Mapping Contemporary Capitalism + Logicland

Begin forwarded message:

>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 15:43:36 +0100
> To: [email protected]
> From: Simon Worthington <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> Subject: [uo] INVITATION: Mapping Contemporary Capitalism
> Reply-To: [email protected]
>
> Dear Cartographers,
>
> You are invited to join the Mute team for Mapping Contemporary
> Capitalism (MCC) in the Annotation room of the Cartographic Congress
> (CC) in Limehouse Town Hall, where we will be holding our open
> research week looking at applying Semantic Web technologies to the
> task of making available a practical tool for examining the relations
> and working of power systems.
>
> If you're interested in lending a hand or you'd just like to find out
> more, please drop in.
>
> cheers
>
> Simon
>
> *******[Please distribute widely]******
>
> THE WEEK'S SCHEDULE
>
> Each day we'll be exploring a theme which is important in helping the
> team understand how to apply Semantic Web technologies to the project
> of 'mapping contemporary capitalism', and to establish the research
> issues to be looked into beyond this week's activities to be able to
> build a working software tool.
>
> Additionally, over the course of the week we will look to produce
> some small software prototypes.
>
> At the start of each day we will run an hour long tutorial on using
> online collaborative working tools (Twiki, Blogger, IRC and email
> lists) to enable the team to continue their work after this week's
> session.
>
> Monday - The Sematic Web Basics: protocols, history of development.
> Exploring collaborative mapping. Creating an outline for the week's
> activities.
> Tuesday - Looking at existing power maps: online and offline,
> institutional and informal. Defining the parameters of what the MCC
> could map.
> Wednesday - Applying the Sematic Web to the MCC project. Running test
> scenarios of how MCC would work.
> Thursday - Looking at data sources, security and who would use the MCC.
> Friday - Document collation day, a day of debates and document writing
>
>
> GENERAL INFORMATION
> Research Workshop
> 11am - 5pm
> Monday 2nd - Friday 6th June
> Mapping Contemporary Capitalism
>
> To learn more about the project snd the Semantic Web see:
> http://docs.metamute.org/view/Home/McC
>
> Mapping Contemporary Capitalism (McC) is a long term software
> development project whose goal is to create a tool for mapping
> relations of power. The software is based on newly emerging open
> source protocols for data management and visualisation, and borrows
> much of its knowledge (The Semantic Web) from Internet pioneers such
> as Tim Berners-Lee and cartographers such as Bureau d'etudes.
>
> As part of the CartographicCongress, we are planning to run a
> research week dedicated to the project 'Mapping Contemporary
> Capitalism' from 2nd June until 6th June. The plan is to bring
> together people who have a long term interest in working on the
> project so as to work on a preliminary research framework. At the end
> of the week we would look to have agreed on working practice,
> research areas and prototyping strategies (all of this we would look
> to have distilled into a report by the end of the week).
>
> Technologies:
> McC will be based on the following open protocols:
>
> *RDF - Resource Description Framework
> *RSS - Rich Site Summary
> *FOAF - Friend Of A Friend
> *OWL - Web Ontology Language
> *SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics
>
> –__–__–
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 17:21:33 +0200
> To: [email protected]
> From: maia/re-p<[email protected]>
> Subject: [uo] logicaland
> Reply-To: [email protected]
>
> hi @ Cartographic Congress
>
> by coincidence i heard/read about the cartographic congress and
> subscribed this mailinglist.
> as i'm in austria i have no chance to pass by, but wanted to send you
> the link
> http://www.logicaland.net, a project we did last year for dthe
> biennale in torino.
>
> it deals with cartography, alternative information visualisations and
> the problem of democratic participation on the www. it is is based on
> a world-simulation of the 70ties. below you can find an introduction
> text
>
> greetings from vienna
> maia gusberti
>
> —————————–
> *./logicaland*
>
> A Participative World System
>
> *./logicaland* is a collective simulation game based on a global
> world model developed in the '70s that has been taken out of its
> original context and adapted into a participative online game. In
> rounds of play lasting up to 22 hours, financial and natural resource
> endowments of 185 states-proceeding from "real" starting values from
> the year 2000-can be manipulated in an interdependent world system.
> The parameter changes made by participants become "votes" that are
> polled by the server and fed back into the simulation.
> *./logicaland* is a multi-user platform, a "social" parlor game, a
> game of cooperating or competing social forces in which a networked
> community can develop visions, pursue collective strategies and
> produce or revise worldviews-a game without winners and losers and
> with no prescribed goals.
> The fact is, however, that social, political and economic
> preconditions exclude 94% (1) of the world's population from
> participation in the game; "that there is de facto no network when
> one is not connected to it." (2) *./logicaland* is, accordingly,
> meant as an experiment within the-essentially "Western"
> dominated-Internet user population. The process of reflection about
> the limits of "democratization via linkage to digital networks," the
> dominant power structures, as well as the unequal possibilities of
> political participation and input into decision-making processes is a
> central theme of *./logicaland* .
> *./logicaland* is defined as a statement in the context of
> "globalization," as a prototype of a potential tool for a new
> "cognitive enlightenment," (3) and as a basis for discussion as part
> of an interdisciplinary encounter with (alternative) world designs,
> worldviews, digital culture and democratic participation. It is an
> attempt to visualize our world and its interwoven mechanisms with the
> intention of expanding consciousness of complex global economic
> interdependencies, sensitizing participants to social and political
> dependencies, and, above all, sharpening individuals' awareness of
> their own involvement and the possibilities inherent in the network
> of the "social system."
>
> (1) Rough estimate of Internet users as a percentage of world
> population based on data from the CIA World Fact Book 2001
> (http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html)
>
> (2) On this subject, also see: Olu Oguibe: "Connectivity, and the
> Fate of the Unconnected"
> (http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/6551/1.html)
>
> (3) In the sense of Phillipe Queau: "In a world that is powered by
> the flow of information, the user interfaces that make the
> information visible-and the underlying code-become enormous social
> forces. Understanding their strengths and limitations and even
> joining the effort to create better tools should be part of citizens'
> commitment to civil society. These tools have just as great an
> influence on our lives as laws do, and we should subject them to
> similar scrutiny. We must gain a better understanding of the
> assumptions that form the basis of the cognitive means-simulation
> models, computational and conceptual models, cognitive patterns,
> statistics-that we utilize, consciously or unconsciously, more and
> more often. A new 'cognitive' enlightenment is necessary." (Queau,
> Phillipe: "Das globale Gemeinwohl", in: Rotzer, Florian:
> *Megamaschine Wissen: Vision: Uberleben im Netz*, Frankfurt/New York:
> Campus, 1999)
> —————————–
> –
> .
> .
> .go: http://www.logicaland.net !
> .
> /.play
>
>
>