Arif Maftuhin

"New versions of Windows and Office move across the technology industry like a powerful weather system, driving sales of personal computers and other hardware, software and services. The pace is typically gradual but steady, yet the impact on the rest of the industry is significant." (NYT) Windows Vista yang home edition diluncurkan hari ini. Saya tertarik untuk melihatnya lebih jauh apa sih yang berbeda dari edisi ini. Teman sekamarku, yang bekerja di tim yang mengerjakan aspek media dari Vista sebulan yang lalu pernah mencoba menginstall Vista ke laptopnya. But to no avail. Nggak tahu apa masalahnya, laptopnya ngadat, ndak mau nginstall. Aku pikir sih karena nggak compatible aja. Nah, karena konon Vista ini sangat interaktif, tentu tak lucu bila melihat beritanya di koran. Aku pun memilih you tube untuk search windows Vista. Tahu hasilnya? "Wow!" Tapi bukan "wow" yang menjadi motto Vista yang kutemukan. Puluhan Video yang mengejek Vista sebagai jiplakan ...

Imperialism used to be justified, even glorified. When its time was over in 1960s, its legacies continue. Discursive colonialism, if I can use this term, seems to be lasting because it has been embedded in the civic society rather than in the political society —the one that had been decolonized during the Post War II. To decolonize the civic society and knowledge is as hard as the bloody political decolonization. In this regard, it might not be an exaggeration to say that this effort of decolonizing the colonial legacy begun when Edward W. Said, thanks to Gramsci and Foucault, launches his ground-breaking work Orientalism (1979). Said’s Orientalism has successfully unraveled the complex hidden power/knowledge relation in the Orientalist approach to the East. Characterized by a notion of distinct other culture (race, religion, or civilization), Orientalism has neglected human experience. Overwhelmed by a sense of self-congratulation or hostility and aggression, Orientalism had contribut...

Saya cerita tentang "masjid" lagi. Tetapi kali ini bukan masjid di Seattle, dan bukan pula masjid tempat kita sholat: cuman masjid dalam hayalan yang ada di serial TV baru di CBC (TV-nya Canada). Judulnya mengingatkan kita pada Laura dan saudari-saudarinya yang kita tonton setiap Ahad siang di TVRI pada dekade 1980an: Little House on the Prairie, nah judul ini lalu diplesetkan menjadi Little Mosque on the Prairie, sebuah sitkom karya Zarqa Nawaz, yang dulu pernah memenangkan penghargaan untuk film komedinya BBQ Muslim di Festival Film Toronto. Saya sudah lama menunggu film ini. Secara kebetulan, saat sedang nonton football, saya mainkan remote saya ke channel CBC dan pas ada cuplikan serial ini. Surprised, lalu saya google judul itu dan ketemulah saya dengan website serial ini: http://littlemosque.ca/ Di website ini, kita bisa melihat beberapa adegan dari serial ini. Dan sebagai film komedi, tentu saja adegannya lucu-lucu. Seperti saat Amr ditahan polisi di bandara, saat mene...

Reading compiled readings, detached from their whole-book context, is sometimes like the three blind men and the elephant. I am not really sure about what I get from reading the three articles. In addition I am not trained as an anthropologist nor historian, to whom the articles might address. Among three, only the second article, “Boundary Displacement: the state…”, that I would give a longer comment. So let me first give a brief comment for the first and third articles. My first impression about Invisible Cities -- without knowing who the author is and what kind of book is -- is that it must not, if you let me call it, be a “scientific” book. It must be a very exciting novel written by a talented novelist. I was curious if I correctly guessed it and, as it is always my case, I google Italo Calvino. To my surprise, Google provides me many links and I choose this Wikipedia link . (Being an Indonesian and working on political Islam, I have enough excuse not to know him, though.) It is ...