nettime: Cut it out!

[Tapio Makela <director@kaapeli.fi> (by way of Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>)]

Dear Nettimers, Mr. Cook and Paul Garrin,

I think you should stop this discussion on nettime. Cook«s rhetoric, style,
argumentation is so appalling, that I do not want to read more. Goodbye!

Instead, I would rather see some discussion on couple of important topics
related to name.space:

1. Independent funding for artists by combining innovation, know how and
business skills. Maybe there are those on Nettime who can rely on public
funding without considering why others would like to create private income
to support arts and critical practices. As the European governments have not
been quite as neo conservative as the U.S. government, maybe this is not a
big concern for everyone. I am not willing to wait for 10-20 years until the
generations now in power in my country realize, that there are creative
practices within various branches of new media. For this reason, ethically
well grounded common efforts to raise funding through the use of Internet,
for instance, are very welcome. Does someone think that private income, and
therefore, private businesses related to arts and critical (tactic) media
are more questionable than, say, associations? If so, why?

2. If name.space is based on the idea that it offers an alternative
name.space, and is not even trying to become any Big Daddy mainframe, the
discussion that Cook and some others have been promoting should be addressed
towards IANA/IHAC, not name.space. Since both dns and Internet access
provider services will be vastly growing businesses, it is in the interest
of its users that there will be competition. Name.space is an alternative
already now, but it may become soon universally resolvable. Until it does,
we can use it as a critical, interesting subnet. Since name.space is in no
way making the functioning of Internet risky, but instead, may make it more
flexible in the future, why the resistance? Why does Paul Garrin have to
defend the project, instead of discussing about it?

3. There does not exist "An Internet Community" that can provide a license
to run it. Internet, unless one is absolutely naive on purpose, consists of
thousands of interest groups. Attempt to exclude competition is done in an
interest of groups that benefit from doing so. We should not only stare at
Internet, but think about how the broadcast radio and television were
monopolized, in different ways in different countries. RIGHT NOW is the time
to act, if one wants to influence the infrastructures of Iternet, not ten
years from now. If digital networks allow horizontal administration instead
of vertical control, why to resist this possibility? We are no longer
competing over analogue bandwith on the air. The DNS has already become a
controlled & slow environment compared to the models proposed within
name.space. I think it will be really interesting to see how name.space will
develop, but it seems like there are plenty of nettimers who wish to crush
the egg before we see the bird. I am just surprised of such narrow
mindedness... Maybe we should wait for a month or so and return to the
name.space discussion then?


4. Artists and skilled media labs run by them should think about more ideas
for running services on the net that could support them financially. Maybe
we could open a smaller mailing list for this kind of dialogue soon.

5. If Mr. Cook does continue to write, I would appreciate from him a
civilized style and reasonable argumenting, instead of: "world is going to
dance to pauls tune because he WISHES it to do so.  how nice.  and the
internet is now going to run by treaty.  how nice."
This rhetoric rings a bell... it somehow reminds me of the Penguin from
Gotham City.

yours,


Tapio MŠkelŠ
Tapio Makela (Tapio MŠkelŠ)
director of MUU, artist organization based in Helsinki, Finland
Also a critic, journalist and researcher
Home: Lapinrinne 4 D 30, 00180 Helsinki, Finland, tel +358-9-6857373
Work: Rikhardinkatu 4, 00130 Helsinki, Finland
tel: +358-9-625972 fax: +358-9-625376
http://muu.autono.net
e-mail: <director@kaapeli.fi>  if out of order, try <tapio@muu.autono.net>



--
*  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
*  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
*  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
*  more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
*  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de