Re: <nettime> Live Your Models

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

On Mon, 02 May 2016, Florian Cramer wrote:

>    In more recent projects, for example crypto currencies,
>    Randianism even seems to have taken the upper hand, serving as
>    trailblazers for panoptical society of control technologies
>    (blockchain) that are quickly adopted by big enterprises.

I believe here you are overlooking the actual usefulness of these
tools, which is not the fruit of a conspiracy: in the rusty panopticon
of managed flows of information, encrusted around the terror of the
next attack, there is no more space for freedom of movement. Having
written about years ago I'm bored today by how in all the fuzz of
"blockchain cultural studies" fanfare nothing is there about migration
as an issue. I really hope I overlooked it.

Think of this: it is extremely hard to have a nomadic life right now.
By life I mean sustaining yourself, meaning being able to perceive
reward for work, move on to the next, pay your taxes, but not being
limited in your liberties. Today all labor is bound to national
regulations and taxations that do not contemplate nomadism, while
nomadism is more and more of a life-style for the next generations.

One can well argue this is being exploited now, sure, little by
little, by neolib enterprises and inculator clusterfuck of taxevading
panama clowns, but do not overlook the dynamics at the bottom, because
they are extremely important for the future institutions to understand
and speak to new generations... which brings me to the next point:

> Too few people question prophecies like the "Singularity", too
> few activists ever got their hands dirty with hardware and
> software development - and manufacturing - to really grasp their
> complications.

This also doesn't computes for me. There are many today who understood
that trans-humanism is just a plain new declination of fascism, but we
have other channels and even the most kosher of all cultural funded EU
events can't catch anymore such crowds.

What I'm very worried about is the future of critical thinking:
even of the most brilliant minds and even this very fine circle of
nettimers here, because visions produced are more and more top-down.
Natural: every human starting to look around him/herself starts
doing so from his/her own condition. And academia is right now more
than ever on top and detached. With the exception of a few olistic
curricula, there are no meditation courses, which is a pity, because
it takes a lot of meditation for the I and I to be crossing the
boundary of contingent reality.

When analysing the new, rather complex and shifting forms of
liberation that are manifest today, I recommend to consider first and
foremost the conditions, desires, fears and problems of people at
the at the bottom and at the boundaries. These are many people, for
instance the huge amounts of migrating youth across Europe. Or the
huge amount of migrants which Europe has to learn to live with, who
are perfectly capable of working, but cannot.

You may consider it a detail, but Bitcoin today is catering to the
needs I depict, which are in fact the backbone of the phenomenon.

To liquidate a communication technology that provides such liberatory
opportunities, considering it something as shabby as a Randyan device
of sociopathic implosion, it is self defeating. We should be looking
at the conditions which made such a technology so successful - and
necessary - without forgetting nor feeling superior to the point of
view of those who appropriated it.

ciao



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