<nettime> cranky's cabin digest [rosler lukens taiuti assange irving]

["nettime's_meme_chose" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Re: <nettime> terrific post from slashdot ...
     martha rosler <navva@earthlink.net>
     Jonathan Lukens <jon@infopollen.net>
     "Lorenzo Taiuti" <md3169@mclink.it>
     Julian Assange <proff@iq.org>
     dirving@box.net.au

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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 02:19:05 -0400
From: martha rosler <navva@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> terrific post from slashdot ...

i don't know if this is meant as a joke or what--but it is most certainly
not true.

>you just think that young played prominent source of
>60-70 turbulence. No, young are fascistoid by nature and always follow.
>

martha rosler
brooklyn, ny

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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 02:31:35 -0400
From: Jonathan Lukens <jon@infopollen.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> terrific post from slashdot ...

Drazen Pantic wrote:

> Am I the only young person who notices that the only people
> who express their dissent at stupid things in this world
> today are old? ....Take for example the only people you see
> speaking out in public against the idiotic "War on
> Terror"--they are old!

No examples. No attempt to qualify this argument. That being said, the
inclusion of examples and references would likely have made the tone of
your argumnet far less refereshing. This isnt sarcasm.

> Even academics who find it just as
> stupid as I do keep their mouths shut, even if they have
> tenure.

Tenure might imply a certain degree of job security, but dissent for the
tenured still implies a great amount of inconveinence.

> The same goes for this "Intellectual Property" debate. I
> would be shocked if there weren't many young artists who
> agree with every word that Bowie says about the
> subject. Still, they keep a low profile and don't rock the
> boat, because we live in a climate where that gets you
> severely punished.

Severely punished how? Its just as likely that the same shifts that
Bowie addresses also indidicate that the rock star is about as
significant now the horse and buggy were in the 1950s. In a world where
any bastard with a firewire port and the inclination can be a pop-idol,
who gives a fuck about interviewing a pop idol? What happens when
celebrity is disconnected from $?, and will $ be all about celebrity and
not about units sold, or will something we dont expect happen? Stay (de)tuned.

> I wasn't there, but I suspect in the 60's
> and 70's people faced the same dilemmas, but they said "fuck
> it, I'll say what I think and see what happens." But then
> again, maybe the government and the corporations have us
> under a tighter clamp now than any other time in Western
> history since constitutions started being written.

Who knows? Im not a historian, but people possess a certain degree of
incompetence and there are more of them everyday... working for the gov
and the org and the com. How tight is that clamp you speak of? Can the
trains run on time? Cant they get rid of the klez virus? I dont claim
affection for the powers that be-- my argument is simply that this is
just as unarguable by you to some poor bastard getting thrown in a
shallow grave for trying to cast his vote as it is by him to some other
poor bastard getting shot out behind the papal barn in the 16th century. 

> Sure, we all have a right to free speech, but the system has
> made it so that speaking freely is severely against our
> interest. This means that even though we won't go to jail,
> we will get fired, spied upon, harassed, and vilified as
> friends of terrorists. (How long will it take before
> somebody argues that abolishing IP laws would be "caving in
> to terrorism"? Surely they will find some stupid, tenuous
> connection.)

The suckers they play the terrorism card on and the folks who would know
what IP stands for are detached enough that I doubt  this will come up
anytime soon. Not that that should be taken as an indictment of the
ignorrant. When I was 8 or 9 my granny made me a set of pillow cases
with the robots from the disney film "The Black Hole" drawn on them. Im
sure that were the illegality of her actions is spelled out for her she
would choose our side of the debate rather quickly.

> Anyway, this era makes me sick. You people suck.

Right on. Most of em boring too.

> I might as
> well burn my books now to save you the trouble, because when
> these old- school rebels die, nobody will raise their voice
> in protest.

Or, at least, no none of them will be written up in the times arts
section. Go figure.

-
Jon

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From: "Lorenzo Taiuti" <md3169@mclink.it>
Subject:  terrific post from slashdot ... ( or the contrast between Young & Old)
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 11:00:35 +0200

Drazen Pantic & Morlock Elloi strike an interesting point:
Who express "dissent" today?
The problem came out in other ways during a discussion on radicalism on 
the Net months ago.
The answer (?) is probably more contradictory than both Pantic & Elloi 
say.
1-The 60-70's were a period when young people began to exist on the 
social scene and pretend a space in society.(today they have it)
2- At that time.the enormous interest of culture and society and media 
("youth hungry" after the war years) both criticised and encouraged 
youth actions
3- The "young people" were anyway reading a lot of "old men's thoughts" 
( Marcuse, Fanon, Guevara, Gramsci, Allen Ginsberg ecc, ecc...)
4- Idea itself of Youth has changed and gone beyond biologic limits.
People are young till around fifty.( and tomorrow...)
Like for poets and artists in the past youth seems to become a "mental 
thing" for all of society.
Therefore youth is not a "discovery", but rather a maintenance.
5- "Young people" do not have as a mass the feeling they "have" to do 
something new.
And they are scared of not finding immediate access to goods and a place 
in Society (that is much more competitive and tougher than in the past). 

But in contradiction the No-Global movement is a visible and solid 
thing.(even if a comparatevely "small" movement)
6- "Old Peoples" seem to do good anyway. Pierre L=E9vy, De Kerchkove, 
Jaron Lanier, Myron Krueger and many other (help me...) did produce 
ideas that are important for the new radicalism.
7- Maybe there are not anymore "generation's ideas". Only fragments that 
go diagonally through ages and levels of society.
8- Maybe we should analize more the positive and negative elements of 
today's radicalism.
Who's hiding a Prada & Armani dress behind his "subversive ideas"?
Ciao
Lorenzo Taiuti

Drazen Pantic said
In a discussion about the interview David Bowie gave to
NYT, [1], Dr. Spork, posted the text with the title "Only
rebels left are old!", [2] :

Am I the only young person who notices that the only people
who express their dissent at stupid things in this world
today are old? This is a terrible sign! I seriously think
 <...>

Morlock Elloi said
> Am I the only young person who notices that the only people
> who express their dissent at stupid things in this world
> today are old? This is a terrible sign! I seriously think

It was always like that - you just think that young played prominent 
source of 60-70 turbulence. No, young are fascistoid by nature and 
always follow.

What we have here is failure of "old" to provide causes that are 
competitive with those that system provides - in terms of gain and 
risk.

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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 20:51:12 +1000
From: Julian Assange <proff@iq.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> terrific post from slashdot ...

> well burn my books now to save you the trouble, because when
> these old- school rebels die, nobody will raise their voice
> in protest.

The other way of looking at it is that these old school rebels have
old school ties with old school media outlets and consequently have
a strangle hold on the market of rebellious ideas. Only the dead
make way for the living.

Another way of looking at it is that if your initial population of
rebellious persons is large (selected from young baby boomers),
then your top ten outliers, in every measurable quantity that varies
normally, but the magic one here is "reportability", are likely to
be at greater extremes than the outliers of a smaller population.
This implies that the observation is fair, but the young are not to blame.

Another interpretation is that due to easy access to many-to-many
communication and self-publishing, factors encouraging centralisation
of the source of ideas and credit assignment to that source have
been marginalised. Consequently the pie is so finely cut that it's hard
to remember who's peice is whos.

Another interpretation is that the young are busy building tomorrow's
reality why the old are busy wanking on about yesterday's falicy.
Although there seems to be plenty of people, both young and old
doing the latter on nettime.

--
 Julian Assange        |If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people
                       |together to collect wood or assign them tasks and
 proff@iq.org          |work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
 proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu  |immensity of the sea. -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

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From: dirving@box.net.au
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 20:59:04 +0930
Subject: Re: <nettime> terrific post from slashdot ...

Having been there at the time, Morlock, I can assure you that you are
quite mistaken.

Morlock Elloi wrote:
> 
> > Am I the only young person who notices that the only people
> > who express their dissent at stupid things in this world
> > today are old? This is a terrible sign! I seriously think
> 
> It was always like that - you just think that young played prominent source of
> 60-70 turbulence. No, young are fascistoid by nature and always follow.
> 
> What we have here is failure of "old" to provide causes that are competitive
> with those that system provides - in terms of gain and risk.
 <...>

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