George Dafermos' Weblog

Sunday, April 11, 2004

(auto)critique of science. quote of the day.

...been reading (auto)critique de la science (1973), a selection of short essays and papers edited by alain jaubert and jean marc levy leblond and translated to greek by ilias nikolakopoulos and xara ntali.

the following is the first paragraph from Edwardo Rot's "conquering outer space when authority exists" which sent shivers up and down my spine, especially in consideration of its date of publication (first appeared in Internationale Situationniste, September 1969, Issue 12). i am not sure i do justice to his work as i'm not very good at translating, but couldn't resist posting it. and am not sure i translated the author's name and the title of the essay correctly, but whatever. am always happy to be alerted to my errors. here goes then:

Science at the service of capital, commodity and spectacle is nothing but capitalised knowledge, fetihism of idea and method, distorted image of human thought. Pseudo-greatness of man, the passive knowledge of a meagre reality constitutes the magical justness of a tribe of slaves.

10:36:21 PM

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patents in europe: second episode

from /.:

"On April 14, FFII is organising a walking demonstration in Brussels against the legalisation of software patents in Europe, as well as a legislation benchmarking conference. Like in August last year, these events will be accompanied by an online demonstration whereby webmasters are asked to close their websites in protest. The reason for the renewed protest is that after the European Parliament voted for a great directive, it is now the Council of Minister's turn, whose working party proposes as 'compromise' to simply discard all good amendments and on top of that to even make program publication an infringement. Already more then 1300 sites participate in the online demonstration. Among them are some big sites like KDE, the GNU Project and the Gimp. Also, on April 15 the European Greens/EFA group is organising a Euro-LUG party inside the European Parliament, 'with a view to enhance the networking among the free software community in Europe [...], to inform the EP about what free software is, how it works and which ideas lie behind.' Speakers will include Gwen Hinze (EFF), Jon Lech Johansen (DeCSS), Georg Greve (FSF Europe and Alan Cox. Prior registration is mandatory for this event."

i don't see many microsofts in europe. the european union's economic spine consists of small and medium-sized organisations that will certainly suffer as a result of expanding the (irrational and imaginary?) patent space. if you're a citizen of eu, know where your benefits lie. say no to patents.

UPDATE 1:
just got mail from one of my valued readers asking how one could say no to patents when the only ones having a say are the members of the suropean parliament. well, you could join the walking demonstration. you could temporarily replace your site's homepage, like so many other have done, with one saying the site is down as a form of protest against the impending vote. but imho the most effective thing you could do is write to your own country's members of the european parliament. the FFII has all the details you may need, including the phone/fax numbers of the people you should contact. here's the letter i wrote in august 2003, which i sent to several people, including some greek MPs.

9:46:39 PM

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MS & the (new?) new marketing

tom harpel, a ?microsoft? employee working on msn.direct - which is all about smart watches that deliver customised information (btw, Tom you might want to have a look at this rss and mobile devices article, courtesy of smartmobs, about bringing RSS feeds to smart watches. most certainly, a very good next step to boost msn.direct forward) - reflects on his meeting with scoble- ms' s chief executive blogger:

Robert and I talked about my project, his project, the new marketing, the importance of RSS feeds (that's how you reach the connectors), rejecting the old-web model of "keep them on our site for as long as possible, by any means necessary," for the "send them away to somewhere cool and they'll come back." The theme of our talk: it is in risk that we find reward. [link]

the above says it all. although tom harpel downplays the commercial viability of human conversations across the Web, he very cluefully summarises the dymanics of the paradigm shift that shakes the industry today. no more stupid data mining techniques; no more ill-control over the freedom embedded in browsers; no more self-arrogance; and robot-like talk. give'em something cool that makes for a good conversation and they'll be coming back! damn you, tom peters!

when such wise words are burst out of the mouths of redmont zealots it is almost frightening:-) one of my blog buddies had recently told me that scoble is the frontman from the blogworld envisaging microsoft's dedication to becoming a weblogged corporation, and i have been coming across more and more blogs written by microsoft people, ( some of whom have found my blog paper of good value and i thank them for that), which is indeed great news as it clearly shows the path other organisations must walk upon if they wish to provide their employees with a space/place worth being part of.

blogging gives 'em a sense of belonging in a place inhabited by real human beings rather than wandering in the labyrinths of corporate schizophrenia, as did the characters of douglas coupland's microserfs and michael drummond's renegades in the empire. i'm twice as stunned to find out that some of them refer to my paper as the new marketing. wow! for someone who doesn't very much like ?microsoft? and its products, this is something entirely unexpected, yet welcomed i must confess.

9:35:34 PM

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