Connection Machines
Eric Kluitenberg

Society itself is no longer seen as the interplay of strategic interests, conflict, and power, but is regarded as an emerging property of the interaction of abstract forces that operate outside of anybody’s will or interest. However, the projection of this public image has been largely a deliberate affair, driven by a variety of strategic interests, so much is clear post-WorldCom, post-Enron, post-World On-line. As Barthes noted long before all this, myth is depoliticised speech, and the politics have been effectively washed away by the metaphor of nature. The purpose of the naturalisation of the mythical object is to make it appear neutral, matter-of-fact, indeed “natural”, and thus unquestionable.

Cultural learning: some issues and horizons
Y. Raj Isar

The importance of cultural learning was first brought home to me in the mid-1990s, when I was Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development. The concerns expressed then, from all corners of the world, have been reiterated and modulated in my subsequent engagement with cultural policy, whose interface with educational policy is still, alas, highly underdeveloped. These concerns have led me to envision the stakes of cultural learning, its lacunae as well as the obstacles to it as the discovery of two kinds of complex plurality: i) that of culture itself, of our cultural selves and ii) that of cultural others as well as paths to ‘living together’ in an interdependent world.

Noncommercial Email Lists: Collateral Damage in the Fight Against Spam
Cindy Cohn and Annalee Newitz

In their zeal to stop spam, many organizations and companies are blocking the delivery of wanted messages, especially those sent through email lists. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most blocking processes are not transparent to the email sender or recipient, and email users are generally given little or no control over which emails are blocked. Instead, system administrators, creators of spam-blocking tools, and ISPs all too often attempt to predict what mail a recipient does and does not want. As a result, email users rarely receive all legitimate messages sent to them.

The Will to Code: Nietzsche and the Democratic Impulse
David M. Berry & Lee Evans

This paper examines the moral claims of free software through the lens of a (re)reading of their theory and practices together with aspects of Nietzsche’s works. It seeks to make a preliminary sketch of how such an analysis might draw attention to oft-neglected aspects of the free software and open source movements. Does an aristocratic moment within the free software (and more generally the free culture) movements point toward a necessary revitalisation of the res publica and should we view this movement as central to the democratic project rather than anathema to it.

Il virtuale, il potenziale, l’attuale ed il reale nell’arte elettronica: i casi di Desert Rain, Totale della Battaglia e Murmuring Fields
Giulia Gelmini

Un altro aspetto del canone estetico tradizionalmente applicato all’arte vuole i linguaggi artistici come esclusivamente legati alla disciplina artistica dalla quale essi sono emersi: il linguaggio teatrale deve essere applicato al teatro e solo al teatro, il linguaggio della pittura ai dipinti ecc. Sovvertendo le regole del gioco, ibridando linguaggi, tecniche e pratiche, i tre gruppi di artisti dei quali si è trattato vanno oltre i recinti disciplinari del teatro-cinema-musica, le incrociano con pratiche più recenti come la performance, l’installazione, il videogioco, e le reinventano applicando i linguaggi di una alle tecniche di un’altra, per definire nuovi sistemi dinamici e in trasformazione.