HUPOMNEMATA

From the same source as the “Cyberspace as place” paper, this one referring to the classic “measure of man” Star Trek Next Generation episode :

“This article brings together the law’s story of corporate personhood with its science fictional counterpart: the story of the android, Lieutenant Commander Data, from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Both the modern corporation and Data are cases of artifactual agency–actors created by artificial means. As such, their claims to personhood–that is, to being moral agents with the same rights and duties as their human counterparts–are problematic. But the story science fiction tells of Data’s claim to personhood is markedly different from the story the law tells about the corporation. Data’s story reveals the “silences” in the narrative of corporate law, replacing them with dialogue. In revealing such “silences,” Data’s story brings into view an alternative moral framework for the law’s struggles with corporate personhood, a new “ending, which we can supply.”

It’s written by Jeffrey Nesteruk. I’m not completely sure the comparison is really relevant as I would rather take the tea with Data than with a corporation (actually the paper itself is not downloadable, which is a shame)

A long paper byDan Hunter about the metaphor of cyberspace as place and its consequences in terms of property and law. Here’s how the abstract begin :

“Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier, a place, where land was free for the taking, where explorers could roam, and communities could form with their own rules. It was an endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility. This is true no longer. This Article argues that we are enclosing cyberspace, and imposing private property conceptions upon it. As a result, we are creating a digital anti-commons where sub-optimal uses of Internet resources is going to be the norm.”

Seems pretty interesting. Downloadable as pdf there

This one as Sailor Chibi Moon
A lot more there

As we had this little discussion with Nicolas and Laurence some days ago about what is singularity, there is this short text on the Guardian’s website :

“A singularity, in physics and astronomy, is a place where the laws of physics as we know them break down – like a black hole in space. But when applied to society by Vernor Vinge, singularity means a moment beyond which huge but unpredictable changes occur.

Vinge, 58, a retired professor of computer science (from San Diego State University) and perhaps the world’s most visionary science-fiction writer, believes – and has done since 1993 – that a singularity will occur when computers become intelligent enough to upgrade themselves, because their learning curve will be straight up, in the most giddy exponential fashion. In the blink of an eye, or rather in as little as 60 hours of becoming ‘superhuman’ – something he expects no later than the year 2030 or he’ll be ‘surprised’ – computers could have re-modelled society and subverted laws in ways utterly bewildering to us. ‘In the early post-human era, everything will be new again.'”

read more

Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier by Bruce Sterling

The full book is online as a “literary freeware”.

“Crashing the System” was no longer “unprecedented” by late 1991. On the contrary, it no longer even seemed an oddity. By 1991, it was clear that all the policemen in the world could no longer “protect” the phone system from crashes. By far the worst crashes the system had ever had, had been inflicted, by the system, upon itself. And this time nobody was making cocksure statements that this was an anomaly, something that would never happen again. By 1991 the System’s defenders had met their nebulous Enemy, and the Enemy was – the System.

read on line

“Activism is an attention hog, and very time and energy intensive. A better approach is to find the things you are doing that intensify the problem, and just cease doing them. Put in less overtime. Sleep late. Have a nap after lunch. Burn less midnight oil. Park your car, turn off all the lights in your apartment, and go outside in the sunshine and read a book. Spend an hour on your mascara if you feel like it. Don’t allow yourself to be spooked into Stakhanovite overdrive; seek command of your own life, and enjoy being yourself.”

More Viridian principles on their new wiki.

” Inspired by Vallejo Plaza in California that borders a wetland, the team at Stoner Meek devised a plan to preserve the wetland as a backdrop for commercial initiatives. “All land should be healthy,” said architect Jill Stoner. “One way or another, it should be supportive of life.”

A car mall, consisting of island showrooms for ecological vehicles, would financially support the greenspace. In keeping with the ecological theme, the mall would also gather wind power to sell to surrounding areas.”

more there.

Margaret Atwood again, coined by David Langford :
“As Others See Us. Margaret Atwood explains the all-important distinction between our world and hers: ‘Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen.’ (Guardian interview, 26 April)”

On kuro5hin, Polyglot wrote that review of contemporary (last 20 years) sf. The comments below are actually more interesting.

a nettime post from Bruce Sterling

Special Dispatch Series – No. 497
May 1, 2003 No.497
Nuclear Scientists in Iraq: Citizens Stole Uranium and Other Dangerous
Materials

The Qatari television station Al-Jazeera recently interviewed two Iraqi
scientists employed by Iraq’s Nuclear Energy Authority – Dr. Hamid
Al-Bahali, an expert in nuclear engineering and a graduate of the Moscow
Institute of Nuclear Engineering, and Dr. Muhammad Zeidan, a biology expert
and a graduate of Damascus and Baghdad Universities. The scientists
discussed the looting of the Nuclear Authority after the war. The following
are excerpts from the interview:

Dr. Al-Bahli: “I have been working at the Nuclear Authority since 1968, when
the doors opened to the use of atomic [energy] for peaceful purposes in
Iraq. We activated the first atomic reactor in Iraq in 1968, and within four
days we transferred radioactive isotopes to hospitals to treat various
illnesses. Since then, and up to 1990, we continued this type of work which
was absolutely for peaceful and humanitarian purposes…”

“As for nuclear weapons, Al-Tawitha, the main area that we will be talking
about, is free of weapons of mass destruction and as far as I know, nothing
was done there in this respect…”

“What happened in Iraq did not happen before anywhere else in the whole
world, and I hope will never happen again; there was anarchy. After hearing
that radioactive components were stolen, the employees of the Nuclear
Authority started informing people that the materials that were stolen were
indeed radioactive and should be returned. A person who has dirty
radioactive components is in danger. How is he going to behave? He may
behave in a way that would harm Iraq’s ecology and even [cause harm] outside
Iraq…”

“Tons of uranium known as yellow cakes were stored in barrels. This was a
phase in the production of uranium from crude components. There were also
other by-products from processing these materials. There were tens of tons
of radioactive waste. They were stored in barrels and their radioactivity
was not high as long as they were under supervision.”

“When order was disrupted, simple citizens – sorry to say – did not have
containers to store drinking water, so they stole those barrels, each one
containing 400 kilos of radioactive uranium. Some of them dumped the powder
on the ground in very large quantities, and others took the contaminated
barrels to their homes, and the barrels appeared in various areas. They
stored water in them, and had every intention of drinking from them or
[using] the barrels to sell milk.”
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