Technopolitics

Technopolitics in a Nutshell: Commented Reading List on Key Categories

Armin Medosch — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 09:58:38 +0000

This article presents in overview form some of the key categories of Technopolitics together with essential reading. Technopolitics is a project that has began as a collaboration between Brian Holmes and me on these pages in 2010. Since 2011 a Technopolitics working group exists in Vienna. There is a lot of additional material which you can find spread out over Thenextlayer, so I thought for newcomers its time to collect a few basic references.

Contradictions of a Tiger Cub, Part I

Armin Medosch — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 10:51:32 +0000

Video sequence taken during recent Vietnam trip. What strikes me is the contradicition between Vietnam's apparent dynamism, allegedly having joined the club of fast growing economies as a 'tiger cub' - in reference to the other Asian 'tiger economies' such as Taiwan, South Korea or Thailand - while at the same time this catching up modernisation process starts from a very low level.

Check out this river view of a village between Can Tho and Cai Be, in the Mekong delta.

Periodization, again

Brian Holmes — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:46:49 +0000

Here's the difficulty I have with Kondratiev waves: it really seems to take two waves to create a complete cycle. What Perez calls a "technological style" actually unfolds over two Kondratiev waves. Between the two there is a regulation crisis with some kind of "successful" resolution (although it is very hard to call WWII "successful"); and then at the end, a kind of chaotic period during which the technological style begins to change.

BLOODY TAYLORISM AND COGNITIVE CAPITAL

John Barker — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:24:37 +0000

This text highlights relationships between different regimes of labour and how they are exploited by capital, in the context of textiles and clothes. Global inequalities are being exploited through the help of ICT and the general drive to labour saving techniques. What makes matters worse is that those participating as producers and consumers remain invisible to each other.

So what will the 6th Kondratiev look like?

Brian Holmes — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:28:01 +0000

Industrial investment at the end of the Great Recession will likely be in the new generation of robots, used in both manufacturing and distribution.

Crisis of Informationalism

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:32:57 +0000

Blank section for to be developed book.

Technopolitics - Die Grenzen der Informationsgesellschaft sprengen

Armin Medosch — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:10:53 +0000

In diesem Artikel wird zunächst das Projekt Technopolitics kurz vorgestellt, was als Hintergrundinformation zur bevorstehenden Veranstaltung Technopolitics@Codedcultures am 27. September in Wien dienen soll. Im zweiten Teil werden konkrete Inhalte der Veranstaltung angesprochen. Es geht darum, über den Bildschirmrand der Informationsgesellschaft hinauszusehen und zu verstehen, inwiefern die Informationsgesellschaft mit konkreten und materiellen Entwicklungen - wie etwa Energie- und Umweltproblematik - in Verbindung steht.

"The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy"

Brian Holmes — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 05:01:43 +0000

While in China I read an extremely significant book about the development of the world-economy in the neoliberal period, by the expatriate Chinese economist Minqi Li.

Continental Drift through the Pampa

Brian Holmes — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:05:43 +0000

Recently I and Claire Pentecost went on an artistic research trip in Argentina with local collaborators. What we call a "Continental Drift." This was a perceptual encounter with the productive processes of a country subject to intense neoliberal restructuring. Hopefully next year we will do more collaborative research in a public seminar context in Buenos Aires, both to define Argentina's position as a hi-tech agro-exporter within Neoliberal Informationalism, and to contribute in some small way to the political breakdown of that hegemony, which is being actively sought by many on the official Argentine left. In the meantime you can read the one post I wrote in English during the experience:

http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/this-way-to-the-port

Down by Law: HADOPI's diluted graduated response, iiNet's battle with Big Content

doll_yoko — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:30:27 +0000

Coordinated opposition had defanged the final version of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and will continue attacking other supra-national digital enclosures such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Hence powerful copyright advocates including the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) have concurrently operated outside such treaty frameworks to pressure individual governments in an ‘especially aggressive’ way to force ISPs to police copyright infringements (Bridy 2010: 2). To date Britain, France, South Korea, and Taiwan, have incorporated various forms of graduated response into their domestic copyright enforcement systems (ibid.). Furthermore, other countries are exploring ‘private ordering’ options to enforce online copyright (Bridy 2010: 11-15; Toner 2011). These range from ‘cooperative relationships’ between major content distributors and broadband providers in which Internet Service Providers (ISPs) suspend repeat infringers’ accounts (in the United States), to ISPs being the ‘sole arbiter of the customer’s innocence or guilt’ terminating accounts without court orders (in Ireland). In Australia, the ISP iiNet after winning a precedent-setting law suit brought against it by an alliance of mainly US content owners proposed a graduated response model in which an ‘independent body’ meeting ‘community standards’ mediates the interests of all parties