moved …

This blog is now closed, i.e. transferred – with a new design to another place:
I would love to welcome you now at

https://danteskaleidoscope.blog/

new postings, in addition to the normal business will also be posted at

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkmJnIQdH8ZMybMy-SbDXhho1kyHAtPYH

Only Data?

Datafication, Digitisation, Artificial Intelligence, (New) Singularity … – there are different terms used, as much as there are different terms used to to grasp the character of our societies: burocratisation, red tape, administered society, alienated structures. And we find different metaphors and phenomona: the age-old gaming machine

from 1958

and the android, nearly impossible to make out as different from the human.

But …, well, there may be a but. Recently a small group of members of the European Academy of Science and Arts met with the aim of establishing a working group on Digitisation, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics, bringing colleagues from different disciplins together. I put some initial ideas together which may also be of general interst and can be found here. There is a good reason to think what it means to exist as human being.

revealed

The influential dinner party, where the 13 lads served themselves the food, each of them brought along (at least there is no kitchen and there are no waiters mentioned) is reasonably well documented – amongst others Leonardo had been witnessing and painting (Ok, that one is a bit blurred) it. Recent research revealed another meeting, the veil had been at least lifted by a Chinese Human Rights Researcher at Central South University – it may become known in the future as DD, the December dinner. The editors of this blog could take a glimpse, especially at the host’s toast. Here it is presented in a somewhat dramatised form, titled :

Virtual Christmas Dinner

staring age and ages, times and eras.

had I been wrong ?

or is it just the world that took a wrong turn?

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… I share the general and underlying gist of your concern: there had been a historically specific background against which the work emerged and consolidated. And it consolidated by elaborating, by deeper collective reflection on the conditions that provided the womb from which it is the off-spring, and with the firm conviction to cut off the umbilical cord, the provider altering, being carrier of the venom, ready to kill his child which he would have preferred to be still-born anyway. What is the answer? Is there only one answer?
One reply is very common, and a kind of standard object of sociological investigation: aim on growth in order to be sufficiently strong in order to stand up and resist – again and again the danger of being poisoned had been revealed – now walking, after the umbilical cord cut-off the problem comes while walking: It is not possible without rest, and even rooting is necessary – the striking leg depends on the supporting leg, and as harder as you one wants to strike, as stronger the supporting leg has to be. Not biologist nor professional player are needed to know: sooner or later the one leg gets in the way of the other, and by the very nature of this process, it is the supporting leg that will gain dominance. – The problem with [the project] is that we forgot that cutting off the cord, still left us on the same poisoned soil on which we now try to walk.

The alternative: aiming on inner strength, remaining a small group, or at least prioritising a healthy strong diet and movement, not per se growing in seize. Call it developing instead of growing, sturdily walking, instead of running with the support of narcotics (of course, these narcotics are called antibiotics, and the like), faster though not sustainable, and less and less able even to survive without the drugs.

Dilemmas, dichotomies, contradictions, hopelessness, challenges, choices, facing bills that need to be paid … understand it as you like, coming statistically to the end of my life, I am wondering, if I have to question my first real child, baptised “Die Organisation”, though brought on the way with the second name “Eine Analyse der modernen Gesellschaft”. Inscribed had been the thesis:

Kurzum: gefordert ist die Erfassung genau diese komplexe Widersprüchlichkeit, in der Organisationen (ent-) stehen und die sie selbst bilden – sowohl in sich als auch in ‘Beeinflussung ihrer Umwelt’. Es geht mit anderen Worten um die Erfassung von Organisationen als vergesellschaftete und zugleich vergesellschaftende Gebilde, die sich durch Strukturiertheit und Prozessualität auszeichnen.**

As so often, we can learn from one of the disciplines dealing with nature. In her book “Chaos Bound. Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science”, Katherine Hayles states on page 221

Consider, for example, how conceptions of gravity have changed over the last three hundred years. Gravity is conceived in the Newto­ nian paradigm very differently from in the general theory of relativity. For Newton, gravity was the result of mutual attraction between masses; for Einstein, it was the result of the curvature of space. One might imagine still other kinds of explanation, such as a Native American belief that objects fall to the earth because the spirit of Mother Earth calls out to kindred spirits in other bodies. But no matter how gravity is conceived, no viable paradigm could predict that when someone steps off a cliff, she will remain spontaneously suspended in mid-air. This possibility is ruled out by the nature of physical reality.

And now it nevertheless seems that another hybrid is trying to emerge. While we do not know about Schroedinger’s cat before the box is opened, while it is thus important to make use of the openness and indeterminacy as we do know that hybrids are so far only found on burial sites …

The [project’s] growth-path reminds me a bit of what is frequently said about the cobbler: that he wears the worst of all shoes. Being scientists we may have to think about it when it comes to the knowledge and ability to deeply reflect as the braingear we use when thinking as the rambler disposes of when walking.

May be this metaphorical way of writing inspires to some thinking, and may be it encourages to return to another crucial element of what [the project] had been about: a really collective exercise of a day growing and going together, instead of bringing individuals together for a common walk for a while ….

So long, courage …

Peter

**

In short: the challenge is to capture precisely this complex contradictoriness in which organisations (en-) stand and which they themselves form – both in themselves and in ‘influencing their environment’. In other words, it is a matter of recording organisations as socialised and at the same time socialising entities which are characterised by structure and process.

(Herrmann, Peter, Die Organisation …: page 6 (machine translation)

Digitisation – Employment – and What?

The recording of the keynote presentation on Digitisation, Employment, and What? is already online. It is an attempt to socio-locate the challenge of today’s productivity puzzle and had been given on occasion of the symposium in Helsinki, organised by the Pellervo Society and the European Academy of Science and Arts, today on the 18th of September 2018.

Usual beginning is about “I do not know where to start” – all is so terribly confusing, a multitude of extremely different things.

There seems an obvious reply in the present case,

• at least for digitisation – the apparent omnipresence of issues that are in one or another way about digital stuff – from the CD-player to the computer on four wheels
• also for AI – the fact that it is not entirely clear is part of AI itself: there seems to be something that we, humankind, came up with and that is now “beyond our capacities” – the Frankenstein of Intellect if you want
• and what seems to be equally clear: precarity in the vein of decreasing employment – another time we hear in different rhythm the old melody: there is not enough work anymore. But if we listen around we hear also something else – something we also heard for many times throughout history: There will never be an end, though there will be many changes.

Having said earlier that presentations are often started with something like “I do not know where to begin”, waiting for an Ariadne who may help. At present, my point is a different one, namely “I do not where it will end”. It is the famous Alice-in-Wonderland-situation, leading elsewhere to the conclusion “but I would not start from here”.

Corporate irresponsibility ?

Tomorrow, in the framework of the ‘hour of contemporary issues’, organised at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Munich, Amalienstrasse 33, Peter Herrmann will give a presentation titled

The Comedy of Big Data, Or: Corporate Social Responsibility Today, While Corporations wither away?

The following gives some idea what the presentation is about.

Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility requires at least a bit of historical clarification: it would be surely misleading to attribute any kind of entrepreneurial ‘social activity’ to the array of Corporate Social Responsibility. However, such review will be only briefly introduced in order to classify certain activities as related to what may be called social responsibility, the emphasis on the corporation as actor. What, however, if we come to the conclusion that certain shifts in the economy lead – in some digitization industries – to forms of the classical corporation withering away, being successively replaced by a new formation of which we cannot see clear, elusive contours. Are we moving towards revived arbitrary systems of socio-charitable controls, Lidle financing professorships, Aldi and Lidl presenting themselves as supporters of social housing and Facebook controlling elections?  Or can we foster a model which leans towards inherent publicness?

ordinary madness

http: //cf.mp-cdn.net/b9/42/12f04789eaa51ed84f12d30948cd-is-hypocrisy-the-greatest-threat-to-human-societies.jpg

I am working a bit on digitisation, and with this also looking at these Silicon Valley folks, these CEOs, their strategies and a bit of the ‘academic backing’ some of them get. The wisdom is mostly much inferior tho what my grandmother said, the difference: she did not have income comparable to that of Zuckerberg, McApple or Nadella. What is equally [or more?] worrying: we believe much of this rubbish [sorry] and even admire them. The other day I read about Mr Z., now being celebrated for his outstanding benevolence. And around the same time he had been accused of supporting Anti-Refugee-Campaigs …

In Washington, during the Senate hearing, Z. stated

Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all of the good that connecting people can do. And, as Facebook has grown, people everywhere have gotten a powerful new tool for staying connected to the people they love, for making their voices heard and for building communities and businesses.

BTW, a hearing that was a bit mute people asking a wall, their hearing not able to figure out that, naturally, the reply would be a kind of echo.

• Is it worthwhile to add that nearly every senator explicitly and pronouncedly expressed gratefulness for Z’s appearance, much more than general curtesy, basic good manners would have suggested? And to ask why he meets the European Parliament’s leaders in private sessions ?
• Is it worthwhile to ask if everybody who has to appear at Court – the small pickpocket, shoplifter or the murderer and rapist – meets the same curtesy?

It is necessary to ask for the real the reason for such ‘liberal’ case Z. – at least it is obvious that the view on liberalism and market equality deserves some qualified review, looking at the foundation and meaning of the ‘free market’.

Tragicomedy of Capitalism Today

A new video is uploaded, referring to short clips from a BBC-biography cast presenting Bill Gates . The presentation here is titled

Tragicomedy of Capitalism Today – A bit of Gates-Peeling

and looks with the reference to short excerpts from the film at some of the socio-cultural dimension of the tragicomedy.

— Tiny aspects – still, if it is true that we are witnessing a fundamental and deep-far reaching change of the ways we produce ad live together, it may be worthwhile to reflect as well a bit on the generational shift and on who this self-appointed avant-garde is.

The five sections are musing around the following items:

• Predatory and Tributary Aspects of Capitalism Today
• Alligator Capitalism
• Cultural/historical heritage without inheritance tax
• Sense of public service or missionary capitalism?
• On horses, cars and Microsoft computers

It is a bit of ‘slow reading’ of the sign of apparently turbulent times.

References:

photo in present text: https: //tr3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2017/12/13/7fa674ee-c595-4a22-867a-c5f27b5faaa6/resize/770x/dcc1b021beb10d381e6eed9ab560bd9f/istock-501221160.jpg

The Bill Gates Story: https://youtu.be/fu1fBJ9b0mQ

Garrett Hardin: The Tragedy of the Commons; i: Science, December 1968

Carol M. Rose, 1986: The Comedy of the Commons: Commerce, Custom, and Inherently Public Property; Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 1828; http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1828

Wassily Leontief, 1983: National Perspective: The Definition of Problems and Opportunities; in: National Academy of Engineering: The Long-Term Impact of Technology on Employment and Unemployment; Washington: National Academy Press

Peter D. Norton, 2008: Fighting Traffic. The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City; Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The MIT Press

Changing the Vita Activa

Digitisation – Challenges between Changing Social Securitisation and Changing the Vita Activa

Recording of the Presentation at the Symposium ‘Digitalisation’, organised by the Academy of Sciences and Arts – taking place at the Faculty of Law, University of Salzburg, March 2nd, 2018.

In general, having worked on this topic for quite a while now, I see the following major questions that urgently require thorough systematic consideration:

• In which way and to which extent is digitisation a matter that changes also the process and mode of production [not limited top robotisation]?
• What are the conditions for pursuing forms or digitisation in the interest of users and the common wheal instead of being solely an instrument for new businesses?
• Which different perspectives on law and justice are emerging from the new political- and socio-economic conditions that go hand in hand with digitisation?

Of course, this requires not least thorough and systematic classification and demarcation of the different aspects that are commonly loosely and vaguely subsumed under such catchall term as digitisation.

I am grateful to a friend, discussing life with her, helped me taking much of the mist of the topic, and also remaining aware, and feeling the challenges of real life, persisting when talking about the virtual one – 감사합니다 !

Artificial intelligence is like …
Poetry in translations is like
taking a shower with a raincoat on.

The recording of the presentation can be found here.

see also on this topic a presentation at the MPI, one week earlier.

WYSIWYG – What you see is what you get?

A short presentation on Big Data and Digitisation at the Max-Planck-Institute fro Social Law and Social Policy

WYSIWYG[1] – Also for Big Data?

WYSIWYG, the supposed revolutionary concept that once opened a new world for computer quarter-literates is not necessarily applicable if we look at the supposed recent revolution: Big Data. More likely we find the emergence of a WYSID – What You See Is Delusion.

 

[from Leibniz’ writing on the Binary Code Calculating Machine]

The presentation aims on contributing from the perspective of political economy to an understanding of some systemic developments that are hidden behind a blurred understanding of Big Data and Digitisation. The following is guiding the development of the argument:

• Moving from Adventures in Wonderland to seeing the World Through the Looking-Glass – Some Terminological Remarks
• From Gold Standard to Sparkling Diamonds – The Economy of the Digital and Informational Revolution
• The Lonely Crowd versus Crowded Loneliness – About Individual, Social, Public and Private Matters
• L’État c’est moi – l’état, c’est-à-dire nous? – Socio-Eco-Legal Issues around Public and Social Responsibility

On the latter, especially four topics are seen as major challenge:

1. Concentralisation
2. Public-Private-Datachips
3. Changed status of Employees or changed property issues
4. The Firm and the loss of transaction cost

Some background material can be found here.

Here the link to the recording of the presentation  – speaker presentation: Professor Dr. Ulrich Becker.

******

[1]            What you see is what you get