Data is political

Reshared post from +Ken Rutkowski

Spin lasers at 11.1 Gigahertz with potential for well over 100 gigahertz speed for the internet of tomorrow
http://goo.gl/jWGZO
Electrical engineers in Bochum have succeeded in developing a new concept for ultrafast semiconductor lasers. The researchers make clever use of the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons, called spin, to successfully break the previous speed barriers. The new spin lasers have the potential to achieve modulation frequencies of well above 100 GHz in future. This is a decisive step towards high-speed data transmission, e.g. for the Internet of tomorrow.

By injecting spin-polarized electrons in semiconductor based microlasers, modulation speeds can be reached that are far superior to any conventional lasers

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Reshared post from +Jason Rockwood

"Storytelling" is not just Madison Avenue buzz. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/darpa-science-propaganda/

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» Darpa Wants to Master the Science of Propaganda
Darpa is asking scientists to take narratives and make them quantitatively analyzable in a rigorous, transparent and repeatable fashion. The idea is to detect terrorists who have been indoctrinated by…

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Reshared post from +Daniel Stoddart

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Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don't get it – CNN.com
Douglas Rushkoff: Media derides the Wall Street protest at its peril. The net-driven movement is a preview of a new sustainable disussion on disconnect in U.S.

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Delightfully nerdy.

Reshared post from +Shah Auckburaully

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Love it.

Reshared post from +Carlos Andrés Rocha

More here: http://www.bemmu.com/music/index.html

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Wall Street Protests: Continental and United Airlines pilots ‘fed up with their bosses’
Over 700 hundred activists, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) carriers, took their grievances to the streets as they protested for wages and benefits in light of a stalled merger b…

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Digital Native vs Geek: Who's who? Good chat with Roberto Bustamante thereon in TVPerú. More interestingly, the final reflections on the rural world…

Reshared post from +Maite Vizcarra

¿Geek vs Nativo Digital: ¿Quién es quién? Buena charla con Roberto Bustamante al respecto en TVPerú. Más interesante, las reflexiones finales sobre el mundo rural 🙂
Tks!
Geeks vs Nativos Digitales: ¿Quién es quién?

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Reshared post from +dubravka sekulic

Metahaven interviewed by Markus Miessen on dutch culture cuts. Good reading! http://blog.frieze.com/dutch-cuts/
'Afuture government should clearly formulate the necessity for the role of culture in the public sector. This necessity cannot be presented as a derivative of economic value (as liberals tend to do), or social cohesion (as social democrats tend to do).'

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I was just introduced to Ariella Azoulay's new book The Civil Contract of Photography. Amazing. #dataispolitical. Thanks, Dubler.

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The Civil Contract of Photography – The MIT Press
An account of the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings, with special attention to photographs of Palestinian noncitizens of Israel and women in Western societies.

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Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly

I just went down to check out the scene at the https://occupywallst.org/ rally. It was a bit of a disappointment, for a number of reasons. First, there were only a few hundred people there (one of the organizers told me they peaked out at around a thousand on the weekend). Second, the people who were there were the wrong people.

What do I mean by that? The attendees were mainly scruffily dressed young people, whose attire and approach was too easily dismissed by those in authority. The smirk on the face of the Fox News reporter who was interviewing various participants said it all. "These people are easy to dismiss."

I couldn't bear to see him goading these idealistic young people into making bombastic statements (the reporter is a tool of AIG was one comment I overheard), so I stepped over and asked if I could speak to him.

I told him that I run a company with about $100 million in revenue, and that it isn't just kids who think that Wall Street bankers got away with a crime. There are a set of people who constructed a set of financial products with intent to defraud. They took our country to the brink of ruin, then got off scott free, even with multi-million dollar bonuses. I'll be interested to see if Fox runs my comments anywhere.

It seems so odd to me that the Tea Party isn't out in force at this protest. It seems so odd that government largesse aimed at rich corporations seems to be OK with them, while government largesse aimed at the disadvantaged ought to be cut. I would have loved to see blue collar Americans out in force at this protest, not just college students.

(Personally, I'm all for a leaner approach to government that I've described with the geeky vision of "Government as a Platform." Spend strategically in order to catalyze society to do what needs to be done. Unfortunately, in this case that wasn't done.)

I highly recommend Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone reporting on the financial crisis of 2008 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405 , as well as these recent pieces: http://www.financialsense.com/financial-sense-newshour/guest-expert/2011/09/14/william-k-black-phd/why-nobody-went-to-jail-during-the-credit-crisis and http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/obamas_economic_quagmire_frank.html They should make your blood boil.

It's not the American Spring yet, but it ought to be.

Here are some of my photos from the event:

In album OccupyWallStreet (29 photos)

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