מושב 1: שאלה של שקיפות - על הבטחת הטכנולוגיה לחופש ולביטחון
דוברים:
צילה חסין (missdata) - סדר זה למכונות. יחי הבלגן!
קרין נהון - שקיפות כחרב המשנה כללי משחק
מושון זר אביב - Obfuscation vs. Big Data
דרור שליו - מנהל אגף חירום וביטחון בעיריית חולון
מנחה: דב אלפון
מושב 2: מהר יותר - השפעת זמן אמת על תהליכים פוליטיים
דוברים:
ענת בן דוד - פרגמטיזם טכנולוגי וריבונות דיגיטלית: גבולות 1967 ברשת
ליה נירגד - גבולות הגזרה
טל מסינג יואב ליפשיץ - פוליטיקה ללא זמן לזמן ללא פוליטיקה
עופרי רביב - על הפער בין נתונים לבין לדעת להשפיע
מנחה: מושון זר אביב
מושב 3: מפס הייצור לפס הרחב - השפעת הטכנולוגיה על שוק העבודה
דוברים:
ערן פישר - מפורד עד גוגל: טכנולוגיה ועבודה בקפיטליזם
ליאור זלמנסון - הנחות לחברים בלבד
תהל פרוש - על העבודה
עידו קינן - שוֹק מהעבודה
מנחה: ניר נאדר
מושב 4: סובייקט, שפה וטכנולוגיה - על החיים במרחב ללא גוף
דוברים:
ורד אשבורן - מהאחר לאחד בעידן הרשת
Batt-Girl - החדר האינטימי שלה
כרמל וייסמן - עקרון ההכבדה על הצומי: תקשורת אינטימית באוקיאנוס המידע
ערן הדס - Source_Code = New Lingua_Franca
עדי להב - אובדנות ושני הפנים של האינטרנט
מנחה: נועם יורן
מושב 5: אלוף בטלות*- על דחיינות ויעילות בעידן הטכנולוגי
דוברים:
שמואל מילר - על דחיינות, יעילות וטכנולוגיה
ניעה ארליך - דחיה, למידה ואמון במשחקים תיעודיים
עידו אמין - הדחיינות מתחילה בתוכי
שי נצר - נתקו אותי - על הקושי והסיפוק שבדיאטה דיגיטלית
מנחה: נועה שובל
In recent years we have witnessed enormous technological changes that have had a far-reaching effect on our lives. Many believe it is a true revolution. The “Digital Revolution”, as it is often termed, has been compared in significance to the invention of print – an encompassing worldwide phenomenon. The internet, the core of this revolution, has provided access to previously inaccessible information, it is a platform for the establishment of new communities. Much like the invention of print that preceded it, it is perceived as a form of technology that promotes progress and the democratization of knowledge, and a force undermining the political, economic and cultural powers of today’s world.
This year’s Art, Society, and Technology Conference by the Israeli Center for Digital Art will provide a critical review of various aspects of technology’s impact on society; within this context, art’s role is to identify the problems inherent in these changes, to serve as a tool of critique and a means to a strategy of coping. The conference will focus on questions of transparency on the internet, in technology’s promise of freedom and security, on the internet’s effect on political processes and the labor market. Also, this event will center on individual conduct in the substanceless arena of the internet, and on the interplay between technology and efficiency or procrastination.
Curator: Noa Shuval
The Conference will be conducted in Hebrew.
Free entrance to the event. Registration must be completed in advance.
To register: info@digitalartlab.org.il // (tel:) 03-5568792
Conference Program
Wednesday, May 28 2014
15:30-16:00 Opening Remarks
16:00-17:45 Session 1: A Question of Transparency – Technology’s promise of freedom and security
The so-called vision, and subsequent myth, of the internet is associated with the concept of transparency, and the accessibility and democratization of information. Globally, there were WikiLeaks and the Snowden and Manning scandals; locally, there was Shaul Ganon cast as a “ranking member of the gay community” in the Bar Noar case, the investigation of the blogger Ishton regarding IDF suicides, and even the explosion of the Emmanuel Rosen story. All these demonstrate that the rules of the game have changed. Ostensibly, the new technology disbands the previous monopoly of news and newspaper editors to determine what information will be made public, and the ways in which it will be portrayed. Moreover, the “Arab Spring” and Israel’s 2011-summer protests have proven that the internet, and particularly social networks, are a means for collective organization and action pulling together countless people round a common idea.
However, although the internet does provide unmediated access to sensitive and even confidential information, the boundaries of accessibility are still maintained. Traditional guardians of information have been replaced by algorithms, and these now determine what data may been seen by all, and the extent to which it is revealed. Social networks and search engines gather information about us, they “study” our preferences, and are programmed to present us with statically probable areas of interest. They even decide how each of us will look on the internet. Algorithms define the user’s living space, their freedom of movement, and their privacy. Meaning, behind the illusion of free access to information there lurks a mechanism that reduces the types of information each of us is exposed to. Unlike established journalistic and news editing, impacted by ideological, human considerations that may be reconstructed, automatic information filtering is covert and imperceptible. The algorithm creates a sterile, tailor-made surfing environment for each user, one that effectively neutralizes our political power. While providing us access to filtered, partial information, the algorithm unceasingly gathers the minutiae of our individual lives, to the point that the algorithmic filter knows more about us than we know ourselves.
Session Speakers:
Tsila Hassine (missdata) – Order is for machines. Vive le chaos!
Karine Nahon – Transparency as a game changer
Mushon Zer-Aviv – Big Data vs. Obfuscation
Dror Shalev –Security and Emergency Management Division, Holon Municipality
Moderator: Dov Alfon
18:00-19:45 Session 2: “Faster!” – The Impact of “real time” on political processes
In his book “The Information Bomb”, Paul Virilio claims that the digital culture has replaced chronologic time with “real time”, a cosmological constant unfolding at the speed of light. Real time is immediate, it leaves no room for processes and considerations. When everything happens at once, cultural memory has no chance to develop, and everything that occurs is forgotten as it transpires. What are the political ramifications of an ongoing constant present that has no past from which to draw from, and no ability to plan the future? Are existing breaks and balances sufficient to maintain the political system? Must the system be updated, or replaced altogether?
Session Speakers:
Anat Ben David – Technological pragmatism and digital sovereignty. The 1967 border of the web.
Lia Nirgad – Area of operation
Tal Messing & Yoav Lifshitz –Politics without Time for a Time without Politics
Ofri Raviv – The difference between data and knowing how to impact
Moderator: Mushon Zer-Aviv
20:00-21:45 Session 3: From Production Line to Broadband – Technology’s impact on the labor market
While the internet is usually presented as a technological platform for economic growth, today more and more voices can be heard denying the neutrality of this platform, claiming that it only serves an extreme neoliberal ideology. In Jaron Lanier’s “Who Owns the Future?” the author claims that the internet industry is destroying the middle class, as the large internet companies create no new value to the market, and generate the majority of their revenue from gathering user data. Significantly, even when companies first begin with a different goal entirely, they eventually fall in line with the existing economic mechanism.
The internet industry has changed employment conditions, replacing the occupational security and rights anchored in collective agreements of Keynesian economics with personal contracts, and ceding all occupational security in the name of flexibility and creativity. But aside from the façade of free content and the many open code opportunities, it is evident that technology serves existing forces, exacerbating instead of lessening exploitation. One common industry practice is “crowd sourcing”, meaning the shift from various professionals compensated for their work, to project-based employment for amateurs who usually agree to do the work for free or for nominal wage.
However, the internet does allow for the organization of collectives, for employer unions, for crowd funding and crowd loans.
Session Speakers:
Eran Fisher – Ford to Google: Technology and work in capitalism
Lior Zalmanson – Discounts for our Friends - The Tupperwarization of Society
Tahel Frosh – About labor.
Ido Kenan – Workshock
Moderator: Nir Nader.
Thursday, May 29 2014
16:30-18:30 Session 4: The Subject, Language, and Technology – About life in the substanceless sphere
One of the most significant and meaningful metaphors of recent decades is the likening of the human brain to a computer. Or, in the words of John Searle:
Because we can design computers that follow rules when they process information, and because apparently human beings also follow rules when they think, then [some argue that] there is some unitary sense in which the brain and the computer are functioning in a similar―and indeed maybe the same―fashion.
This is the perception that lies at the heart of artificial intelligence research, and from this stems the belief that intelligent computers that emulate human thought processes are possible. AlanTuring was the first to define the requisites of success in such an endeavor in 1950. The test, named for Turing, states that machines may be deemed intelligent when proving capable of participating in unscripted conversation with two persons, and the humans cannot distinguish by discourse alone who is man and who is machine.
One of the early attempts to program software that processes natural speech was called “ELIZA”, software that simulated psychotherapy sessions between doctor and patient.
Today, fifty years after ELIZA, we live in a world where a considerable part of our daily communication is done through technological mediation, in instant messages, status updates, and messenger programs. Does this form of communication impact our existence, and if so – how? Can programs like ELIZA offer a real therapeutic solution? Can a technologically mediated encounter truly replace direct interaction?
Session Speakers:
Vered Ashboren-Notti – From the ‘other’ to the ‘one’ in the internet age.
Batt-Girl – Her own private space
Carmel Vaisman – The handicap principle of attention: flirting in a media saturated environment
Eran Hadas –_Code = New Lingua_Franca
Adi Lahav – Suicidality and the dual faces of the internet
Moderator: Noam Yuran
During recess between sessions: “O E A” Performance by Tzion Abraham Hazan
19:00-20:45 Session 5: Champion Idler* - About procrastination and efficiency in the technological age
The internet culture, with its laptops and mobile phones, has blurred the boundaries between work and pleasure. For efficiency we answer work emails from home and take our computers on vacation. For efficiency, various “life hacking” techniques have been developed to reduce and reorganize daily processes in an information-rich environment, and the “Quantified Self” movement uses technology to measure aspects of our daily lives to make them more productive. Approaches such as these are based on the idea that life is a resource to be exploited. Conversely, these supposedly streamlining tools are a central element of procrastination, particularly when every phone also offers the chance to play, read, watch, and be entertained. Is procrastination an interference that must be stopped, or is this simply a means of coping with the endless demand to be ever more efficient?
*The title name is taken from Tom Hodgkinson’s magazine “The Idler”, founded in 1993.
Session Speakers:
Samuel Miller – Procrastination and Technology
Nea Ehrlich – Procrastination and Believability in Documentary Games
Edo Amin – Procrastination begins in me.
Shai Netzer – Cut me off – About the hardships and satisfaction of digital dieting.
Moderator: Noa Shuval.
21:00-21:15 Summary remarks
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