Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 218

More W.D. Howells historico-literary musings in the Too Long Don’t Read vein

*Here my long-dead friend Mr W D Howells is doing a particularly Victorian thing. He’s attempting to move from mere literary critic to cultural censor. It’s hard for us moderns to sympathize with this dreadful ambition, because if all the “filth” were removed from our own literature, there would scarcely be anything left of us at all.

*It’s important to empathize, though, and to realize that Howells is trying hard to do the right and good thing here, even though he’s obviously, painfully gnawed by psychosexual impulses he scarcely understands. A guy who read as widely, and in as many languages as Howells did, must have come across some contemporary Victorian pornography. That experience must have been traumatic for Howells. The way he carries on in that last paragraph, with Freudian slips galore, is pitiful.

*We moderns are second to none in our sexual frankness — there has never been a culture as sexy as us, mostly because none of them had invented cheap, effective contraception — but we sure are keen on cultural obliteration, mostly through our smug disinterest. Howells would be stunned and heartbroken to realize how few of us can recite any poem by heart. His literary world of the 1800s has sustained an extent of damage at our hands that’s even worse that the complete, totalizing bowdlerization that he is proposing here. We have no Poesy, none to speak of, while for Howells, poetry was a giant, world-bestriding cultural phenomenon like some secular religion. Howells has such esteem for poetry that he is horrified to realize that real, no-kidding poets, in all times and places, are commonly broke, boozy, promiscuous sleaze bags.

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“When I realized what lives some of my poets had led, how they were drunkards, and swindlers, and unchaste, and untrue, I lamented over them with a sense of personal disgrace in them, and to this day I have no patience with that code of the world which relaxes itself in behalf of the brilliant and gifted offender; rather he should suffer more blame. (((Even Plato, in his ideal Republic, wanted to ostracize the poets.)))

“The worst of the literature of past times, before an ethical conscience began to inform it, or the advance of the race compelled it to decency, is that it leaves the mind foul with filthy images and base thoughts; but what I have been trying to say is that the boy, unless he is exceptionally depraved beforehand, is saved from these through his ignorance. Still I wish they were not there, and I hope the time will come when the beast-man will be so far subdued and tamed in us that the memory of him in literature shall be left to perish; that what is lewd and ribald in the great poets shall be kept out of such editions as are meant for general reading, and that the pedant-pride which now perpetuates it as an essential part of those poets shall no longer have its way.

(((I find this idea utterly horrifying, but it’s extremely important to confront the utterly horrifying within the legacy of the past. You mustn’t clean up the great-grandparents because you’re trying to save the kids from your own distress. Someday the kids will be in the mood for comprehensive cultural obliteration to save their own kids, and you’ve got to show them, through your own example, that it’s an act of self-indulgence.)))

“At the end of the ends such things do defile, they do corrupt. We may palliate them or excuse them for this reason or that, but that is the truth, and I do not see why they should not be dropped from literature, as they were long ago dropped from the talk of decent people. The literary histories might keep record of them, but it is loath some to think of those heaps of ordure, accumulated from generation to generation, and carefully passed down from age to age as something precious and vital, and not justly regarded as the moral offal which they are.” (((The problem here is that the things carefully passed down from age to age are NOT AT ALL the precious and vital things. For instance, practically everything we know about the Greco-Latin world escaped by accident from the cleansing fires of Christianity, while every last thing we know about Egypt was either buried or too physically big and hard to destroy. Arbiters of taste and propriety have never succeeded in handing down the good stuff by an act of will.)))

*************

“The streams of filth flow down through the ages in literature, (((there’s something sublime about that cloacal image, it cheers one up somehow))) which sometimes seems little better than an open sewer, and, as I have said, I do not see why the time should not come when the noxious and noisome channels should be stopped; but the base of the mind is bestial, and so far the beast in us has insisted upon having his full say.

“The worst of lewd literature is that it seems to give a sanction to lewdness in the life, and that inexperience takes this effect for reality: that is the danger and the harm, and I think the fact ought not to be blinked. (((It’s really interesting to realize that censorship is an unpleasant task that one has to bravely face up to. A kind of Victorian auto-colonization going on here; the inner human “beast” has got to be invaded, conquered, then replaced with something better and more up to date, maybe a steam engine.)))

“Compared with the meaner poets the greater are the cleaner, (((no, they’re not, actually))) and Chaucer was probably safer than any other English poet of his time, (((most of them had their works obliterated, so how would we possibly know))) but I am not going to pretend that there are not things in Chaucer which a boy would be the better for not reading; (((“Geoffrey Chaucer: Menace to Youth” — it’s hard not to mock this assessment, but it’s dangerous not to understand why an intelligent literary critic would think this way))) and so far as these words of mine shall be taken for counsel, I am not willing that they should unqualifiedly praise him.

“The matter is by no means simple; it is not easy to conceive of a means of purifying the literature of the past without weakening it, and even falsifying it, but it is best to own that it is in all respects just what it is, and not to feign it otherwise. I am not ready to say that the harm from it is positive, but you do get smeared with it, and the filthy thought lives with the filthy rhyme in the ear, even when it does not corrupt the heart or make it seem a light thing for the reader’s tongue and pen to sin in kind.”

(((I’m convinced that we say and promulgate cultural ideas that are every bit this sad and crazy; we just don’t know which ideas those are, yet.)))

       

Vimeo Presents: top ten videos of 2013

*How can these not be good? I’m on patchy wifi in a Belgrade restaurant and can’t watch them myself, but I’m posting them just for you.

https://vimeo.com/blog/post:603

       

Dead Media Beat: The blog is dead, long live the blog

*Jason Kottke. A good guy to pay attention to in these matters.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/12/the-blog-is-dead/

“Sometime in the past few years, the blog died. In 2014, people will finally notice. Sure, blogs still exist, many of them are excellent, and they will go on existing and being excellent for many years to come. But the function of the blog, the nebulous informational task we all agreed the blog was fulfilling for the past decade, is increasingly being handled by a growing number of disparate media forms that are blog-like but also decidedly not blogs.

“Instead of blogging, people are posting to Tumblr, tweeting, pinning things to their board, posting to Reddit, Snapchatting, updating Facebook statuses, Instagramming, and publishing on Medium. In 1997, wired teens created online diaries, and in 2004 the blog was king. Today, teens are about as likely to start a blog (over Instagramming or Snapchatting) as they are to buy a music CD. Blogs are for 40-somethings with kids.

(((Did I mention I have a tumblr, despite my long familiarity with blogs?)))

http://brucesterling.tumblr.com

“Instead of launching blogs, companies are building mobile apps, Newsstand magazines on iOS, and things like The Verge. The Verge or Gawker or Talking Points Memo or BuzzFeed or The Huffington Post are no more blogs than The New York Times or Fox News, and they are increasingly not referring to themselves as such.

“The primary mode for the distribution of links has moved from the loosely connected network of blogs to tightly integrated services like Facebook and Twitter. If you look at the incoming referers to a site like BuzzFeed, you’ll see tons of traffic from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Pinterest but not a whole lot from blogs, even in the aggregate.

“For the past month at kottke.org, 14 percent of the traffic came from referrals compared to 30 percent from social, and I don’t even work that hard on optimizing for social media. Sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy aren’t seeking traffic from blogs anymore. Even the publicists clogging my inbox with promotional material urge me to “share this on my social media channels” rather than post it to my blog. (((The only blogspam I still get is for forged handbags. Big sellers with my readership, I reckon.)))

“The design metaphor at the heart of the blog format is on the wane as well. In a piece at The Atlantic, (((I told you that was a good magazine, thanks Mr Howells))) Alexis Madrigal says that the reverse-chronological stream (a.k.a. The Stream, a.k.a. The River of News) is on its way out. Snapchat, with its ephemeral media, is an obvious non-stream app; Madrigal calls it “a passing fog.”

Facebook’s News Feed is increasingly organized by importance, not chronology. Pinterest, Digg, and an increasing number of other sites use grid layouts to present information. Twitter is coming to resemble radio news as media outlets repost the same stories throughout the day, ICYMI (in case you missed it). Reddit orders stories by score. The design of BuzzFeed’s front page barely matters because most of their traffic comes in from elsewhere.

“So, R.I.P. The Blog, 1997-2013. But this isn’t cause for lament….” (((Actually, it very much is. Every one of these digital media holocausts: dead platforms, BBSes, CD-ROMS, etc etc etc, deserves lamentation. People got married through those things, they got news that changed their lives; they were media, and now they are dead.)))

       

Augmented Reality: Bring Touchless Interaction to Everything Around You

*I like my Leap Motion. I always carry it with me. I’m looking forward to the time when… well, when I can wave my hand at it and chase intelligence agencies and surveillance marketers away. That would be cool.

http://labs.leapmotion.com/post/70461940083/bring-touchless-interaction-to-everything-around-you

“Daniel Kleinman is Maker-in-Residence at SmartThings. His preliminary work with the Leap Motion Controller takes a step towards integrating Leap Motion interaction with the Internet of Things.

“At SmartThings, we think a lot about the way we interact with the everyday objects around us, and – more importantly – how they can react to us. By adding intelligence to the previously dumb, inanimate things in our homes, we can not only teach the locks, lights, thermostats, and other devices we live with to memorize our unique habits and routines, but also offer people security, peace of mind, and savings by letting them control all of these things from their phones.

“Recently, we integrated Leap Motion interaction with our open platform, hoping to unlock a new world of possibilities in which home automation devices didn’t just respond automatically to our preferences and presence, but also to our hand movements. While this is an early experiment, it offers a hint of what a touchlessly interactive world might look like.

“I felt like the simplest way to get started would be to create an in-browser Leap Motion and SmartThings integration. (If you have any compatible smart devices, you can take our live web demo for a spin after registering for free as a SmartThings developer.) SmartThings lets you create URL “endpoints” that control associated devices in your home. With the LeapJS examples, it was easy to see gestures in the browser and to send ajax messages to a SmartThings endpoint….”

       

More of the worthy literary ponderings of William Dean Howells

*Here’s that American literary maestro, Mr Howells, indulging himself in one of my own favorite occupations; reading old, obscure books about previous literary situations. Being a New Yorker, Howells finds a little-known book called “New York In Slices.” This is a tell-all book, rather scandalous and improper it seems, and the author of “New York In Slices” seems to be anonymous; or at least, Howells doesn’t mention his name, which is unusual for him.

*The book’s about the New York cultural scene in 1849. Howells is reading it fifty years later.

*I’m reading Howells about a hundred and ten years after that date, so I’m naturally interested to see if there is anybody left from 1849 who still grips the brass ring of literary history. Howells wonders much the same thing.

“Shall we, one day, we who are now in the rich and full enjoyment of our far-reaching fame, affect the imagination of posterity as these phantoms of the past affect ours?” (((Well, yeah, Bill, your answer is definitely “yes.” And me, too: I’m just as phantomizable, but the clock hasn’t ticked as much yet. But don’t feel too bad, Bill, because it’s thanks to the likes of you that I learn stuff like this.)))

“Shall we, too, appear in some pale limbo of unimportance as thin and faded as ‘John Inman, the getter-up of innumerable things for the annuals and magazines,’ or as Dr. Rufus Griswold, supposed for picturesque purposes to be ‘stalking about with an immense quarto volume under his arm . . . an early copy of his forthcoming ‘Female Poets of America”; or as Lewis Gaylord Clark, the ‘sunnyfaced, smiling’ editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine, ‘who don’t look as if the Ink-Fiend had ever heard of him,’ as he stands up to dance a polka with ‘a demure lady who has evidently spilled the inkstand over her dress’; or as ‘the stately Mrs. Seba Smith, bending aristocratically over the centre-table, and talking in a bright, cold, steady stream, like an antique fountain by moonlight’; or as ‘the spiritual and dainty Fanny Osgood, clapping her hands and crowing like a baby,’ where she sits ‘nestled under a shawl of heraldic devices, like a bird escaped from its cage’; or as Margaret Fuller, ‘her large, gray eyes Tamping inspiration, and her thin, quivering lip prophesying like a Pythoness’?”

(((I don’t know what “Tamping inspiration” means — it looks like a corruptive misprint for “lamping,” a decay of meaning from somewhere in the mists of time — but I definitely know who Margaret Fuller was: that gray-eyed, prophesying Pythoness. Margaret Fuller was a Transcendentalist, but she was also a feminist and an armed, democratic revolutionary. This report in “New York In Slices” must have been one of Margaret’s last days in the USA, before she left forever as a working journalist, and become a propagandist for Garibaldi in the siege of the Roman Republic.

(((In Rome, Margaret Fuller married an Italian redshirt soldier, and became “Margaret Fuller Ossoli.” Margaret wrote some allegedly tremendous diary about her war experiences while fighting for freedom in Italy, and then the Roman Republic fell in flames. Margaret got onto a boat for the USA, her dazzling manuscript in her bag, and the boat sank just offshore from New York City and everybody drowned, including her, her husband and her kid.)))

(((So, there’s not a lot left today of what Margaret Fuller, as a remarkable American writer, actually wrote. But she was most definitely a Prophesying Pythoness, and she’s rather well-known among critics of women’s studies, today. It turned out that the tilled fields of American literature would sprout an almighty crop of liberated Margarets, one day. The Pythoness Margaret Ossoli was like dragon’s teeth.)))

       

American Literature in Exile, an essay by William Dean Howells

*I’m an American writer who is rather given to planetary rambling, but there are certainly areas of the world where I get lots more writerly. Here in Belgrade, for instance, I rejoice in a book-lined studio with a genuine working chair and even a writer’s desk.

*Connectivity’s patchy, I’m rarely disturbed by the colorful locals (who’ve got their own problems), and the consequence is that I read heaps of literary stuff here in Belgrade. I even read and write poetry in Belgrade, a diversion well-neigh unheard-of in my other locales.

*In Belgrade, I read material of massive literary density, like, say, William Dean Howells. Likely you’ve scarcely heard of him. He was Mark Twain’s best literary ally: man of letters, critic, poet, novelist, travel writer, anthologist, editor of a crucially important American cultural magazine (“The Atlantic,” which is still pretty good, actually — “The Atlantic” is alarmingly good, even, although Howells has been dead since 1920).

*I’m not a major Howells devotee, but now I can see why Twain thought he was a big deal. Howells is an American establishment figure. Being an intellectual, he’s something of a left-wing socialist peacenik — he’s upset by war and poverty, and he says kindly, broadminded things about street urchins, foreign immigrants, Jews, Negroes, teenage girls, and other underclass creatures that it would have been more elegant to overlook entirely — that sort of thing.

*It’s good to read Howell because he’s so secure in his own world. He’s properly dressed in his own Manhattan tie-and-tails; he’s not bitterly agitated, or preyed upon by bipolarity, like Clemens was. Howells is energetic without ever being antic. He gives the impression of a natural ruling-class figure who would likely do very well in the State Department.

*There’s a steampunk version of the Howells-Twain relationship where Howells is “M,” the master spy, the firm-hand-on-the-tiller, while Mark Twain is his brilliant yet reckless field agent, with a license to wander the world and kill off steampunk super-villains. I shouldn’t have said that, because now somebody’s gonna do it and get it all wrong; but, well, I’m in literary mode now, writing an Italian dieselpunk story, and the flights of fancy are proliferating out of control.

*That brings me to this quite long essay (when you read William Dean Howells, you can get all prolix, you see; tl;dr hasn’t been invented yet, it’s the 1880s and 1890s, plenty of room on the white magazine page here, printers’ devils standing by). The essay is all about American writers who wander the world. How could I not like that?

*I’m one of those, and Howells was one for a while, too; in fact, I started reading Howells because he wrote at length about Italy. Howells is pretty good about Italy, too, although his favorite Italian topic is Venice, an Italian city that has simply been annihilated by guys like me and Howells; Venice is one of the rare places that was literally murdered by world tourism, just overwhelmed, eaten alive. It’s a pitiful, spectral place now, Venice, and it was also pitiful in Howells’ day, but for interestingly different reasons.

*In writing about his Venice, Howells doesn’t intend to reveal such things to me; he’s trying to be immediate and topical. He’s trying to explain a foreign society to his own society, an American society which is just as distant to me as Venice was to Howells, although it’s a distance of time, rather than space.

*I don’t like to say that I enjoy Howells for reasons, that, as a writer, Howells didn’t understand and didn’t intend to convey. That seems patronizing, and it’s not really true. Actually, I *study* Howells for those reasons, it’s an earnest form of cultural research, whereas, when I *enjoy* Howells, it’s usually because of some literary jeux d’esprit he tosses off, some simile or metaphor, or a sonorous phrase in the language we still share; he’s even pretty good at puns, when he stoops to one.

*He’s just a good craftsman of the language of his period, not the best, but a better writer than I am today. He’s calmer and more attentive to the readers, and less given to black-humor wisecracks and mind-bending head-trips. Science fiction writers are cult-meister guys who like to attack, and dazzle, and half-blind their readers; that’s part of their temperament as creatives, but it gets in the way of effective prose composition. I can’t help doing that sci-fi stuff any more than Howells can help, say, his annoying racist, sexist Victorian propriety; it’s who we are two people, not just two writers, and you can’t bleach that out of our texts without annihilating us. That’s how literature is.

*But Howells is working harder than me, at literature. He’s established, centered and committed; he’s just going to work it out along that mainstream line with a matured consistency, and I think Twain must have admired that about him. Howells was an older writer with a much better reputation, but he knew very well that Twain was a truly great writer, and Twain must have found that consoling.

***********************************

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE

by William Dean Howells

A recently lecturing Englishman is reported to have noted the unenviable primacy of the United States among countries where the struggle for material prosperity has been disastrous to the pursuit of literature.

(((I don’t want to get to obtrusive with the ol’ triple-parens here, but let me rephrase that for you, as a kind of push-start: British critics think that American writers are a bunch of trashy, dollar-obsessed sellouts. Not a new idea!)))

He said, or is said to have said (one cannot be too careful in attributing to a public man the thoughts that may be really due to an imaginative frame in the reporter), that among us, “the old race of writers of distinction, such as Longfellow, Bryant, Holmes, and Washington Irving, have (sic) died out, and the Americans who are most prominent in cultivated European opinion in art or literature, like Sargent, Henry James, or Marion Crawford, live habitually out of America, and draw their inspiration from England, France, and Italy.”

I.

If this were true, I confess that I am so indifferent to what many Americans glory in that it would not distress me, or wound me in the sort of self-love which calls itself patriotism. If it would at all help to put an end to that struggle for material prosperity which has eventuated with us in so many millionaires and so many tramps, I should be glad to believe that it was driving our literary men out of the country. (((This is the “Gilded Age,” folks. An age with politically untouchable millionares and swarms of tramps. Us, too.)))

This would be a tremendous object-lesson, and might be a warning to the millionaires and the tramps. But I am afraid it would not have this effect, for neither our very rich nor our very poor care at all for the state of polite learning among us; though for the matter of that, I believe that economic conditions have little to do with it; and that if a general mediocrity of fortune prevailed and there were no haste to be rich and to get poor, the state of polite learning would not be considerably affected.

(((“Cash can’t buy brains.”)))

As matters stand, I think we may reasonably ask whether the Americans “most prominent in cultivated European opinion,” the Americans who “live habitually out of America,” are not less exiles than advance agents of the expansion now advertising itself to the world. ((Uh-oh. Hear that, Europe? We’re not fleeing over there because we can’t stand ourselves. We’re coming to overwhelm you, and make you more like we are.)))

They may be the vanguard of the great army of adventurers destined to overrun the earth from these shores, and exploit all foreign countries to our advantage. They probably themselves do not know it, but in the act of “drawing their inspiration” from alien scenes, or taking their own where they find it, are not they simply transporting to Europe “the struggle for material prosperity,” which Sir Lepel supposes to be fatal to them here? (((Coca-Cola is a patent medicine when Howells writes this, but he’s prophesying its global triumph here. And, accurately.)))

There is a question, however, which comes before this, and that is the question whether they have quitted us in such numbers as justly to alarm our patriotism. Qualitatively, in the authors named and in the late Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. Harry Harland, and the late Mr. Harold Frederic, as well as in Mark Twain, once temporarily resident abroad, the defection is very great; but quantitatively it is not such as to leave us without a fair measure of home-keeping authorship. Our destitution is not nearly so great now in the absence of Mr. James and Mr. Crawford as it was in the times before the “struggle for material prosperity” when Washington Irving went and lived in England and on the European continent well-nigh half his life.

Sir Lepel Griffin — or Sir Lepel Griffin’s reporter (((Sir Lepel is a crusty Indian British colonel type, of an imperial breed now extinct))) — seems to forget the fact of Irving’s long absenteeism when he classes him with “the old race” of eminent American authors who stayed at home. But really none of those he names were so constant to our air as he seems — or his reporter seems — to think. Longfellow sojourned three or four years in Germany, Spain, and Italy; Holmes spent as great time in Paris; Bryant was a frequent traveller, and each of them “drew his inspiration” now and then from alien sources. Lowell was many years in Italy, Spain, and England; Motley spent more than half his life abroad; Hawthorne was away from us nearly a decade. (((That’s a lot of “American” writers. That’s a cavalcade of the major American writers of the day. Obviously they came back from Europe even *more* American than before, because they hadn’t grasped what America was, until they’d lived someplace else.)))

II.

If I seem to be proving too much in one way, I do not feel that I am proving too much in another. My facts go to show that the literary spirit is the true world-citizen, and is at home everywhere. ((Literature interprets flags as censorship, routes around them, etc. Actually, writers basically have *language* problems, not big national-border problems. You can be a great Brazilian writer and be considered quite groovy in Portugal, but escaping that Lusophone linguistic district is like climbing through barbed wire.)))

If any good American were distressed by the absenteeism of our authors, I should first advise him that American literature was not derived from the folklore of the red Indians, but was, as I have said once before, a condition of English literature, and was independent even of our independence. (((In our modern society we’d naturally stretch for some reason to say, “Hey, wait, the ‘Red Indians’ were super-influential, literarily! What about Sherman Alexie and William Least Heat Moon?” etc etc. Howells would stare at us in wonderment and chalk us up as victims of political insanity.)))

Then I should entreat him to consider the case of foreign authors who had found it more comfortable or more profitable to live out of their respective countries than in them. (((Hey yeah! Look, all writers run for the doors as soon as they can afford it!)))

I should allege for his consolation the case of Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, and more latterly that of the Brownings and Walter Savage Landor, who preferred an Italian to an English sojourn; and yet more recently that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who voluntarily lived several years in Vermont, (((the “voluntarily” is good — actually, Kipling’s American wife told him to do that, and Kipling always did whatever she said))) and has “drawn his inspiration” in notable instances from the life of these States.

It will serve him also to consider that the two greatest Norwegian authors, Bjornsen and Ibsen, have both lived long in France and Italy. Heinrich Heine loved to live in Paris much better than in Dusseldorf, or even in Hamburg; and Turgenev himself, who said that any man’s country could get on without him, but no man could get on without his country, managed to dispense with his own in the French capital, and died there after he was quite free to go back to St. Petersburg.

In the last century Rousseau lived in France rather than Switzerland; Voltaire at least tried to live in Prussia, and was obliged to a long exile elsewhere; Goldoni left fame and friends in Venice for the favor of princes in Paris. (((Voltaire actually lived on top of the Swiss CERN cyclotron, where he could skip over the Swiss border handily. I’ve seen the wreckage of that posh hideout Voltaire built, among the grateful French peasants. It’s pretty great, as writers’ houses go.)))

Literary absenteeism, it seems to me, is not peculiarly an American vice or an American virtue. It is an expression and a proof of the modern sense which enlarges one’s country to the bounds of civilization. I cannot think it justly a reproach in the eyes of the world, and if any American feels it a grievance, I suggest that he do what he can to have embodied in the platform of his party a plank affirming the right of American authors to a public provision that will enable them to live as agreeably at home as they can abroad on the same money. (((Writers always somehow think they can invent their own economics.)))

In the mean time, their absenteeism is not a consequence of “the struggle for material prosperity,” not a high disdain of the strife which goes on not less in Europe than in America, and must, of course, go on everywhere as long as competitive conditions endure, but is the result of chances and preferences which mean nothing nationally calamitous or discreditable. ((However, there’s always the CHANCE that national preferences will be calamitous and discreditable, and we Americans don’t exactly lack for those, here in oncoming 2014.)))

       

The Electronic Frontier Foundation 2013 Holiday Wishlist

*Maybe it’s just me, but that situation sure doesn’t sound very “frontier” like. More like “barbed wire and mud under ceaseless artillery bombardment.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/effs-2013-holiday-wishlist

DECEMBER 3, 2013 | BY EVA GALPERIN AND SETH SCHOEN
EFF’s 2013 Holiday Wishlist

“As we did last year and the year before, EFF welcomes the winter season with a new wishlist of some things we’d love to have happen for the holidays—for us and for all Internet users. These are some of the actions we’d most like to see from companies, governments, organizations, and individuals in the new year.

“Citizens, organizations, privacy officials, and governments should unite around the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance and add their voices to declare that mass surveillance violates international human rights.

“The U.S. Congress should create a new Church Committee to find out what intelligence agencies are actually doing; since mass surveillance is a global problem, we also need parliamentary commissions of inquiry around the world to look into the same question.
Congress should pass meaningful reform to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

“The Department of Justice should notify everyone who’s been convicted of a crime using evidence derived—directly or indirectly—from warrantless surveillance programs (not just a cherry-picked handful of defendants). (((Imagine getting mail to that effect, in your prison cell. That would feel great, wouldn’t it? Happy New Year!)))

“All communications companies should publish transparency reports showing the scope and nature of government requests for user information. The Internet industry, led by Google, (((oh brother))) has made this a standard for corporate transparency, but telecom companies are still totally missing in action. (((No they’re not. They’re in action with their long-term friends and patrons the NSA.)))

“All Internet sites should adopt cryptographic best practices for every connection, every time, including PFS, STARTTLS, HSTS, and encrypted traffic between data centers.
In 2014, every certificate authority and web browser should commit to adopt Google’s Certificate Transparency system to detect and stop the issuance of fake certificates that facilitate spying on web users. (((That’s the frontier in action, isn’t it? I know that when Lewis and Clark were exploring the frontier, the first thing they did for President Jefferson was to scout out some encryption forests and encryption mines.)))

“Companies that sell books, movies, music, or other digital media should commit to the principle that if you bought it, you own it. That means no DRM and no sneaky license agreements. (((That already kinda works, if you bought it for 25 cents off a pirate disk in China.)))

“Every wireless device should let you change its MAC address (a hardware serial number), and no new technology standards should be designed to transmit any persistent hardware serial numbers over the air or on a network. (If your device keeps sending the same hardware serial number, like wifi devices and cell phones, among others, whoever’s at the other end or listening in can recognize you and track your location. Businesses and governments are already taking advantage of this to build massive databases of our devices.) (((I’d pay extra. You bet!)))

“Web sites should publish historical versions of their terms of service and privacy policies, with their effective dates, to help users understand what’s changed over time.
Governments should come clean about how they’ve weakened computer and communications security, clean up the damage, and stop doing it. (((These are probably listed together because it’s utterly impossible to do the one without the other. “Surveillance-Marketing Complex, USA”)))

“Companies entering the secure communications space (as well as those that have been there a while!) should explain exactly how secure they are and why. They should get public technical audits by experts and clearly explain how they handle classic, fundamental security challenges. They should clearly and publicly explain whether and to what extent they could be compelled to record or turn over user data or to help break users’ security (including by disclosing cryptographic keys or passwords, by issuing false digital certificates, or by modifying their software). (((“As Honest Cryptographers, We Have Nothing to Hide!”)))

“The surveillance industry should take responsibility for ensuring that it’s not assisting mass surveillance and other human rights violations. (((Just like the Defense industry, which never, ever attacks anybody.)))

“It goes without saying that 2013 has been a major year for transparency, security, privacy, and more. Let’s see it out with a bang by getting some of these important wishes granted.

“Update: Thanks to prompt action by Facebook, their robots.txt file has been modified to allow crawls by the Internet Archive for the Facebook terms of use and privacy policy. We appreciate their quick response.”

DRM
Defend Your Right to Repair!
Terms Of (Ab)Use
International
International Privacy Standards
Mass Surveillance Technologies
State Surveillance & Human Rights
Cell Tracking
Encrypting the Web
Locational Privacy
NSA Spying
RFID
Security
Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform
Transparency

       

Design Fiction: WE COLONISED THE MOON in London

*Not exactly “design fiction,” but it’s hard to beat for daffy, out-there space whimsy.

The Arts Catalyst present

Republic of the Moon


Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, South Bank, London SE1 9PH, UK
10
January – 2 February 2014, open daily 11am-6pm, admission free


www.artscatalyst.org/moon



An exhibition of work by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Katie Paterson, Liliane Lijn, Leonid Tishkov, WE COLONISED THE MOON and Moon Vehicle that re-imagines our relationship with our nearest celestial neighbor.



It’s nearly four decades since humans walked on the Moon, but it now seems likely that we will return there in this century – whether to mine for its minerals, as a ‘stepping stone’ to Mars, or simply to do scientific research. In a provocative pre-emptive action, a group of artists are declaring a Republic of the Moon here on Earth, to re-examine our relationship with our planet’s only natural satellite. (((Do the Chinese know? They own the Moon’s only working robot.)))



After two decades working with space dreamers from the European Space Agency to anarchist autonomous astronauts, The Arts Catalyst will transform Bargehouse into an Earth-based embassy for a ‘Republic of the Moon’, filled with artists’ fantastical imaginings.

Presenting international artists including Liliane Lijn, Leonid Tishkov, Katie Paterson, Agnes Meyer Brandis and WE COLONISED THE MOON, the exhibition combines personal encounters, DIY space plans, imaginary expeditions and new myths for the next space age. 


Marking the start of its twentieth anniversary year, The Arts Catalyst, the UK’s leading experimental art and science organisation, will animate the Bargehouse exhibition with performances, workshops, music, talks, a pop-up moon shop (((yeah man))) by super/collider and playful protests against lunar exploitation.

A manifesto declaring the Moon a temporary autonomous zone, with responses from artists and scientists to novelist Tony White’s call to ‘occupy the Moon!’ will be published in print and e-Book formats to coincide with the exhibition.



• Agnes Meyer-Brandis’ Moon Goose Analogue: Lunar Migration Bird Facility (Ars Electronica award of distinction winner 2012)

• Katie Paterson Second Moon and Earth–Moon–Earth

• Liliane Lijn’s moonmeme

• Leonid Tishkov’s Private Moon


• WE COLONISED THE MOON (Sue Corke and Hagen Betzwieser) will be the Republic of the Moon’s artists in residence throughout the exhibition.


• Moon Vehicle, devised by the students at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, with artist Joanna Griffin. 



The artists in Republic of the Moon regard the Moon not as a resource to be exploited but as a heavenly body that belongs to us all. The exhibition asks: Who will be the first colonisers of the Moon? Perhaps it should be the artists. (((If so, I sure hope they’re artists who are unwontedly great at plugging sudden vacuum leaks and maintaining life-support plumbing.)))



A Manifesto for the Republic of the Moon will be published to accompany the exhibition, edited by curator, Rob La Frenais.



A full programme of events and ticket bookings can be found at www.artscatalyst.org/moon



Events for adults

- Friday 10 January, 5-6pm – Exhibition tour with curator Rob La Frenais and the artists. Free, no booking necessary.



- Saturday 11 January, 11am-1pm – Open think tank late breakfast for scientists, experts and the public with artists in residence WE COLONISED THE MOON.

Further participatory events investigate the future of the Moon: theme park or quarry? Will take place on Saturdays 18 and 25 January.



- Thursday 16 January, 7-10pm – Kosmica: Full Moon Party and late night exhibition opening. Talks by: artist Tomas Saraceno, space medicine expert Kevin Fong, space politics specialist Jill Stuart, space scientist Lucie Green, Live Moon smelling (((wow))) with WE COLONISED THE MOON, music by Orchestra Elastique (with Georges Méliès, A trip to the Moon). (((Good movie!)))

Tickets £5, book online 

- Saturday 1 February, 2-5pm – Global Lunar Day: an investigation of international and cultural approaches to the Moon.

Symposium moderator: Dr Jill Stuart (Executive Editor of Space Policy) and speakers: Prof Bernard Foing (Executive Director, International Lunar Exploration Working Group), Bijal (Bee) Thakore (engineer and member of Board of Directors, Planetary Society), Dr Marek Kukula (Public Astronomer, Royal Observatory Greenwich), Joanna Griffin (artist and researcher, Srishti School of Arts, Bangalore).

Free

Family workshops
- Sun 12 January, 2–5pm – Make it to the Moon, drop in family workshops led by artist and ESERO-UK Space Ambassador Helen Schell. Imagine a mission to the Moon and using various art and craft techniques design and make space diaries, logbooks, rocket manuals, Moon flags and mission badges. For 5–11 year olds, must be accompanied by an adult, free.

-

Sun 19 January, 2.30–4.30pm – Moon Stories, family workshop with Moon Vehicle project leader Joanna Griffin. Join a space adventure re-enacting the history of Moon landings, making space vehicles and a light-based lunar installation for a new mission. Suitable for ages 8+, must be accompanied by an adult, free but booking essential. 



Republic of the Moon is a touring exhibition, commissioned by The Arts Catalyst with FACT. The first version of the exhibition was presented at FACT Liverpool in winter 2012. The exhibition and residency has been made possible with Grants for the Arts support from Arts Council England and Science & Technology Facilities Council.



Moon Goose Analogue: Lunar Migration Bird Facility links directly to Meyer-Brandis’s, Moon Goose Colony, 2011, a project during her residency at Pollinaria, Italy, the site of the remote analogue habitat where the artist has raised and houses the colony of moon geese. (((Viva Italia!)))



Second Moon has been commissioned by Locus+ in partnership with Newcastle University and Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums. Supported by Arts Council England, Adelaide Festival and Newcastle City Council

Bargehouse is owned and managed by social enterprise, Coin Street Community Builders: www.coinstreet.org

       

Symposium: “Speculations on Anonymous Materials”

*It’s kind of exciting to see philosophy getting every bit as bizarre, freaky and opaque as tech-art.

*It’s a press release.

Symposium: “Speculations on Anonymous Materials”


Saturday, January 4, 2014, 11–20h

Fridericianum

Friedrichsplatz 18
34117 Kassel

Germany

Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11–19h, 
Thursday 11–20h





www.fridericianum.org

Participants: Maurizio Ferraris, Markus Gabriel, Iain Hamilton Grant, Robin Mackay, Reza Negarestani


Moderator: Armen Avanessian



”The “Speculations on Anonymous Materials” symposium brings together different approaches in philosophy, which in their own way all aim to go beyond modern and postmodern thinking. (((And high time, too.)))

“The symposium is based on the following hypothesis: The fundamental technological, scientific and socio-political changes at the beginning of the 21st century have caused sharp caesuras (((ouch))) in both philosophy and art. 

“

The exhibition Speculations on Anonymous Materials presents artistic practices that yet have to claim a place in art history and art theory—just as the philosophical approaches brought together in this symposium cannot be grasped as a single homogenous movement. 

This merging of art and philosophy is grounded on the methodological assumption that contemporary art and speculative philosophy, perhaps without yet being aware of the fact and despite their different modes of existence, are driven by a common interest. (((“Way too many computers.”)))

“The symposium’s quest for a new terminology and a new grammar of thinking about contemporary art will focus on new meanings of materiality, matter and materialism.



Concept: Armen Avanessian, Tom Lamberty, Susanne Pfeffer, Nina Tabassomi



All lectures will be in English.


Admission is free—please rsvp to symposium@fridericianum.org.



The symposium takes place in the context of the exhibition Speculations on Anonymous Materials, on view at Fridericianum until January 26, 2014.




Press contact 
Carolin Wuerthner

press@fridericianum.org


       

Protect your alleged right to sleep on the couches of people you met on the Internet

*Meanwhile, in the emergent and potentially disruptive shareable economy, newly feared by hoteliers, landlords, and collectors of tourist-tax everywhere:

http://www.peers.org/#home

“Mishelle’s petition calling on New York to fix the poorly written law that threatens Airbnb hosts has been making waves over the last two months. Over 230,000 people from around the world have signed on in support. Peers members have held a city-wide strategy meeting, developed neighborhood organizing teams and visited legislators offices. On top of that, we’ve collected the personal stories of hundreds of people who depend on Airbnb.

“We’re off to an amazing start, which is important because what happens in New York could have consequences around the world. Right now, we’re doing everything we can to put your stories in front of lawmakers. We created a website with the personal stories of Airbnb hosts, Peers members are telling those stories directly to legislators and we want to take out the first full page peer-funded ad in sharing economy history in City and State — the newspaper that caters to New York’s state legislature and political elite.

“Can you chip in at least $4 dollars and make this full page ad a reality and help tell the story of a people-driven sharing movement?

“We know that if decision-makers hear the real stories of New Yorkers who depend on Airbnb that it will make the difference. City and State is the most cost-effective way to reach New York State Legislators and their staffs — the people who will decide whether or not to fix the law.

“Not only will the ad itself tell our story, but the way it’s funded is an important part of the story as well. (((That’s for sure. You think political candidates don’t know about crowd funding? Think otherwise.))) There are a lot of legislators who think this is about Airbnb, the company. What they don’t yet understand is that the sharing economy has fundamentally changed our role in the economy. This isn’t about a company; it’s about our livelihood and the human connections that homesharing provides.

“When legislators see an ad funded by real people like you (((I have to admit that I rather resent being classified as mere “real people” by Internet-frenzied “homesharing” activists))), they’re going to see this issue in a new light. If we raise $7,000 by today, December 16, we’ll be able to run the ad.

“Peers members are running the biggest campaign yet to protect the future of home-sharing and the outcome of this fight could have ramifications around the world. But we believe that if Peers members come together, we can win this campaign and save home-sharing in New York and beyond.
 
“Yes, I can donate at least $4 to buy a full page ad in City and State and support Peers members protecting home-sharing in New York.”

Thank you for your support.
Natalie Foster
 
Natalie Foster

Executive Director