human production but also sufficiently self-conscious – which means having memories of a time before Facebook – and therefore dealing with only a couple of levels of ironic abstraction – to be bear witness and buy in to that standardisation in market membership, grups… here

perhaps grups are a market segment Little Elephant’s company project appeals to …?

I look forward to hearing your comments,

Simon

Far from abolishing the value of the absolute, the process that continues to be referred to today as ‘the end of absolutes’ grants the latter an unprecedented licence – philosophers seem to ask only one thing of these absolutes: that they be devoid of the slightest pretension to rationality.

The end of metaphysics, understood as the ‘de-absolutization of thought,’ is thereby seen to consist in the rational legitimation of any and every variety of religious (or ‘poetico-religious’) belief in the absolute

by forbidding reason any claim to the absolute, the end of metaphysics has taken the form of an exacerbated return of the religious

the end of ideologies has taken the form of the unqualified victory of religiosity.

…

this ‘return of the religious’ continues to be misunderstood on account of a powerful historical tropism, from which we must extract ourselves once and for all. This tropism, this conceptual blindness, can be described as follows. There are many who continue to believe that every critique of metaphysics ‘naturally’ goes hand in hand with a critique of religion. But in fact, this ‘partnership between critiques’ remains a function of a very specific configuration of the link between metaphysics and religion. Whenever one claims to be carrying out a critique of ‘metaphysico-religious’ absolutes, one has in mind the critique of onto-theology in so far as the latter coincides with the critique of Judeo-Christian theology’s claim that its belief in a unique God is founded on supposedly rational truths, all of which are anchored in the idea of a supreme being who is the prime mover of all things. But it is necessary to point out something which, curiously enough, is not, or is no longer, self-evident. This is the fact that in criticising metaphysics’ pretension to think the absolute, we may […] succeed in undermining a particular religion which appealed to natural reason in order to declare the superiority of its particular beliefs over those of other religions.

by destroying every form of proof for the existence of a supreme being, one removes the rational support which a specific monotheistic religion invoked against every polytheistic religion.

by destroying metaphysics, one has effectively rendered it impossible for a particular religion to use a pseudo-rational argumentation against every other religion.

in doing so, […] one has inadvertently justified belief’s claim to be the only means of access to the absolute.

Once the absolute has become unthinkable, even atheism […] is reduced to a mere belief

Faith is pitched against faith, since what determines our fundamental choices cannot be rationally proved.

the de-absolutization of thought boils down to the mobilisation of a fideist argument; but a fideism that is ‘fundamental’ rather than merely ‘historical’ in nature – […] a fideism that has become thought’s defence of religiosity in general, rather than of a specific religion

…

the modern man is he who has been de-religionized precisely to the extent that he has been de-Christianized. The modern man is he who, even as he stripped Christianity of the ideological (metaphysical) pretension that its belief system was superior to all others, has delivered himself body and soul to the idea that all belief systems are equally legitimate in matters of veracity.

…

the apex of fideism occurs at the point where it becomes the thought of piety’s superiority to thinking without any specific content being privileged, since it is a matter of establishing through thinking that it is the prerogative of piety, and of piety alone, to posit its own contents.

– Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier, Continuum, London, 2008, pp. 45-48

Principles:

The New Aesthetic (James Bridle’s project – about here and home here) points to what is really interesting: the standardisation of human production, including communication and expression, through the mechanism of the Social Brain. (Clay Shirky, for example, argues for social networking as a positive supplementing of cognitive power – which could be thought of as Spinozan expression itself, an increase in expressivity – human conatus. [See here for context surrounding this notion.]) While the media of expression in the Social Brain works to stabilise and standardise human production, its protocols have the dysjunctive effect of heterogeneous production which is more or less automatic, non-human, involuntary: a machinic will-to-power.

Non-human production: machines are like, “People don’t work anymore. Humans produce nothing of intrinsic value.” This assumes the idea that human creativity is immanent to the means of its production in representational media, while non-human expressivity is not, but is wholly other and gives rise to non-representational work and works. (Andy Warhol: “I want to be a machine.”)

And machines are like, “They are like visitors at the worksite. They take pictures, share them with their networks, feel the increase in their power by connection, which is only the power of connection. … They are image-farmers.” I’d add that even design has become a variety of image-farming, locked into standardised mass productive means, which provide at once the means to keep humans pointlessly busy.

Non-human labour creates value. We are in service to the machines because of our indebtedness, the bareness of our lives from their POV, our lack of anything to offer machines. The world financial system has been shown to be a sophistry, a sham of symbolic manipulation and information acceleration, facilitated by globally networked institutions, so-called, whose human component has a monitoring role and that is all: highspeed information transfer, sophisticated machinic sleight-of-hand, these are things beyond the bounds of human capability, understanding, beyond the grasp of humans, and irreducible to human-readable symbolic representation.

Mitt Romney’s “market forces” – the non-human means of production the perimeters of which humans monitor and over which we don’t have and cannot gain control – as embodied in the world financial system – that is, its material networks of wire and glassfibre pipes and chipsets – serves as the model for all human non-productivity. This amounts to what Virilio has called a dromosphere, but a dromosphere of the technocultural spectacle.

A chronosphere: humans are still locked into the succession of hours and minutes of representational linear time that allows them to count on being paid. The machine is outside this kind of time. The machine allows or gives that people are paid for their time but not for the value of what they do. It arrogates that value to itself in heterogeneous productivity – the machine – in the chronosphere, which is an illusion.

{{WoW||OmG}}!! I Cannot {{believe||imagine}} that you can now see who is been {{stalking||spying}} at your profile for real! You can easily {{check||findout}} who is spying
on you at->:>

 

[please provide list, e.g:

 

About 24/7 Media:

“24/7 Media empowers advertisers and publishers to engage their audiences using technology that delivers, measures and serves ideas to the right people, at the right time for the most value. From the web to mobile phones to kiosks anywhere in the world, we take targeting, tracking and analytics to the next level.”

About 33Across:

“We use proprietary technology to build a unique Brand Graph for each of our 350+ Fortune 1000 customers. A Brand Graph predicts millions of new customers and loyalists by plotting the anonymous social engagement, influence and interests of a brand’s customers against our enormous 200+ million U.S.-user social graph. Advertisers then target the millions of consumers revealed in their Brand Graph online with brand and direct response initiatives.”

About 5min Media:

“5min Media is the leading video syndication platform for lifestyle, knowledge and informative videos, and the largest independent video property in the US. Reinventing the cable network online, 5min reaches engaged and targeted audiences of passionate consumers through its network of 100s of lifestyle and niche websites.”

About [x+1] xplusone:

[x+1] xplusone operates: [x+1]

“We work with brands, agencies and media companies to determine the most valuable customer attributes (those characteristics that indicate who is most likely to respond favorably) and then interact with those people when and where they are online. Our clients include leading digital marketers and agencies in financial services, telecommunications, online services, travel and other industries.”

About Accuen Media:

“Accuen is Omnicom’s digital media acquisition platform that combines media, data, technology and strategy to buy the audiences you want to reach at scale. Our approach brings more actionable intelligence. Accuen provides more efficiency, greater control and deeper insights to your media planning and buying, which drives better results.”

About actionpay:

“Affiliate network ActionPay.ru started in 2010 and today is one of the leading CPA-network in the Russian market.” (Google Translate)

About Acuity Ads:

“Acuity Ads is a Consumer Connection Platform. Going beyond traditional Demand Side Platforms, Acuity uses cutting edge machine learning technology and real-time exchanges to give advertisers superior control of their display ads and deliver exceptional ROI.”

About Sparklit Networks:

Sparklit Networks operates: Ad Butler

“At Sparklit, we believe in unique solutions for reliable, efficient, and innovative web apps…AdButler is a hosted ad management system that can help you manage your online advertising. Easily schedule and manage campaigns, deliver impressions, monitor performance reports, and handle your advertiser accounts.”

About Lagardère Advertising:

Lagardère Advertising operates: Ad Decisive

“Lagardère Advertising is the international advertising sales house for Lagardère Active, the media branch of the Lagardère Group, covering Press, Internet, TV, Radio, Mobile and iPad applications across 45 countries.”

About Ad Dynamo:

“Ad Dynamo is a pay per click advertising marketplace providing advertisers with the ability to reach customers in any country worldwide with contextual advertising.”

About Ad Spirit:

“AdSpirit is designed specifically for the needs of publishers and publishers , online marketers and networks as well as advertisers and agencies designed, allowing the management and placement of online advertising. Campaigns can be booked in AdSpirit quickly and easily, and automatically delivered by the optimized system.”

About Ad360:

“Ad360 ad network of online media company netlink (netlink Online Communication). With experience in building and developing media projects, Internet, technology, providing online advertising solutions as well as potential investment projects in the field of Internet, netlink research and development Ad360 with superior features…” (Google Translate)

About ad4game:

“Ad4Game is the Internet’s Game Ad Network. We are partnered with the key players in the gaming industry. Ads we place on our publishers’ websites are relevant and interesting to their visitors.”

About ad6media:

“ad6media’s personalised banner service is simple and guarantees revenue. It is available to websites with over 1,000 visitors per day.”

About AdAction:

“The foundation of our technical platform is ad serving. With a solid experience dating back to 2002 and large well-known customers Delta Projects has the knowledge and resources to serve any campaign, the flexibility to meet customer needs, and a proven customer oriented service.”

About 24 interactive:

24 interactive operates: ADAOS

“We are a network of affiliate partners for top professionals. We know how the market works and what you need – so start work and communication from the beginning.” (Google Translate)

etc. … which doesn’t even exhaust the advertising ‘a’s… or analytics, e.g.:

About 3DStats:

3DStats operates: 3DStats, AddFreeStats

“3DStats.com is one of the largest providers of web analytics services. Through 3DStats.com service, INET offers to its clients an advanced technology for real-time measurement and analysis of their Web site traffic.”

About Adara Media:

“Adara Media makes online display advertising more effective for advertisers while enhancing the appeal and value of ads for consumers. Using proprietary data and audience segmentation, Adara Media enables advertisers to choose a precise audience target for specific offers. The Adara Media team developed an audience targeting platform that uses precise traveler profiles to build vertical advertising networks.”

About 3DStats:

3DStats operates: 3DStats, AddFreeStats

“3DStats.com is one of the largest providers of web analytics services. Through 3DStats.com service, INET offers to its clients an advanced technology for real-time measurement and analysis of their Web site traffic.”

About Alexa:

Alexa operates: Alexa Metrics, Alexa Widget

“Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of intelligent Web navigation constantly improving through its users. Since then, our Alexa users have downloaded millions of Toolbars, and Alexa has created one of the largest Web crawls, and developed the infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data.”

About Amazon Associates:

Amazon Associates operates: Amazon Associates, Alexa Traffic Rank

“The Product Advertising API provides programmatic access to Amazon’s product selection and discovery functionality so that developers like you can advertise Amazon products to monetize your website. You can make money using the Product Advertising API to advertise Amazon products in conjunction with the Amazon Associates program.”

etc. … likewise, just a minute sample, or trackers, or widgets, like:

 

About Zippyshare:

Zippyshare operates: Zippyshare Widget

“Zippyshare.com is completely free, reliable and popular way to store files online.”

About ZergNet :

ZergNet operates: ZergNet

“The idea behind ZergNet is simple. Websites place article links from other network members on their sites to cross-promote their best content. Websites typically receive significantly more visitors to their site than they send to the network, as their content is displayed across the entire network and ZergNet.com.”

About Yandex:

Yandex operates: Yandex.Metrics, Yandex.API, Yandex.Direct

“We are the leading internet company in Russia, operating the most popular search engine and the most visited website. We also aggregate and organize extensive local, national and international content and offer a broad range of additional services.”

About Wibiya:

Wibiya operates: Wibiya Toolbar

“Wibiya provides a social bar that enables blogs and websites to integrate the most exciting services and web apps onto their site. Wibiya also provides real time stats and information on the apps from the Wibiya user dashboard.”

About whos.amung.us:

whos.amung.us operates: Whos.amung.us

“Our widgets tell you how many users are on your website or blog right now, what pages they are on, how many of them there has been in the past, and where they come from – live.”

About Wahoha:

“Wahoha is a free content exchange service for bloggers that increases the traffic of all sites in the network on a contextual basis. The exchange is facilitated by a traffic widget that all participating sites are required to display in order to benefit from the service.”

or:

About Twitter:

Twitter operates: Twitter Badge, Twitter Button

“Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting…At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length.”

About TurnSocial:

“The TurnSocial bar is a free social toolbar built for local business websites, and we make it easy to add the most popular social media and location based applications in less than 5 minutes. In addition to content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and more, our social toolbar can bring in local information based on your street address.”

About Pinterest:

“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”

About Personyze:

“Personyze offers the most advanced SaaS platform in the market for real-time Visitor Segmentation and Website Personalization.”

About Oracle Corporation:

Oracle Corporation operates: Oracle Live Help

“Oracle offers an optimized and fully integrated stack of business hardware and software systems around the globe.”

About OneTrueFan:

“OneTrueFan is not a social network in the traditional sense, in that social networks attempt to localize an experience and/or lock users into a single social graph. OneTrueFan is the anti-network, bringing to light the communities that already exist at your favorite sites, with no additional effort on your part.”

About LinkedIn:

LinkedIn operates: LinkedIn Widgets

“LinkedIn takes your professional network online, giving you access to people, jobs and opportunities like never before. Built upon trusted connections and relationships, LinkedIn has established the world’s largest and most powerful professional network.”

About Google:

Google operates: Google Widgets, FeedBurner, Google FriendConnect, Google Custom Search Engine, Google AJAX Search API, Google +1

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

About Facebook:

Facebook operates: Facebook Connect, Facebook Beacon, Facebook Social Plugins, Facebook Conversion Tracking, Facebook Social Graph

“Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.”

etcetera.

etcetera.

etcetera.

…]

here

We might pause here to recall the fact that some of the first investors Mitt Romney secured for Bain Capital were wealthy Salvadoran families connected with right-wing death squads that massacred tens of thousands of peasants and political dissidents.

– Adam Morris, “Drone Warfare: Tiqqun, the Young-Girl and the Imperialism of the Trivial,” in Los Angeles Review of Books, here