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…)

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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!