These last days I have been testing, well, playing with issue crawler.  A tool amongst others @ govcom designed to help map and follow controversies on the net.

I expected to come up with some great results harvesting links from guifi.net and other related sites. However, to my surprise, the first crawler did not reveal itself as useful as I thought. guifi.net site did not even appear as a “node” (my fault for not understanding nor coming up with a great config for the crawler settings; As I already knew some of the actors that were engaged in free wifi issues I should have set iteration value to 1 instead of 2; that might have caused to discard some actors that had weak ties on-line but strong ones in the back office…). Anyway, after documenting myself a little bit on the site, things turned out to be a little bit more comprehensive and I could harvester a little more (still, a snowball analysis tentative was left somewhere between /dev/null and the never never land). For anyone who does not grasp what I am talking about, I deeply encourage them to visit issuecrawler.net. It just takes a couple of minutes to see what is about and it is worth the detour.

After playing with issue crawler, I felt that, perhaps, many researchers on the web are searching for graphical tools to visualize a vast array of data or just be able to set / label the links between significant clusters of actors. Touchgraph, for instance, using google “similar pages” may be a more suitable and fastest tool for such purpose. Although it does not enables you to label linking lines (which is always annoying).

With issue crawler you can export your crawler map as a .svg or .pdf or .png file and have that edited later, but still, it would be really great if you could have an app that will allow users to label linking lines or maybe it has and I missed it. However, Issue crawler, as a tool to help exploring or positioning some actors involved in a given issue (be it the BP unstoppable fuel drain in the gulf coast or the demand to open the EM spectrum) that has been traced over the net, is quite useful when complemented with other flows of data or when asking experts three or four websites to start harvesting.

In any case, I could not left unmentioned that guifi.net website is sort of anomalous site in that is not a “typical” site (fortunately). It has links to other sites, yes, but not in a way a blog might have linked his friends or neighbourghs. Nor in a way a big media site or a city council will do it…that left me thinking that there are sites more “suitably” designed to be harvested by issue crawler. And the less suitable sites included, the more experts  needed to help you identify both where an issue is located / based and where it is happening (sometimes you can not rely on the news; as the issue is not “noticiable”). Well…just thinking out loud. guifi.net site is both a site where people get info about but mostly “do things in it”

Another thing which surprised me is that crawls do change their shape when I consult them again. So, I guess the shape of a crawl is less informative than I first thought. Although clusters remain clusters. Again, I had not tested all the options, just played so I might and probably has missed a lot of things. I am not and I do not consider myself an expert using issue crwaler. But it is also useful to have these first impressions posted

Here’s a pict of my second tricky crawl;

from my harvested crawls

PS: I know pict resolution sucks, but I can not put anything larger than 495 px on my blog without deforming the post column and I can not resize the crawl .png without losing even more resolution either…Damn it!

RAX!

“An important step, introduced by William James, is to abandon epistemological questions in favour of the care and concern demanded by that which is ‘‘coming into existence’’, and by its milieu, which may nurture or poison it. Poisoning is easy but nurturing is a craft, the neglect of which may be understood in relation to our vulnerability to capitalism.” (Stengers, 2008)

mcneiltrackxc.com

Hackito Ergo Sum confernece to be held in Paris coming soon…

Copy pasted (and re-formated) from :  http://hackitoergosum.org

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 – Call For Paper – HES2010 CFP

Hackito Ergo Sum 2010 – Call For Paper – HES2010 CFP

Hackito Ergo Sum conference will be held from April 8th to 10th 2010 in Paris, France.
It is part of the series of conference “Hacker Space Fest” taking place since 2008 in France and all over Europe.

HES2010 will focus on hardcore computer security, insecurity, vulnerability analysis, reverse engineering, research and hacking.

INTRO
The goal of this conference is to promote security research, broaden public awareness and create an open forum so that communication between the researcher, the security industry, the experts and the public can happen.

A recent decision of justice in France has convicted a security researcher for disclosing vulnerabilities and exploits. These laws (similar to the one in Germany), descending from USA’s DMCA law, are orienting freedom of research and knowledge into a situation where “illegal knowledge” can happen, restricted to the only ones blessed by governmental silent approval and military. Scientific research and public information cannot be made into another monopoly of state, where “some” can study and publish and “some others” cannot.
Such approach just show how misinformed some politics are and how little understanding they get of the struggle they are acting in.

Not understanding that the best way to improve security is to attack it shows the lack of maturity of some stakeholder by being cut out of independent information sources.
This is where our ethics and responsibility is to say “No, we have a right for free information and true independence in research”, and this responsibility is the one of anybody, not just the responsibility of academically blessed scientists.

This conference will try to take in account all voices in order to reach a balanced position regarding research and security, inviting businesses, governmental actors, researchers, professionals and general public to share concerns, approaches and interests during.
During three days, research conferences, solutions presentations, panels and debates will aim at finding synthetic and balanced solutions to the current situation.

To see content proposals, tracks and timelines it is worth visiting original post here

RAX!

from mitpress.mit.edu

Last year a friend of mine asked me about what would be a proper translation into Spanish for a Latour quote appearing in http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/084.html. As well as what did I understand from it. The quote:

“We are digging for the origin of an absolute –not a relative– distinction between truth and falsity, between a pure world, absolutely emptied of human-made intermediaries and a disgusting world composed of impure but fascinating human-made mediators. What is iconoclash? Or ¿ there is a world beyond the image wars?” (Latour, 2001)

Well, the translation is not important anyway, but still, the idea behind the iconoclash exhibit might be useful as another example of “not postulating two different ontological realms and then build bridges between them”. Which is something ANT has ever since tried to avoid (although I am not sure if ANT has stressed this point so much, but still, it is a crucial one and should be noticed more often, IMHO).

Here follows my answer. Spanish written at the time and spanish written now (see  warnings at the end of about section for any harmful interference language switching may cause…)

–

Te diré que se trata de mostrar como, a pesar de la existencia de una línea divisoria que quisiera dirimir las imágenes como siendo “verdaderas” o “falsas”, en realidad, todas (“falsas” y “verdaderas”) necesitan de mediaciones para lograr re-presentar aquello que re-presentan. Es decir, no hay acceso a la naturaleza, la religión o el arte sin “mediaciones”. Sin imágenes (en este caso) que procuran “plasmar” la cosa-en-si pero al hacerlo, cabe considerar que esa misma imágen añade algo a lo que supone re-presentar.

Iconoclash se refiere, en parte, a la imposibilidad o paradoja que, al “destruir” una imágen, no puedes evitar crear otra. Es decir, si los nazis tachan la estrella de David, tachan la estrella de david pero hacen surgir esa imagen de la estrella tachada a su vez. No se si me explico.

Entonces, la exposicón de iconoclash vendria a ser la búsqueda (la arqueología) de cuando surge esa distinción, cuando surge esa división que hace pensar que seria posible tener, de un lado, las imágenes inmaculadas y de otro las impuras o falseadas. Para Latour, como digo, ambas son hechas por la mano del hombre; manufacturadas, fabricadas. De ahí el interés por saber como y porqué se introduce esta distinción o se atorga un status a una u otra imágen.

“Is it manipulated or is real?” be heard. It is as if, again, the work of the hands, the careful manipulation, the human made mediation had to be put in one column, and truth, exactitude, mimesis, faithful representation into another. As if everything that was added to the credit in one column had to be deducted from the other. Strange accounting! – that would make politics as well as religion, science, and art, utterly impossible”

Haraway, por ejemplo, habla de este tipo de semiotico-materialidad de la imágen creo, con las representaciones que hacen los científicos del Virus o del ADN.

ahora, si te refieres a la traducción, yo diría que es algo así:

“Estamos escavando para conocer el orígen de una distinción absoluta -no relativa- entre verdad y falsedad, entre un mundo puro, absolutamente vaciado de intermediarios hechos por los humanos y un mundo asqueroso compuesto de impuros pero fascinantes mediadores hechos por los humanos. ¿Qué es iconoclash? o ¿Hay un mundo más allá dela guerra de las imágenes?”

RAX!

from flowtv.org

Shortening digital divides may imply also widening white spaces for open access and use of radio electric spectrum as well as allowing and using the already existing fiber optics networks that lies beneath our feet without having ever noticed them.

Anyway, what are white spaces and dark fibers and why do they matter?

“The switchover from analog to digital terrestrial TV has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of spectrum available for innovative technologies. Currently the European and International organizations are studying the implementation of new spectrum management techniques. The opening up of the spectrum at least for secondary use will greatly increase the overall economic and social benefit to the general public. The US regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set the precedent and has passed an order to allow secondary use of spectrum on the bands between broadcast TV frequencies. The Open Spectrum Alliance strives to make similar forms of spectrum management available in all countries and additional allocation bands.” from here.

“It’s a totally different paradigm for wireless networking,”"Until now, in wireless networks, you were given a spectrum, and you would share it with everyone else. Everyone was an equal stakeholder. Now, you have this spectrum where there are certain people who are primary users.” (Chandra, 2009) from here.

from ninux.org

Some people interested in free WiFi networks will gather around Rome on November the 27-30th. Why? Well, quoting the organisers from ninux.org:

“A weekend, surreal time slot on topics about wireless communities. Under the same roof for the first time you’ll find hackers, geeks, nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics.”

It will be an excellent opportunity to pulse the energies of ongoing WiFi communities (we prefer the term network or project) and see if we can share some insights on different issues regarding free wifi networks. With the help of some people at guifi.net we are preparing a short interview to put in common some of the main concerns we (as hackers, geeks, nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics) experiment while doing free wifing. Hopefully enough, these  will either echo or difract existing concerns form other networks from which we can learn or think about. Will see…

See you in Rome.

RAX!

On December 10-12th,  ATACD (A Topological Approach to Cultural Dynamics) conference will be held at the University of Barcelona (UB) Faculty of Philosophy. Plenary Speakers include:

Rosi Braidotti, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

J. Doyne Farmer, Santa Fe Institute, USA

Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Alex Galloway, New York University, USA

Penny Harvey, University of Manchester, UK

Dirk Helbing, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Scott Lash, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Brian Rotman, Ohio University

Luc Steels, SONY-France, France

Eyal Weizmann, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Not bad, M?
I and Roger Baig will be presenting a paper entitled:

“Citizen Management of Technology: from open content to open networks with guifi.net.”

The conference looks really great and there are also public and open side events. For more details don’t miss ATACD home page

RAX!

Fall is coming closer, and, as it does, the demand for accountable work during elapsed time since my stay at CSI increases. As my Ph.D program entered into the Bologna process, recent changes have started to apply. One of them consisting in an increased demand of results regarding my thesis. These are to be write down in a report and then receive comments from an academic board in which two in-house and one foreign professor give their advises in what is known as “panels”.

At the beginning I was sort of careless about this “trial”, but, after having passed through two of them, now I think it is indeed a very good idea. As, finally, it is not that easy to find readers for your work (not at all). And, plus, it helps you go back and forth in your text again and again according to different suggestions that, quite often, you did not have the time to realize or consider. So these “trials” do increase the possibility of facing a reduced form of a tribunal many times before facing THE tribunal. And thus, gives you the possibility of committing more errors and solve them.

Back in ‘83:

” ‘Accumulated knowledge’ people say with admiration, but this acceleration is made possible by a change of scale, which in turn makes possible the multiplication of trials and errors. Certainty does not increase in a laboratory because people in it are more honest, more rigorous, or more ‘falsificationist’. It is simply that they can make as many mistakes as they wish or simply more mistakes than the others ‘outside’ who cannot master the changes scale. Each of mistake is in turn archived, saved,recorded, and made easily readable again,whatever the specific field or topic may be.” (Latour, 1983)

One is to believe that our department is lab-like becoming day by day (Still, it remains doubtful the extent to which it could raise the world…).

I do not know the date yet, but arguably at the end of September I should be doing this accountable exercise called “panel”. On previous panels I received great feedback from prof. Luz Ma. Martínez (UAB), Jenny Cubells (UAB) and Pep Vivas (UOC).  And also, belonging to FIC research group, I also got feedback from them. It is great to have them as readers ! ¿How do yo u sign in readers for your work? M?

RAX!

After having presented a piece of work of my ongoing thesis at CSI, I have received many comments. Nevertheless, not agreeing completely with all of them, I think it is worth making some considerations on uses and misuses of STS concepts or, else, ways of thinking about STS.

As Deleuze said, concepts do have an origin and a need to be but also do have an expiring date. That is to say, you use one or another concept if it makes sense in a particular “agencement” in which you are trying to live or, in this case, research. And, likewise, you abandon a concept if it suddenly does not make sense or it does not bring forward new connections or affinities with what you are interested in. It is all about finding the “agencements qui nous conviennent” and stopping our “interpretation” about if that meant A or B. You can further elaborate this very idea if you take into consideration Alice in Wonderland quote about the meaning of words (Which Deleuze does also refer to; and Did I in a previous post).

“- When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, – it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

- The question is,said Alice, – whether you can make words mean so many different things.

- The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, – which is to be master – - that’s all.” (Carroll, 1865)

Having said so, I think that, unless we want to act as some sort of “thought police (thinkpol for Orwell fans…)”, we should celebrate (which does not mean to accept everything) the proliferation of a multiplicity of uses of some notions that, originally embedded in STS, have been used in other fields. Some of these translations have been fruitful such as to seriously take into consideration post/de-colonial and feminists approaches; for instance. That said, if we think about the notion of Cyborg as elaborated by Donna Haraway, we can acknowledge for many “misuses” of the term. But were not that misuses relevant to someones, weren’t they aimed at a purpose? I think that the relevance of “cyborg” was precisely due to a quick and widely acceptance into many academic fields which, more or less accurately (that is the point), did respect the very idea from which the cyborg arose. In deed, Donna Haraway, in a conference held at Barcelona and cosponsored by the UAB’s Department of Social Psychology, sustained that, although many STS scholars referred to the notion of cyborg (amongst which she explicitly mentioned Bruno Latour), they (her words) never realized that it was about gender.

So, after all, it should not be that strange to found pertinent uses of STS concepts “across the borders”. Though, and here is the crucial point (IMHO), battles for naming and labeling may arise. Given that, if what you are doing with “my” concept is not what “I” do, then call it another thing which is great in order to avoid confusion. But it is also naïf in the sense that, somehow, one is to believe that there is only one proper way of “using” things and neglects, indeed, the possibility of “translation” of this very concepts that, although retaining something, do also leave something aside. For the notion of cyborg (which btw I am not quite sure we could include it into STS vocabulary, but still) when re-used by some STS scholars, and according to Haraway, it was “gender” which was left aside when translated. So, ¿what is really “unacceptable” and what is “suitable” for different translations of STS concepts such as Obligatory Point of Passage, Translation, Actor, Network, Script, etc. Which, ironically, they are themselves translations from other sources or “origins”?; to put it shortly.

from saltpublishing.com

This is not to argue against a concern about how concepts are abused (insofar as you do not need to talk about an Action-Net if the only thing you state in a paper is that some elements are interconnected or, else, if claims of authority are made as you assume to rightfully use a term or concept). Instead I am willing to interrogate what it is that we found so disrupting in misusing a term, concept or notion.

Another point, very different from concept uses or misuses, is about “choices” and “pertinence”. Here I am grateful to the suggestion of considering how the idea of space can be conceptualized. As, for the time being, I was looking at the idea of production of space by Henri Lefebvre so as to argue that wifi was not just an instrumental effect of a technology but rather a production of space that allowed (and was produced) by a series of practices that were not possible before. But did not pay attention to other theories or ways of conceiving space such as those appearing on Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump” known paper. Well, for days to come, I will have to think about crossings between urban sociology, political sociology and STS [given that it is not that “evident” that they could work together or at least, the way I intended to do it

Ok, quick posting for the aftermath of the seminar 

RAX!

On July , 8th some people (Including myself…) at the CSI  are presenting their work at the monthly seminar.  After giving some thought, I chose to present a fragment of a chapter of my thesis which I am currently working on (In French…). It will draw on some recent findings here in Paris concerning WiFi and deepen into the history of routers. This is, how a huge armchair-like machine ended up in our homes as a cute closed-box with an antenna.

Behold the Inteface Message Processor! from: aleph.llull.net

Hopefully enough it won’t be that boring (given that the chapter could qualify for an honorific membership from the Society of People Interested in Boring Things.) Nevertheless, the goal is to provide a topological approach of the knots and tendencies to which routers have been attached and how these very attachments changed what they are / were since the late ’60’s.

That said, I am expecting great comments from people at the CSI seminar. It is not everyday that you can have your work commented by STS people

RAX!