Have just received an email from Amazon asking to confirm if I want to close my account.
At the bottom of their email is the strapline: "Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company." It reminds me of Pret A Manger's hypocrisy "We shun the obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much ‘prepared’ and ‘fast’ food." (they're owned by McDonalds of course) dave On 12 December 2010 10:39, dave miller <[email protected]> wrote: > My pathetic response so far has been to close my account with Amazon. > I know it's nothing really, but I've had it over 10 years, so I assume > I'm a valued customer. I told them why I'm closing it. > > I hope that by withdrawing myself - and never being a customer again - > from those companies who have showed themselves to be political, or at > least not neutral, in the Wikileaks shutdown, I can exert some > economic pressure. If many people do the same then it should hurt them > hard - their valuation is based on numbers of registered members > > I'm assuming that these companies will respond more to economic > pressure than government pressure. I dont know how true this is. > > There's also - Paypal, visa and Mastercard, I want nothing to do with > them, they disgust me. > > dave > > > > On 11 December 2010 21:00, Simon Biggs <[email protected]> wrote: >> 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 >> > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
