I like many others was overwhelmed by the news coming out of Africa and the Middle (and Far) East this spring, which we have now come to refer to as the Arab Spring. – Because the big picture is so difficult to understand and take in, I prefer to focus on small sections of it: Diar El Mahçoul, a social housing estate up on one of the hills of Algiers (a couple of stones’ throw from the cave in which Cervantes hid from the corsairs for several years), planned and built for the lower echelons of the French colonial administration shortly before the start of the Algerian War of Independence. And reports of unrest from there between March and April 2011. Without zeros, Arabic numerals and mathematics there would never have been any mercantilism / capitalism / colonialism or even a modern science of cybernetics. We would be living without computers or digital cameras. – As I look through the viewfinder at the grid of LED dots on my screen, the lens just millimetres from the news out of Algiers, I am reminded of the mashrabiya, the latticework window screens of traditional Arabic buildings, which for many centuries has regulated the gaze and the light on the boundaries between private and public. (Christian Wachter)