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2005 exhibition and edited collection curated by Bruno Latour "From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik - or How to Make Things Public" seems to be simultaneously critiquing and creating Habermas's 'bourgeois public sphere'. Amongst many, many other 'things', Dingpolitik references the work of Walter Lippmann "The Phantom Public" and John Dewey's "The Public and Its Problems". "What Is the Res of Res publica? By the German neologism Dingpolitik, we wish to designate a risky and tentative set of experiments in probing just what it could mean for political thought to turn "things" around and to become slightly more realistic than has been attempted up to now. A few years ago, computer scientists invented the marvelous expression of "object-oriented" software to describe a new way to program their computers. We wish to use this metaphor to ask the question: "What would an object-oriented democracy look like?"

I found this recent pamphlet about "MicroPublicPlaces" from situatedtechnologies.net while hunting down Latour's Dingpolitik. Arendt's theory of acting (as opposed to Heidegger's thinking) in "The Human Condition" foreshadows Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, in my opinion, and is seen here as operating in parallel with Latour's object-oriented democracry. Beginning with a critique of the current state of the public realm, they follow two trajectories: one through Hannah Arendt's "vita activa" and Bruno Latour's "dingpolitiks", and another through the history of information and computation technologies. Through the former they establish an understanding of the "public" as a space of difference that is held in common, while through the latter they formulate an infrastructure that could support such a contestable space. This leads them argue for a new public realm built on specific architectural programs (water purification plants, zoos, kindergartens, repair shops, chapels) and adaptive learning environments that initiate collaborative relations between people and machines. Their goal is to foster a manifold public through the participatory structures of MicroPublicPlaces.

There is still no decision from the Attorney-General's department for the introduction of an R18+ rating even after a landslide in the number of supporters for the introduction of the rating. It's getting a bit ridiculous now. The public sphere in Australia will hopefully pull us into line with the rest of the globe...

Article from Fibreculture journal.

This is the Iranian government's answer to US anti-internet censorship groups who aim to undermine the regime's strict filtering rules through funding from the CIA. It brings up questions of international involvement in extreme national governance of the internet.