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<DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for the Lazzarato on Tarde It is a
great read. Patricia </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 10/15/2009 11:58:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jbeller@pratt.edu writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Hi all,
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Thanks to Kristian Lukic for the great introduction as well as the
mention of the important work of Matteo Pasquinelli. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For some reason, often when I read posts by certain members on this list
who render theories of value without recognizing value's continued imbrication
in capitalist dynamics a little voice in my head intones the old dictim: "you
can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." It seems so clear to
me that despite references to socialism and industrialization, when it came to
trying Marx, some of us didn't inhale. But Pasquinelli, who has inhaled
deeply, takes the reins and heads on down to the river of dialectics once
again. </DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>At the risk of mixing metaphors I have excerpted here from his essay
"Immaterial War: Prototypes of Conflict Within Cognitive Capitalism" a fine
draught... or is it a toke. Partake at your own risk.<BR>
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<DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino"><B>3. Lazzarato reading Tarde:
the public dimension of value </B></DIV>
<DIV
style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino"><B></B> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">Contemporary criticism does not
have a clear perspective of the public life of </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">cognitive products: it is
largely dominated by the metaphors stolen from </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">Creative Commons and Free
Software, which support quite a flat vision with </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">no notion of value and
valorisation. For this reason, I want to introduce a more </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">dynamic scenario following
Maurizio Lazzarato and Gabriel Tarde that </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">explain how value is produced by
an accumulation of social desire and </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">collective imitation. Lazzarato
has re-introduced the thought of the French </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">sociologist Tarde in his book
<I>Puissances de l'invention</I><SPAN style="FONT: 11px Palatino">4</SPAN>
[Powers of invention] </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">and in his article “La
psychologie économique contre l’economie politique”<SPAN
style="FONT: 11px Palatino">5</SPAN>. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">To sum up in few lines, Tarde’s
philosophy challenges the </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">contemporary political economy
because it: 1) dissolves the opposition of </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">material and immaterial labour
and consider the “cooperation between brains” </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">a main force in the traditional
pre-capitalist societies not only in postfordism; </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">2) puts innovation as the
driving force instead of monetary accumulation only </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">(Smith, Marx and Schumpter did
not really understand innovation as an </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">internal force of capitalism, a
vision more concerned about <I>re-production</I> rather </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">than <I>production</I>); 3)
develops a new theory of value no more based on use-<SPAN
style="FONT: 14px Helvetica"> </SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">value only, but also on other
kinds of value, like truth-value and beauty-value </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">(Lazzarato: “The <I>economic
psychology</I> is a theory of the creation and </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">constitution of values, whereas
political economy and Marxism are theories to </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">measure values”<SPAN
style="FONT: 11px Palatino">6</SPAN>). </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">Tarde’s crucial insight for the
present work is about the relation </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">between science and public
opinion. As Lazzarato put it: “According to Tarde, </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">a invention (of science or not)
that is not imitated is not socially existent: to be </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">imitated an invention needs to
draw attention, to produce a force of ‘mental </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">attraction’ on other brains, to
mobilise their desires and beliefs through a </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">process of social communication.
[…] Tarde figures out an issue crossing all </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">his work: the constituent power
of the public.”<SPAN style="FONT: 11px Palatino">7</SPAN> We could say: any
creative </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">idea that is not imitated is not
socially existent and has no value. In Tarde the </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">Public is the “social group of
the future”, integrating for the first time mass </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">media as an apparatus of
valorisation in a sort of anticipation of postfordism. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">Moreover Tarde considers the
working class itself as a kind of “public </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">opinion” that is unified on the
base of common beliefs and affects rather than </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">common interests. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">The Tarde-Lazzarato connection
introduces a dynamic or better </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">competitive model, where
immaterial objects have to face the laws of the </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">noosphere – innovation and
imitation – in quite a Darwinistic environment....</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Palatino"><FONT class=Apple-style-span
face=Helvetica size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">But
wait, if you've gotten this far, one good hit deserves another.
Cheers!</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><B>4. Enzo Rullani and the “law
of diffusion” </B></DIV>
<P style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder> </P>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">Rullani was among the first to
introduce the term <I>cognitive capitalism</I><SPAN
style="FONT: 12px Palatino">8</SPAN>. Unlike </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">most, he does not point out the
process of knowledge sharing, but above all </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">the process of cognitive
valorisation. He is quite clear about the fact that </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">competition still exists (is
perhaps even stronger) in the realm of “immaterial” </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">economy. Rullani is one of few
people that try to measure how much value </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">knowledge produces and as a
seasoned economist he gives mathematical </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">formulas as well - like in his
book <I>Economia della conoscenza </I>[Economy of </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">Knowledge]<SPAN
style="FONT: 12px Palatino">9</SPAN>. Rullani says that the value of knowledge
is multiplied by its </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">diffusion, and that you have to
learn how to manage this kind of circulation. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">As Rullani puts it, in the
interview with Antonella Corsani published on </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">Multitudes in 2000<SPAN
style="FONT: 12px Palatino">10</SPAN>: </DIV>
<P style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder> </P>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">An economy based on knowledge is
structurally anchored to sharing: </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">knowledge produces value <I>if
it is adopted, </I>and the adoption (in that format and </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">the consequent standards) makes
<I>interdependency.</I> </DIV>
<P style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder> </P>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">The value of immaterial objects
is produced by dissemination and </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">interdependency: there is the
same process behind the popularity of a pop star </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">and behind the success of a
software. The digital revolution made the </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">reproduction of immaterial
objects easier, faster, ubiquitous and almost free. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">However, as Rullani points out,
“proprietary logic does not disappear but has </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">to <I>subordinate itself to the
law of diffusion</I>”<SPAN style="FONT: 12px Palatino">11</SPAN>: proprietary
logic is no longer based </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">on space and objects, but on
time and speed. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">There are three ways that a
producer of knowledge can distribute its uses, still </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">keeping a part of the advantage
under the form of: 1) a speed differential in </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">the production of new knowledge
or in the exploitation of its uses; 2) a control </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">of the context stronger than
others; 3) a network of alliances and cooperation </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">capable of contracting and
controlling modalities of usage of knowledge </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 14px Palatino">within the whole circuit of
sharing. </DIV>
<P style="MIN-HEIGHT: 16px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder> </P>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">A speed differential means: “I
got this idea and I can handle it better than </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">others: while they are still
becoming familiar with it, I develop it further”. A </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">better understanding of the
context is something not easy to duplicate: it is </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">about the genealogy of the idea,
the cultural and social history of a place, the </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">confidential information
accumulated in years. The network of alliances is </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">called sometimes “social
capital” and is implemented as “social networks” on </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">the web: it is about your
contacts, your PR, your street and web credibility. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">Here it is clear that a given
idea produces value in a dynamic </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">environment challenged by other
forces and other products. Any idea lives in </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">a jungle – in a constant
guerrilla warfare – and cognitive workers follow often </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">the destiny of their
brainchildren. In the capitalism of digital networks time is </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">a more and more crucial
dimension: a time advantage is measured in seconds. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">Moreover, in the society of
white noise the rarest commodity is attention. An </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">economy of scarcity exists even
in the cognitive capitalism as a scarcity of </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino">attention and related
<I>attention economy</I>. When everything can be duplicated <SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 17px Palatino"><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">everywhere, time becomes more important than
space.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 15px Palatino"><FONT class=Apple-style-span
size=3><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=3><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span face=Palatino><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span face=Palatino><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px; FONT-FAMILY: Helvetica">from Matteo
Pasquinelli, "Immaterial War: Prototypes of Conflict Within Cognitive
Capitalism." This essay and others available at <SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span face=Palatino><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px; FONT-FAMILY: Helvetica"><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"><A title=http://matteopasquinelli.com/bibliography
href="http://matteopasquinelli.com/bibliography">http://matteopasquinelli.com/bibliography</A></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">While one might want to insist contra-Lazzarato as
cited above that Marxism and political economy are also theories of the
creation of value as well as the measure of value (and that the shift in the
protocols of production are the material shifts that occasion a reworking of
the categories of value and valuation), the above synthesis is correct in
seeing the (contemporary) fusion of material and immaterial (industrial and
psychological) production. Pasquinelli's article, focusing on Harvey's work on
the parasitism of rent, also details certain strategies of capture that were
alluded to in a previous post by Andrejivic where he citied
Clough: </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">I<FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#ff2a45>t's hard,
when looking at these developments, not to be struck by Patricia Ticineto
Clough's observation that, "this is a dynamic background, a
probablisitc, statistical background which provides an infra-empirical or
infra-temporal sociality, the subject of which is, I want to propose, the
population, technologically or methodologically open to the modulation of its
affective capacities. Sociality as affective background displaces sociality
grasped in terms off structure and individual; affective modulation and
individuation displace subject formation and ideological interpellation as
central to the relation of governance and economy" (from The New Empiricism:
Affect and Sociological Method, European Journal of Social Theory 2009).
</FONT> .</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px">The article also, interestingly enough, proposes a
theory of Immaterial Civil War, a brief plan for forms of semiotic (and
affective) activism.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span size=4><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: 14px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Jonathan Beller</DIV>
<DIV>Professor </DIV>
<DIV>Humanities and Media Studies</DIV>
<DIV>and Critical and Visual Studies</DIV>
<DIV>Pratt Institute</DIV>
<DIV><A title=mailto:jbeller@pratt.edu
href="mailto:jbeller@pratt.edu">jbeller@pratt.edu</A></DIV>
<DIV>718-636-3573 fax</DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span face=Times size=4><SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: 15px"><BR></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR
class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV></DIV></SPAN><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline></DIV></SPAN><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline></DIV></SPAN><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline></DIV></SPAN><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline></SPAN><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline></DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Kristian Lukic wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV>Hi all,<BR><BR>Trebor kindly asked me to introduce myself on the list,
although Im <BR>following and lurking for a several years now,<BR><BR>Im
writer, curator, artist, curently working as curator in Museum of
<BR>Contemporary Art in Novi Sad, Serbia and also active in Institute for
<BR>Flexible Cultures and Technologies - Napon. Before I was working in New
<BR>Media Center kuda.org in Novi Sad as program manager (still
<BR>collaborating on some projects...).<BR><BR>The topic of the conference
is quite close to something what I was <BR>involved recent years. To the
play/work/leisure I came mostly through <BR>computer games (was and
still active in Eastwood group, playing with <BR>laws and natures of
computer games...) and MMO worlds which is most <BR>obvious relation between
play and work.<BR><BR>Also in 2007 in Novi Sad, Serbia we organized
exhibition and conference <BR>called Play Cultures in 2007, and also
exhibition and conference in <BR>2008, Territories & Resources (about
play/work connection in web 2.0 and <BR>social networks).<BR><BR><A
title=http://www.napon.org/
href="http://www.napon.org/">www.napon.org</A><BR><BR><BR>Currently Im
finishing MA thesis at Theory of Art and Media at Belgrade <BR>University of
Arts (before that finished MA Art History at the same
<BR>University)<BR>under the name "Commodified Play" which is mixture of
lectures under <BR>the same name that I had from 2006 on several conferences
and events.<BR><BR>In 2007 together with Stealth group from Rotterdam we did
a one semester <BR>course at Piet Zwart Media Design postgradute students,
that was about <BR>MMO and virtual worlds called "meta.life", and one
workshop about the <BR>same topic in Laboral centre for arts in Gijon in
Spain.<BR><BR>Im mostly interested in conepts of play as free activity
definied by <BR>Huizinga and Callois and today's problems with these
definitions. Also <BR>how play is becoming more and more commodified human
activity, the <BR>concept of agon apears to be "ruling" play element,
especially in the <BR>notion of Virno's Negation and Inovation and what
Pasquinelli describe <BR>as Immaterial Civil War. In young animals, play is
mostly preparation <BR>for survival, learning how to efficiently defend
themselves or how to <BR>efficiently attack prey. Its interesting for
example how game industry <BR>is counting on specifically this element /
pure agon. Here is useful to <BR>realize concept of animal spirits that
Virno and Pasqunelli are <BR>reffering too, where they regard inovation and
culture as the constant <BR>battle, (or Immaterial civil war) and
prolongation of animal nature in <BR>human. In that sense culture is not
something opposite to "animal <BR>spirit" but rather continuation or even
amplification of animal nature <BR>in humans. Situationists for examply
clearly located problem of <BR>competition aspect in play.<BR><BR><BR>On the
pure practical level its good to remind us how remote warfare is
<BR>becoming crucial in contemporary warfare (Reapers / Predators), and how
<BR>skilled youngsters with excellent reflexes in game playing (150-200
<BR>operations in minute) are becoming major task force in remote combats.
<BR>This activity is for sure blurred area between play and work, but it
<BR>interesting how its connected to massive training and recruitment of
<BR>youth throughout world (Currently 46 countries in the world are
<BR>developing remote warfare). Maybe It is quite time to analyze connection
<BR>between children/youth and militarism, the last connection on such a
<BR>scale was youth organization Ballila in Musolini's Italy, and its
<BR>infamous follower
Hitlerjugend...<BR><BR>http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/23/wus.warfare.pilots.uav/index.html#cnnSTCVideo<BR><BR>although
I will probably physically not attend conference its great to <BR>follow
discussion on IDC list and I'm looking forward to see the <BR>outcomes
of the conference!<BR><BR>many greetings,<BR>Kristian
Lukic<BR><BR><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>iDC
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