Reading List Against Metathesiophobia

As Bruce Sterling said, „Just go ahead, Larry and Sergey. You don’t scare me. I read … ”:

• The Verge – founded in 2011 in partnership with Vox Media, covers the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture. Its mission is to offer in-depth reporting and long-form feature stories, breaking news coverage, product information, and community content in a unified and cohesive manner.
• Techcrunch – a leading technology media property, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.
• Rhizome – the Rhizome ArtBase is an online archive of digital art containing over 2,500 art works. Encompassing a vast range of projects from artists all over the world, the ArtBase provides an online home for works that employ materials such as software, code, websites, moving images, games and browsers towards aesthetic and critical ends. The mission of the ArtBase is to provide free, open, and permanent access to a living and historic collection of seminal new media art objects.
• The Creators Project – a global celebration of art and technology. Founded by a revolutionary partnership between Intel and VICE, The Creators Project celebrates visionary artists across multiple disciplines who are using technology in innovative ways to push the boundaries of creative expression. We seek to inspire new and emerging artists by showcasing the infinite possibilities presented by the advancement of modern technology. The Creators Project is proud to have showcased more than 500 artists from all around the world.
• Hyperallergic – a forum for serious, playful and radical thinking about art in the world today. It combines the best of art blog and magazine culture by focusing on publishing quality and engaging writing and images from informed and provocative perspectives.

And what do you read to fight Metathesiophobia?

Tagged as: Bruce Sterling, Metathesiophobia, readlinglist | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Sonntag, 20130428, 16:52 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

The Future of General Computing

Bruce Sterlings take:

Where is the abandoned part?
 
The personal desktop computer. Lots of pads, and slates, and screens, and projectors. Where are the computers? Where’s the stone box?
 
I’m a futurist. One of the problems of being a futurist is that you learn that things are temporary. Stone boxes are temporary. Plastic boxes, very temporary. I am temporary.
 
I’m a mortal human being. It’s not weird or amazing to have a human life span. It’s ubiquitous. It’s universal. Death. It’s just somewhat taboo to dwell on the subject in public.
 
My parents didn’t live particularly long. I used to figure I should be dropping dead around now. Dropping dead: a massive heart attack at the podium in South By. That would be awesome. Imagine how that would look on Wikipedia.
 
So it’s kinda disturbing to me to realize that computers are dying, not me. Computers are dying off, and I am actually in pretty good shape.
 
I’m not Ray Kurzweil, I’m not gonna outlive the Milky Way Galaxy personally. But I might well be hanging around for some unconscionable length of time, like maybe age ninety. That would make SXSW 57, and I would still be tottering up here, having outlived the personal computer — this amazing device which might appear, and even disappear, during my own lifetime.
 
And it really seems to be going. I don’t think I heard any speaker at any panel here ever use the term “PC.” Where are they? It’s just vanished like the word “Computer” in the name of “Apple Computer.”
 
Why does nobody talk about them? Because nobody wants them, that’s why. Imagine somebody brings you a personal desktop computer here at South By, they’re like bringing it in on a trolley.
 
“Look, this device is personal. It computes and it’s totally personal, just for you, and you alone. It doesn’t talk to the internet. No sociality. You can’t share any of the content with anybody. Because it’s just for you, it’s private. It’s yours. You can compute with it. Nobody will know! You can process text, and draw stuff, and do your accounts. It’s got a spreadsheet. No modem, no broadband, no Cloud, no Facebook, Google, Amazon, no wireless. This is a dream machine. Because it’s personal and it computes. And it sits on the desk. You personally compute with it. You can even write your own software for it. It faithfully executes all your commands.”
 
So — if somebody tried to give you this device, this one I just made the pitch for, a genuinely Personal Computer, it’s just for you — Would you take it?
 
Even for free?
 
Would you even bend over and pick it up?
 
Isn’t it basically the cliff house in Walnut Canyon? Isn’t it the stone box?
 
“Look, I have my own little stone box here in this canyon! I can grow my own beans and corn. I harvest some prickly pear. I’m super advanced here.”
 
I really think I’m going to outlive the personal computer. And why not? I outlived the fax machine. I did. I was alive when people thought it was amazing to have a fax machine. Now I’m alive, and people think it’s amazing to still have a fax machine.
 
Why not the personal computer? Why shouldn’t it vanish like the cliff people vanished? Why shouldn’t it vanish like Steve Jobs vanished?
 
It’s not that we return to the status quo ante: don’t get me wrong. It’s not that once we had a nomad life, then we live in high-tech stone dwellings, and we return to chase the bison like we did before.
 
No: we return into a different kind of nomad life. A kind of Alan Kay world, where computation has vanished into the walls and ceiling, as he said many, many years ago.
 
Then we look back in nostalgia at the Personal Computer world. It’s not that we were forced out of our stone boxes in the canyon. We weren’t driven away by force. We just mysteriously left. It was like the waning of the moon.
 
They were too limiting, somehow. They computed, but they just didn’t do enough for us. They seemed like a fantastic way forward, but somehow they were actually getting in the way of our experience.
 
All these machines that tore us away from lived experience, and made us stare into the square screens or hunch over the keyboards, covered with their arcane, petroglyph symbols. Control Dingbat That, backslash R M this. We never really understood that. Not really.
…
Computers were really, truly disruptive. Mobile devices are so radically disruptive that they even disrupted computers. They’re a bigger deal then the dead bookstores. We’ve got guys who own cell phones in this world who can’t even read.
 
And I’m very intimate with this spectacle. I’m very keen on all its little ins and outs.
 
The thing that bugs me about your attitude toward it is that you don’t recognize its tragic dimension.
 
This is something that literature has always been very keen on, that technology never gets around to acknowledging. The cold wind moaning through the empty stone box.
 
When are you gonna own up to it? Where are the Dell PC’s? This is Austin, Texas. Michael Dell is the biggest tech mogul in central Texas. Why is he not here? Why is he not at least not selling his wares?
 
Where are the dedicated gaming consoles you used to love? Do you remember how important those were? I could spend all day here just reciting the names of the casualities in your line of work.
 
It’s always the electronic frontier. Nobody ever goes back to look at the electronic forests that were cut down with chainsaws and tossed into the rivers.

 

Now compare, mix, and enhance this with Cory Doctorow:

Cory Doctorow: Lockdown – The coming war on general-purpose computing

Regardless of whether you think these are real problems or hysterical fears, they are, nevertheless, the political currency of lobbies and interest groups far more influential than Hollywood and big content. Every one of them will arrive at the same place: “Can’t you just make us a general-purpose computer that runs all the programs, except the ones that scare and anger us? Can’t you just make us an Internet that transmits any message over any protocol between any two points, unless it upsets us?”
 
There will be programs that run on general-purpose computers, and peripherals, that will freak even me out. So I can believe that people who advocate for limiting general-purpose computers will find a receptive audience. But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning certain instructions, protocols or messages will be wholly ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy. As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits, and all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship. This stuff matters because we’ve spent the last decade sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it’s just been an end-level guardian. The stakes are only going to get higher.
 
We haven’t lost yet, but we have to win the copyright war first if we want to keep the Internet and the PC free and open. Freedom in the future will require us to have the capacity to monitor our devices and set meaningful policies for them; to examine and terminate the software processes that runs on them; and to maintain them as honest servants to our will, not as traitors and spies working for criminals, thugs, and control freaks.

Tagged as: Bruce Sterling, computers, computing, Cory Doctorow, food for thought, future | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Sonntag, 20130428, 15:45 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

Bruce Sterling Closing Remarks - SXSW Interactive 2013

Yes, I am a Bruce Sterling fanboy. Give him about 25-30 minutes to warm up ;)

Text of SXSW2013 closing remarks by Bruce Sterling

Our democracy has been hacked. American democracy has never been perfect, but more often than not, the will of the people did drive policy. Congress today is utterly incapable of passing any reform of any significance until they get permission from special interests.
…
Then I look over the SXSW crowd. I’ve seen a lot of them. You look pretty good, for a SXSW crowd. More foreigners around, Koreans, Germans, Britons.
Even a neighborhood from London: Hackney. I was super-impressed by that: Hackney. Hackney! That is unheard-of global ambition by a district of a town. It’s like South Austin had it’s own presence at the London Olympics.
I’m gonna take Hackney a lot more seriously from now on. Hackney is a force to be reckoned with. I’ll probably overlook their surveillance cameras, and their miserable immigration and visa policies.
…
Whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody. Including you.
People like to say that musicians reacted badly to the digital revolution. They put a foot wrong. What really happened is that the digital revolution reduces everybody to the state of musicians. Everybody — not just us bohemian creatives, but the military, political parties, the anchor stores in retail malls, academics subjected to massive open online courses.
It’s the same thing over and over. Basically, the only ones making money are the ones that have big, legal stone castles surrounded with all kinds of regulatory thorns. Meaning: the sickness industry, the bank gangsters, and the military contractors. Gothic High-Tech.
If more computation, and more networking, was going to make the world prosperous, we’d be living in a prosperous world. And we’re not. Obviously we’re living in a Depression.
…
Google already disrupted newspapers, basically destroyed ‘em single-handed. That wasn’t okay. What happened when Android disrupted Nokia, that wasn’t particularly okay.
But I’m okay with disruption. I’ve seen a lot of it, I know how it works. I’ve participated in it. I’ve personally known people who’ve benefited by it. I’ve known people who’ve suffered by it.
I have seen disruption in music, literature, the arts, entertainment publishing, the fourth estate, the military, political parties, manufacturing — pretty much everywhere except finance, health, the law, and the prison/military industry. Which is why they’ve got all the money now and the rest of us are pretty much reduced to disrupted global peons.
Computers were really, truly disruptive. Mobile devices are so radically disruptive that they even disrupted computers. They’re a bigger deal then the dead bookstores. We’ve got guys who own cell phones in this world who can’t even read.
…
It’s always the electronic frontier. Nobody ever goes back to look at the electronic forests that were cut down with chainsaws and tossed into the rivers.
…
And then there’s this empty pretense that these innovations make the world “better.” This is a dangerous word. Like: “If we’re not making the world better, then why are we doing this at all?”
Now, I don’t want to claim that this attitude is hypocritical. Because when you say a thing like that at South By: “Oh, we’re here to make the world better” — you haven’t even reached the level of hypocrisy. You’re stuck at the level of childish naivete.
The world has a tragic dimension. This world does not always get better. The world has deserts. Deserts aren’t better. People don’t always get better.
…
Since the financial panic of 2008, things have gotten worse across the board. The Austerity is a complete policy failure. It’s even worse then the Panic. We’re not surrounded by betterness in 2013. By practically every measure, nature is worse, culture is worse, governance is worse. The infrastructure is in visible decline. Business is worse. People are living in cardboard in Silicon Valley.
…
However, just because it’s interesting doesn’t mean it’s good.
…
the first step, really the proper step, is to accept that our hands are not clean. We don’t just play and experiment: we kill.
When you disrupt the stone box, the stone box goes empty. It’s not merely irritated or disturbed, it’s dead. It’s dead media. It’s dead, it has been killed, and to be a phoenix you have to admit your complicity in the barbecue fire.
It’s your fire, it’s not somebody else’s. Yes, we killed the past. We didn’t pull the trigger on it directly, but it died for our benefit, it died through things we did.
Own up to that. Own up to that: yes, we burned it up. No one is historically innocent. Yes, we are carnivores at this barbecue. Yes, it died, we roasted it, we ate it. And the saving grace here is we eat what we kill.
Go on, eat it. No, don’t pretend to be the child bride in white lace who thinks that babies are found under the cabbages. You’re not that young, you’re twenty-six years old. You ought to be slaughtering the hog of the twentieth century, roasting it over a bonfire. Live up to it, come on.

Tagged as: audio, bruce sterling, rant, sxsw | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Sonntag, 20130428, 15:11 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

„Was, SSH kann auch das?” bei den Grazer Linuxtagen 2013

Die Veranstalter der Grazer Linuxtage 2013 war so freundlich, meinen Talk „Was, SSH kann auch das? – Produktivitäts- und Sicherheitstipps für SSH” in ihr Programm aufzunehmen.

Aus der Einreich-Beschreibung:

Tipps zum effizienteren Umgang mit und Empfehlungen zum sicheren Betrieb von ssh(d). Sichere Kommandozeile auch von unterwegs mit Mosh. SSH Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung mit “Google Authenticator”.
 
SSH (Secure Shell) ist für viele ein unersetzliches Werkzeug zur Verwaltung von Servern oder ganzen Serverclustern. Oft wird aber nur ein kleines Subset der Möglichkeiten von SSH genutzt. Daher zeige ich in diesem Vortrag Tipps zum effizienteren Umgang mit ssh(d) und Empfehlungen zum sicheren Betrieb von ssh(d). Darüber hinaus zeige ich, wie man mit Mosh (mobile shell) auch über schlechte, roamende Verbindungen (getestet auf der Zugfahrt nach Graz) eine sichere Kommandozeilen-Session benutzen kann. Zum Abschluss des Vortrages erweitern wir den SSH-Server dann soweit, dass man den “Google Authenticator” zur Anmeldung verwenden kann. Damit kann man SSH mit einer Zwei-Faktor-Authentifizierung nutzen, wenn man Zertifikate nicht einsetzen kann oder will. Der Vortrag richtet sich an Personen, die SSH zumindest schon einmal genutzt haben. ;)

Photo von @heinz.

Ich denke, wir hatten in den 40 Minuten in dem überfüllten Hörsaal (wo sind die ganzen Leute her gekommen?) viel Spaß und ich konnte ein paar interessante Dinge erzählen.

Wer den Talk nochmal hören will: Bei den Linuxwochen Wien 2013 gibts noch eine Möglichkeit am Donnerstag den 2. Mai um 15:00 Uhr.

Hier noch die Slides dazu:

Tagged as: glt13, ssh, sshd, talk, vortrag | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Samstag, 20130427, 21:44 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

Aber so wars ja gar nicht gemeint ...

Du weißt, Du hast als Partei ein Problem, wenn selbst der Verfassungsdienst im Bundeskanzleramt – von dem man sonst NIE etwas hört – meint, dass Dein Gesetzsvorschlag bedenklich sei.

So geschehen mit dem Demokratiepaket. Dieses sollte uns unter anderem die Möglichkeit geben, per Bürgerkartenfunktion den Antritt einer Partei bei Nattionalratswahlen zu unterstützen (natürlich erst nach der nächsten Nationalratswahl).

Der Verfassungsdienste meinte nun aber zu dem Demokratiepaket:

… Bürger, die sich an einer neu geschaffenen Bürgeranfrage, an Bürgerinitiativen oder Volksbegehren beteiligen, eine Vormerkung im geplanten Zentralen Wählerregister bekommen sollen.
…
Der Verfassungsdienst kritisiert nun, dass damit Informationen gesammelt werden, dass ein bestimmter Wähler an einem bestimmten direktdemokratischen Instrument teilgenommen hat. Durch die zentrale Verarbeitung dieser Informationen werde zumindest technisch das Potenzial dafür geschaffen, dass durch die Kumulations- und Kombinationsmöglichkeit von „Vermerken” Rückschlüsse auf die politische Partizipation von Personen oder Gruppen von Personen gezogen werden können.

Und jetzt holen wir die nassen Fetzen raus, weil:

ÖVP-Klubobmann Karlheinz Kopf, der gemeinsam mit seinem SPÖ-Kollegen Josef Cap den Gesetzesentwurf ausverhandelt hat, versichert in der Freitag-Ausgabe der „Vorarlberger Nachrichten”: „Das ist nicht die Intention.”

Sg. Hr. Kopf und Hr. Chap, für € 8.160 bzw. € 13.872 (Klubobmanbezüge) MONATLICH (brutto und 14x) erwarte ich mir als Steuerzahler und Bürger von Abgeordneten, dass ein von ihnen verhandelter Gesetzesvorschlag bereits so ausgearbeitet ist, dass dessen Intention klar und eindeutig ist.

Ich merke mir das für die Nationalratswahl am 29. September 2013!

Tagged as: datenschutz, demokratie, politik, rant, spö, övp | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Samstag, 20130406, 17:41 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)

Piraten rechts überholt

Wenn man mich fragen würde, wären die Themen Bürgerrechte, Informationsfreiheit, informationelle Selbstbestimmung, Begrenzung des willkürlichen Staatszugriffs auf Daten und Informationen, Internet, … meiner Erwartungshaltung nach die Kernkompetenzen der Piraten (deren Selbstbild mag davon abweichen ;).

Und genau bei diesen Themen werden sie gerade von ALLEN anderen Parteien rechts überholt. Ein Beispiel gefällig?

Beim Thema „Videoüberwachung zur Einhaltung der Rettungsgasse” haben es die NEOS mit einer OTS geschafft, in die Berichterstattung des FuZu zu kommen.

Die Piraten haben bis heute(!!!) nichts zu diesem Thema auf ihrer Homepage.

Ich hoffe darauf,dass die Piraten bei Ihrem Ideencamp dieses Wochenende Lösungen für dieses Kommunikationsproblem finden.

Tagged as: kommunikation, piratenat, rant | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Samstag, 20130406, 16:56 | permanent link | 1 Kommentar(e)

SPÖ arbeitet wieder am Überwachungsstaat

Der Standard berichtet:

Für Aufregung hat am Donnerstag ein von Verkehrsministerin Doris Bures (S) präsentierte Vorschlag zur Novelle der Straßenverkehrsordnung (StVO) gesorgt. Demnach soll die Einhaltung der Rettungsgasse künftig mit rund 800 Videokameras überwacht werden

Eine ähnliche Forderung des niederösterreichischen Landeshauptmanns Erwin Pröll (ÖVP) aus dem Jahre 2010 hat Fr. Bures noch wie folgt abgeschmettert:

Für Bures […] ist das zwar grundsätzlich vorstellbar. Dazu müssten aber eben die gesetzlichen Grundlagen geschaffen werden - und zwar über das Sicherheitspolizeigesetz (SPG).

Allerdings hat Werner Faymann (SPÖ), als er 2008 noch Verkehrsminister war, auch schon mal laut (allerdings wie erwartet ergebnislos) über eine Videoüberwachung der Autobahnen nachgedacht. Allerdinsg hatte er das etwas „vorsichtiger” formuliert:

Ich habe eine Arbeitsgruppe […] eingerichtet, die sich genau mit diesem Thema auseinandersetzt”, sagte Faymann zur „Wiener Zeitung” [Wochenend-Ausgabe]. „Ich will umgekehrt zu Deutschland vorher eine Diskussion und genaue gesetzliche Richtlinien”, so der Minister. „Wenn ein Weg gefunden wird, wo Missbrauch ausgeschlossen ist, dann bin ich dafür”, sagte Faymann, der in Übereinstimmung mit Datenschützern vorgehen will.

Es entbehrt hier nicht einer gewissen Komik, dass auf einmal Innenministerin Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) zu einer Datenschützerin wird

Mikl-Leitner hält gerade „im sensiblen Bereich des Datenschutzes” Schnellschüsse für „höchst bedenklich”, so die Ministerin in einem Statement. „Ich denke, in erster Linie wäre es richtig, die Autofahrer besser zu informieren und nicht stattdessen flächendeckend zu überwachen”.

und damit auch der Forderung ihres Parteikollegen Erwin Pröll aus dem Jahre 2010 widerspricht.

Die SPÖ setzt mit dieser initiative ihre abscheuliche Parteilinie fort, sich auf der einen Seite wie beispielsweise der Europaabgeordnete Josef Weidenholzer als „die Datenschützer” zu positionieren, Hinterrücks dann aber die Grundrechte der Bürgerinnen und Bürger weiter auszuhöhlen und den Überwachungsstaat zu fördern.

Zur Erinnerung. Dank der Zustimmung/Initiative der SPÖ haben wir unter anderem:

• die Vorratsdatenspeicherung (wem gehört welches Handy, wann war dieses wo, mit wem wurde kommuniziert, …)
• Videoüberwachung in den Wiener Linien
• Terrorismuspräventionsgesetz
• die Bildungsevidenz, in der Schulverweise, Besuch von Ethik- oder Religionsunterricht, Bedarf an Förderunterricht, alle „Nicht genügend”, Nachzipfe, Klassenbucheinträge und soziale Auffälligkeiten für 60 Jahre gespeichert werden.

und die Speicherung, welche Volksbegehren, … wir im Laufe unseres Lebens unterstützt haben, kommt auch bald, wenn wir uns nicht wehren.

 

Die 25. Nationalratswahl in Österreich wird am 29. September 2013 stattfinden. Ich hoffe, Ihr erinnert Euch dann an diese „Erfolge” der SPÖ.

Tagged as: datenschutz, politik, privatsphäre, rant, spö, vorratsdatenspeicherung, überwachung | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Samstag, 20130406, 16:41 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)