<synthesis> Inc-synthesis Digest, Vol 2, Issue 9

[Baruch]

hi just a few clarifications on this announcement from one of the participants :)
> STREAM #8 / Monday, 29 June 2020 at 5 pm CET
> Value extraction and the workforce of the cryptoscene
> With Mart?n Nadal, C?sar Escudero Andaluz, Telekommunisten, Sa?o Sedla?ek, Nascent
> Moderated by Aude Launay
> + You are kindly invited to share your comments and questions trough the live chat!
> 
> Value is classically said to stem from human labor, and money to represent this value.
not said,  scientifically argued.  Originally by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, given its revolutionary imperative by Marx and Engels and retriieved and redeemed after generations of reactionary neo-classical marginalist flimflam by Cottrell & Cockshott and asserted into the Cryptocurrency blockchain field of dreams and ponzi schemes with the Haket

> Although those theories have been made obsolete by, among other things, the subjectivization of value which opened the door to the narratives of financialization, the idea that value should be objectively linked to the steps of its production endures in our economic imaginaries.
not obsolete, please see above.  “Subjective value” only has bearing on exchange not use value. All socially necessary production requires labour.  Its not imaginary. 


> Whether ?labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things? or whether its value was indexed to the profit derived from it?the consequences of which we can see now more clearly than ever when it comes to the wages of ?essential workers??the production of value with regards to labor still stands as one of the most pressing issues of the digital evolution.

its only an issue because it is a fact. There is no Money Lab without labour. 

> 
> It is interesting to bear in mind that, in the Western European region, work doesn?t seem to have been socially valued until relatively late?around the 18th century?but has then been largely glorified by the nascent modern education system of the 19th century. An activity traditionally devalued, or even at times condemned, since antiquity, work was then opposed to the spiritual meaning of life (and actually, to military activites too). Human beings were to find self-fulfillment with otium (meditation, reflection, poetry and politics?)?or war??, and not with its negation, negotium (trade, business?).

this is also part of imperialism, patriarchy and colonialism, the subsumption of women’s labour and that of non-citizens. 
> 
> After centuries of direct workers exploitation, the late 20th century saw otium and negotium merge in a new knowledge economy that extracted value from intellectual and cultural work.
yes but this work depends on machines which not only work nut are made of work. 

> What some view as a path towards a sort of ?dotCommunism? unfortunately mostly led to a ?data is the new oil? state of mind.


> The situation and the history that produced it are of course more complex and it?s an attempt at mapping them through the lense of the massification of interest in cryptography that Mart?n Nadal and Cesar Escudero Andaluz propose with Economy, Knowledge and Surveillance in the Age of the Cryptocene.
> 
> Not only did data extraction turn each and every internet user into an unwitting worker by turning otium into negotium, but it is also heavily damaging everyone?s attention capacity to the point of seriously reducing our critical thinking ability.

historical materialism is your friend if you want “critical thinking ability” only drawback: you need to fight off the legacy of anti-communism trauma all the time. 

> This is the question addressed by Ishtar Gate, a blockchain-based micro-economy-in-the-arts platform devised by the writer and visual theorist Penny Rafferty together with Nascent, designed to reward the reading of critical content and its comment with tokens exchangeable in real life. One step further in this return to valuing otium, Sa?o Sedla?ek turns some data extraction technologies?such as real-time pose estimation?against themselves, and allows the users of its Oblomo platform to mine cryptocurrencies while standing still, and to exchange the product of those physically inactive moments for the workforce of other people willing to, for instance, mow your lawn or wash your car. And what if, in this age of ever-expanding automation, we could evaluate the machinic workforce and transmit it through a currency? Embedding the classical labor value theory in a rational digital cryptocurrency, the Haket designed by Telekommunisten is intended as a criticism of the Bitcoin architecture and as way to rethink it as a stable currency thus usable as a currency.

it is just a mirror which reveals in the best case how a cryptocurrency can really live up to all the hype and provide money-like exchange of material value, without a central authority.  It doesn’t solve any of the other problems in the world. It is a merely a revelatory instrument, its shows the true value of bitcoin, and the true value of all that cryptocrunching should it truly be put in the services of autonomous economic actors. 
more info : http://haket.info
cheers

B
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Follow the programme here:
> FB event > https://www.facebook.com/events/527075734629065/ <https://www.facebook.com/events/527075734629065/>
> Telegram > https://t.me/aksiomaorg <https://t.me/aksiomaorg>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Organised and produced by: Aksioma ? Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2020
> For the series: Tactics & Practice <https://aksioma.org/tactics.practice/>
> In the frame of: konS <https://kons-platforma.org/> ? Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art
> In collaboration with: Kino ?i?ka ? Centre for Urban Culture <https://www.kinosiska.si/en/> and Institute of Network Cultures <https://www.kinosiska.si/en/> / Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
> In partnership with:?Rijeka ECoC 2020 <https://rijeka2020.eu/en/> and Interface Cultures Department <https://www.ufg.at/Master-Programme.1594+M52087573ab0.0.html> / Kunstuniversit?t Linz
> Media partners: Neural magazine, We Make Money Not Art, TAM-TAM, Radio ?tudent
> 
> The project konS ? Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art was chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations ?Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres?. 
> The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.
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> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2020 18:34:58 +0200
> From: Krystian Woznicki <kw at berlinergazette.de>
> To: inc-synthesis at listcultures.org
> Subject: <synthesis> books / readers under lockdown
> Message-ID: <bcba8a6f-074f-e70b-ebad-b5bf154d38ca at berlinergazette.de>
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> 
> Hi INC-folks,
> 
> during the pandemic-related shutdown/lockdown period web and platform
> industries are experiencing a high. Unsurprisingly, digital capitalism's
> magic moment is intertwined with overall fear and panic, clouding the
> reason of many critics, also in the context of digital/networked culture
> debates. Magdalena Taube and myself have argued elsewhere (see:
> https://tinyurl.com/y9lvzrwm) that this is the moment for more
> energetically than ever reviving criticism and exploring alternatives. A
> special problem ? initially not discussed in our aforementioned
> contribution ? is the case of books under proprietary lockdown:
> commercial platforms for 'e-reading' or 'social reading' have been using
> the 'corona crisis' to revamp their 'temporary free trial offers' into
> ostensibly 'social initiatives' promoting something like 'open access.'
> One example would be Scribid. In other words, books under proprietary
> lockdown ? suddenly seemingly liberated ? have been offered to readers
> under lockdown. Obviously, the underlying calculus is, that, once the
> readers are liberated again (freed from lockdown), the books can be put
> under lockdown again, making readers pay for them from then on.
> 
> One could argue, that many businesses did not even need to trick people
> ? in this cheap way ? into heavier web-usage and web-service-dependency,
> as there are not too many alternatives around. Did 'we' actually have a
> choice? And yet, the question needs to be asked: What kind of
> initiatives from within the sphere of critical public libraries and open
> access have emerged or been rediscovered in the past two, three months?
> How are business models of rather proprietary-oriented publishers being
> recast towards more commonist ends?????
> 
> I hope that these questions are not too off-topic for this list. I am
> just curious what people on this list think about these issues and what
> they have observed or even researched with regard to them. At the end of
> the day, given that INC is hosting an extensive public access book
> series (https://networkcultures.org/publications/) and has recently also
> issued 'The Urgent Publishing Toolkit,' this might eventually be not
> that far off as it might seem at first glance.???
> 
> By the way:
> 
> One example for a small initiative is the Berlin-based publishing
> collective bbooks that started a sharing initiative, making available
> two of their titles online, German translations of "Torpor" by Chris
> Kraus and "Marx? Philosophie" by ?tienne Balibar. Have a look here:
> http://b-books.de/share.htm
> 
> Moreover, I recently came across a few books that were made available
> for 'free reading' in the course of the latest Black Lives Matter
> uprisings, including the following two titles:
> 
> Distributed Blackness
> http://opensquare.nyupress.org/books/9781479820375/
> 
> FUTURES OF BLACK RADICALISM (see e-book section)
> https://www.versobooks.com/books/2438-futures-of-black-radicalism
> ?
> Best wishes,
> 
> Krystian
> 
> -- 
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> BG ? Berliner Gazette | since 1999 | https://berlinergazette.de
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> 
> SILENT WORKS ? The Hidden Human Labor in AI-Driven Capitalism  
> BG Project 2020: Exhibition, Conference + Text Series
> https://silent-works.berlinergazette.de
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> MORE WORLD ? How Can We Cooperate Across Borders to Tackle Climate Change?
> Results from BG?s 20th Anniversary Event: Videos, Audios, Projects + Texts 
> https://more-world.berlinergazette.de?
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> End of Inc-synthesis Digest, Vol 2, Issue 9
> *******************************************

Dr. phil. Baruch Gottlieb

lecturer
Studium Generale
UdK Berlin

guest lecturer / researcher
Fachgebiet Allgemeine Technikwissenschaft
TU Cottbus

associate researcher
West Den Haag

telekommunisten.net
g4t.info
@baruch




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