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Convenience Criticism: On Rainer Mühlhoff’s book about “AI” and Fascism
Books about so-called “AI”, the hype around “AI” and the connection between “AI” and authoritarian and fascist forces are much needed these days. They are important resources for communities to understand, organise against and resist “AI”. Aline and I have referenced some of them in our writing on this blog, among them Dan McQuillan’s “Resisting […]
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On Signal’s Meredith Whittaker in The Economist. Or: The origins of poor digital policy demands
Over the last years, I have taken part in numerous meetings about how to square the circle of formulating policy demands that both make a difference and have a vague prospect of being adopted by policy-makers. And I often get to observe how this kills any meaningful debate and narrows perspectives. It makes us end […]
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Crashing hard: why talking about bubbles obscures the real social cost of overinvesting into “Artificial Intelligence”
More and more commentators talk about and warn of an “AI bubble”, and everybody seems to congratulate each other on being such a smart financial analyst. BUT: A bubble pops and you are left with air and maybe a splash of soap somewhere on the floor. A fairly clean affair. This kind of investor speak […]
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The lie at the heart of hopelessness
Most people I know are fighting severe anxiety about their individual and our collective future right now, struggling to picture a life worth planning. It is paralysing, also for me. It is also a lie. Not that reality isn’t grim (ignoring that will only make things worse) but paralysis is neither inevitable nor warranted. Yet, […]
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Is there a need for “AI” after capitalism?
Do we have a use for “AI” after capitalism? This question is – of course – more a rhetorical device than a genuine question. It serves as a starting point for discussing two propositions: The first is that “AI” in its current form is little more but condensed capitalism and a technology created and shaped […]
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Descale the internet! Why going against maximum scale does not scale at all
Economists love scale. Start-ups love scaling up (and so do investors). Politicians love large-scale, global stuff. And in all things digital, economies of scale are assumed to be a common feature of markets – high fixed cost, low marginal cost, network effects, yada yada yada. BUT: There is a very important difference between a minimum […]
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The politics of decentralization and the libertarian allure of Mastodon
I am currently reading the fabulous “Hayek’s Bastards” by Quinn Slobodian. It made me think about decentralisation in Mastodon (yes, the federated social network). And it made me think about the lack of a coherent progressive vision for the digital age. I will explain what that book has to do with both. But let’s go […]
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Cyberlibertarianism: deconstructing the tropes in all things digital
I devoured David Golumbia’s 400-page critique of cyberlibertarian digital discourse. Read. This. Book. In case you cannot (while I still recommend it!), I would like to highlight a few key insights I have taken away from it. Then, I will also touch on a few points on which I disagree – and it is wonderful […]
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Intentional inefficiency as bureaucratic anti-fascism
Fascism is back. And Big Tech is its willing enabler. Both statements are hardly controversial. Both statements are also deeper related than widely accepted. This post explains how (digital) capitalism and the rising far-right in the US as well as in Germany are related. It will dive into the role of bureaucracy as an anti-fascist […]
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On tech sovereignty – how to nail jelly to a tree
After briefly commenting on the EuroStack, politics have continued to escalate, warranting another, slightly longer post on the broader European perspective. What is the policy context, what kind of sovereignty is implied in the current policy developments, and what is to make of this? Europe’s ambiguity: what exactly is the problem with the US authoritarian […]
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Solidarity beyond individual privacy and data protection
Progressive digital policy people are on the defensive. Europe has politically been shifting to the right. Border violence, authoritarian surveillance and commercialisation of data are threatening people that move to the EU and people that live here. In the search for answers, progressive actors are turning to familiar tools: The defense of privacy and data […]
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The EuroStack – a critical appreciation
Many tech policy people are pondering the EuroStack proposed recently as a collaboration between Bertelsmann Stiftung and Francesca Bria. I would like to join the discussion with some observations; others like Tara Tarakiyee have already articulated that the proposal contains ambiguities or inconsistencies that remain open for interpretation. (Note that I am not summarising the […]
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Illegal Instructions – at the 38c3
Hacking has always been political. This is why we went to the 38c3, the 38th annual congress of the Chaos Communication Club, in Hamburg. It is the largest hacker congress in the world, with 15,000 people joining the event over four days and with no corporate sponsoring and all volunteer work. Wow. What did we […]
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Freedom to respond in expert hearings
Experts who are invited to provide their expertise in hearings at the German Bundestag should be free to respond as corresponds to their individual conscience. This should explicitly include the freedom to withhold their expertise to questions that are posed by parties that do not align with democratic principles. Together with others, we have initiated […]
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We talk, we write, we share and we act. Here, we write, mostly on current tech policy issues.