MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award

https://www.media.mit.edu/disobedience/

by rbanffy • 9 years ago

282 158 9 years ago

media.mit.edu

aristus• 9 years ago

Seems like a great way to catch a nasty case of conspiracy to commit a felony. The reason the Nobel committee can give an award to a political prisoner in another country is that they are in another country.

sokoloff• 9 years ago

To take another comment, suppose the Media Lab awards Snowden the $250K. What possible conspiracy charge could the Media Lab (or the person(s) who nominated Snowden) catch?

bobsam3• 9 years ago

Has Snowden been charged with anything?

If not, can it still be considered helping a fugitive?

bambax2• 9 years ago

Disobedience only means anything if it upsets somebody somewhere, preferably someone powerful.

So, if you decide to honor disobedient people, you accept it will carry some kind of consequence for yourself, or else you're full of it.

The MIT should definitely honor someone that the US government doesn't like, instead of, say, the Chinese government, as a matter of principle (and consistency).

canadian_voter• 9 years ago

The recipient must have taken a personal risk in order to affect positive change for greater society.

There are plenty of ways to disobey without breaking the law.

marcosdumay• 9 years ago

What exactly can people disobey that not the Law?

justinclift2• 9 years ago

Wonder how many times Edward Snowden will be nominated? :)

bloaf• 9 years ago

"Engaged in" makes it sound like they're more interested in ongoing disobedience, e.g. the folks at sci-hub.

justinclift2• 9 years ago

Good suggestion. :)

natch2• 9 years ago

Not sure where you are drawing your implied conclusion that Snowdon is not engaged in ongoing disobedience, but I would say Snowdon has remained pretty darn engaged with the issues he brought to light. And his disobedience is certainly ongoing, in that he isn't obeying the call from authorities to turn himself in to a system which is virtually guaranteed to deny him fair treatment.

perfmode• 9 years ago

Remember Aaron.

toastednz• 9 years ago

I've nominated Alexandra Elbakyan of sci-hub and encourage everyone else to do the same.

I'd also be happy if Aaron Swartz won!

tricolon• 9 years ago

The first eligibility requirement: The recipient must be living.

hkmurakami• 9 years ago

Idk, nominate his father?

oopsietazer3• 9 years ago

The first word in the award: Disobedience.

paulv• 9 years ago

One of the criteria is that the nominees are alive. :-/

bobsam3• 9 years ago

You must be new to "disobedience"...

eddotman• 9 years ago

Good call. Decided to do the same.

AdamJacobMuller• 9 years ago

Aaron Swartz was literally my first thought too. I'm submitting him anyway, he should win and the money should go to like-minded worth individuals and causes.

Iv2• 9 years ago

I just did the same. Aaron is equally deserving, but this award will be put to better use by a living person.

deafcalculus• 9 years ago

I voted for Alexandra Elbakyan.

Her blog - https://engineuring.wordpress.com/ Her email - mindwrapper@gmail.com

rhaps0dy• 9 years ago

Elbakyan! Elbakyan!! :D

Also, who runs Library Genesis? Those people could use the prize too!

lambdadmitry2• 9 years ago

I've already wrote about that on HN, but I believe it's worth reiterating.

Alexandra Elbakyan is not an example of disobedience. In fact, she is very obedient to the rules of society she lives in (she is an avid Putin's supporter), it's just those rules are different from the West. Her risks over SciHub project is negligible while she lives in Russia, and given her views, I think it's unlikely she want to live somewhere else. In her early interviews/posts in Russian, she considers the project as a Russian crusade over the West of some sorts, so I don't believe this is in any way similar to the Aaron's case. Aaron was a political activist and a champion of human rights, and Alexandra is neither.

To be honest, the way in which Western media frame her baffles me: they used a common western narrative and slotted her into it instead of telling the true story.

rwallace• 9 years ago

Alexandra Elbakyan is staying in Russia, yes. That's why she's still alive while Aaron Swartz unfortunately isn't and given that the award has to go to a live political activist and champion of human rights, that's why I've nominated her. Demanding our heroes die to prove their sincerity is, let's just say, not a helpful position to take.

alexmlamb2• 9 years ago

The winner is almost guaranteed to be a conformist, given that the organization selecting the winner is part of the dominant, mainstream power structure.

So expect the winner to be, paradoxically, someone who is completely obedient.

cpkpad• 9 years ago

I cannot sufficiently emphasize how true this is.

Source: Intimately familiar with the Media Lab. As with most places, there is a type of conformable non-conformance. Kind of like casual Fridays at work, or office humor. The Media Lab, and Joi in particular, would never reward non-conformance. Now, if a liberal in Saudi Arabia breaks conservative laws, that they would reward. But that's conforming to their standards.

dheera• 9 years ago

0. Pick lock to roof of building 54

1. Get caught by CP's, pay $500 fine

2. Claim $250,000 from Media Lab?

dwringer• 9 years ago

I backed out after the first page after it kept telling me what to do and didn't appear to reward disobeying.

SexyCyborg2• 9 years ago

Yup. I submitted my application based on the FashionTech wearable I designed, built and wore to protest the lack of inclusion of any local women at a Western tech event here in Shenzhen. http://i.imgur.com/2D8dESV.jpg

I ended up stomping around a mainland Chinese tourist attraction half-naked in it, giving speeches to massive Chinese crowds about an inclusion issue. http://i.imgur.com/9Dz9M9N.jpg

Anyone who knows anything about China will tell you how unbelievably dangerous this is.

But I was protesting the MIT Media Labs best buddy Make Magazine so I'm sure my application has been directly filed in the trash- even though I'd be very surprised if anyone else applying has done anything that dangerous.

50CNT• 9 years ago

Off-topic, but since I started looking at some of your stuff, with the entire trans-humanism and cyborg thing, what implants do you have? I don't mean aesthetic body modification, but things with chips in them.

I'm also in China, a bit further up north, in 山寨版silicon valley, aka. Beijing, Haidian, but I'm really interested in what is going on in Shenzhen. Any chance we could chat?

severine• 9 years ago

Hey, I'm going through your Pastebin (http://pastebin.com/u/SexyCyborg) and it's really interesting, informative, and eye-opening. Keep it up, that's some voice!

saycheese2• 9 years ago

As someone that actively engages in disobedience it is disheartening that they'd award $250k to a single winner instead of $50k to five, $10k to twenty-five, etc.

So many people struggle to make a difference, no matter how small, and being honored for their efforts, when it's most likely that it rarely if ever happens in real life, would be inspiring to them to keep up what they're doing.

For those interested in reading about the original post covering in detail the thoughts behind the award, see this blog post:

https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/03/21/on-disobedience.html

allenleein• 9 years ago

We should still nominate still Aaron Swartz.

＊＊＊Aaron Swartz＊＊＊ Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

(From archive.org: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...)

ploggingdev• 9 years ago

From the post :

Eligibility requirements for the $250,000 prize
The recipient must be living.

So that rules out Aaron Swartz.

noipv4• 9 years ago

Scihub took up much of Aaron's mission.

snsr2• 9 years ago

MIT was complicit in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for seemingly qualifying activities.

rascoe• 9 years ago

I would like to see the money go to Aaron's parents, Robert and Susan Swartz, in his memory. I believe they expended a tremendous amount financially in the legal fight for Aaron. It would seem fitting to extract some small measure of remuneration from MIT for their complicitness via this award.

Iv2• 9 years ago

From what I heard, MIT Media Lab is a bit of a free electron in the MIT behemoth.

snsr2• 9 years ago

I imagine so, and I certainly applaud the spirit of the award, but I still thought it worth noting.

tzs• 9 years ago

How was MIT complicit?

When they involved the police, they had no idea who it was that was apparently attacking them. They just knew that an unknown party was causing serious disruptions, and was actively trying to evade their countermeasures, and had moved on to trespassing and equipment tampering.

It was only after Swartz was arrested that his identity became known.

Everything after that was in the hands of prosecutors. MIT did tell prosecutors that MIT did not advocate jail time for Swartz.

nikcub2• 9 years ago

"causing serious disruptions"

So disruptive to MIT that they didn't even notice it until JSTOR emailed.

revelation• 9 years ago

Todays radical act of disobedience for me was disabling JavaScript on this site. Quelle surprise, it promptly broke and was all black, despite being literally a form.

tedmiston2• 9 years ago

It looks like Typeform which depends pretty heavily on interactivity, like for keyboard shortcuts. It's somewhat surprising they wouldn't have a no JS fallback but on the other hand the experience would be markedly worse than those with JS on.

Mithaldu3• 9 years ago

Note it's all black. It doesn't even have a "there'd be stuff here with JS on" text.

gpvos• 9 years ago

The default HTML form experience is still way better than a black page. I don't see the form really needing any more functionality than that.

curyous• 9 years ago

Aren't these the people that failed to defend Aaron Swartz?

smokeyj• 9 years ago

Maybe it's a honeypot so MIT can flip the disobedient to the feds.

dom2• 9 years ago

MIT is not one uniform entity.

coldtea5• 9 years ago

Then it should have made several conflicting announcements at the time, but I just saw one.

williamle83003• 9 years ago

Would you say it's an "autonomous collective?"

bluetwo• 9 years ago

I appreciate the spirit of the award, however it seems to be coming from an odd place for an odd amount.

I'm not sure what part of the mission of the MIT Media Lab is really involved with rocking the boat. And 250k seems like a heck of a lot of cash to do this. 50k seems like a good amount. I would rather see 5 winners.

DonHopkins2• 9 years ago

The MIT Media Lab has always had a long list of corporate sponsors [1]. And some of them are real boat rockers. If by boat you mean yacht, and by rock you mean race.

But I notice that Philip Morris isn't on that list any more, like it was in 2004 [2] and 2005 [3].

Philip Morris makes a lot of money from disobedient kids who won't listen to what their parents tell them about not smoking. And they do pay a lot of disobedient scientists who are willing to dispute the scientific consensus about the dangers of smoking. [4]

[1] https://www.media.mit.edu/members/member-companies/

[2] http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf

[3] http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/low-tar...

Mithaldu3• 9 years ago

Ah good, another page that renders literally nothing without JS. Only this one is black instead of white.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 9 years ago

I just nominated Donald J Trump. He has disobeyed all political conventions in regard to his election campaign and especially in regard to his relationship with the media. In fact, many people believe he has disobeyed the supreme law of the United States: the Constitution with regards to the emoluments clause and not having a religious test with regards to his immigration ban executive order. He has taken personal risk of failure and being the object of ridicule by tens of millions of people throughout the world.

In regards to what good he has done, he is ostensibly trying to make America great. Less controversially, it is agreed by virtually everybody that he has been the cause for dramatically increased political engagement by the complacent American population and has served to expose multiple vulnerabilities in the American political system especially with regards to Presidential powers, that many people assumed were not a threat to democracy.

tedmiston2• 9 years ago

Interesting perspective. It seems pretty implausible that they would actually give the award to the POTUS, but it is simultaneously great to see Americans start to be more critical readers (analytically not negatively) of news sources, and also quite shocking to see the number of people in this country that blindly and unquestionably accept what they are told even when it lacks credibility and/or sources. I'm hoping Trump can be a positive vehicle for moving more people from the latter to the former.

Semiapies• 9 years ago

I think the main thing that should disqualify him would be his lack of intention. But yes, that's the best-case result of his presidency.

paulddraper• 9 years ago

If "lack of intention" simply refers to the fact that it comes naturally because it is in his character through and through, then yes I agree.

am_i_down4• 9 years ago

What do you mean by "lack of intention"?

suyash2• 9 years ago

Trump intentions are absolutely clear if you listen to him. I vote for Trump as well, he is going to make this country truly great.

geofft• 9 years ago

Sam Altman agrees: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/business/how-trump-became...

“Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly. That’s the start-up playbook. That’s exactly what we tell our start-ups to do.”

(Sam Altman has also built a tool for holding Trump to his campaign promises.)

yjftsjthsd-h• 9 years ago

Sam Altman has also built a tool for holding Trump to his campaign promises.

More about this would be much appreciated. Is it general purpose (could it work on arbitrary politicians)?

komali25• 9 years ago

I disagree that he has done good. Between his attacks on the media and climate change facts, he is causing permanent damage in the popular trust in science.

bambax2• 9 years ago

disobeyed all political conventions

One can't disobey "conventions". One disobey laws, and in particular, laws that are enforced, and the breaking of which carry real threats to their freedom.

Also, you can't be disobeying if you're the boss and decide who gets tried and who doesn't. So since DJT has been president he can't disobey no more.

Not sure if your comment was ironic; if yes, fine, if not, you're very wrong.

am_i_down4• 9 years ago

One can't disobey "conventions"

You are playing a semantics game. Replace disobey with ignore, and the intent is the same.

you can't be disobeying if you're the boss and decide who gets tried and who doesn't

The United States is a constitutional democracy, not a fascist regime. In the past, presidents have indeed disobeyed, and one was consequently impeached.

jabgrabdthrow• 9 years ago

Winner will be a sheep

"You are not being nuanced by calling them sheep, consider these perspectives on power structures"

Winner will be a sheep =]

I bet MIT will be very brave and give Swartz and Snowden prizes after they get permission from trump

iandanforth• 9 years ago

I nominated Edward Snowden. I'm sure I wasn't the first.

slim• 9 years ago

Why is this award not named after Aaron Swartz?

appleflaxen• 9 years ago

Because MIT is one of the public institutions that persecuted him.

Wonderdonkey• 9 years ago

White type on black background made my eyes disobey my wish to have functioning vision for about three minutes after I clicked away.

glomek4• 9 years ago

It doesn't matter if Aaron Swartz is ineligible. We should still nominate him. We should nominate him so many times that granting the award to anyone else makes this award an obviously disingenuous publicity stunt.

ptero2• 9 years ago

I'd vote for Swartz or Snowden any day. But IMO voting for Swartz would serve mostly to shame MIT. Voting for someone else might make a difference to a live person.

glomek4• 9 years ago

MIT needs to be shamed publicly, regularly and continuously until they publicly apologize for their shameful behavior.

Giving this award to Swartz, and giving the money to his parents, along with a public statement of remorse and a public commitment to behaving more honorably in the future, would be an excellent way for them to do this.

laser• 9 years ago

And beyond that– to potentially many live people that the recipient is able to positively impact.

kevinr3• 9 years ago

Unpopular opinion: Aaron Swartz abused the trust which was placed in him by MIT as its guest when engaging in his civil disobedience, and MIT was perfectly justified not to intercede in his case.

A bit like if your friend comes to your house, you tell him, "don't smoke weed outside, the cops around here will arrest you," and your friend says "I support marijuana legalization, so I'll smoke wherever I want." Your friend smokes up on your front steps, you try to get him to stop (it's your house after all), and then the cops show up, rough you up a bit, and arrest him.

There are many more deserving than Aaron Swartz of this award, within and without the MIT community.

raverbashing2• 9 years ago

Exactly

The AS widows are becoming annoying

nikcub2• 9 years ago

That is simply not what happen. He was never warned off MIT campus. The case was never one of trespassing with MIT - otherwise he'd have been slapped on the wrist with a local case.

Rather he was arrested by a federal secret service agent for CFAA violations that were based on extremely tenuous arguments that at the least most legal commentators concede was an egregious case of over-prosecution.

I'd love to hear your list of deserving award winners who are somehow notable dissidents without breaking something as lowly as a trespass law.

xxcode• 9 years ago

interesting titbit:

aaron's dad (Bob Swartz) worked as a patent attorney at the media lab. Not sure if he still does, but he did.

some external reference: https://www.media.mit.edu/videos/aaronsw-2013-03-12/

joelg• 9 years ago

How are so many people bringing up Aaron Swartz? Media Lab !== MIT and this is probably entirely Joi's idea. And the MIT administration has changed significantly since 2013.

oopsietazer3• 9 years ago

If that were indeed the case then this shouldn't have been called an MIT award.

williamle83003• 9 years ago

Yuup.

holografix• 9 years ago

Give it to the white helmets. They disobey their basic human survival instincts everyday.

mroll• 9 years ago

Vote for Aaron Swartz

hxgb• 9 years ago

Of course I'm nominating Ross Ulbricht

williamle83003• 9 years ago

We're always going to remember Aaron Swartz...

rubberstamp• 9 years ago

A better name would've been TakeNoBullshit award. Because that is what which rots the world and Aaron tried to fight it to save others from being subjected to the same bullshit.

Like 2muchcoffeeman commented:

>The award is clearly for people who are being disobedient for the benefit of society. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules is just anarchy or trolling. You're just inconveniencing people who set out to recognise real contributions to society.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13848430

rrggrr• 9 years ago

If Boaty McBoatface can win a ship naming contest with almost 130,000 votes, certainly Aaron Swarz can be nominated with 2x that number - win or lose.

sergiotapia• 9 years ago

Aaron Swartz should be declared the winner.

ape4• 9 years ago

Sounds interesting but I disobeyed the [START] button.

bane• 9 years ago

I feel like a disobedience award should be met with a little disobedience. I'm not sure what all the chit-chat about rules and eligibility is around here, I've nominated Aaron Swartz -- fuck the rules.

ouid• 9 years ago

How can a disobedience award be a thing? Aren't those concepts fundamentally incompatible?

suyash2• 9 years ago

The President is the most deserving winner of this award. Please vote for Donald Trump now.

WuDing• 9 years ago

Definitely disagree!

reachtarunhere• 9 years ago

How about Alexandra Elbakyan who started sci-hub. Her work is pretty similar to Aaron's. I feel that by defying the rules sci-hub has really helped bring the cause of open-access to everyone's attention and we are all watching it change the system for good.

nullnilvoid• 9 years ago

I would vote for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in a heartbeat.

slg• 9 years ago

After reading the comments on this page, I am a little disheartened that apparently most people want to give what is basically a work grant to a dead guy. Regardless of what you think of someone like Aaron Swartz, there are plenty of people who are currently doing good work who could greatly benefit from something like this. Giving it to a dead person simply to make a political statement diminishes any impact this award could have.

AnthonyMouse3• 9 years ago

Giving it to a dead person simply to make a political statement diminishes any impact this award could have.

Giving it to Aaron Swartz would provide both the title and the money to advance the cause of Aaron's Law or similar reform of the CFAA, enacting which would do more for socially positive disobedience than the equivalent amount of money.

saycheese2• 9 years ago

As you likely know, but some may not, grants have legally enforceable constraints on how the funds will be spent, and often require proof that the funds were spent as required; not spending the funds as required might result in civil and criminal legal complaints being filed.

The funds presented to the winner of the award are not a work grant. There are no strings attached as far as I am able to tell by the rules or hidden agendas via the applications; for example, "If you are the winner, how might the $250k prize make a difference?"

Basically, to have expectations of how the winner might spend the funds is what it is, but to state it's basically a work grant is inaccurate.

YeGoblynQueenne• 9 years ago

I see a lot of support for nominating Aaron Swartz on this page. Why not Chelsea Manning instead?

Consider this: her actions parallel Swartz's actions (she liberated information), except that they could potentially benefit many, many more people the world over; Swartz's disobedience would primarily benefit academics (though of course the benefits would sort of trickle down to the rest of the population, eventually).

Additionally, Chelsea Manning is alive, and would benefit from the award. Nominating Aaron Swartz post-humously seems to me like nothing more than an attempt to rub MIT's nose into its own mess ...except of course that the people involved with the award are not the people responsible for Aaron Swartz's treatment.

Chris20483• 9 years ago

Manning isn't in a position to do much now, though?

ehudla• 9 years ago

Noam Chomsky.

SagelyGuru• 9 years ago

It is hard not to be cynical about this, coming from an organisation that called the cops on Aaron Swartz and let the attorneys hound him to his death. It looks like a belated PR exercise to ease their conscience or public image. If they at least named the prize after him, then it might come across as more genuine.

ldehaan• 9 years ago

Aaron Swartz

dominotw• 9 years ago

ethical disobedience

Isn't this ironic. Basically saying, Your disobedience must be obedient to our criteria of ethics. Isn't every disobedience unethical to someone?

Typical 'better than you' attitude of elites, we know what the best kind of disobedience is, based on our narrowly defined ideals.

ingenieros2• 9 years ago

How ironic that the page won't open because I'm running Privacy Badger on my browser.

d4l3k• 9 years ago

I'm also running Privacy Badger and had no issues opening the page. What browser are you on?

ingenieros2• 9 years ago

Chrome

erinniehaus• 9 years ago

I nominate Fiskkit.com A new site which is a BS filter for news/online content and lets there be a discussion of an article or text that favors facts and logic. Kinda cool. Anyone can tag news article for true/false/bias and nine other things...democratizing civic engagement and disobedience by putting BS filter into hands of anyone. I know they are looking for help to try and root out the crap that passes for news and discourse online and get people more engaged.

MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award

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