[iDC] Fwd: Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all

[David Golumbia]

posted to nettime, but in part inspired by ulises's idc postings & almost
sent several times here re: that.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Golumbia <dgolumbia at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> Egyptian Revolution: 2nd decolonialisation for all
To: nettime-l at kein.org


i have been wanting to remark for a while on a silence is not
just deafening, but revelatory. it makes these lists seem like "places to
talk about politics so long as and only in so far as you think politics are
being radically transformed by one electronic technology or another." in
such a context, the fact of resistance is more important than its success,
so that we can talk about failed uprisings as revolutions.

the members of the various lists you mention are among the smartest and most
attentive people i know in the world. Obviously nettime, idc, aoir, etc.,
are not forums for discussion of world politics. Yet their transient dips
into such topics (like those of mass media pundints) come to seem both
interested and strangely quietist. "we're interested in your
revolution/catastrophe/big political change if it is fueled by
twitter/facebook/AJAX and if one government or another uses the internet to
access or block parts of the huge political conversation; otherwise, don't
care much."

very few of the egyptian protestors appear to be using electronic devices
when they are protesting, even as our pundints narrate over the pictures
with stories about facebook transforming the political fabric.

this is not to deny the role of various forms of social media in all forms
of political activity. it is to ask what exactly are we talking about, and
in what way do we see our discussion itself as contributing to contemporary
politics?

DG
uncomputing.org



On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Armin Medosch <armin at easynet.co.uk> wrote:

>
>
> the silence on nettime regarding the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions
> is really deafening. is it that the vanguard of net-criticism has
> nothing to say when a genuine people's movement is rearing it's
> hydra-like head?
>
> justifiedly a few voices have been heard here and on IDC condemning the
> viewpoint that this is a #twitterrevolutuion or facebookrevolution. such
> media-centric viewpoints, as much as they are propounded by Western
> commentators, are old-hat indeed.
>
> It is telling that the media-centric vanguards (netcriticism,
> transmediale, IDC, etc.) have very little to say in this situation.
>
> The Mass Intelligence of the people of Egypt shows that there is an
> alternative. Although the outcome is not yet clear, and any genuine
> renovation of a grassroots democratic idea is bound to run into
> organised resistance by capitalists and religious autocrats alike,  the
> current example should invigorate all who are looking for genuine
> change. It is definitely a 'moment in history'
>
>
> (some of the ideas and notions put forward in this posting have been
> developed in collaboration with Brian Holmes in the technopolitics
> project)
>
>
>
-- 
David Golumbia
dgolumbia at gmail.com



-- 
David Golumbia
dgolumbia at gmail.com
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