Following my previous post, I will now add some extra events so the list of to-go’s is really getting crowded. The following days will be some sort of festival of festivals in Paris!

So, along with the ouverture of the MediaLab, Passageenseine and Hacker Space Fest, please behold the following:

May 30, 31

World Information City @ Maison des Metallos (their logo seems a little bit right-wing fashioned though…but maybe they are willing to reach an effect as situationist-like metal band Laibach did. Nevertheless, we prefer smooth shapes and fluidity over rigid lines and monumentalism. Jhon Urry, Bruno Latour, Saskia Sassen and Brian Holmes, amongst others, will be there)

Plus, people from hackitectura.net which inspired some of my research will trun place de la bastille into a “wikiplaza” profiting from the mega umbrella-event future-en-seine.org May, 30 – June, 07th.

June 3, 4

Hyperurbain2 @ cité des sciences et de l’industrie.

Among the on-going presnetations of hyperurbain2 this one looks great: 11:30 on June, 4th: Le piéton dans la ville : Nouvelles épreuves de la micromobilité hyperdocumentée. Sophie Pène, GRIPIC-EA 1498, Université Paris IV, France

And, to sum up,

June 2-7th

Mal au Pixel (4th edition) @ St.Ouen

Electronic music and bricolage festival. There is a seminar on art, environtment and technology the 7th.

from craslab.org

These days there are several events that are worth taking into account. The Medialab opening and official presentation (Now!), the Co-Hacking Space Pas-sage-en-seine on June, 4th and 5th and the Hackerspace Fest. on June, 26-30th.

First things first:

Sciences Po anounces it’s official Medialab. Other Medialabs are already there (just see google results) however I guess this one, apart from it’s specificity, can also have it’s “Media” pronunced both with French or English accent… Anyway. They have a great set of conferences which, as listed on their site www.sciences-po.fr, includes:

Le lundi 25 mai: Richard Rogers, de l’Université d’Amsterdam, directeur de la fondation Govcom.org, auteur de Information Politic on the Web, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass (2005), montrera comment suivre la politique sur le web;

Le mardi 26 mai: Yochai Benkler, de la Law School de Harvard, co-directeur du Berkman Center for Internet and Society, auteur du livre important The Wealth of Networks. How Social Production Transforms Market and Freedom, Yale University Press, New Haven (2006), montrera ce qu’on peut faire en science politique en utilisant les données numériques;

Le jeudi 28 mai: Carlo Ratti, du MIT, directeur du SENSEable City Lab, nous montrera comment le numérique modifie l’appréhension de la ville et des études urbaines.

from www.sciences-po.fr/recherche/fr/dispositif/medialab.htm

We will be there for Benkler talk entitled Observing Networked Politics and see if we can grasp some usefull inputs for our Thesis. What does resist the assumption of not being networked today anyway? Certainly not politics.

RAX!

I have found this quote of Bruno Latour reading a paper from Social Studies of Science by Adrian Mackenzie dated on 2003 entitled “These Things Called Systems: Collective Imaginings and Infrastructural Software”. (I must confess I had some difficulties reading that paper though…) Nevertheless, here’s a quote for the quote of the day section from Latour’s Aramis, ou l’amour des techniques:

“The engineer substitutes for the signs he writes the things that he has mobilized; he attaches them to each so they’ll hold up; then he withdraws a little, delegating to another self, in the form of a chip, a sensor, or an automatic device, the task of watching over the connection. And this delegating allows him to withdraw even further – as if there were an object.” (Latour, 1996: 81) -as seen in MacKenzie, A.(2003) SSS, 2003, 33.

schematic from free hardware project ronja.twibright.com

from www.blackouteurope.eu:

“Think about how you use the Internet! What would it mean to you if free access to the Internet was taken away?
These days, the Internet is about life and freedom. It’s about shopping, booking theatre tickets … holidays, learning, job-seeking, banking, and trade. It’s also about the fun things – dating, chatting, invitations, music, entertainment, joking and even a Second Life. It is a tool to express ourselves, to collaborate, innovate, share, stimulate new business ideas, reach new markets – thrive without middlemen..

Just think – what’s your web address? Unless people have that address in their “package” of regular websites – they won’t be able to find you. That means they can’t buy, or book, or register, or even view you online. Your business won’t be able to find niche suppliers of goods – and compare prices. If you get any money at all from advertising on your site, it will diminish. Yes, Amazon and a select few will be OK, they will be the included in the package. But your advertising on Google or any other website, will be increasingly worthless. Skype could be blocked. (As it is in Germany in the use from iPhone, already). Small businesses could literally disappear, especially specialist, niche or artisan businesses.

If we don’t do something now – we could lose free and open use of the internet.” (Blackout Europe, 2009)

For residents in the Spanish State you can e-mail your MPE here; xmailer.hacktivistas.net

Seems that citizen initiatives such as WiFi networks are becoming increasingly relevant in order to secure a second chance or a true alternative as they constitute huge linkages of computers and data and people in a Open philosophy. Hopefully enough, MPEs on May 6th will attend to the already 345.000 mails sent supporting the Open Letter to the European Parliament.

RAX!

I.Stengers Cosmopolitiques from www.cnap.fr

Reading Isabell Stengers Cosmopolitiques, there are many references to the work of Deleuze. One of them, extracted from Deleuze “Qu’est-ce que la philososphie?” says:

“Diagnostiquer les devenirs dans chaque présent qui passe, c’est ce que Nietzsche assignait au philosophe comme médecin, ‘médecin de la civilisation’ ou inventeur de nouveaux modes d’existence immanents” (Deleuze, 1991)

RAX!