Digitalization, Copying, Copyright

Now Entering Cyberia(Population: Zero) A Note on the Medium

Due to your vague interest in these matters which have been deemed antisocial by the new thought police, you have been exiled to Cyberia. You may believe your visit to be voluntary, but ask yourself: if you could live—in real time, in full color, without a 'net'—the revolt and transformation you fantasize about, would you be here, contemplating and trading in mere representations of such things? The new isolation chambers and interrogation rooms largely need no judicial procedures or law enforcement to fill them—we confine ourselves to these office cubicles, internet cafes, and lonely bedrooms willingly, even believing ourselves to have found access to our dreams and desires here.

-CrimethInc. Workers' Collective.
http://www.crimethinc.com/main/intro.html


è What does really Information Society mean?
Bilgi toplumu : yazı, ses ve görüntü için ortak dijital sinyal iletme aracı
æ By "electronic information" I take it that we mean digital electronic information. Great confusion has been generated in the past thirty years by the failure to make this crucial distinction. Analog electronic information affects us mightily--as in broadcast television--but it lacks the essential ingredient of digital electronic information: the common signal base for word, sound, and image. The Implications of Electronic Information for the Sociology of KnowledgeRichard A. LanhamProfessor of EnglishUniversity of California, Los AngelesTechnology, Scholarship, and the Humanities:The Implications of Electronic InformationSeptember 30 - October 2, 1992

æ By numbers, Pythagoras apparently did not simply refer to whole numbers, but also to numericalratios and proportions. For him, both forms and numbers represented a deeper order, harmony, hidden behind visible phenomena. Pythagoras is said to have made the famous discovery that vibrating strings under equal tension sound together in harmony if their lengths are in a simple numerical ratio. The harmonious concord of two strings does indeed yield a beautiful sound, and it was certainly one of the momentous discoveries in the history of mankind that mathematical structure, in this case numerical ratio, was a source of harmony and beauty.












èè Genetic engineering and nano-technology
Genetik mühendislik ve nano-teknoloji

æ In the early part of the 21st century, the technologies emerging from the information technology and biotechnology revolutions will present unprecedented governance challenges to national and international political systems. Of particular interest here are electronic communication and computer intelligence, emerging from the information revolution, and human genetic manipulation and bioinformatics, emerging from the biotechnology revolution.These technologies amplify human capabilities so significantly and so profoundly that they stand to alter fundamentally the very notion of what we think of as human.

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1139/MR1139.chap2.pdf


èè The very naive belief that we are supposed to accept that technologycal progress shall eventually lead the humankind a better life and prosperty. Or may be shall lead us to:
Bilgi toplumunun aradığı cennet: modernitenin zaferi teknolojik ilerleme üstüne kurulu ütopya. Nihai amaç
æ "President Hubbard's first step in establishing the RICH Economy was to offer a prize of $50,000 per year to any worker who could design a machine that would replace him or her."
the Work Ethic : (find a Master to employ you for wages, or live in squalid poverty) is obsolete. A Work Esthetic will have to arise to replace this old Stone Age syndrome of the slave, the peasant, the serf, the prole, the wage-worker -- the human labor-machine who is not fully a person but, as Marx said, " a tool, an automaton." Delivered from the role of things and robots, people will learn to become fully developped persons, in the sense of the Human Potential movement. They will not seek work out of economic necessity, but out of psychological necessity -- as an outlet for their creative potential.
The RICH Economyby Robert Anton Wilson from The Illuminati Papers













è A diffrent “matrix” scenario in light of capitalist movement. Are we going to become “homo-cells”?
Kapitalist süreç ve modernitenin ışığında farklı bir matrix senaryosu – “homo-cell”

æ The boxes containing computers will become so small that they are nearly invisible; human-computer interaction will be so facile that computers will require almost no skill to use. Intelligence and memory will be embedded in a host of other machines and environments around us, until most products are “smart” and interconnected.
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1139/MR1139.chap2.pdf


æ SIMULATION
· A model of the real or the creation of the real through conceptual or "mythological" models which have no connection or origin in reality.
· The model becomes the determinant of our perception of reality, we end up confusing the model for reality.
æ SIMULACRA
· A copy without an original.
· It does not matter where this copy comes from, this copy is excepted as the new truth.
· A copy which is its own reality.
Jean Baudrillard.

æ Robert A. Heinlein's ancient, wise, and curmudgeonly character, Lazarus Long:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/KVC/kvc1.htm


è In a world where content is generated by software…


İçeriğin yazılım tarafından üretildiği bir dünyaya doğru

æ What I'm denying, and I've mentioned this before, is that there is a basis for a strong replication mechanism either in cognition or in communication. It's much weaker than that. As I said, preservative processes are always partly constructive processes. When they don’t replicate, this does not mean that they make an error of copying. Their goal is not to copy. There are transformation in the process of transmission all the time, and also in the process of remembering and retrieving past, stored information, and these transformations are part of the efficient working of these mechanisms.

AN EPIDEMIOLOGY OF REPRESENTATIONS [7.27.05]A Talk with Dan Sperber
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sperber05/sperber05_index.html




è Legal protection of software generating content: Patent and Copyright
Patent: içeriği üreten yazılımın da patent veya CR ile korunması

æ A key- principle of Anglo-American IP law is the notion that copyright cannot subsist in an author's original 'idea', but only in the form taken by that idea once objectified in a 'work' or 'expression'. As Frow argues (1988: 13; and see Born 1995: 226-8), the software component of computer systems consists in a hierarchy of interconnected computational codes which vary, between relatively mechanical functions (object or machine code, assembler program), and relatively freely-designed purposes as embodied in high-level programs or in the initial conceptual design of a program in flowchart or algorithm. Even in the latter, there is a question as to how mechanically initial ideas are inscribed in design or program, or how much this process is itself a creative translation. In short, the problem is where to locate 'idea', where 'expression', and where mechanical process: the terms are destabilised and elided in this medium. The difficulty, then, is to define which codes may legitimately be protected and licensed since creatively 'authored', and which copied without payment since mechanical process or simply 'idea'. Since it is routine for many levels of code to be rewritten in order to improve functioning or to adapt a program to its local environment, and given the interconnectedness of codes, the notion that certain levels can be protected as 'authored' and therefore inviolable, while allowing, others to be altered, is plainly contradicted by the materiality of the medium.


(Im)materiality and sociality:
the dynamics of intellectual
property in a computer
software research cultures[1][1]
GEORGINA BORN,
Published in: Social Anthropology (1996), Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 101-116.



Refilling printer ink cartridges: crime?

æ A recent court victory was handed to Lexmark, which reportedly gives them the power under contract and patent law to enforce the “single use only” policy written on the side of Lexmark printer cartridge boxes. This means you could technically face legal charges for refilling a Lexmark printer cartridge with third-party ink. Apparently, not all Lexmark ink cartridges are sold under the “single use policy” — but units sold without the policy come at a higher price. Lexmark calls this their “Prebate” program, in which they offer consumers a 20% (about $30) markdown on ink cartridges if they agree to send them back to Lexmark after a single use. The recent court ruling upheld that such a policy was enforceable by Lexmark, such that if you buy a cheaper cartridge under the Prebate program, you are breaking the law and could face legal action if you refill the cartridge, send it to another cartridge remanufacturer, or if you simply don’t return it. So, y’know, if you’re in the habit of buying cheap Lexmark ink cartridges, you might want to keep an eye out for the Lexmark militia come to commandeer those suckers.[Via Slashdot]







è Copyright and machine generated art
Copyright ve makina tarafından üretilen sanat


èè Art and science separated by the medieval ages, merging again in the network technology


æ The earliest philosophies within the earliest technologies were part of
traditional canonical cultures:

—Techniques were accompanied by the "knowledge" embedded in
mythology—where we might talk about myths as embryonic project designs.
Practitioners either used natural tools for adaptation to the natural environment (as
emphasized in Schilling's Philosophie der Technik, 1961) in an organic style of
technology; or else they began the conscious introduction of newly-devised tools,
as instruments for creating a new environment ("second nature").

—Two principal ways of reflection appeared in these early cultures: one
insisted on maintaining the existing natural and social order by way of specific
practices (e.g., in ancient China as discussed by Needham) or ways of preserving
harmony between society and nature (e.g., in India); the other involved
aggression against or attacking nature or the natural environment in the name of
human society (Mumford's "myth of the machine," including the organized social
activities of "megamachines").

—Techniques existed without science and science without technology.

—In antiquity, handcrafts yielded objects of art; though
philosophical/scientific knowledge might be involved, there was no orientation
toward experimental sciences in the modern sense, nor were there science-based
production methods. Sometimes, mechanical inventions were devised to illustrate
science, to show the power of scientific demonstrations, or to amaze the public.
But these had no impact on handcrafts.

Within modern technology, there are different kinds of self-reflective
"philosophies," including:
i) a systems philosophy of project management, making explicit use
of the methodology of systems engineering (designing here or there
leading to design everywhere—the "principle" of a design culture);
ii) social technology or organizational design—the design of societies,
from the local to the global—where there is a need to be aware of the
limits of a design culture, to avoid social engineering because a society
cannot be totally artificial; the most that is possible is societies that
combine the artificial with the natural;

Gorokhov,
A New Interpretation of Technological Progress
PHIL & TECH J. 4:1 Fall 1998
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v4n1/pdf/GOROKHO2.PDF


è The notion of Digital Rights Management (DRM) : Law enforcing software
DRM ve içeriğin tamamen kontrolü...




è Consent manufacturing role of media and control of content (N. Chomsky).Democracy in the era of digital communication. The future society runs on software.
Demokrasi : yönlendirilmiş algının onaylanması içeriğin kontrolü: dünyanın kontrolü. Yazılımla yönetilen topluma doğru

æ This definition of politics is not original. The term “cybernetics” can be traced back to the Greek word kybernetes, meaning steersman or helmsman, and it is also the root of such English words as “governor” and “government.” In the nineteenth century, the French scientist André Amp? re took to using the term cybernetics as an equivalent for politics. More recently, the term has been employed by, among others, political scientists Karl Deutsch (1966[1963]), David Easton (1965), and John Steinbruner (1974), and by this author (1974, 1983, 1987, 1995, 1996a, 2001a, 2002b, and Corning and Hines, 1988). See also Miller, 1995; and François, 1999. The cybernetic model is also widely employed by life scientists, engineers and physicists, and there are numerous books and several scientific journals devoted to this subject.
THE EVOLUTION OF POLITICS
Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.,
Institute for the Study of Complex Systems
http://www.complexsystems.org/publications/pdf/THE%20EVOLUTION%20OF%20POLITICS.pdf



æ The problem that emerges is no longer to ensure democratic control over a large and complex centralized system but rather to determine how much governance is necessary for a decentralized, distributed system and how society can accomplish this goal. http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1139/MR1139.chap2.pdf




The Socio-technological Singularity
A related reasoning was proposed by Jacques Vallée. Extrapolating from the phenomenal growth of computer networks and their power to transmit information, he noted that at some point all existing information would become available instantaneously everywhere. This is the "information singularity". http://pcp.lanl.gov/SINGULAR.html



“knowledge discovery in databases” (“KDD”), also
called “data mining” (“DM”),4 have emerged. The building blocks of these techniques are complex algorithms, artificial intelligence, neural networks and even genetic-based modeling; they can discover previously unknown facts and phenomena about a database,
answering questions users did not know to ask. They carry out the analysis without receiving a hypothesis from the human analysts, instead searching for hidden patterns on their own. Not only can the KDD tools describe the database as it is, they can also make predictions about future data. KDD can be embedded in the operating network of a business or organization and requires minimal intervention or supervision. KDD closes the sophistication gap.
However, the technical discipline of data mining is part of a larger social context. The descriptive and predictive information that KDD produces significantly affects those subject to the analysis and therefore should be the focus of legal scrutiny. When such KDD tools are linked to the ongoing online surveillance, the potential for adverse effects increases greatly, presenting a double threat compared by Jason Catlett, President of Junkbusters.com,5 to “going hunting with nuclear weapons.”6 On the other hand, KDD may have positive effects as well. These effects are not captured by simple paradigms of privacy. This Article explains why.
YALE JOURNAL OF LAW & TECHNOLOGY 2002-2003
“MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS!”:




Over the past several decades, Koza has internalized that lesson as deeply as any computer scientist alive and, arguably, made more of the insight than any coder in history. Now 62 and an adjunct professor at Stanford University, Koza is the inventor of genetic programming, a revolutionary approach to artificial intelligence (AI) capable of solving complex engineering problems with virtually no human guidance. Koza’s 1,000 networked computers don’t just follow a preordained routine. They create, growing new and unexpected designs out of the most basic code. They are computers that innovate, that find solutions not only equal to but better than the best work of expert humans. His “invention machine,” as he likes to call it, has even earned a U.S. patent for developing a system to make factories more efficient, one of the first intellectual-property protections ever granted to a nonhuman designer.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0e13af26862ba010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html