Posts Tagged ‘Anti-technology’
Bristol, Britain’s Flagship ‘Smart City’ (UK)
Thursday, June 9th, 2016
“We’re creating an environment where in a year or two, not five, the whole world will look at Bristol for the future of smart cities.”
– Dimitra Simeonidou, High Performance Networks Lab, Bristol University
The city of Bristol, south west U.K., has begun a multi-million pound experiment to create the ‘smart-city’ of the future, which would cement Bristol as a global leader in the telecommunications world. The wider area of Avon (mainly the ‘post-industrial’ estates of Bristol and Bath) already hosts the largest digital technology sector in the British Isles outside of London, and receives funding from the government as such.
City authorities and allied technological entrepreneurs are working to kit out Bristol with a city-wide ‘digital fabric’ of the very latest in sensor and connectivity technology, to make it the world’s first open ‘programmable city’. A high-speed fibre-optic network (making use of disused cable ducting owned by the council) is being combined with a new ‘city operating system’ that will power an experimental network. In the coming spring of 2016, 1,500 sensor-equipped lampposts are being launched around the city; the vast majority of Bristol will be covered in a Radio Frequency (RF) mesh. This is predicted to revolutionise the way that emergency response, traffic management and other municipal services are handled, and track certain vehicle locations, with eventual alleged trickle-down ‘benefits’ such as informing residents of parking spaces and air pollution (ahem, from those parking spaces) in an increasingly mechanised and technified environment. (more…)
Tags: Analysis, Anti-technology, Bristol, Bristol Is Open, Bristol University, CityOS, Dimitra Simeonidou, High Performance Networks Lab, IBM, Internet of Things, NEC, Paul Wilson (MD Bristol Is Open), Return Fire, Smart Cities, Technological Singularity, Toshiba, UK
Posted in Social Control
‘A map to access the brain’ : Text by anarchist comrade Luca ‘Billy’ Bernasconi (Italy)
Saturday, April 9th, 2016
The Human Brain Project (HBP) began in 2013; it is a research project with an ultimate goal to be achieved within the next 8 years: to create IT simulation of the functioning of the human brain. A massive project made possible only by the billion euros financing granted by the European Commission in the context of the programme ‘FET- Future and Emerging Technologies’.
Techno-sciences as an investment
The programme represents a sort of ‘New Deal’ for the new millennium: to advance scientific convergence in futuristic, therefore risky from an economic point of view, fields in order to come out with even more technological applications that can produce profits in both a social (that is to say control over society) and economic context.
The projects competing for this massive financing were six, one more fearsome than the other. They all had in common a techno-scientific convergence intended to develop new ‘revolutionary’ technological applications in the dystopia in which we are living. For example, the objective of one of the competing projects was to reconstruct all the biological processes of the human body virtually, so as to create a universally standardized model of a patient, which could be personalized by simply changing its anatomic, physiological and genetic characteristics1. (more…)
Tags: Anti-technology, Biotechnology, BlueGene/Q Lemanicus, Brain Mind Institute, Cineca, Henry Markram, Human Brain Project, Italy, Letter, Luca Bernasconi, Switzerland
Posted in Eco Struggle
‘Invasion of the Transhumanists’ from Acorn #22 (UK)
Wednesday, March 9th, 2016
From Winter Oak:
If there is one present-day current of thought that stands out as even more repugnant than all the other repugnance of industrial capitalism, it is transhumanism.
For those who have not come across it before, this is a warped ideology that wants to physically merge humans and industrial technology, with the “dream” of abolishing mortality and creating a super-race of cyborgs or Daleks.
Whether or not this is ever likely to come true is pretty much beyond the point – the transhumanists are dangerous simply in that they are promoting a way of thinking, a way of envisaging the future, that is completely bound up with the extension of industrial capitalism and, of course, completely against any idea of caring about the living planet.
The transhumanists form part of an ultramodern neoliberal cult – also worryingly infecting supposedly “radical” circles – which regards the very idea of “nature” as out of date and builds its cold worldview on a fetish for all that is false, artificial, inhuman. (more…)
Tags: Acorn, Anti-technology, Didier Coeurnelle, France, Lyons, Technological Singularity, Transhumanism, UK
Posted in Eco Struggle
Second communique of ITS – 2016 (Mexico)
Sunday, February 14th, 2016
Chikomoztok
Crescent Moon of February
“Individualists Tending Toward the Wild” (ITS) claims responsibility for the following:
January 28th, 2016
-A timer-activated explosive device against the “National Water Commission” (Conagua) located on Avenida Insurgentes Sur, Delegación Tlalpan, Mexico City.
This device led to police mobilization.
-Homemade explosive detonated at the “Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing, and Nutrition” (Sagarpa) on Avenida Presidente Juárez de Tlalnepantla de Baz, Mexico State.
The explosive was left in front of the Secretariat in the city center of Tlalnepantla, around 9 o’clock in the evening. The device exploded successfully leaving two people wounded. The blast and shrapnel damaged several nearby cars and generated substantial police and military
mobilization.
February 3rd, 2016
-We detonated an explosive package in front of the conglomerate of the apartments known as “Tec Siuts” where students of the Tec of Monterrey inhabit, located on the highway Lago de Guadalupe in Atizapán, Mexico State.
– A homemade explosive device was detonated at one of the entrances of the Tec of Monterrey in similar manner on the Lago de Guadalupe highway in the same municipality.
With these two acts we remind those associated with that academic institution that we continue the War against all who promote and develop Scientific and Technological Progress, and who hide behind the walls of that abhorrent university (as well as others).
February 8th, 2016
-A fuze-activated package-bomb composed of dynamite was abandoned at the central offices of the Sagarpa in the Tabachines neighborhood in the municipality of Zapopan, Jalisco. The package was destined for the head of that federal institution.
-Another fuze-activated package bomb composed this time of a hard cardboard tube filled with gunpowder was abandoned at the “National Science and Technology Council” (Conacyt), destined for the head of that institution, in the Vallarta San Jorge neighborhood in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
Even though both explosives did not reach their respective targets (according to the press), and failed to wound or kill them, they caused great police and military mobilization in both municipalities. The press stated the following concerning this matter: “a police explosives
specialist commented that even if the devices did not contain a large amount of explosives, they could have caused fatal harm to those who were within a close radius of their explosion.”
Let it be known that ITS is also in Jalisco. This was only a test, and we continue to be committed to terrorizing, wounding, mutilating, and even killing those cynical people who, while hiding behind an institution that claims to be “concerned” about nature, are nevertheless directly responsible
for its devastation and domestication.
This isn’t over. The War continues!
Axkan Kema, Tehuatl, Nehuatl!!
Individualists Tending Toward the Wild:
-Feral-Criminal Band (Jalisco)
-Clandestine Group “Fury of the Lynx” (Mexico City)
-Ouroboros Silvestre (Mexico State)
Postscript for federal security forces:
Are you nervous because the groups that attack and commit terrorism against civilization are multiplying?
Are you nervous that the abhorrent and sickening visit of the Pope is just around the corner, because we are still out on the street, and you haven’t caught us yet?
You have lots of reasons to be nervous.
–
http://maldicionecoextremista.noblogs.org
Tags: Anti-technology, Individualists Tending towards the Wild (ITS), Mexico, Mexico City
Posted in Direct Action
'Call for papers' for Interference gathering on society and technology August 15-17 2014 (Netherlands)
Friday, April 25th, 2014
Interference, n:
1. preventing (a process or activity) from continuing or being carried out properly.
2. the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled.
Interference is a gathering of people, perspectives, theories, and actions that share a critical approach to society and technology. It will take place at the Binnenpret in Amsterdam, NL from 15th to the 17th of August 2014. It will be a space where we can meet, debate, share, learn, and find our affinities and oppositions. The event comes as a response to the lack of a common ground for confrontation and discussion over themes like hacking, technology, art and politics that could break out of the existing containers and roles for such concepts and practices.
Interference is not a hacker conference. From a threat to the so-called national security, hacking has become an instrument for reinforcing the status quo. Fed up with yet another recuperation, the aim is to re/contextualize hacking as a conflictual praxis and release it from its technofetishist boundaries. Bypassing the cultural filters, Interference wants to take the technical expertise of the hacking scene out of its isolation to place it within the broader perspective of the societal structures it shapes and is part of. (more…)
Tags: Analysis, Anarchist Gathering, Anti-technology, Binnenpret, Hacking, Interference, Netherlands
Posted in Autonomy