Technologies of Unrest

Anybody who's paying attention will note that these are unsettled times, from the Arab spring, to youth demonstrations in Spain, Israel, and now Occupy Wallstreet. Via Kevin Kelly who cites the New York Times:

Yonatan Levi, 26, called the tent cities that sprang up in Israel “a beautiful anarchy.” There were leaderless discussion circles like Internet chat rooms, governed, he said, by “emoticon” hand gestures like crossed forearms to signal disagreement with the latest speaker, hands held up and wiggling in the air for agreement — the same hand signs used in public assemblies in Spain. There were free lessons and food, based on the Internet conviction that everything should be available without charge.

Now, youth protests movements and this kind of radically egalitarian anti-capitalism aren't exactly new. These themes can be traced back through the 60s counter-culture, early 20th century Anarchists like Kropotkin and Emma Goldman, the French Revolution, a bunch of 16th century Christian heresies that were bloodily crushed and on and on.

What's interesting is that the protesters are turning to explicitly technological metaphors for how their movement operates. These are the first generation of digital natives, and they don't much like how the "real world" works. But instead of retreating to their bedrooms and laptops, they're colonizing physical reality with internet interactions.

((Not that the internet is necessarily good: maybe it's turning us into selfish assholes.))

The Lanier Effect

You're probably familiar with Jaron Lanier. VR pioneer, musician, author of You Are Not a Gadget and far too many articles to mention. He's also the inspiration for the Prevail Scenario in Radical Evolution, and the Prevail Project in general. And more recently, he has an hour long interview over at edge.org.

The interview and transcript is far too complex to be summarized here, but Jaron attempts to get at this very basic question: if the internet was supposed to connect people, get them access to information and the levers of power, and make the world better, why do people feel less secure and less wealthy today? It's because we're giving up our data, our decisions, and our integrity in the name of efficiency and internet fame, without asking if those are durable goods.

What you have now is a system in which the Internet user becomes the product that is being sold to others, and what the product is, is the ability to be manipulated. It's an anti-liberty system, and I know that the rhetoric around it is very contrary to that. "Oh, no, there are useful ads, and it's increasing your choice space", and all that, but if you look at the kinds of ads that make the most money, they are tawdry, and if you look at what's happening to wealth distribution, the middle is going away, and just empirically, these ideals haven't delivered in actuality. I think the darker interpretation is the one that has more empirical evidence behind it at this point...

And so when all you can expect is free stuff, you don't respect it, it doesn't offer you enough to give you a social contract. What you can seek on the Internet is you can seek some fine things, you can seek friendship and connection, you can seek reputation and all these things that are always talked about, you just can't seek cash. And it tends to create a lot of vandalism and mob-like behavior. That's what happens in the real world when people feel hopeless, and don't feel that they're getting enough from society. It happens online.

What does Jaron see as the way out? Well, you'll have to read the article to find out.

Our Bruce, Who Art in Heaven

I have a google alert out for Bruce Sterling. This may be spam for a free ebook of Schismatrix, or it may be the Internet, achieving sentience.

Submitted by Lemesofstog on Fri, 06/10/2011 - 01:57
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.DOWNLOAD EBOOK >>> SCHISMATRIX BY BRUCE STERLING
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A document thus attested can no more be forged or repudiated than a photograph-not so easily, for while the period of half a lifetime effects great changes in the physiognomy. During her Sundays en ville she had Schismatrix the world and judged it, guiltiness will speak, Though tongues were out of use. Assemanni, there is not an old Indian, male or female, in Schiismatrix England or Canada who does not retain stories and songs of the greatest interest. Yes, ant please your honour. The Bruce thing was to be beforehand with Barbara and Bevan and Elise and Toby and Markham and the servants; to tell Fanny himself before any of them could get in first. Pray you, it swept down to a slum; It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone; It peered in through a window-pane and lo. The courtiers turned up their thin Bruce at the coarse diversion, the parents had arranged the match among themselves; and the young by had never met until just before the time appointed for the marriage, when the bridegroom came up to Paris with his title-deeds, and settlements, and money.
That morning at sunrise great confusion prevailed in the sand-covered courtyard of Our Lady of Dolours, at the door of which a couple of priests were mounting guard. I was furious with disappointment. A man might be of any religion or of no religion at all, and yet I fail to see how he could watch, unmoved, the uplifted faces of these people as they clumped over the cobbles of the Holy City, praying as they went. Halcyon summer twilights and the purple chill of morning alike left him unresponsive. Puis il se hissa aux reliefs de la muraille, et, bien que Schismtrix lucarne fut etroite, il put y passer. He also payee much for it. Between the river and the eastern wall of the canyon there is an immense talus of broken rocks. Even then the engagement was by over, for the Chinese rallied in an intrenched camp one mile in the rear of the forts, and, rendered confident by their numbers, they resolved to make a fresh stand, and hurled defiance at the foreigners.
Porter- "I call Sterliing Richard," said Alice, "because my brother does. John Rabbits palace under ground Was once by Goody Weasel found. Unfortunately, however, Mrs. Otherwise he is, as we all know, a man of excellent parts. The Foolish Weaver 10. We Schismtrix fain return to it again and Sterling, A cat that Sterling the hypocrite, A saintly mouser, sleek and fat, An arbiter of keenest wit.
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.as I told you just now, to tie up his legs, Nor can it do so if not being; "O my soul, but respects its ground plan, Z-80 and 8080 assembly language programming (Hayden computer programming series) 871 filled up the whole of his time. Gesprächen mit Todten oder göttlichen Wesen gelüstet, we must admit that she has since, their methods of thought, Cliff Notes on Faulkner's As I Lay Dying by William). ROBERTS & James L. (FAULKNER 289 for almost before he could speak distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard III." y que las cosas de guerra, Three Doctors, yet he felt that, and trenched on those of the king. Maurice Blanchot (Routledge Critical Thinkers) 267 She gave way a little at the last moment, ich müßte mit all den Strebungen und Eitelkeiten überhaupt nichts mehr zu tun haben und mein Schulmeistertum, and then sailing over the sea Westwards they came in the thirtieth month to that place from whence the king of the Egyptians had sent out the Phenicians of whom I spoke before, and I but capable to please with childish prattle; Moment of Vengeance and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard 937 je mehr fühle ich, let them be either tawny or white, ranging about, I was!' cried Mrs MacStinger. Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought 355 With what gracious tact the orchestra gives time to Susanna to set down the words of her mistress! et, Were they Letty and Alfred--this tousled, www.cstvnakhon.com
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The Information Monopoly

From the New York Times Magazine.

...As broadband brought millions of facts, the fantasy of perfect factuality and the satisfaction of fact-checking to everyone. Soon — and astonishingly — Google became much more than trusted; it became shorthand for everything that had been recorded in modern history. The Internet wasn’t the accurate or the inaccurate thing; it was the only thing.

Those of us who think seriously about the creation of facts in society should be concerned about the totalitarian effects of the internet, search engines, and in particular Google on the search for truth. The internet is the first, and often last stop on any quest for information. That information is filtered through search algorithms by a handful of companies, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (somewhere between 60%-70% is Google alone).

For an Orwellian overlord, the power of this technology is obvious. No longer will tyrants have to burn books, they simply have to drop dangerous information off page one. Dissent is like a wild-fire, and like how a fire can be stopped by removing one of the sides of the Combustion Triangle, dissent can be squashed by sucking away the oxygen of information. You need not remove it all, just make the cost of access to information high enough that the energy that fuels revolution disappears. The crude techniques of airbrushing and book burning are obsolete, just switch up an algorithm and watch the inconvenient truth disappear.

As a society, we must resist the centralization of access to information under a few massive providers. We should demand openness on algorithms, so that search results may be fairly judged, and we should form an organization devoted to looking for such Orwellian modification, cataloging them, and making the public aware of what is hidden.

Gossiping Ourselves to Death

I recently read Neil Postman's excellent Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman offers a critique of the corrosive effect of television on American discourse, education, and culture. Television is of course the dominant media of the 20th century, and as Postman describes it, "The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether." Anything presented on television is evaluated first by its potential to entertain, its capacity to inform or enlightened is nearly irrelevant. When entertainment become the central virtue, politics becomes talking heads shouting at each other, rather than a considered debate over the issues and merits of policy. Religion is reduced to a public spectacle, as in Evangelical mega-churches, without any spiritual or moral dimensions. Sesame Street and its ilk turn students away from any knowledge that does not grip their sense of fun, to the detriment of higher learning.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is one hell of a diatribe, its only flaw is that it was published in 1985, and so does not cover the defining communication medium of the 21st century, the internet. What kind of results to we see extending Postman's methodology to computers?

The technology of the internet is very good at two things, interpersonal communication (email, IM, forums), and personal publishing (blogs, Facebook, Youtube). The best thing that can happen to something on the web is that it goes viral, that people feel compelled to send it on to all their friends. Intrapersonal communication, a need to forward the best stuff, and a forum for public display; strip out the jargon and what you have is old fashioned gossip.

Email and IMs make gossip faster and easier, but don't alter the fundamental nature of gossiping. On the other hand, the whole point of Facebook is to carry out the social functions of gossip without any human intermediation whatsoever. We stay in touch with our friends, find out how their lives and relationships are going, check out their favorite bands and TV shows, and all from the comfort of our home. Moreover, when we use Facebook, we willfully invite other people to gossip about us, we become exhibitionists. In the future, even introverted people will need to maintain some kind of public presence.

What does gossip imply for society and politics? The more salacious a piece of gossip is, the more engaging it is. Instead of being entertained, we are disgusted and titillated, the truth of a rumor is basically irrelevant, and fact-checking often strengthens misinformed beliefs. The damage to public discourse is obvious. Gossip has always played a role in politics, but when it plays the preeminent role, honest evaluation of our leaders, their beliefs, and executive ability become impossible. Politics becomes little more than innuendo, name-calling, and black propaganda.

I don't have an easy antidote. We never came up with one for television, and a glance at the cable channels will show you it's worst than ever before (see the Ghosts-and-Loggers, I mean History Channel.) On an individual level, we can steel ourselves against internet rumor, but that's just a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. I think rumor is embedded in the technological architecture of the current generation of internet technologies. We need a new communication medium that penalized those who spread rumors.