Re: <nettime> closure of Media Lab Europe

[Newmedia {AT} aol.com]

Ned:

As someone who has been involved with all this for quite while, I'd offer 
that the "model" for the Media Lab was already obsolete in US in the 1990's -- 
which is why they tried to expand into "less mature" geographies by using the 
Internet bubble to bootstrap themselves into Ireland, etc.  When that bubble 
collapsed -- as I suggested it had to throughout my early involvement with 
nettime starting in 1996 -- they had no chance.

More constructively, you might consider the distinction between finance and 
industrial capital that I introduced in the open session at nettime's final 
"convention" in 1997 in Ljubljana during an exchange with Peter Lamborn Wilson 
(aka Hakim Bey.)   

For a fuller discussion of some of the implications of this distinction and 
the relationship to the various phases of a Kontradiev "Long Wave," you might 
want to read Carlota Perez' 2002 "Technological Revolutions and Financial 
Capital."

In the current "synergy" phase (2005-2020) of building out a new 
"techno-economic paradigm" -- when industrial capital takes over from finance capital -- 
who needs the Media Lab?

Best,

Mark Stahlman
New Media Laboratory
New York City


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