Media Mutandis - a NODE.London Reader - Society

Future Wireless: practical.discourse.creative • L.Sykes

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:33:41 +0000

by Lewis Sykes

Overview
Wireless technologies have changed the world and continue to do so at an unprecedented rate. But as we embrace these technologies, we also need to ask how are they changing our personal and social spaces? Do we really want mobile phone calls on commercial flights – or is ‘always-on’ culture making us wireless wage slaves? Who owns the wireless world and how can we truly realise its creative potential beyond the realms of corporate culture? Has wireless technology liberated communication or has it simply revealed a darker, more dysfunctional side to our natures? What can users and practitioners do to take control of the airwaves and shape and colour their own future? These are just some of the global issues, which Future Wireless addressed – not just through live debate – but also through practical demonstration, workshops and unique artist interventions.

Future Wireless Introduction • Dr. R.Barbrook

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:41:36 +0000

by Dr. Richard Barbrook

“It is possible to be enthusiastic about contextualised use of new technologies while being critical of technological progress ideology that still so thoroughly surrounds even critical techno-cultures”.
Tapio Mäkelä

Future Wireless Vision • C.Benesch

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 11:51:38 +0000

by Christian Benesch

Far from just a long awaited relief from endless troubles with cabling, "wireless" has become a synonym for independence. A term that not only describes the new networks that are becoming so popular, but also devices that can leave their base and be the permanent companion of the owner. They set him free of many prior restrictions. They let him move. They are there when needed to provide their calendars, task lists or the oc

The Free Software Definition • The Free Software Foundation

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:24:08 +0000

by The Free Software Foundation

We maintain this free software definition to show clearly what must be true about a particular software program for it to be considered free software.

‘Free software’ is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’.

Towards a Human-centric Communication • D.Choi

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:31:08 +0000

by Dooeun Choi

Wireless technology lets us be connected anywhere and anytime. So we can expect that a wireless future will bring much more ‘ubiquitous’ connectedness. However, a single node can only manage a limited number of branches, so there should be intermediate nodes that vary in terms of quantity and quality. Therefore the important issue is to whom and what we would like to be connected. The utopia of a wireless future might come if we can figure out how we can relate with other valuable nodes and classify them as ‘personal’ cases.

The Search for Spectrum • P.Cochrane

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:53:40 +0000

by Peter Cochrane

Peter Cochrane participated in the Cybersalon & Open Spectrum UK conference, FUTURE WIRELESS: practical.discourse.creative,at the Science Museum's Dana Centre, London, October 4 2005. The following article presents ideas aired in Peter Cochrane's contribution to the evening panel discussion, Wireless Horizons:

The Search for Spectrum
Peter Cochrane's Blog, silicon.com, Monday October 10 2005
Written at Chatham House, London. Copy dispatched via Wi-fi from a London coffee shop.

The Open Source Definition, Version 1.9 • B.Perens

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:28:19 +0000

by Bruce Perens

Source: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

The indented, italicized sections below appear as annotations to the Open Source Definition (OSD) and are not a part of the OSD. A plain version of the OSD without annotations can be found here. http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.php

Future Wireless Vision • C.Condorelli, B.Gibson

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:27:45 +0000

by Celine Condorelli and Beatrice Gibson, taxi_onomy

Our vision of a wireless future is dystopic. Being constantly connected means you are forced to simultaneously be doing several things at once, and we see this as a fundamental problem. A world in which we cease to process because we are swamped by the varying and multiple trajectories of information means, in fact, that we are increasingly distracted by our own technology, and that we cannot escape our own data. We become in essence the victims of an economy of distraction.

A Wireless Future • S.Drakopoulou

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:50:37 +0000

by Sophia Drakopoulou

A new kind of social space is created out of the transmission and reception of data between mobile phone users. A private communicational space arising from the city's striated space, a social space born out of a new telecommunications technology. This virtual but real communicational space can be thought as a subversive space, a decentralised network where users generate and exchange their own data, take pictures, make phone calls and access the internet.

My research explores the creation and appropriation of this space by its users and investigates a broadcasting model where people will be able to send their text and other multi-media elements and display them onto designated local public screens.

The Mirror's Gonna Steal Your Soul • T.Prug

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:47:58 +0000

by Toni Prug

Ideas Can Not Be Free
The Free Software and free culture movements are today’s loudest opponents of the wide introduction and implementation of patents and copyright, the main tools of intellectual property regimes. At the heart of their arguments lie the values of sharing and creativity. Yet, obsessed as it is with novelty, innovation and the possibility of bursting creativity, theory coming from and around these movements has remained largely free from an engagement with the history of technology and its role in the development of current civilization. Whatever historical reflection does take place is usually limited to the consideration of US history, and works through a re-examination of American documents, events, organizations and processes. Rare exceptions are partial inclusions of French and British histories and cultures, which are read selectively so as to compliment the dominant US discourses that theorise Free Software/culture movements. In British academia, the same has been said about international relations studies,^[1] where “most of the rest of humanity is rated according to its degree of importance to ‘western interests’”. (Pilger, 2002, p 160) No wonder then, that when economy is mentioned within and around Free Software theory, discussion hardly ever moves beyond free markets, and trade and any kind of production are assumed to be beneficial. The logic of growth through creation is unquestioned and its value inflated. As with history, such narrow theorising falls apart under a global view of economics, as we know from ecological studies: U.S. levels of consumption are unsustainable for the rest of population of the planet, and economic growth (Rivero, 2001, p 87), as currently defined, is neither possible or desirable globally without a complete reconceptualisation.^[2]

Future Wireless Vision • R.Horvitz

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:00:48 +0000

by Robert Horvitz

“Open Spectrum” is based on the realisation that technology can reduce or even eliminate the need for governments to micro-manage wireless communication. In different contexts it can be viewed as:

The Packet Gang • J.King

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:17:30 +0000

by Jamie King

Preface
In this essay, originally produced for Mute magazine http://www.metamute.org in 2004, I was attempting to answer some specific problems. During this period, I had been very involved in the ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-globalisation’ movement, and had noted the intense excitement and expectation accruing around the organisational idea of ‘openness’. We in the social movements, we told ourselves and others, were ‘open’; we used all the virtues of networked organisation to our advantage, and we didn’t need ‘their’ closed-ness, just as we didn’t need ‘their’ proprietary attitudes.

Future Wireless Vision • A.Hyde

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 11:12:16 +0000

by Adam Hyde

Wireless began its life as a synonym for radio. However, now the two are becoming cousins, related by a common physical phenomenon but also with distinct emergent identities.

From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again • B.Neilson, N.Rossiter

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:33:01 +0000

Labour, Life and Unstable Networks

by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter

In Florian Schneider’s documentary Organizing the Unorganizables (2002), Raj Jayadev of the DE-BUG worker’s collective in Silicon Valley identifies the central problem of temporary labour as one of time. Jayadev recounts the story of ‘Edward’, a staff-writer for the Debug magazine: "My Mondays roll into my Tuesdays, and my Tuesdays roll into my Wednesdays without me knowing it. And I lose track of time and I lose hope with what tomorrow’s going to be". Jayadev continues: ‘What concerns temp workers the most is not so much a $2 an hour pay raise or safer working conditions. Rather, they want the ability to create, to look forward to something new, and to reclaim the time of life’. How does this desire to create, all too easily associated with artistic production, intersect with the experiences of other workers who engage in precarious forms of labour?

Radical Machines Against the Techno-Empire • M.Pasquinelli

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:38:10 +0000

by Matteo Pasquinelli

Source:
http://journal.hyperdrome.net/issues/issue1/pasquinelli.html
(from Journal of Hyper(+)drome.Manifestation, September 2004)

Everyone of us is a machine of the real, everyone of us is a constructive machine. - Toni Negri

Technical machines only work if they are not out of order. Desiring machines on the contrary continually break down as they run, and in fact run only when they are not functioning properly. Art often takes advantage of this property by creating veritable group fantasies in which desiring production is used to short-circuit social production, and to interfere with the reproductive function of technical machines by introducing an element of dysfunction. - Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, L’anti-Oedipe