Thanks Patrick. My theory?
The more central to normalised social activity the internet becomes you might think the more we should despair. However, it is when the internet has become the instrument of social, economic and political exchange that the "other" finds opportunity to strike. Anon-ops' power is greater now than it could have been before, simply because the internet has become instrumental to normality. If one seeks to disrupt normality and posit an alternative then now is the moment to do it. As they say, it is when it seems the battle is lost that victory becomes apparent. Best Simon On 11/12/2010 19:59, "Lichty, Patrick" <[email protected]> wrote: > Digital Anarchy and Wikileaks. > Or, Skynet doesn¹t look anything like we thought it did. > > This is the first time I¹ve posted in a while, but I think we¹re in > significant times. Assange and the whole Wikileaks phenomenon is so important > that it needs a little theory. > > To recap for those who have been unaware of the news, Wikileaks is an online > Wikipedia-like database that ³whistle-blows² against governmental/corporate > wrongdoing by releasing controlled/classified documents. As of December 2010 > they have been releasing huge numbers of cables relating to US foreign policy, > which has the First World, especially the US State Department in a panic. > Why? Because the leaks show the US in any number of gaffes, like calling > Russia a ³mafia state², disclosing precarious mentions of Middle Eastern > leaders. In addition, other undisclosed information, such as revealing > transfers of weapons technology from North Korea to Iran, US drug companies > targeting African politicians, and so on. This disclosure has sent the First > World into diplomatic chaos, with geopolitical politics reconfiguring itself > like a planet-sized Rubik¹s Cube. > > First World power has been bitten by its own child, or its own emergent system > as typified in popular science fiction franchises, like the Matrix and > Terminator. Infopower has begun to become autonomous of its material (atomic) > roots. Instead of the robots, it is merely the infosphere that is asserting > itself. In The Porcelain Workshop, Antonio Negri asserts that one of the > three major shift into the postmodern is the primacy of informatics/cognitive > capital as central to the new order. As such, it is focusing of society on > this flow of capital which has relocated the foundations of power in the new > millennium. > > The Internet was conceived by the US military (DARPA) as a decentralized > network for the sharing and redundant storage of information in multiple > locations in case of nuclear attack. In such a case, one node can be > destroyed, and the network can still function despite their loss. It is for > this reason that I believe that material/conventional power should be termed > as ³atomic², as nuclear weapons are the ultimate extension of the > nation-state, and as metaphor for material society, we can also double that > this power situates in the world of atoms. However, this extension of > conventional/²atomic² power has grown into a concurrent, distributed, > heterogenous field of power that I will call the Infostate, that includes the > Web, E-mail, and all functions of networked communications. Although the > functionaries of conventional power have restructured themselves in terms of > the informational milieu, the latter is not necessarily congruent with the > former. The Internet spans most physical states, yet resides in no single > one. > > Despite this, there are zones which the nation state has tried to > territorialize and limit the flow of cognitive capital, such as Turkey and > China, but the firewalls remain porous and slippery. This > deterritiorialization of the Infostate creates an asymmetrical power relation > which, due to its amorphous nature, is problematic for the conventional > nation-state to engage. Conventional power requires a face upon which to focus > fear and hatred upon, such as Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden. Infopower is > mercuric and morphogenic, and when confronted by the centralized, hierarchical > nature of conventional power, it merely splits, morphs or replicates, > sidestepping the metaphorical ³army & general². This relationship signals the > new balance of power between the nation-state and the Infostate as Krokerian > Panic dialectic, in which the ability of the one to relate in terms of the > other implodes. > > With the bleeding of information from the material to the infomatic rhizome > through Wikileaks (i.e. the US diplomatic cable leaks), the Infostate has > created an asymmetrical insurgency against conventional power. Negri¹s > conception of cognitive capital as locus of power asymmetrically challenges > that of material capital. This is analogous to previous mention of events as > told in the movie, The Matrix, and the artificial (informatic) being > overriding/supercedes embodied conventional power. As Deleuze, then Agamben > assert that power is the separation of the subject from potentiality, and as > such mitigates dissent, the nation-state is trying to exert power by > separating the means of support and the figurehead from Wikileaks, but > distributed, asymmetrical cyberwarfare by the net.community has already > disrupted banks, credit, and networked sites. It has even awakened the > amorphous hacker subculture of ³Anonymous² which was last known for its mass > protests against the Church of Scientology to rise against the opponents of > Wikileaks. The Net, as child of the military (conventional power) has begun > to turn on its masters, with expected reflexive responses. > > This knee-jerk reaction of the nation-state to asymmetrical power versus > conventional power became evident in the case of 2001, where decentralized > ³cellular² physical social networks circumvented centralized power. Although > the previous statement says decentralized physical power, this is merely an > intermediary step to the development of asymmetrical distributed infopower. > The centralized, hierarchical nature of the material corporate nation-state > has been unable to contain the decentralized flow of cellular power, which has > become infopower, created by the emergency of distributed networks. This is > seen as we look again at Matrix Reloaded, where in, as in The Matrix Trilogy, > the informatic body/state (Agent Smith) reacts to the intervention of > conventional human power (Neo, or ³The One²) by asymmetry in massively > replicating Wikileaks sites (³The Many²). Conventional power now has a cloud > of moving, replicating targets rather than one to aim at. > > The First World then reacts to being challenged by expediting > material/physical diplomacy that would take months, days, or weeks by > arresting Assange and possibly for extraditing him to the United States, his > locus of challenge. But although the ³head², (the object of leverage of > conventional power) is in custody, the ³body² of Wikileaks and the rest of its > ³computational cloud of dissent² stated on December 7th (incidentally, the day > of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), that it will continue to release > information through the WikiLeaks network. Like the anthropomorphization of > centralizing identity/placing a single ³face² on challenges to hegemony (as in > the Queens of the movies Aliens and The Borg in Star Trek), the true face of > asymmetry is that of facelessness and morphogenic dissent. It is like trying > to hold mercury, because as the Critical Art Ensemble states, decentralized > dissent can only be addressed through decentralized means, and this is not the > structure of conventional power. > > In Electronic Civil Disobedience, The Critical Art Ensemble also states that > in the age of informatic power, physical resistance is severely limited in its > potential for effect, if not useless, as the physical protester is corralled > or elided entirely by authority. The real interventionists, CAE states, are > the 20-something year-old hackers who punch through the firewalls and reroute > flows of information, creating irruptions of redirection, disruption, and > detournement of infocapital at will. The case of Ricardo Dominguez and the > Electronic Disturbance Theatre¹s virtual sit-in against the University of > California was a relatively benign case of the disruption of data as political > act. But the intervention in infocapital is explicated on a larger scale by > Chinese governbmental hackers¹ compromise of Google (as revealed by > Wikileaks), as well as the infiltration of an Iranian reactor by hakers. All > of these illustrate Negri¹s idea that postmodern power/capital has shifted to > that of the informatics and cognitive fields, and signal a primary shift of > the balance power in the First World, if not globally. > > In light of this redistribution of power, what would the solution for > converntional/²atomic² power¹s reassertion of hegemony? This would be to > contain the rise of informatic power by containing its means of distribution. > This would be by the means of national firewalling, and trunk-line > disconnection or limited Internet disabling, disrupting infopower, but also > crippling the flow of digitized material capital as well. This is problematic > at best, as conventional power and informatic power are in symbiotic, the > latter being more nimble and a step ahead of the former, and to attack a > symbiote always means to cripple its partner as well. The logical result of > such actions would be the elimination of net neutrality (the free and open > flow of data across the Internet) or even the severance of typologies and > flows of information across the networks. The symbiotic effect is that > conventional power/capital is also hobbled, as the physical is dependent on > the same flows of information across the distributed nets, disabling itself in > the process. It is for this reason that it cannot engage in this means of > retaliation, as it would be the digital suicide of the First World > nation-state. > > This is the brilliance of Wikileaks its use of infrastructure upon which > conventional power relies as site of anarchic resistance proves the > potentiality of infomatic power rendering conventional power impotent. In > this case, bits trump atoms in the milieu of the Net. As nuclear détente > created an ³aesthetics of uselessness² in the ridiculously high numbers of > times the world¹s nuclear stockpiles could destroy the Earth, this potential > reduction of the ³atomic/atomic² to aesthetic nullity arises as the Infostate > merely shuts down the control systems of the bunker. I nation of nuclear > gophers, lifeless in their burrows. > > Power is reconfiguring in light of informational vs. conventional power, and > this is why the rise of Wikileaks is significant, and why the geopolitical > panic-site it creates is a singular event. It suggests that decentralized > power renders hierarchical conventional power impotent, signaling the > beginning of the 21st Century paradigm. In The Coming Insurrection, the > French anarchist group, The Invisible Committee, posits a Communo-Anarchic > insurgency to overthrow the conventional nation-state. What would replace it > is the creation of a cybernetic proto-industrial model of networked communes > with high tech microproduction that would be established during and after a > mass armed insurrection. The insurrection, as CAE states, will not be with > guns, but with bytes. This is in line with Negri¹s assertion that capital in > the postmodern has shifted to information/cognitive capital, and that > conventional power merely marginalizes material (atomic) dissent. The real > theatre of engagement is the infosphere, and Wikileaks has realized > info-insurgency as real power first world/digital society has become > informatic. Anarchy in its most powerful form is now in the disruption and > release of data withheld by the nation-state. > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Simon Biggs [email protected] [email protected] Skype: simonbiggsuk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Research Professor edinburgh college of art http://www.eca.ac.uk/ Creative Interdisciplinary Research in CoLlaborative Environments http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice http://www.elmcip.net/ Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
