Call for Participation to Chaos Computer Club’s 37C3

Remember that this is not the type of Congress where people go on paid time. There are no sponsorships and generally no commercial interest behind this event, so I think (my guess, I have no data to back that up) that most people take vacation days and pay their own ticket.

not really true. As far as seven(!) years back people have done experiments where AI reproduction was good enough to fool even experienced listeners (https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/computer-generates-m...)

The biggest issue with AI art isn't the quality, we can already make generative art that is faithful enough to not be distinguishable. It's that authorship is an inherent part of art, and nobody is really interested in art that has no human creator in the same way nobody watches bots play chess, despite higher quality of play. Authenticity is central to art, what Walter Benjamin called the 'aura' of a work. (it's unique place in space and time, which automated art does not have).

Keeping this in mind the NFT craze over seemingly random pictures makes more sense, because it was essentially a mechanism to give a replaceable, fungible, mechanic work an aura of sorts, anchoring it. Rather than fidelity, this will be the central question of the tech/art intersection.

Besides not being a monolith and this being amenable to labeling as such, it's still in many parts different from many other hacker scenes.

The CCC has always had the ambition (and backing credentials/skills) to be a political movement as much as a technological one. In fact that's the origin story of the Congress; Wau Holland inviting others to "do something" with these machines that were set to change the world. This political attitude always had a left and anti-fascist bent, IMHO something that Germany in the 80s, and nowadays, desperately needs.

The US scene in comparison (seen from far, just to be clear) looks much more comfortable with closeness to corporate and state actors. Having worked with the intelligence community seems to be more of a badge of honor over there?

In France in comparison the scene as I see it focuses much more on making things, while organisations like La Quadrature du Net are well known but small and not at all organized/supported in the grass roots way that the CCC is. Which is why they seem to enjoy the CCC events, it's always great to have them there. :)

I might be getting this very wrong, like I said I'm only seeing the US scene from "over here" and I only have shallow interaction with the French scene.

I'd also love to hear from other places and how your local nerd communities do in terms of taking political agency.

Regarding the political bent, one big difference from the US is that people at CCC will openly express their disagreements, and are generally respectful about it. The only limitations are that Nazis are not allowed, which is partly because they are forbidden by law.