The Hard Disk You’ve Been Waiting For – Hard disk – Gizmodo.
Gefunden: “Another Format Bites The Dust: Sony Discontinues Floppy Disks” – Gizmondo
Lange habe ich keine mehr davon gesehen, obwohl…ich glaube einer der Arbeitsplatzrechner hier hat noch ein Laufwerk. Schade, was war das doch für ein Spaß auf dem Schulhof – 16 Farben Bilder und ein paar Zeilen TXT Dateien auf Disketten tauschen.
Another Format Bites The Dust: Sony Discontinues Floppy Disks
What, wait? Sony’s been churning out floppy disks all these years? And 12m were sold last year in Japan alone? I guess that is not enough though—as Sony Japan will cease selling them March 2011. [Akihabara News]
viaAnother Format Bites The Dust: Sony Discontinues Floppy Disks – Sony floppy disks – Gizmodo.
Rücklagen von Hochschulen, Studienbeitragswegfall und allgemeine Mittelkürzungen
„Ich bin mir durchaus darüber im Klaren, dass diese Situation für die Hochschulen nicht einfach ist. Aber die finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen des Landes machen bei allem Respekt vor der Leistung der Hochschulen einen moderaten Sparbeitrag unumgänglich“, sagte die Ministerin und fügte hinzu: „Ich halte diesen Beitrag nicht zuletzt angesichts der Rücklagen der Hochschulen von mehr als 250 Millionen Euro für vertretbar. Das ist zu verkraften, ohne Strukturen zu zerstören. Das erfordert aber auch Mut zur Verantwortung.“
Kühne-Hörmann stellte gleichzeitig heraus, dass alle übrigen Bestandteile der Hochschulfinanzierung nicht angetastet werden:
Das sind die so genannten Qualitätssicherungsmittel zur Verbesserung der Studienstruktur und der Lehre in Höhe von 92 Millionen Euro im Jahr, durch welche die abgeschafften Studienbeiträge kompensiert werden. Auch das Bau- und Investitionsprogramm HEUREKA bleibt mit Jahresraten von 250 Millionen Euro bis 2020 bestehen. Diese Raten werden durch das von 2009 bis 2012 laufende Sonderinvestitionsprogramm des Landes um 354 Millionen Euro und durch das Konjunkturprogramm II von Bund und Land in den Jahren von 2009 bis 2011 um 187 Millionen Euro noch verstärkt.
via hessen.de
Nein, zu Kürzungen bei den Wissenschaften wird es durch die Einführung von Studienbeiträgen nicht kommen. Auch nicht unbedingt durch ihre Abschaffung. Wohl aber durch die Gemengelage, die entsteht, wenn Hochschulen einerseits Geld zurücklegen, auch weil sie den Wegfall von Studienbeiträgen befürchten, andererseits aber mit ihren normalen Mitteln kaum mehr studierbare Lehre anbieten können. Und was folgt? Bau- und Investitionsmittel werden nicht gekürzt, Mittel für Personal- und Sachkosten wohl. Prima, das bringt uns weit nach vorn auf dem Weg in die Wissensgesellschaft…
Einspruch: "Facebook's Play to Take Over the Entire Internet"
Facebook is now going to create and store that “semantic relationship,” which is both great and terrifying. Computer scientists have long envisioned a Web 3.0, a smarter Internet that understands the difference between objects, people, places, animals, etc. In other words, computers and servers should know that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an object, and in particular it’s a film, and in particular a film by Michel Gondry, who is a person. Right now computers see words like “Michel Gondry” only as dumb, meaningless text. Facebook wants to change that—which is great. But it also plans to own that information—which is scary. As Web guru Dave Winer puts it, “Facebook is to be the identity system for the web. A company? That just can’t work . . . Even Bill Gates didn’t have the audacity to propose that!” Gates may not have it, but Zuckerberg certainly does.
Es ist schon komisch, wie sehr Kritik auch über 60 Jahre nach der “Dialektik der Aufklärung” noch an die Zurechnung eines Adressaten gebunden ist – insbesondere, wenn dieser der Ökonomie zuzuordnen ist. Seit über 10 Jahren ist die “Semantic Web” Idee formuliert und bislang war sie vor allem spannendes, aber wenig umgesetztes Konzept einzelner Idealisten. Kaum spannt sich ein Unternehmen konsequent vor diesen Wagen, ruft das halbe Netz “scary, scary”.
Das Schwierige daran scheint mir eher, dass so langsam klar wird, was sich eigentlich verschiebt, wenn die alte Arbeitsteilung zwischen Menschen und Geräten im Bereich der Medientechnologien nicht mehr die einzige Form des Zusammenarbeitens ist. Objekte identifizieren, klassifizieren und zu werten ist schon längst nicht mehr die singuläre Aufgabe der Nutzer und Produzenten von Medieninhalten. Darauf aber sind unsere Wissenskategorien und die Strukturen von Ökonomie, Recht und eben auch Kritik noch nicht umgestellt. Sie verlassen sich auf eine sehr spezifisch moderne Form von “Agency”: individuell Handelnde oder kollektiv-organisierte Agenturen.
"The medical subject is a statistical subject": Inclusion by numbers
Zwei neue und gelobte Bücher zur Praxis der Vermessung und Verrechnung in der Biomedizin, im Review durch Sismondo in einer der nächsten Social Studies of Science.
“People have been statistics for a long time (for example, Hacking 1990; Porter, 1986), but we have had our biomedical selves importantly defined by statistics for a relatively short time – mostly as a result of the rise of the clinical trial in the second half of the 20th century (Marks, 1997). In the past half-century, medicine has become irreducibly statistical. The medi- cal subject is a statistical subject. One result of this, as Greene’s narratives show, is a dra- matic expansion of the province of medicine. Today we are all medical subjects, in virtue of statistical profiles that measure the risks we carry and the odds that we will benefit from or be harmed by particular treatments. No longer are there any simply healthy people.Like many of the characteristics on which they depend, the statistical risks people carry are invisible. In becoming scientific, medicine has, like almost every other science, determined that what is more fundamental is invisible.”
Einspruch: Macht der Simulation: Plötzlich sind wir alle Zuschauer (FAZ)
Nur Gestrige können glauben, dass in der Skepsis gegen diese neue Macht die Sehnsucht nach vorindustriellen Zeiten steckt. Es geht vielmehr darum, gegen die Welt der Computer Instanzen des Einspruchs zu etablieren, den Widerspruch, der sich einzig und allein aus Empirie und Intuition speisen kann, als Aufgabe moderner Gesellschaften zu erkennen. Tun wir das nicht, fliegt bald gar nichts mehr.
via faz.net
Zwischen Fluggesellschaften und Luftraumaufsicht wird über die Nutzung von Simulationsdaten gestritten – mit traditionellen Argumenten (Sicherheit vs. Profit, siehe die Interviews in den gestrigen Tagesthemen) und über so schwierige Eigenschaften wie Validität. Frank Schirrmacher hat sich in der FAZ darüber ausgelassen und bringt zu meiner Besorgnis einen neuen Akteur ins Spiel: den gesunden Menschenverstand.
Das Argument ist so simpel wie falsch: Validität von Prognosen – darum geht es ja bei den Simulationen – lässt sich durch das Hinzuziehen von Material, durch Prüfung der Annahmen, die der Prognose zugrunde lagen und durch die Überprüfung der Durchführung steigern. Aber nicht durch Intuition.
Fundstücke: XAuth/Facebook
via netzwertig.com
Streitbare Identitäten…
Remix Culture is a Myth | Savage Minds
“remix is a myth. Talk to the ISPs. 99% of illegal content is downloaded for consumption only. Barely anyone is remixing illegally.” Andrew Keen (@ajkeen) 7:22 AM Mar 26th
This is a Tweet/quote from the self-confessed Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley. I follow him on Twitter as a gnawing antidote to the breathless Web 2.0 enthusiasm that props up investments in infantilizing social media tools in this information economy. Despite his antagonism for antagonism’s sake sometimes he nails the hot air out of the right cyberpole at just the right time. I thought this Tweet/quote about remix culture being a rhetorical device and not a practiced reality was so right on I reTweeted it to Facebook. An exchange amongst fellow Savage Mind Dustin Wax (Oneman) and other Savage readers followed. This is reposted with the A-OK of everyone involved. Oh, and by myth I follow Vincent Mosco in seeing myths as simultaneously both distortions of and possibilities for future action.
Adam Fish remix is myth. 99% of content is downloaded for consumption. Barely anyone remixes. Remix is not a valid argument for copyleft. TH @ajkeen
Dustin M. Wax That’s cuckoo. That’s like saying macaroni art is myth because 99% of macaroni is eaten. Barely anyone makes macaroni portraits. But edge cases aren’t non-cases.
Adam Fish Yes, remix exists but not in the meaningful volumes to warrant it the legal utility and scholarly attention it receives. Where would H. Jenkins and Larry Lessig be without those few elite tools with the spare money and leisure to remix? By myth I mean a happy distortion and possible lie.
George Grader copyleft is copyright’s annoying little brother?
Kim Christen OMG! thx for saying this Adam, I completely agree that it gets WAY more attention than it warrants!
Dustin M. Wax I might be missing some vital background info here, but I think I disagree. Remix might be just a tiny percentage of potential uses of media, but it has a disproportionate impact on the development of a culture than “plain” consumption. To take a prominent example, Danger Mouse making the “Grey Album” has a greater effect on us than someone else *listening to* either the “White Album” or the “Black Album”.
I agree that it is a way of interacting with media that is not typical, but I think it attracts more attention, and needs greater protection than “mere” consumption, precisely *because* it is atypical and disproportionately influential.
Kim Christen Dustin, it may be the anthropologist in me, but how might one actually quantify the “effect” or “impact” that the “Grey Album” has on someone, or even some collective like “music listeners” etc? and how would you quantify that versus some other album or work that is or is not a “remix”?
Dustin M. Wax Kim, it may be the anthropologist in *me*, but I wouldn’t. I’m the Anti-Quant. That said, the comparison isn’t between remix and non-remix *production* — I wouldn’t even try to compare the influence of the Grey Album against the influence of the Beatles’ or Jay-Z’s albums. The comparison Adam set up is remix vs. non-remix *consumption*
The other issue, though, is a concern. How do we apprehend and understand the way that consumers interact with creative media? To be honest, I had the same question in mind when I wrote the comment above, and I decided to ignore it because this is Facebook and I can be stupider here than in real life.
But since you asked, I’d say that we have never adequately theorized the relationship between readers/viewers/listeners and their media. This is actually a major stumbling block for people who want to make the case that, for example, watching porn causes misogyny or playing violent video games causes desensitization to real-life violence (or their counterarguments, e.g. that watching porn helps people express themselves sexually or that playing video games helps people channel aggression in non-hurtful ways).
That said, to my mind, remix culture encourages the creation of new material for interpretation, so that where there was Work X and Work Y in our culture before, now there is Work X, Work Y, *and* Work Z, the Remix. And since the remix, by positioning disparate works in new relations, encourages different interpretations, it leads to new culture. More semy to get poly on, so to speak. In effect, it multiplies the act of consumption/interpretation simply by being *more*.
Adam, I apologize for hijacking this thread. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop, but I’ll be appropriately contrite for not stopping
We should have this discussion at Savage Minds; Facebook’s not exactly a public forum!
Kim Christen hey, Dustin, I see we are fellow banana slugs! all good questions, i still agree with Adam’s original post–or at least the sentiment behind it =)!
Dustin M. Wax Yay banana slugs! You should just agree with me — it’s so much easier
But my concern is the notion that there are certain parts of our culture that can and should be locked down. From one perspective, *all* consumption is remixing, since I never hear a song the way you do, and neither of us hears it the way the artist(s) did. We’re always mixing in parts of our own cultural experience and personal history, and always placing everything into relation with the rest of our media experience. The draconian copyright laws we live under now pretend that this isn’t the case, which would be ok (pretend away, doesn’t make it so) except for the fact that they then limit the admittedly small percentage of people who make new media using other media as their medium — which is to say, who concretize, or would concretize, those tacit remixes into new material culture. That’s what bothers me about Adam’s original post, the idea that less restrictive legal frameworks aren’t needed because so few people are restricted by existing ones.
Kim Christen I think you read A LOT more into what Adam posted than I did…however, if you’re interested in my take on remix you can read my article “Gone Digital: Aboriginal Remix and the Cultural Commons” or “Access and Accountability in the Digital Age” –on my blog here: http://www.kimberlychristen.com/?page_id=4
Adam Fish Remix and other bricolage are ancient and rich form of innovation. The few that do it can be influential. Today a not insignificant number of people attach unlicensed music to their Youtube personal videos, but few really make the virtuosic remix of the Grey album or Kirby Dick’s pirated flick This Movie is Not Yet Rated. The influence these rogue artworks have can’t be measured on the subjectivity of the consumer–and that isn’t anthropology but 1960s communication studies. The influence of remix culture is on the possibility for future practices. That is the threat to restrictive copyright laws–the limiting of the realm of imagination and practical possibility. I see and hear this all the time in my work as an video documentarian educator. Every hack who can barely open her Macbook or color correct her camera is suddenly totally worried about the presence of a passing corporate logo or some ambient muzak in her documentary. Right now I am editing a documentary about a hunger strike in the Himalayan mountains. We have old TV news and BBC documentary clips that I am using however I want. When and if this documentary become worth any money, the distributor’s lawyer will work it out.
The point is to make stuff.
In my ethnographic work with user-generated TV network, Current, I have witnessed a network willing to pay for short, mediocre quality documentaries be mostly ignored by all but 200 core producers. The wanted 10,000s, an army of citizen journalists and did everything they could to make it. They failed because of lack of interest and skill. Of those 200 take a guess about the class/education of the viewer-creators. This is not a leveling or democratization of media production.
Remix is important, hybridity is a source of innovation, to do it at all or well takes considerable talent and resources, that only a few elites have. But more sinisterly, copyright laws have colonized the consciousness of would-be producers, creating a culture of fear that limits creativity–it is this that we must overcome.
If you are one of the lucky few compelled or resourced to, make the hybrid artwork.
Daniel Taghioff Adam, I like this. You seem to be critiqueing a very old negative notion of liberal freedom “leave me alone” which is embedded in a lot of very “new” thinking.
Hence the massive emphasis on remix, hybridity etc, since it goes with discourses that emphasise difference and diversity, whilst masking out what we have in common.
This makes it easy to ignore things like…. Healthcare to pick a totally random example. Or socioeconomics to revive a terribly outdated idea (Oh actually you just did that, maybe it is safe to mention it. How about inequality?)
Yes creativity and creative freedom is very important, just look at Apple’s bottom line, but what about the underlying conditions that support (or not) creative or even human agency in general?
This is hardly a new idea, Amartya Sen get there in economics a few decades ago, picking up an stuff even Adam Smith was on about, and yet the cutting edge media / culture debates seem not to have really picked up on this.
This is not to ignore new left critiques of mechanical approaches to socio-economics (class applied as a literal category etc…) but surely given that we live in the most unequal world humans have ever witnessed, this overwhelming emphasis on the particular, the hybrid, the creative, the product-innovative is more than a little bit like looking at the differences in leaf structure in order to ignore that someone owns 90% of the trees and is planning on cutting them all down for an enormous bonfire.
Daniel Taghioff As for copyright, has anyone seriously sat down and run econometrics on which models of creator’s monopoly would lead to the most aggregate benefit to society? Which model would be most progressive, and create incomes where they are most needed also?
I doubt it, because it is an area where the moneyed few are rather at odds with the many. Sure copyright has a role in the general maintenance of wealth, but what role is it best even from an economic perspective? Why is this question so little asked?
Surely qualitative work about how media are used and consumed, and so on could inform that? Why assume that dividing qual and quant is good? Qualies have carved out a niche in Anglo-Saxon academia no, why be so antagonistic?
via savageminds.org
A Turing Machine Overview
Mein nächster Rechner…definitiv!