Culture

The Mountain Lake

Yesterday I held a public lecture in a local suburb of Göteborg, a place called the Mountain Lake. In English the name is totally exotic and idyllic. In Swedish the place is called Bergsjön (literally the mountain lake). Bergsjön is not a place with idyllic connotations but rather one thinks of a problem suburb to the northeast of Göteborg.

Built in the 1960s. Bergsjön is actually a part of Göteborg which lies close to nature, with parks, and yes, a lake. The area is 8 km outside the city center with good public transportation. Almost all the street names have something to do with outer space (for example Galileo Street and Comet Road). At the same time the area is also described as a failing area marked by social segregation, high unemployment and a large (yet diverse) immigrant population.

Bergsjön came to be built during the so-called million program which is the common name for the large scale housing project intended to solve the housing crisis of the 1950s and 1960s in Sweden. The goal was to build one million apartments in Sweden during 1965-1974. It is worth remembering that the population of Sweden is today 9 million.

The architectural ideal of the day was strongly focused on a few key ideas such as commuting, intense central planning, functionalism and a return to nature (or rather a desire to leave the narrow confines of the small stone cities). These ideas, coupled with narrow economic margins, formed the way in which these satellite cities were designed, built and populated. Today one fourth of the population of Sweden lives in a house built in this program. Despite the ideals and economic constraints, in the end, only one fourth of the houses of the million project have more than six floors.

Bergsjön

Many of the complaints against the projects do not concern themselves with the standard of living or the building materials and techniques used. The problem has been seen as a social problem. By building large-scale projects also involves the movement of people. These people have little or no common background connected with the place. Therefore social cohesion becomes difficult from the start.

In addition to this these spaces have been populated with a high number of new immigrants in addition to people with social problems. Thus the areas have been marked with high unemployment. This leads to high social costs and low council taxes which creates a negative spiral.

Social cohesion is on the rise. The first â??officialâ?? notice of this development came from linguists who began to notice a common language being formed and developed in these areas. The language is marked with a high level of borrowed terms from many different parts of the world. Once this minor dialect became more popular it also brought with it a growing awareness of the cultural developments within these areas.

Despite this there remain serious issues connected to the buildings of the million program. Mikael Askergren suggests that they should not be seen as social living spaces but rather:

â??Why do people have such problems loving the concrete architecture of Sweden’s structuralist residential suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s? Most people seem to agree that it is impossible to live a decent life there. But it should be possible to learn to love the architecture of these suburbs as monumentalist artworks; as sculpture. The future of the suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s is not to be lived in, but (much like the castles, palaces, and other monumentalist artworks of ancient times) to be emptied, to be restored to their original splendour, and then to become the subject of tourism.â?? â??Concrete Tourismâ?? by Mikael Askergren, Plaza Magazine, 5-2002.

Whatever happens these areas constitute the real fringe of Swedish language and cultural development. Away from the mainstream they may be the place from where new culture may be introduced into the mainstream.

However, none of this will solve the social issues connected with the larges sites of the million program. Politicians have largely ignored the topic of social improvement since they naively believe that reducing unemployment through different schemes (carrots and/or sticks) will even fix problems of social seclusion and segregation.

Posted on by mklang

CFP Social Network Sites

The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) has announced a call for papers for a special theme issue on Social Network Sites: People, Practice, and Culture. The guest editors are Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison.

Potential questions that submissions might address include, but are not limited to:

  • What strategies do individuals use to craft an online presentation of self in a profile, and for what audiences?
  • What privacy or other concerns emerge from use of these sites? What kinds of policy decisions and educational practices might ameliorate these concerns?
  • Can we predict social, psychological, or other outcomes from profile and network analysis?
  • How can “friends” networks most usefully be visualized? What can we learn from network visualizations?
  • How does the network structure differ among sites, and what are the social and cultural implications of these differences? How does the structure of networks in these sites compare to the networks of other communities?
  • What are the patterns of relationship development in these spaces? Do individuals use these sites to meet new people or to maintain pre-existing, offline connections?
  • What role do race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation play in social network sites?

While all social network sites allow participants to create a profile and publicly articulate their social connections within the system, the line between social network sites and dating sites, MMOGs, media sharing sites, blogging tools, and other social community sites can be blurry. Rather than enforcing a strict definition of what constitutes a social network site, we ask authors to explain how their site of study fits into a rubric of social network sites.

Here are some dates to remember:

  • Abstracts due: November 28, 2006
  • Decisions on abstracts: December 8, 2006
  • Full papers due: February 28, 2007
  • Anticipated publication: October 2007 / January 2008
Posted on by mklang

Fear as Amusement

It is unfortunate that we as a culture focus almost totally on surviving stressful situations. This can be seen as a natural reaction since without survival there is nothing. But the unfortunate side effect is that we forget that the stressful experience will become an experience â?? something to be remembered. What kind of memories can we create if we are fixated on surviving?

What, you may ask, should we be doing instead? I think that we should approach stressful experiences with a smile and the knowledge that this will become a defining moment in our lives. Ordinary mundane episodes in a life are quickly forgotten but the stressful situations live with us, they receive a disproportionate segment of our minds and self-image. Disproportionate in the sense of time since, in general, most of life is mundane while stress is short lived.

In order to change this I am going to make an effort to enjoy my defence. The stress of being interrogated, question, probed and queried is to be put aside. In its place I will view this as an enjoyable experience, albeit an exciting one, but still an enjoyable one. Instead of seeing this as dental surgery â?? all pain and discomfort, I choose to understand the PhD defence as a trip to the amusement park. Wild and frightening rides designed to get the adrenalin flowing but remaining within the realm of amusement.

Posted on by mklang

Today is Annual International Right to Know Day

Privacy International has released a review of the Freedom of Information (FOI) situation in nearly 70 countries around the world, including almost 40 countries from Europe.

The “Freedom of Information Around the World 2006 Global Survey of Access to Government Information Laws”, shows the growth in legislation and practice within this area.

The report also points to many problems that exist, such as poorly drafted laws, lax implementation and an ongoing culture of secrecy in many countries.

The report is being released just prior to the Annual International Right to Know Day on 28 September – thats today…

Events on Annual International Right to Know Day.

Posted on by mklang

Down with DRM video contest

Freeculture are organising a video competition to coincide with the Down with DRM day.

Enter the Down with DRM video contest for a chance to win a Neuros OSD – a portable digital VCR!

Joining in Oct 3rd – Day Against DRM, Free Culture will select the 5 best anti-DRM video entries and award a Neuros OSD to each creator. DefectiveByDesign.org is also looking to air selected anti-DRM videos on their website during the week of October 3rd, and we want to give them a hand.

Here are the official rules to enter Free Culture’s Down with DRM video contest:

  • Deadline for submissions: Sunday, October 1 at 11:59pm EDT
  • Criteria for video:
    • Anti-DRM themed
    • Short
    • Video, animation, or remix
    • Make it catchy â?? we want these videos to be viral
  • Please submit your video to the online video sharing network(s) that you prefer. Here are some examples:
  • Please tag your video with “downwithdrm” and “dbdoct3” so that people can search for it.
  • Preference will be given to submissions under free content licenses such as Creative Commons BY-SA, BY, PD, or the Free Art license.
  • E-mail downwithdrm@freeculture.org with a link to your video by October 1 at 11:59pm EDT.
  • Free Culture will select the top 5 entries and award the winners with a Neuros OSD (one per video)
Posted on by mklang

Artifactuality and Material Culture

Here is a very cool sounding PhD seminar course: Towards a â??New Materialismâ??? Exploring Artifactuality and Material Culture in History of Science, Technology and Medicine

A monthly Ã?resund reading symposium arranged by History of Technology Division, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)/The Danish National Museum of Science and Technology, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, & Research Policy Institute, Lund University

Schedule & Reading:

Thursday October 5, DTU, Lyngby
Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (2004)

Thursday November 6, University of Lund, Lund
Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science (1995)
Thursday December 7, Medical Museion, Copenhagen
Sharon Macdonald, ed., Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (1997)
Thursday January 25, Museum in Copenhagen To Be Decided (TBD)
Bill Brown, ed. Things (2004)
Thursday February 22, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Soraya de Chadarevian & Nick Hopwood, ed., Models: The Third Dimension of Science (2004)

Thursday March 22, Museum in Copenhagen TBD
Larsson, ed., Cultures of Creativity: Birth of a 21st Century Museum (2006)
Thursday April 19, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (1997)
Thursday May 24, Museum in Copenhagen TBD
Tim Dant, Materiality and Society (2005)
Thursday June 21, Museum in Lund/Malmö TBD
Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel, ed., Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005)

Register before 21 September – More information here. It’s very, very tempting…

(via Perfekta Tomrummet)

Posted on by mklang

Copyright kills again

Once again copyright is used in a way to prevent the public from gaining access to material from dead authors. The first reports on this issue that surfaced in June . Joyceâ??s grandson, Stephen Joyce has limited access to material, attempted to prevent publication of scholarly works, demanded access to literary conferences (New Yorker) – his actions are tolerated since he controls the copyright of James Joyce.

James Joyce died in 1941. His work forms an important part of world litterature in general and Irish littarature in particular. It’s interpretation and exploration is part of world culture and heritage. And yet copyright law enables his grandson to limit this exploration. The grandson of Joyce knows about as much about what Joyce would have wanted as my cat does – if I had one. The point is that copyright is granted as an incentive for the writer – as a thanks for the bonus to society. But what happens when copyright is used to limit access? Doesn’t this mean that the bargain fails?

In another example of copyright abuse concerning dead authors we see that the widow of the works of Jorge Luis Borges is actively preventing re-publication:

Here is the story from The Chronicle Herald I quote it in full since it is short and I could only retreive it by using Google cache.

Despite huge demand, a French publishing house says it has been unable to reprint its critically acclaimed edition of the complete works of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges because of a dispute with his widow.

French editor Gallimard published the two tomes under its prestigious La Pleiade imprint in 1993 and 1999, but they sold out within less than a year each time, said Francoise Issaurat, spokeswoman for the publisherâ??s press office in Paris.

Borgesâ??s widow, Maria Kodama, inherited the sole rights to his estate when the author died in 1986, although the will was contested. Kodama, whom the publisher says does not want the work reprinted, has drawn fire from Borges scholars who accuse her of denying them access to his papers and of trying to shape interpretations of his life and work.

“We never received the authorization of Mrs. Kodama to reprint the Pleiade collections, which were enormously successful,” Issaurat said. “We could have sold 30,000 copies of each, easily.” Kodama and her representatives were not immediately available to explain why she has not authorized the reprinting. However, Franceâ??s Nouvel Observateur magazine cited the publisher as saying that Kodama was concerned the first edition was riddled with errors and that she had demanded they hire a new editor.

Whether or not you can, want or need to read the works of Joyce & Borges is not the point. (But you should try – they are great for a reason). The point here is to question the rationale of granting copyright terms beyond the life of the author.

Take for exampel Borges “The Book of Imaginary Beings“. It was published in 1967. The book was an expanded version of the Spanish edition “El Libro de los Seres Imaginarios” (published 1957). The Imaginary Beings contains descriptions of 120 mythical beasts from folklore and literature. The book is copyrighted on publication. Borges died in 1986 and according to copyright regulation the copyright protection does not elapse until 2056.

The rationale behind such protection is to ensure that the write profits from his/her writing. To ensure this the state offers the opposite of the market ideology – the monopoly. So far so good. The author has a monopoly on his/her work as a thanks for making this work available to the public and therefore enriching it.

But this sitaution/contract/agreement/understanding fails when the heirs of the creator prevent the communication of the work to a wider audience. They have not created anything so why are they being given this position?

(via Errata)

Posted on by mklang

Gender Equality and Terrorism

The question of why people become terrorists is naturally much older than the present discussion. While the trendy (and simplistic) explanations right now are based upon ethnic and religious boundaries we easily forget our all too close past. Terror groups over the last 50 years have not necessarily followed ethnic or religious boundaries. European terrorism between 1960-1990, for example, has plenty of examples of terrorists attacking their ethnic, social and religious peers.

For example: Brigate Rosse (Italien militant leftists), Black Star (Greek anti-Imperialist, anti-capitalist), Rote Armee Fraktion (German Baader-Meinhof Group), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom), Real (or True) IRA (Irish Republican Army) and First of October Antifascist Resistance Group (Spain)

So if we can cross of ethnic and religious tensions as to the cause of terrorism â?? what else is there? In recent research collaboration between University College London and Zhejiang Normal University in China arrived at one of the root causes is that there are too many men in society. These men are unlikely to be able to have (much/any?) sex and almost no chance of having families of their own. From the UCL media press release (28 August 2006):

Cultures that favour male babies have bred a surplus of men who will struggle to find sexual partners and could find themselves marginalised in society, warns a new paper co-authored by a UCL (University College London) researcher. As more men discover their lack of marriage prospects, this could lead to antisocial behaviour, violence and possibly more opportunities for organised crime and terrorism, threatening the stability and security of many societies.

There you have it. Research claims that lack of sex makes men into terroristsâ?¦ The solution is naturally to be found in the words of the great John Lennon & McCartney: All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

What a load of…

Posted on by mklang

Culture and Copyright, Fans and Bootlegs

An issue in the piracy debate, which is not often brought up, is that of rare or unusual material. While most would agree that taking a newly produced commercial music cd and sharing it online is at least questionable behaviour. To those who understand both the letter and the spirit of the law would say that it was illegal. Albeit that there remain some who argue that the law should permit this behaviour under certain circumstances.

But what about material which is not commercially viable? What about material which larger corporations ignore simply because they deem it to be uninteresting? Sometimes the pro-piracy debaters (for example Rasmus Fleischer) argue that file sharers fill an important cultural gap by ensuring that rare materials are provided rather than disappearing altogether.

The Australian fan site ABBAMAIL is for the true fans of the Swedish group. Most real fans are (slightly) obsessive (I think this is a requirement for fandom?) and collect all the products which their idols have produced. In addition to this most fans are also interested in collecting the rarities that are not officially released â?? the bootlegs.

The Sidney Morning Herald writes that ABBAMAIL:

Until recently, the site also sold bootleg CDs and DVDs containing old recordings of ABBA performances, radio and TV appearances that were otherwise unavailable.

Titles included “Memories that remain”, “1979 Australian Radio interview”, “An Australian love affair” and “Dick Cavett meets ABBA”.

The owner of the rights to ABBAâ??s music (Universal) has threatened ABBAMAIL with legal action unless it not only stops selling the bootlegs but also hands over the details of fans who allegedly bought or supplied unauthorised or “bootlegged” live recordings via the site. Read more about this on the protest site started by the founders of ABBAMAIL www.universalgreed.com.

The question at stake here is not who is legally right. This is not argued. The question is whether there should be a right to provide material which is not being disseminated (for a whole range of reasons). The Swedish television and radio archives are a treasure of material but the organisations do not dare release the material for fear that the â??ownerâ?? may claim economic compensation â?? the result is that the cultural treasure is slowly being forgotten. This is not the point of copyright law.

Posted on by mklang