hello!

lurking on the list since a while, I would love to share an experiment of
observation we did during the riot in Rome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J_FU8qAMtVg

This short video displays the activity on social networks (Twitter,
Facebook, Foursquare), transforming it in 3D visualizations growing on the
territory (data only refer to the city of Rome). The peaks and contours
represent the intensity of the communication and conversations that was
taking place from the start of the protest, at 3pm local time, up until its
approximate end, at 8pm local time. The animation shows the geo-referenced
intensity of messages for each 30 minute time slot from the beginning to the
end of the protest.

Watching it, we perceive immediately a mutation: the intersection between
public digital space and phisical territory, the observability of our online
activities, but also the possibility to create new forms, methodologies and
tools for protest, collaboration, organization, solidarity. Here some
reflections:

http://www.artisopensource.net/2011/10/16/versus-rome-october-15th-the-riots-on-social-networks/

The reinvention of political language and practices (and protest) seems
crucial. Big operators (public and private) have learned so well: for
example, they observe and analyze our digital life every days building on it
their own strategies with enormous benefits...

What about people who want to fight against it?

my 2 cents,
p.

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 10:51 PM, xname <root@???> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 08:45:34PM -0600, John Hopkins wrote:
>
> > But I also make this statement in the Quantum sense where The
> > Observer changes That Which Is Observed.
>
> This is what I had in mind,
>
> > Having observers versus
> > participants deeply affects the flow of an event. Now, someone will
> > point out that many of the observers ARE participating;
>
> but I would conclude the opposite: since, as Heisenberg told us, there is
> no such a thing as reality without observation, we may think that there
> are only observers, and that the difference between participants and
> observers is apparent.
>
> memory and databases, then, become important, because they are the only
> proofs and traces of 'reality' - if it ever happened.
>
> but nowadays mediation is excessive and there is a form of fusion between
> humans and measurement and recording instruments, a fusion which may bring
> about the surpassing of organic perception as a source of knowledge.
>
> because mediating becomes an alibi, a refusal to feel, deferring to the
> machinic memory - and to a future data mining, any relation with a present
> pale and uncertain.
>
> thus, isn't mediation (life recording) in some of these cases
> (entertainment and activism) becoming a way to avoid observation - where
> observation is an active process in the creation of a collectively shared
> form of reality (and mediation is a passive method)?
>
> > It is in
> > the space of the immediate present where we encounter most
> > profoundly the unknown Other. And with the encounter with the
> > unknown, we learn to see the world differently, we are changed, and
> > we change Others.
>
> And it is only in the immediate present that this relation of attraction
> and repulsion with Alterity can be embodied and disembodied, and the will
> to be possessed can be satisfied.
>
>
> E.
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