Ian Dury - Lord Upminster
2 hours ago
Monday, 12 September 2011
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Brian Eno: How has the internet changed your thinking?
Brian Eno @ German news magazine Der Spiegel:
"I notice that certain radical social experiments that even the most idealistic anarchists seem utopian, fifty years ago, had to take place now smoothly and without fanfare. These include the open-source development, shareware and freeware, Wikipedia, MoveOn and UK Citizens Online Democracy.
I notice that the power of the world is not entirely liberated in the same way as we had expected. Repressive regimes can turn it off, and can use it as liberal propaganda. On the positive side, I notice that the difference in the trustworthiness of the network has made people more skeptical about the information they receive from all other media.
It occurs to me now that I know as my patchwork of a wider range of sources digest than in the past. Also, I notice that I'm less inclined to look for through-composed, finished stories, and more prefer to make my own collage from, what I can find. What strikes me is that I read books cursory and they scan in the same manner as I scan the network - when I "bookmark" set.
It strikes me that to make the turn of the century dream of bioethicists Darryl Macer, a map of all the concepts in the world, an autonomous way is reality - in the form of the network.
It occurs to me that I communicate with more people, but less detail. It strikes me that it is possible to have confidential relationships that exist only in the net and have little or no physical components. It strikes me that it is even possible to engage in complex social projects, such as making music, without ever seeing the other employees. From the value of these changes I'm not convinced.
It occurs to me that was the idea of "community" is changing: While the term once described a certain physical and geographical ties between the people, he can now "the pursuit of common interests" mean. What strikes me is that I now belong to hundreds of communities - the community of people who are interested in active democracy, the community of people who for synthesizers, for climate change, Tommy Cooper jokes, for copyright, for A cappella singing, for speakers interested in the philosophy of pragmatism, the theory of evolution, etc..
It strikes me that the desire for community with millions of people so strongly that they belong entirely fictional communities such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. My concern is that this could work to the detriment of real life.
I notice that I have more time than before to spend with words and language - because that is the currency of the net. My note books may take longer to get full. I notice also that night I rougher the disappearance of the fax machine because it is a more personal communication tool than e-mail because it allowed drawing and handwritten letters. I notice that my mind is primarily a linguistic one, for example, compared to visual functioning is established.
It occurs to me that has changed the concept of "experts". An expert was usually "someone who had access to particular information." But now since so much information accessible to everyone equally, the notion of "experts" to "someone who can interpret the information better." The ruling has replaced the access.
I notice that I've become a slave to the network - that my e-mails several times a day look that I worry about the pile of unsolicited and unanswered emails in my inbox. It strikes me that it is difficult to find a whole morning to think without interruption. I notice that you expect from me that I will answer e-mails immediately, and that it is difficult not to do so. I notice that I am consequently impulsive.
I notice that I frequently donate money in response to calls on the Internet. I notice that "memes" are now directly spreading infections such as malignant by the vectors of the network can - and that's not always good. I notice that sometimes I'll sign petitions for things I do not really understand, and only because it is so easy. I suppose that this kind of irresponsibility is rife.
It strikes me that what pushed the network to another location in a modified form reappears. For example, musicians were usually on tour to make their records for advertising, but since vinyl records or CDs because of illegal downloads are not earned much more money they make records now, to promote her tours. Book stores, their employees are familiar with books, and familiar record stores, their employees, with music, are frequent.
It strikes me that the more the power of free or cheap versions of something provides the "authentic experience" - the unique, unmediated experience - is valued more highly. It strikes me that the authors devote more attention to those aspects of their work that can not be duplicated. The "authentic" has replaced the Reproducible.
I notice that hardly anyone has thought of us about the chaos that would result if the power would crumble.
It occurs to me that my life has changed more by my mobile phone than through the internet."
translated with Google from the original German article
Ten Years After September 11
A decade’s perspective highlights the enormous damage that the attacks of September 11, 2001 did to the human rights cause. There was, first of all, the irreparable damage of lives lost that day – some 3,000 people from many nations. Terrorism – the deliberate targeting of civilians for political ends – is an affront to the human rights movement. The values of human rights place respect for the individual at their core. Terrorism treats individuals as pawns, to be disposed of for political ends.
Suicide attacks have long been a tool for terrorists, but the magnitude of the September 11 assault spawned replication. Most people were repulsed by this killing, but enough were inspired that it contributed to an epidemic of suicide attacks on civilians in the ensuing decade. Victims multiplied in many countries. The growing willingness of some to sacrifice themselves for a cause has further complicated the defense against terrorism. And the realization that there are no limits to what terrorists might attempt made the quest to stop them all the more urgent.
Yet the damaging legacy of September 11 can also be found in the reaction. Some recognized that the best antidote to terrorism was to reaffirm the values of humanity it flouted – that the most effective way to counter the appeal of mass murder was to scrupulously respect human rights and the rule of law. Yet all too often, those leading the counterterrorism charge adopted the ends-justify-the-means logic of the terrorists. The result was a litany of practices whose names are now synonymous with blatant disregard for human rights: Guantanamo, military commissions, CIA “black sites,” water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” extraordinary rendition to torture covered up by meaningless “diplomatic assurances,” among others.
Undertaken in the name of expediency, these abuses may have spurred more terrorist attacks. Those who deployed them lost the moral high ground, undermined trust in law-enforcement officials, and discarded lawful techniques for piercing secretive criminal enterprises that had long proved effective.
They also bred copycat responses by governments whose interest was less stopping terrorism than using the latest rhetoric of convenience to silence political opposition. Overbroad and vague anti-terrorism laws proliferated. Peaceful dissidents were labeled terrorists and detained without trial. Torture and arbitrary detention became harder to combat because “that’s what Bush did.” Many governments best placed to reverse these damaging trends were silenced by their own complicity in them – and by their tendency to welcome virtually anything said to be done in the name of fighting terrorism.
Today, there has been global progress in curtailing counterterrorism abuses, but little willingness to hold abusive officials to account. For example, saying that he would “look forward and not backwards,” President Barack Obama has decreed an end to torture by US agents but refused to prosecute those who ordered it. Nor have most governments investigated, let alone prosecuted, their own abusive officials. This failure to uphold the rule of law risks transforming torture and other serious human rights violations from blatant criminal offenses to permissible policy options.
The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is thus an occasion to remember its victims and to reaffirm the importance of human rights, to oppose the terrorist who kills civilians in the name of a cause and the official who “disappears” or tortures suspects in the name of fighting terrorism.
@'Human Rights Watch'
Suicide attacks have long been a tool for terrorists, but the magnitude of the September 11 assault spawned replication. Most people were repulsed by this killing, but enough were inspired that it contributed to an epidemic of suicide attacks on civilians in the ensuing decade. Victims multiplied in many countries. The growing willingness of some to sacrifice themselves for a cause has further complicated the defense against terrorism. And the realization that there are no limits to what terrorists might attempt made the quest to stop them all the more urgent.
Yet the damaging legacy of September 11 can also be found in the reaction. Some recognized that the best antidote to terrorism was to reaffirm the values of humanity it flouted – that the most effective way to counter the appeal of mass murder was to scrupulously respect human rights and the rule of law. Yet all too often, those leading the counterterrorism charge adopted the ends-justify-the-means logic of the terrorists. The result was a litany of practices whose names are now synonymous with blatant disregard for human rights: Guantanamo, military commissions, CIA “black sites,” water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” extraordinary rendition to torture covered up by meaningless “diplomatic assurances,” among others.
Undertaken in the name of expediency, these abuses may have spurred more terrorist attacks. Those who deployed them lost the moral high ground, undermined trust in law-enforcement officials, and discarded lawful techniques for piercing secretive criminal enterprises that had long proved effective.
They also bred copycat responses by governments whose interest was less stopping terrorism than using the latest rhetoric of convenience to silence political opposition. Overbroad and vague anti-terrorism laws proliferated. Peaceful dissidents were labeled terrorists and detained without trial. Torture and arbitrary detention became harder to combat because “that’s what Bush did.” Many governments best placed to reverse these damaging trends were silenced by their own complicity in them – and by their tendency to welcome virtually anything said to be done in the name of fighting terrorism.
Today, there has been global progress in curtailing counterterrorism abuses, but little willingness to hold abusive officials to account. For example, saying that he would “look forward and not backwards,” President Barack Obama has decreed an end to torture by US agents but refused to prosecute those who ordered it. Nor have most governments investigated, let alone prosecuted, their own abusive officials. This failure to uphold the rule of law risks transforming torture and other serious human rights violations from blatant criminal offenses to permissible policy options.
The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks is thus an occasion to remember its victims and to reaffirm the importance of human rights, to oppose the terrorist who kills civilians in the name of a cause and the official who “disappears” or tortures suspects in the name of fighting terrorism.
@'Human Rights Watch'
Hmmm!
Disgusting. Check out this ad the Recording Industry Association, the Motion Picture Association, and others just took out as they try to push their Internet censorship legislation: They think their customers should be treated like criminal suspects.
Urge Congress To Reject The PROTECT IP Act
Sifting through the debris for real legacy of attacks
Less than a week before Osama bin Laden was killed, I visited Ground Zero. Most prosaically, it is a building site. Even with the contours of the inevitably spectacular Freedom Tower becoming more visible, it is the rougher elements that dominate: the cranes; the unpolished, uncovered concrete; the barbed wire on the fences that rim the former site of the twin towers. There's dust in the air and you can't help breathing it in. At first blush, it's all profoundly ordinary.
But stay a while and you are struck by the silence. The sounds of construction may punctuate it, but they do not obliterate it. There's an eeriness here that is anything but mundane. In a town of boundless, infectious, magnificent energy, this site is an island; a place of stillness in a city set to vibrate.
Silence. Stillness. Reverence. It's a new sort of cathedral, haunted by the ghost of what happened a decade ago today. This is the nature of terrorism. It is designed to invade the psyche and haunt it. To change the way you think, and then act. Ultimately it has little to do with those it kills - even if there are 3000 of them. It is about those who remain.
In that sense, the fact that every mainstream media outlet is marking this terrible anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks is a victory for the perpetrators. Terrorism is least successful when it is ignored; when it is denied what Margaret Thatcher called the ''oxygen of publicity''.
But it is impossible to ignore this. It was more than merely symbolic or spectacular. It was cinematic. When the first plane struck the north tower, the cameras of the world rushed to film the carnage. Al-Qaeda gave them 17 minutes to set up. With lenses now trained on the World Trade Centre, images of the second plane smashing into the south tower were beamed live across the globe. You've seen them a thousand times since. Their presence is permanent. But beneath its cataclysmic appearances, the component parts of this attack were surprisingly modest. This was not the product of expensive, high-tech weaponry. It was the work of 19 men with box cutters. In fact, this was their greatest asset. It is difficult to imagine a nation being able to destroy the World Trade Centre. Its weapons are too detectable, its visibility too obvious and the political consequences too grave. The sheer size of this attack conjured up the image of a colossus that could strike anywhere at will, but it was misleading; a vast overstatement.
There was always a danger of misreading these attacks, and we did. From the beginning, we failed to understand what we were confronting. The story of this decade is how this misreading led us to dark places with some lamentable consequences. In the process, hundreds of thousands died, and societies became divided. No doubt much of this pleased bin Laden, whose guilt is plain. But it is worth considering how we got sucked into contributing to the process...
But stay a while and you are struck by the silence. The sounds of construction may punctuate it, but they do not obliterate it. There's an eeriness here that is anything but mundane. In a town of boundless, infectious, magnificent energy, this site is an island; a place of stillness in a city set to vibrate.
Silence. Stillness. Reverence. It's a new sort of cathedral, haunted by the ghost of what happened a decade ago today. This is the nature of terrorism. It is designed to invade the psyche and haunt it. To change the way you think, and then act. Ultimately it has little to do with those it kills - even if there are 3000 of them. It is about those who remain.
In that sense, the fact that every mainstream media outlet is marking this terrible anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks is a victory for the perpetrators. Terrorism is least successful when it is ignored; when it is denied what Margaret Thatcher called the ''oxygen of publicity''.
But it is impossible to ignore this. It was more than merely symbolic or spectacular. It was cinematic. When the first plane struck the north tower, the cameras of the world rushed to film the carnage. Al-Qaeda gave them 17 minutes to set up. With lenses now trained on the World Trade Centre, images of the second plane smashing into the south tower were beamed live across the globe. You've seen them a thousand times since. Their presence is permanent. But beneath its cataclysmic appearances, the component parts of this attack were surprisingly modest. This was not the product of expensive, high-tech weaponry. It was the work of 19 men with box cutters. In fact, this was their greatest asset. It is difficult to imagine a nation being able to destroy the World Trade Centre. Its weapons are too detectable, its visibility too obvious and the political consequences too grave. The sheer size of this attack conjured up the image of a colossus that could strike anywhere at will, but it was misleading; a vast overstatement.
There was always a danger of misreading these attacks, and we did. From the beginning, we failed to understand what we were confronting. The story of this decade is how this misreading led us to dark places with some lamentable consequences. In the process, hundreds of thousands died, and societies became divided. No doubt much of this pleased bin Laden, whose guilt is plain. But it is worth considering how we got sucked into contributing to the process...
Continue reading
A must read from today's Age...
Crash Test Dummy
@'daviesandstarr'
Subatomic Sound System meets Ari Up & Lee Scratch Perry - Hello, Hell is Very Low 7"
The “Hello, Hell Is Very Low” vinyl 45 features a dub and vocal take of a rootical dubstep reflip of the rare and classic “Underground Roots” riddim, known to have been used by Studio One’s Sir Coxsone Dodd’s sound system to lay waste in Jamaican sound clashes (typically played back to back with the only known vocal version, a closely guarded special rumored to have been done for Coxsone by Junior Byles). On this 45, Subatomic Sound System dubs the riddim up proper with maximum respect to the tradition of the masters, Lee Perry & King Tubby, while also turning out the low end, delivering drums and bass big and bad enough knock out even a modern day dubstep club crowd. It also must be mentioned that, this is the first time EVER that Lee “Scratch” Perry and Ari Up of the Slits appear on the same recording, even though they both worked extensively on On-Sound projects with Adrian Sherwood during the 80s. The combination proves strong as they both succeed in striking a clever lyrical balance, delivering vocals that juxtapose conscious culture and spirituality with humor and wordplay.
On the A-Side, “Hello, Hello, Hell is Very Low” features tough lyrics from Lee “Scratch” Perry alongside Ari Up of the Slits and original melodica from Subatomic Sound’s Emch that summons the ghost of Augustus Pablo for some classic melodies. The dubbed out track is centered around Perry riffing on the line “Hello, Hell is very low and Heaven is very, very high!” linguistically playing off the greetings “Hello” vs. “Hi” and with the metaphysical concept of “Hell” being “lo(w)” and “Heaven” being “(hi)igh” in what is on one hand slapstick humor and on the other hand profound moral philosophizing. Ari Up meanwhile shows her respect for dub history and the people of her second home, Jamaica, with lyrics “Underground roots, what we bring to you, rub-a-dub roots, message to the youth…time to know the truth!” exorting the “underground youth” to rise up “overground” while at the same time sending a message to the dubstep generation about the origins of dub and respecting its founders.
On the B-Side, Ari-Up of the Slits delivers “Bed Athletes” a singjay vocal tune in a classic dancehall style. Lyrically she twists the original children’s song melody into a positive minded and humorous sex education course for the “underground youth”, with a verse for the men and another for the women, emphasizing the importance of physical fitness and mental training for mutual enjoyment of each others company in bed, even suggesting that men “learn Ninjitsu” so the art of “Japanese fighting” can be “used ‘pon daggering”.
:)
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