Whomever, whatever controls the protocols, controls the device and reaps the
rewards that the device brings. This is because the protocol is a proxy for the
actualized projection of energy or the pathway that energy is mandated to
follow. A protocol determines the characteristics of the energy flow: where
power accumulates, where it is sourced -- at the scale of electronic circuits up
to the widest expression of the techno-social system. An electronic circuit is
simply a set of parameters/protocols to confine and direct the flow of
electrons. Allowing them to temporarily persist before being shunted along by
the 'force' of electric current.
Did you ever consider that electrical generation is a 'push' service?
When we 'pay' attention to the dominant flows -- of what is labeled, for the
Marxist to understand, 'social capital**', but is actualized as 'social energy'
-- we give our personal energy to those dominant flows: we are paying with our
invaluable and limited life-time. The accumulation of power and energy in the
socio-political sphere ultimately rests on the ability of protocols within that
system to accumulate and direct the energies of the human lives of those
'participating' in that system. The statement "Kim Jong-Un would have less power
if the population of North Korea were 250,000 instead of 25 million" may seem
obvious, but to generate a nuclear weapon requires a certain minimal
'infrastructure' which, again, ultimately rests on human shoulders to create and
maintain. For generating the same weapon system, the population size will differ
somewhat from nation-state to nation-state, based on other energy sources
available to the system (in whatever form: relative ease of access to
hydrocarbons, intellectual development, etc), but there is a certain minimum
cumulate energy level necessary to 'build a (nuclear) bomb'. The bomb, with its
purpose to direct concentrated destructive energy to the 'enemy' is a cumulative
expression of many interlocking protocols that actually 'gather' energies
together for that energized expression. That minimum energy level is also
necessary to control the process to the high degree of precision necessary to
materialize the technologies necessary to construct a bomb. This is why there is
a difference between simply building a bomb (where size doesn't matter), and
fabricating one that fits in the nose-cone of an ICBM: smaller size equilibrates
with higher degree of precision which means greater energy consumption per unit
device: therefore more difficult to do unless you tap more energy from the given
population base, or you have a larger population base...
If you starve 23 of the 25 million North Koreans to near-death you might make a
dent in the energy procurement system necessary to construct a bomb, though
perhaps not. The elites drive the process, though they need to eat as well.
We in the west exist in a different energy-harvesting regime, but one that
concentrates our attentions with impressive thoroughness. It has many tentacles,
many of them screen-related, though as pointed out, IoT quickly insinuates
itself into tampons, medicine, wine bottles, toilets, ... everything ...
IoT represents another dimension of the acquisition and control of power flows:
regulation via feedback. Regulation saps energy from a system by forcing it into
rigid flow patterns. Regulation exists on a sliding scale that spans anarchism
to state-sponsored sclerosis. Regulate what is 'necessary' to reach the goals of
the system, let the rest go. Regulation demands constant feedback to ensure the
sweet spot, feedback costs energy. Big data is regulation run amok, and one
[energy] price is CO2-generating, hydrocarbon-burning server farms. When
everything is known about every living consumer, then the planet will be covered
with server farms.
**capital is far too mechanistic/materialist word to be using anymore (or should
have ever been!), rooted as it is in Newtonian relations -- capital is an
expression that reifies what is a temporal concentration of energy (gold in Ft.
Knox, bbl of petroleum reserves, well-fed human slaves, explosives, buildings,
anything human-constructed, human-compiled, etc, etc...). These concentrations
of energized matter persist only for a time, they are transitory and cannot be
maintained except through the addition of energy to the system to maintain their
order (ever own a house?).
jh
On 17/Sep/17 12:39, Morlock Elloi wrote:
This meme cannot be repeated often enough (even if one starts to resemble RMS).
While esoteric discourses about consequences can be amusing, we really need to
get back to the root causes. They are not novel, just often forgotten.
--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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