Author: David

1. Shannon Mattern – Code and Clay; Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media
2. Achille Mbembé –  Critique of Black Reason
3. Stuart Elden – Foucault: The Birth of Power
4. Adam Greenfield – Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
5. McKenzie Wark – General Intellects: Twenty-Five Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century

I’ve only just started Shannon Mattern’s Code and Clay; Data and Dirt, but it’s already my #1 non-fiction read of the year. It’s just my kind of thing: enormous ambition, a sweeping historical scope and an infectious brillance that makes you see new things in and about cities.

Achille Mbembé’s Critique of Black Reason has finally been translated into English. It’s an extraordinary book that place the project of creating ‘blackness’ as a nonhuman category through centuries of colonial dominance, capitalist exploitation and oppression. It builds on Mbembé’s earlier development of the concept of ‘necropolitics’, transforming this from a critique of Foucauldian biopolitics into something far more central to the expansion of European power, and its current decline.

Speaking of Foucault, in a year when there has been even more intense efforts to disparage and discredit the greatest thinker of the second half of the twentieth century and even to portray him as a neoliberal fellow-traveller, it was refreshing to read the latest installment of Stuart Elden’s painstakingly researched and evidenced account of Foucault’s middle years, The Birth of Power. Elden is working backwards, the first volume having been on Foucault’s Last Decade, and he makes a convincing case for a consistent project throughout Foucault’s life, but also, in this volume, for a much more Marxist Foucault than his (frankly, much less well-read) critics often realise.

Adam Greenfield continues to produce excellent polemical but well-argued work on urban technologies. In Radical Technologies, he dispatches everything from the Internet of Things to Blockchain. Although sometimes the relentless negativity can get wearing, it’s a welcome corrective to the techno-optimism of Silicon Valley.

Finally, I used McKenzie Wark’s edited collection of his essays for Public Seminar, General Intellects, for my graduate theory class this year, and therefore read it and discussed its themes in far greater detail than I would normally do. It made for a very provocative course, and the students and I were at times infuriated with and delighted by the threads that Wark weaves through this work. At its worst, it seems like really there is only one ‘general intellect’ for Wark, and that’s Wark. But, at its best, the book asks all the right questions of those approaching social theory in this new century. It really needed a bit more a global scope – Wark considers Chinese and African thinkers elsewhere on the website but not in the book itself, which isn’t great especially when the book does find space for crap like vacuous hippy ‘philosopher’, Timothy Morton.

Adam Greenfield (2017) Radical Technologies: the Design of Everyday Life. A sceptical take on the promise(s) of utopian technologies.

Achille Mbembe (2017) Critique of Black Reason. Esssential theoretical reading from this boundary-pushing post-colonial thinker.

Nicole Starosielski (2015) The Undersea Network. Fascinating account of (mainly) Pacific undersea communications networks.

Jocelyn Wills (2017) Tug of War: Surveillance Capitalism, Military Contracting and the Rise of the Security State. A history of the Canadian satellite communications firm, MacDonald Dettwiller & Associates (MDA).

Here’s what I’m currently reading, as of June 2017…

Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (2017) The Shock of the Anthropocene. Only just starting this recent translation from the French of a 2013 work.

William E. Connolly (2017) Facing the Planetary. I had high hopes for this book but it’s turning out to be a disappointment, about which more later…

George Monbiot (2017) How Did We Get into This Mess? A passionate and popular – but not dumbed-down – account of what’s wrong with the world by The Guardian columnist

Joshua Reeves (2017) Citizen Spies. A strong, historically-drive account of contemporary US surveillance

McKenzie Wark (2017) General Intellects. This essential collection of essays on contemporary thinkers will be the base text for my graduate social theory class, starting in the Fall

The United Arab Emirates is the fantasy frontier of hi-tech dreams of smart cities and a frictionless economy. We are encouraged to believe that from nowhere it has risen out of the sand, almost fully formed, weightless, its glass skyscrapers a city of the future. It has become the favourite destination of western entrepreneurs and inward investment. 95% of the country’s population is now temporary foreign residents simply there to make as much money as they can before they leave. No questions are asked about how it really got this way and at what cost.

But there is a cost.

The UAE is a hereditary Sheikhdom. There is no democracy, no independent judiciary, no free speech, indeed almost none of the things that those inward investors would expect in their own countries and for themselves.

In March 2017, the UAE’s secret police arrested a man described as the last human rights activist in the sheikhdom. Since 2011, Ahmed Mansoor had been one of the few dissenting voices willing to challenge the myth of the UAE as a techno-paradise. Just like other Arab patriots in the region, he loves his country, and he wants it to be better. Not just rich, not just a smart, bright playground for foreign money, but a country where its wealth can make for a more just and equal society – just like the nations whose investment supports the UAE. He tried to draw attention to the plight of his fellow critical voices, almost all of whom have been ‘disappeared’ by the regime.

But even Mansoor’s mild and well-mannered calls for change cannot be tolerated. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, it is likely he will never be released.

It’s long past time that the countries which invest so much in the UAE begin to take some responsibility for the treatment of people like Mansoor. We can’t claim that this is nothing to do our investments, and our companies who makes so much money from the UAE.

This is why we are so pleased to see that at least Mansoor is recognised by a new exhibition at the Digital Catapult in London their first venture into digital art. The organisation, which relies so much on investment from industry, now has Ahmed Mansoor’s portrait enshrined in its floors. The installation is by London artist, Manu Luksch, who has been working on the glossy stories of hi-tech UAE and its smart city, Masdar, interviewed Mansoor last year just weeks before his arrest. The portrait is fragile, made from sand from the deserts of the UAE.  Just like Mansoor himself, his picture could vanish, disappear as if it had never existed.

Like Mansoor himself, we need to be witnesses and recognise this courageous human being, one of the few people prepared to stand up not just to a repressive government but to the power of our corporations and governments who support them. Western governments need to speak with more than just money. Our brands of digital innovation need to have human rights at their core.

Together, Manu and I are calling for the release of Ahmed Mansoor, and other dissident voices, and for a vision of our shared future that does not see human beings as expendable in the face of ‘smart’ technological innovation.

The UAE government cares what we think. They need us. So we have a duty to speak out.

Spread the word: #FreeAhmed

Manu Luksch and David Murakami Wood

Background on Ahmed Mansoor

2011 – “The UAE Five”

The Arab Spring: as a telecommunication engineer and blogger, Ahmed Mansoor facilitates a discussion forum online together with five activists, later known as the UAE Five.  After signing a petition in favour of an elected parliament, Mansoor is arrested and convicted for ‘insults to the nation’s leadership’. After his release, due to international pressure, he remained without passport or licence to take on work, etc.

https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2012/01/uae5-mansoor-still-face-restrictions-after-pardon-emirates/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAE_Five

2015 – “the Nobel Prize for human rights.”

Ahmed Mansoor is the recipient of the Laureate Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders 2015 by Amnesty International.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/ahmed-mansoor-selected-as-the-2015-laureate-martin-ennals-award-for-human-rights-defenders/

2016 – “The Million Dollar Dissident”

Mansoor’s iphone is targeted by expensive spyware. A Citizen Lab report raises questions about lack of accountability and regulation in the case of spyware developed in democraties and sold to countries with shocking human rights records.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ahmed-mansoor-million-dollar-dissident-government-spyware

https://citizenlab.org/2016/08/million-dollar-dissident-iphone-zero-day-nso-group-uae/

2017 – March 20: “The last Emirati human rights activist” 

Ahmed Mansoor is  detained on charges of ‘spreading hatred and sectarianism on social media’.

http://www.gc4hr.org/news/view/1521

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/04/20/uae-free-prominent-rights-defender

2017 – May 28: “Disappeared”

Mansoor is sentenced to 10 years in prison.

http://icfuae.org.uk/news/emirati-man-thought-be-ahmed-mansoor-gets-10-years-jail-over-social-media-posts

#FreeAhmed: Calls for Ahmed’s release

Mirrored at: http://www.ambienttv.net/content/?q=AhmedMansoor

Back when I used to blog more regularly, one of the topics to which I kept returning was the seemingly imminent break-up or more rigid control of the Internet. Of course, China has its Golden Shield (and more) and paranoid autocracies like Iran and North Korea had promised to create their own separate and policed nets, but there were also increasing suggestions from the likes of then French President Sarkozy that the Internet should be, in his words, “civilized.” And then there was the continuous ongoing extension of online surveillance, both by states like the USA, transnational alliances like the Five Eyes, and mega-corporations like Facebook.

However, the last couple of days have seen two breaking stories that really do threaten to spark this long-threatened demolition of relatively free global communication. The first is a new blow in the long battle over ‘net neutrality’, the principle that all traffic on the Internet is created equal and treated equally. Many large corporations have long disliked this as it prevents them from providing openly differential levels of service, such as expensive ‘priority’ communications – even though there have always been less obvious ways of doing so. And the US neoliberal right has disliked it for the same reason. Under Obama, net neutrality enjoyed reasonable protection, but as soon as Trump took office and elevated free market fundamentalist, Ajit Pai, to the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, net neutrality looked doomed. This week, the board of the FCC voted 2-1 to begin the process of ending it.

We don’t know how this will play out yet, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the day after this was announced, Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the UK, said that her government would create a completely controlled Internet in Britain (pretty much exactly what Iran and North Korea were proposing years ago). Other analysts have connected this to stronger surveillance powers recently introduced and, yes, it is connected. But the two bigger influences are the change in government and attitudes to the Internet in the USA and, of course, Brexit. It might seem contradictory that an ostensibly free market move is linked to repressive regulation, but that is precisely what neoliberalism is all about: the state acts either carelessly or repressively of social freedoms in favour of market freedoms.

As for Brexit, it seems to me that in order to carry out anything like the control of communications that May is proposing, Britain would have to be entirely outside of EU data protection and privacy regulations. Ironically, however, Brexit may be the one thing that stops May’s proposals from being as influential as they might otherwise have been. The proposals to control the Internet in the context of Brexit look like just another example of a puffed-up, paranoid and decreasingly influential country. It’s potentially going to be another thing that the European Union should absolutely use to distinguish what it offers to its citizens (and the world) compared to populist, authoritarian nationalisms. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the torturer, O’Brien might have described the future as “a boot stamping on a human head, forever,” but the UK’s future looks increasingly like “a nation shooting itself in the foot, forever.” If British people haven’t realised this yet, they’ve got time…

As for the USA, at present, our best hope is perhaps that the proposed end of net neutrality goes down with Trump’s ship, as he steers his bloated Titanic full-speed ahead into multiple icebergs.

Ubicity doctoral researcher, Michael Carter, and I, have a piece out in Issue #8 of the excellent online magazine, Limn. It’s called ‘Power Down’ and it focuses on infrastructure hacking and the Internet of Things: http://limn.it/power-down/

The whole is issue really worth reading (as are the previous issues) and can be accessed here: http://limn.it/issue/08/

Recently completed Ubicity MA researcher, Vincenzo Alaimo, explores how open data can be used as a tool to promote smart city development. Read his article “Open Data Smart City” in a recent issue of Canada’s magazine for local government, Municipal World: https://issuu.com/municipalworld/docs/mwdigestmar2017

There’s a great letter from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to Canadian MPs, urging them not to overreact to the attacks in Ottawa and Quebec last week:

 http://ccla.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2014-10-27-Open-Letter-to-Members-of-Parliament.pdf

We currently await the legislation, which is due to be tabled at 3pm on Monday…

Here’s a collection of thoughts on the Ottawa and Quebec attacks this week. Let me make it clear that my first thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims, Nathan Cirillo and Patrice Vincent. This is not a coordinated and clear essay, rather it’s a series of comments that I’ve made on various social media platforms in one convenient place:

1. Media coverage of the attacks in Canada was initially measured, serious and did not exaggerate or speculate unduly. This was noted by American publications (for example, Mother Jones). The broadcast media, particularly the CBC, were much better than the papers in this regard. However, within a day, the usual narrative that accompanies these kinds of events in their aftermath started to emerge, in particular the idea that ‘everything has changed’ or must change – for example, this piece in the National Post. This is the worst possible reaction to what happened. The best way to be is not to be intimidated or afraid. To remain committed to a democratic and open society. To reject the politics of fear and of violence and aggressive intervention overseas. To perhaps rekindle that (however mythical) vision of Canada as a peace-maker and peace-builder.

2. It is quite instructive to compare the government’s reactions to these attacks with their reactions to the disappearance and deaths of hundreds of aboriginal women and girls and their complete rejection of action in the latter case. Why is pretty much everything still the same after the death of Tina Fontaine but ‘nothing will be the same again’ after the murder of Nathan Cirillo? Something to think about…

3. Of course, a lot of the reaction, including already some racist and Islamophobic attacks, have focused on the supposed religious affiliations of the attackers. But these murders were carried out by alienated young Canadian men on other Canadians, just like Justin Bourque who killed three policemen in New Brunswick back in June. Unlike Bourque, both the recent attackers claimed radical Islamic affiliation and identity. But at least one of them had been turned away from mosques for behaving strangely, and few Muslims here or anywhere else in the world would recognise either of them as fellows. Why are we still concentrating on IS / the Middle East in looking for answers and responsibility… and continuing in our aggressive (re)action there, when it is our young men who are doing this? What is it about our society that is failing our young people?

4. What about the role of the state in preventing these attacks? Why it is that Canada’s intelligence services didn’t stop the attackers this week, especially as the first was on the top priority watchlist of 90 ‘radicalized’ people; and the second was a known career criminal who had just been refused a passport because he was considered too dangerous. Well, one reason is that under Harper the priorities of the intelligence services have been clearly misdirected for political / economic ends. Take this list on CSIS’s public website: top of the list is environmentalists trying to prevent logging activities. If you can find me a single example of a Canadian environmental activist who even tried to endanger anyone’s life, I’d be very surprised. These aren’t ‘terrorists’, these are activists. The intelligence services should not be used as a political tool to benefit particular industries and target those who actually care about saving our lives and our environment, whether those are environmentalists, indigenous people or others. The intelligence services, if they are to have any ethical purpose at all, should be to prevent real and present threats to life.

5. Yet of course, for the current Canadian government, the attacks serve as evidence for existing (and probably as yet unproposed) new laws or changes to the law. But te attacks this week were not evidence of the need for new powers, they were evidence of the failure of the intelligence services and police to use their existing powers properly. There should be no fast-tracking of bills to increase security powers using these events as an excuse – instead any changes in the law should be only be proposed following a full, open and accountable inquiry into what happened and what went wrong.

6. Let’s hope that any inquiry into these attacks doesn’t exclude the possible role that the abolition of the long gun registry might have played in hindering the ability of police to prevent the second attack… I trust of course that the government will be entirely open to exploring the possibility that allowing people to have unregistered rifles and shotguns might just have been a mistake. It is also ironic that the same people who are now demanding increased government powers of surveillance and security are the ones who justified the ending of the registry on the grounds that it constituted unnecessary government interference in private lives.

7. Finally, the attacks are already being packaged and presented as if they are finished and, now, we respond. It’s convenient in many ways for the official narrative that is emerging that both attackers are dead. I’m not saying they were killed deliberately with this in mind, not at all.

NB: Some witnesses also seemed to indicate that the shooter was being driven by another attacker, and I reported this in earlier versions of this post, but this seems to have been incorrect.