far beyond the traditional definition of Augmented Reality, which focused on precise 3D tracking, visual display and real-time performance.
“We specifically invite contributions in the following EMERGING AREAS:
“* HUMAN PERFORMANCE & PERCEPTION: Learning, Training, Therapy, Rehabilitation, Virtual Analytics and Entertainment are beginning to leverage the convergence of disciplinary applied MR/AR research to expand how we experience and enhance the limits of human experience.
“* AUGMENTED VIRTUALITY: Telepresence, tele-immersion, real-time 3D video acquisition and streaming, (auto-)stereoscopic displays, multi-user 3D displays, tele-operation and live video stream augmentation (e.g., in robotics), broadcast augmentation and virtual studios.
“* MULTI-SENSORY MIXED REALITY: Auditory, haptic and olfactory interfaces.
“* WEARABLE COMPUTING: Wearable displays (e.g., Google Glass, smart watches), wearable sensors and actuators, augmented humans (e.g., cyborg technology).
“* SPATIAL INPUT: Tangible interfaces, ambient-device interaction and novel sensors (e.g., situated/embedded touch input), location sensing technologies (of any kind, including non real-time), smart spaces, situated 2D displays, enabling technologies for spatial interfaces (e.g., 3D reconstruction, touch interfaces, gesture detection).
“* SPATIAL OUTPUT: Wearable projectors, projector-camera systems, ambient displays.
“ISMAR 2014 will mark the 17th year of the conference, which started in 1998 as the International Workshop on Augmented Reality. It will be held in Munich, Germany, one of the world’s leading places for AR/MR research and industry and certainly one of the most enjoyable cities to visit in general. We invite you to participate in this important event for the exchange of new ideas in this exciting field!”
Yulia Timoshenko believes everything in the Ukraine will be fine.
*Things sure haven’t been particularly “fine” for the Orange Gas Princess up to this point, but, well, you never know. And since you can’t ever know, it’s a pretty good idea to hear people out at full length in their own voices.
*I’m turning off commentary for this post as I’m sure that cyberwar enthusiasts are being hired to go around combatting remarks of this kind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/yulia-tymoshenko/russia-ukraine-crimea_b_4986630.html
First and foremost. On 16 March there was no “referendum” in Crimea. This “referendum” was a cover for overt military aggression against Ukraine and an attempt to annex part of Ukrainian territory.
Not a single civilised state has recognised the results of this so-called “referendum”. It was one hundred percent illegal and its legal consequences are worthless. This big lie won’t last long.
Second. Crimea will always be Ukrainian, despite all the attempts of Russian occupants. This is our land and we won’t give it away to anyone!
Third. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank everyone who is defending Ukraine’s national interests in Crimea in these dramatic days. I am grateful to Ukraine’s military for their unbreakable spirit, forbearance, incredible heroism and patriotism. I am grateful to the Crimeans who didn’t support the separatists. I am grateful to the Crimean Tatars, the volunteers and the journalists.
Thanks to you, a new proud and beautiful Ukraine is being born – a country of heroes! And there’s nothing the Russian aggressors can do about this. Justice will be restored soon.
I implore the Ukrainian parliament to urgently ratify the Rome Statute to allow Ukraine to appeal to the International Criminal Court in Hague and to petition the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to rule on the compatibility of the Rome Statue with the Constitution of Ukraine. Ukraine must urgently appeal to the International Criminal Court to stop the military capture of Ukraine. Everyone involved in the military aggression against our state must face personal international responsibility.
I feel sorry for the people of Crimea who fell for this big lie and became victims of their own carelessness and naiveté, which may cast their sunny island into darkness. The Russian regime will soon show them that even the subtropics can have polar nights. This could lead to a humanitarian disaster and unpredictable consequences for the Crimeans. There will be no economic paradise. Russia doesn’t have the resources – their economy is on the verge of collapse. Now that leading countries of the world are imposing the strictest sanctions against Russia, tomorrow they will have no interest in Crimea and its people.
Fourth. I feel sorry for the people of Russia. They are being led into a totalitarian abyss of economic and spiritual collapse which goes hand-in-hand with poverty and devastation.
Using degrading and immoral means, the Russian government has destroyed the notion of truth with their mad propaganda for the occupation of Ukraine. They have killed the myth of Russia’s orthodoxy, spirituality and sacredness and what they believe is their positive personal role in the history of mankind. Instead, the whole world has witnessed Russia’s immoral and unjustified aggression that has put under question the peaceful coexistence of all nations on this planet.
The Russian regime has even offset Russia’s historical role in WWII and transformed it from a liberator to an invader. This moral loss for Russia is far more tragic than any perspective material losses resulting from international sanctions.
But we can only hope that a new Russia is also being born today. Not Putin’s Russia, but a country that last weekend came out for the march of freedom. A Russia of Andrey Makarevich wearing a yellow and blue ribbon. A Russia of Liya Akhedzhakova, Eldar Ryazanov and Boris Grebenshchikov. Ukraine has a real future with a Russia like this.
Fifth. On the Maidan Ukraine made its pro-European choice and gained its first victory in the battle for European values by removing the dictatorship. Today, despite all the difficulties, our unity is stronger than ever before. On 21 March we will see the signing of the association agreement with the EU. This is a success for Ukraine and it cannot be erased. Let nobody doubt our resilience and assuredness.
We made our choice and we choose freedom!
And one more thing…
The Ukrainian Maidan overthrew criminal despotism. The people triumphed. This is good, but we cannot stop because today our tyrannical neighbour wants to conquer Ukraine.
We are a peaceful people who do not choose war. But if necessary, we can do more than just defend ourselves. Perhaps even against our will, Ukraine now has a new and greater mission: to help break the tyranny of our neighbouring state with our spiritual and moral power.
Ukraine has learned to win and today has the strongest weapon in the world – the power of will, honour, truth and spirit!
Today Ukraine is not only the geographical centre of Europe – it is also the spiritual centre for victory of democracy. The world has recognized this and is standing by Ukraine’s side.
Last Saturday Valeriya Novodvorskaya said democratic Russia is waiting for the Ukrainian army to liberate it. This is obviously a metaphor, but it does contain a grain of reality.
We won’t be visiting anyone with tanks and machine guns, but we have a different army. It is an army that cannot be stopped by borders, trenches, anti-tank fortifications or minefields. It is our Ukrainian army of freedom, democracy, human dignity and spirit. And it is already on the march. Ukraine is fulfilling its mission, which includes the liberation of Russia.
I believe that everything will be fine.
Yulia Tymoshenko
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/yulia...
P.S. According to legend, Master Kano was walking through the forest in winter and saw two tree branches covered in snow. One thick branch broke under the weight of the snow whilst another, a younger branch, bent under the weight, straightened back up throwing the snow. This is how judo came to be – a martial art whose basic principle is to feign submission in order to win. But only feign. Ukraine is that second, younger branch. I think there’s at least one well-known judoka in Russia that should know this parable.
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