Benjamin Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts at UCSD and Director of The Center for Design and Geopoltics at CALIT2, asks: Why don't the bright futures promised in TED talks come true? Professor Bratton attacks the intellectual viability of TED, calling it placebo politics, middlebrow megachurch infotainment, and the equivalent of right-wing media channels. Does TED falsely present problems as simply puzzles to be solved by rearranging the pieces?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Expose and Repurpose: Opposing Self-Commodification

Moderator: Ben Vickers With Erica Scourti, Sebastian Schmieg

A discussion on how artistic practices outplay or disrupt processes of self-commodification.

At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Friday, 30 Jan 2015

Conference Stream: Work

Introduction: Kristoffer Gansing Moderation: Carolin Gerlitz With Judy Wajcman, Tiziana Terranova

A double-keynote on the dilemmas of post-digital labour and on possibilities and capabilities of workers to cope with and organise out of today’s both highly diffuse as well as algorithmically governed labour situations.

At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Thursday 29 Jan 2015

Conference Stream: Work

Keynote with Ryan Bishop (Winchester School of Art), Benjamin H. Bratton and Metahaven At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin 31.1.2014

Conference stream An Afterglow of The Mediatic

Planetary computation and its geographies can be modeled as a coherent platform, a vertical software/hardware "stack". In his forthcoming book, "The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty", Benjamin Bratton explores this topography as a geopolitical framework, one defined by accidents and contradictions as much as by inventions and efficiencies. The design group Metahaven's forthcoming publication, "Black Transparency", focuses on the political and aesthetic regimes of contemporary transparency, and their coexistence with networks, institutions, and various (dis)organised groups. The latest in their series of ongoing collaborative discussions, Metahaven and Bratton will take turns using the stack's six layers—Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, and User—offering proposals on the future of each.

With Ryan Bishop, Sean Cubitt, Jussi Parikka, Denisa Kera

At Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin Sat, 1.2.2014

Afterglow of The Mediatic conference stream

The panel focuses on the effects of electronic and synthetic waste on geological and biological bodies. The tissue and the soil effectively register the residue of scientific and technological processes, acting as inadvertent storage site and archival apparatus for our trash. The panel includes discussions of electronic waste, nuclear fallout as well as the global labour concerning the geology of media: minerals and material sciences. It is in this sense that it aims to address the media of the earth, and the earth as essential to the existence of media: issues which tie organic bodies with the non-organic reality. The speakers represent media and technology studies perspectives to what was often reserved as a territory of the sciences, namely geophysics. A geopolitics that is truly geo-based emerges from these engagements.

a tutorial/essay video on how to && why leave facebook without deleting ur account ( more @ nickbriz.com/facebook )

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Filter Bubble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

Recycled Likes http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-stuff-on-facebook#awesm=~oIOG2pHruSl3s1 && http://bureauofminds.tumblr.com/post/41028512430/facebook-is-impersonating-people-without-their

Sponsored Stories http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/facebook-sponsored-stories/ && info on the change/update to this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/10/facebook-sponsored-storie_n_4574644.html

Mood Manipulation Experiment http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/