nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two
Anonymous, or out-of-the-box activism (section 8, continued)
Viewed from out the media, the reaction of the church of Scientology, just
as that of all Anonymous' (many) casualties afterwards, was to portray the
members of the group as monomaniac computer fanatics and cyber-terrorists,
or in one word: (dangerous) hackers. It is not easy to define Anonymous in
terms of ideology, but one aspect cannot escape notice: what boils up from
all the Anonymous nodes is a very peculiar interpretation of freedom of
expression, which is adamantly refered to as 'non-negotiable' [71]. As can
be seen with the /OpBart/ operation, Anonymous often appears when
censorship appears too [72]. Anonymous' and Wikileaks' paths crossed again
between December 6 and 10, 2010 during /Operation Avange Assange (aka
Operation Payback/), when several DDoS attacks were mounted, many
successful, against a twelve-some banks and financial institutions which
had blocked monetary transfers in favor of Wikileaks [73x].
To uncover the enemy's misdeeds while keeping a mask on, defy opacity
through transparence while remaining anonymous, attack powerful actors
(churches, armies, governments, banks) by way of interventions pairing
technical competences with spectacular mass media engagement, and to adopt
a truly warrior attitude, whether in the form of open warfare or sabotage
actions - these are the features Anonymous and Wikileaks share in common.
But the similarities stop here. Unlike Wikileaks, one cannot identify
Anonymous with one really existing person because it is not a SPO [###*],
but always operates as a (fluctuating) collective. In theory, anybody can
be part of Anonymous, whereas passing on a top secret piece of information
to Wikileaks does not result in identification of the person doing it.
Anonymous in its turn, is made up of a great many individuals, networks,
and (separate) operations.
Can The Pirate Bay, Wikileaks and Anonymous be considered as different
manifestations of the same hacker spirit? It is clear that the 'Petri
dish' where Anonymous stems from is, at least partially, connected to the
high-level world of hackerdom, as can be seen the participation of various
Anonymous groups to a number of operations conducted by Lulzsec [74]. The
hacker motto /just for fun/ finds its expression in the Lulz spirit, which
is a transformation of the acronym LOL (/Laughing Out Loud/) used in
on-line chats. The //b//canal random/ of the picture showcase 4chan [75]
surely is part and parcel of those who defined themselves as the first
members of Anonymous, for the simple reason that the major part of its
contents were posted anonymously. a number of people, arrested during the
successive waves of repression that hit Anonymous, were users of 4chan. In
case you feel no affinity whatsoever nor any curiosity about mangas,
Japanese animus, video games, TV series, outlandish acronyms, black humor,
randy pre-porn, LOLcats (photoshopped feline pets, usually with some
'funny' legend), publicity jamming, etc., 4chan is definitely not for
you. You might think you've just been dumped in a cage filled with maniacs
with an annoying soft spot for horror and the surreal, a meeting point for
youngsters talking gobbledygook. And in case you are gifted with a
paranoid imagination your conclusion will be clear: dangerous
cyber-terrorists at work!
Mass media have focused on Anonymous hacking operations, but actually
there have been many simultaneous (types of) Anonymous interventions, on
different networks. There have also been public demonstrations of the more
traditional ('in real life') kind, where Anonymous activists would wear
Guy Fawkes masks. With the politicization of real life actions, Lulz
on-line attacks have become less numerous, and the group went more
political. This until groups appeared within Anonymous which openly called
themselves anarchists, the A(A)A for Anon Anarchist Action, for instance.
But what kind of anarchism are we talking about here? Is it the
anarcho-capitalist variety, bent on the total triumph of the free market,
and of all-out privatization facilitated by a liberating technology, or is
it anarchy understood as an anti-authoritarian practice and the struggle
for a society made up of 'free and equals', where competition takes a step
back in favor of mutual help and solidarity? For sure, there are members
of Anonymous who are active within (genuinely) anarchist organizations,
but there are among them also who espouse liberal (capitalist) or even
libertarian tendencies. The fact that journalists hailed 4chan as the
Web's most anarchist site should raise some doubt - and more questions.
Moot's (young New Yorker Christopher Poole's nick) positions provide a
good benchmark for evaluation. Poole has declared himself in favor of
total opacity, and absolute anonymity on-line, which gives to each and
everyone the opportunity to choose for 'bad behavior' without offending,
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
With this installment, we reach the end of the second part of Ippolita
Collective's In the Facebook Aquarium. The third part ('The freedoms of
the Net') is the last one, and is only very marginally shorter than the
first and second parts.
I propose to make the next installments longer (and hence less frequent)
to reduce the stress to nettimers, who, I am told, tend to get a bit lost
and forget the gist of the argument due to its segmentation. The rapid
fire of the preceding installments had also a bit to do with my desire to
'make some good progress' in moving this translation forward, so I ask for
your forbearance.
Cheers from p+2D!, hoping you enjoy!
--
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two
Anonymous, or out-of-the-box activism (section 8, conluded)
Sociality and politics work in the same way: on-line practice is narrowly
connected with real life practice, and cross-fertilization occurs all the
time. Anonymous' initiatives made a big splash in the media, which in its
turn focused the attention of the police on the group, something they
would have gladly done without. During the Occupy Wall Street
demonstrations, which were inspired by the 'Indignados' movement in Spain
occupying central squares all over the country, Anonymous brought in its
technical expertise. Twitter and Facebook apps were created on the spot to
improve communications between protesters. On many occasion, transparency,
so disparaged, became an effective weapon against the police, e.g. to
identify those law-and-order personel manhandling protesters. Yet the same
face identification technology was repeatedly used against the
demonstrators themselves [77].
As we already wrote speaking of Wikileaks, denouncement works only within
a democratic context and where a certain amount of liberties and citizen
rights still obtain, where civil disobedience is deemed acceptable as a
value, and where state-sponsored repression rarely goes at the cost of
people's lives. In all those cases, appeals, claims, and criticism have
much more bite when the actions show creativity, like Anonymous' ones.
However, it is in the build-up phase that the inherent weakness of mass
movements shows up, yet Anonymous unambiguously claims to be a mass
movement by profiling itself as a 'legion' that nothing can stop. To shout
out /Que se vajan todos!/ (let them all f^%$# of!) as the Argentinian
did in 2001, is a good equivalence of digital sabotage methods, but it is
still a petition of sorts to the authorities. It amounts to a demand to
the powers that they go a bit easy, a demand to the banks that they stop
behaving like . . . banks, to governments that should stop making war and
to soldiers, that they stop killing. All this is legitimate, it is even
fair and right, but it is also a bit inadequate also, when it comes to the
concrete reality of (these) propositions. It is even counter-productive,
since the request for change is addressed to the very people who are
responsible for repression, and in fact, it (only) bolsters the legitimacy
of their authority in the process. So it is precisely in the build-up
phase that one should be acutely aware and bring about a radical shift in
perspective. The macroscopic lens [approach] of the opposition movement
against a corrupt and oppressive power, coming up with alternatives in the
name of all is doomed from the start, because it espouses the
confrontational logic, which is the hallmark of hegemonic discourses.
Those Anonymous organizers who do not share Wikileaks' /nerd suprematist/
style, once they had all their fun at lampooning banks, churches,
corporates, and governments, should really start concentrating on the
constructive aspects of their technological prowess [78]. If not, they
will end up co-opted to-morrow by the very powers they so much enjoy
ridiculing to-day.
Anonymous' anomaly resides precisely in the fact that its activists hold a
great power: the power of technology. They know the sinuosities of the
digital networks and they know how to make their existence work to their
advantage. They can choose to use this knowledge-power to reinforce the
network of already existing organizations. Governments are organizations
desirous to expand the possibilities to exercise control, sometime with
the benevolent purpose to help the weaker members of society: in which
case they surely need such competences. Big companies (on the other hand),
and especially the major companies providing on-line sociality services
(i.e. the big social networks), are in desperate need of strengthening
their organizations' networks, that is to make them more secure, which
means to close them of to undesirable elements. But other modalities (of
action) are also possible, for instance investing in capacity-building
among budding networks which do not have a stake to defend, or interests
to protect, or copyrighted material, or patents and trademarks, in one
word, stuff to safeguard
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two The Wikileaks Fracas: senseless challenge - or sensible defiance? (continued) Back to the Wikileaks Affair. The publication on July 25th 2010, in five major newspapers (/The New York Times/, /The Guradian/, /Der Spiegel/, /Le Monde/, /El Pais/) documents on the Afghan War (about murders on civilians, special 'killer' units against Talibans, double dealings by Pakistan, etc.) displays the signs of a confused and contradictory strategy. But at the same time, it also betrays a candid and wholesale espousal of (the mode of) sensationalist hyperbole which is the hallmark of the spectacle society. Dispatches followed upon each other for some months till the end of September 2010, when Wikileaks' German spokesperson, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, left the organization - or was kicked out - due to a personal dispute with Julian Assange [60]. And the latter is now subject to a bench warrant on a double complaint of sexual misdemeanor in Sweden, and which was converted, as per the Schengen agreements, in an European arrest warrant in November 2010. [##]. These allegations (of sexual misconduct) do not shed a very favorable light on the already controversial figure of Julian Assange, but it is important to note that the whole fuss took place a frenzied media spectacle. By delving a little deeper into the matter, one can bring the more complex aspects of the issue to the fore. Indeed, according to Swedish law, consensual, but unprotected sex may afterwards be reformulated as sexual assault if one of the parties asks for a test regarding sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and the other party refuses. Since Julian Assange has up to now declined to submit to such a medical checkup, the accusation has been upheld. But to indulge in sexual violence, and to refuse to submit to a blood test are two different (kinds of) offenses [61]. On December 7, 2010, Julian Assange turned himself over to the London Police. That same day, under pressure of the US Government, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, Paypal and Western Union blocked all money transfers to Wikileaks, and froze its accounts. Julian Assange remained in prison till December 16. One year later (after a protracted court case, all the way up to the Supreme Court of the UK -transl) Great Britain assented to the extradition request by Sweden, which still wanted to prosecute Julian Assange for sexual offenses. In the meanwhile, in the United States, a good many conservative politicians pointed to Assange as an enemy that must be combatted, Sarah Palin wished him dead, and others asked for a reward, dead or alive. Even among the more progressive politicians the view prevailed that he is a dangerous terrorist. Maybe the allegations of sexual assault have been fabricated, but what is for sure, is that Assange has been widely described as an authoritarian, paranoid and inflexible personality, entirely unwilling to bear with the irritations that go with human relationships, being totally engaged in his own, personal crusade. So here we have yet again a fanatic, and then one of the more obsessed, representative of /nerd supremacy/. In case you need more convincing, just read his - unauthorized - autobiography, which came out in November 2011 [62]. Having spend the advance money on his legal costs, Assange subsequently tried, but failed to break up the contract with his editor. One more thing worth noticing in the Wikileaks affair is what Julian Assange had to say in an interview with /Forbes Magazine/ in November 2010. He (stated that he) does not consider himself an enemy of the United States and of capitalism in general, quite the contrary. His remarks on the issue could not have been clearer: Wikileaks disclosures are meant to improve markets' information, since perfect markets demand completely truthful information. This way, people are free to decide on which product to focus. And he went on to declare his libertarian faith: Its not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because Ive learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned Im a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free. WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical. [63] Wikileaks' war has caused collateral damages, and made at least one clear victim: the young American soldier and IT specialist Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, who was accused of downloading tens of thousands of secret documents and to have passed them on to Wikileaks while he was serving as computer intelligence analyst in Iraq. From November 2010 Bradley - then - Manning was first detained for 10 months in distinctively inhuman conditions in Quantico (Virginia) military prison before being transferred to Fort Lavenworth (Kansas). Activists, lawyers, and noted personalities in
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two . . . . . . . . . . NB. Three corrections made to previous installment(s): influent influential also, everywhere: monicker moniker Pirate Partiet documentation: from Wikisource, not Wikipedia (note 56). . . . . . . . . . . The Wikileaks Fracas: senseless challenge - or sensible defiance? (section #7) Just as with The Pirate Bay, the Wikileaks affair is still in the unfolding stage. And, in so far as we have to do with a spectacle here, a (spectacular indeed) turn of events is always on the cards. Yet, next to everything that has been written about Wikileaks displays a disturbing lack of critical analysis. One hardly finds anything beyond mundane standpoints of the 'Like/ Don't Like' variety. Left-wing groups, especially in Europe, generally take Wikileaks for a champion of the oppressed daring to go against corrupt governments. The logic here is once more borrowed from the battlefield: my enemy's foes are my allies. Seen from the viewpoint of governments, or of those taking a patriotic and/or conservative position, Wikileaks is perceived as a project threatening the international diplomatic intercourse. It endangers the lives of soldiers of 'the forces of good' engaged in peace keeping operations / the war against terrorism and 'the forces of evil', and also saps the reputation of the institutions of constitutional government. We, every thing else notwithstanding, do consider Wikileaks - granted, in an ambiguous fashion - to be part and parcel of the libertarian galaxy. So let's go quickly through the facts (as known): Wikileaks, the site, started in 2006, publishes restricted, confidential, secret (official) documents. Till 2010 it used the same interface as Wikipedia [i.e. a Wiki -transl] and claims itself to be a spot where dangerous documents may be dropped in an anonymous fashion. The site itself then makes such documents public, after a checking process. In the beginning of Wikileaks, dropping documents on the site was neither risk-less nor very anonymous, and it was in a later phase only that the Wikileaks team rigged itself with relatively secure systems. The site won acclaims from the international press in 2007, by which time Julian Assange proclaimed himself editor-in-chief. Assange, born 1971, is an Australian hacker, and his technical competence is outstanding; many of his contribution to a range of (free software) coding projects are highly original [58]. He was condemned in Australia for what federal institutions deemed to be crimes (but his prison sentence was commuted in a fine). Julian Assange made the front-page of newspapers worldwide in November 2010 and thereafter, when Wikileaks published a throve of secret (but not top-secret) diplomatic documents (/'cablegate'/), exposing misdeeds of governments, but principally those of the US Government. It is not so much the content of documents published on Wikileaks that is problematic. It is preferable that news circulates, rather than be censored. But both aims and methods of Wikileaks come dangerously close to those of Facebook. The idea is to achieve the radical transparency project, (but now) at the level of governments: expose the wrongs of big, bad governments, and be on the lookout for the sins of the powerful just like we do with our 'friends'. Millions of secret documents are then dished out to the general public, provoking a phenomenon of mass voyeurism which in its turn begets mass indifference. We are confronted with shocking, shocking revelations: wars turn out to be not intended to export democracy, but instead to get a stranglehold on the sources of oil, uranium, and to secure access to precious earth resources, all this with world domination as ultimate aim. Truly shocking, however, may rather be the realization that public opinion has become accustomed to believe without further ado such mendacious slogans as the war for freedom against the axis of evil. Julian Assange is the public face of the white knight hackers, profiling themselves as the guardian priests of a liberating technology, and who are willing to defy the system even at the cost of their own freedom. Of course, some contradictions remain, but (the most important is that) it is all for our best will. The most obvious contradictions is that this battle for transparency demands a semi-secret, un-transparant organization, run by an occult hierarchy with equally occult funding, and with a single public leader, a charismatic figurehead able to attract the attention of television cameras and prepared to engage in broadcasted duels with the planet's presidents and other big leaders, all this in prime time media warfare. There is no mediation possible, no work to be done, no commitment to be shown. There is one single and only truth, the one that speaks from the documents made available to us by Wikileaks' supreme, liberating technology. Yet, as we have shown in the case of Big Data, having a massive
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two . . . . . . . . . . NB. Three corrections made to previous installment(s): influent influential also, everywhere: monicker moniker Pirate Partiet documentation: from Wikisource, not Wikipedia (note 56). . . . . . . . . . . The Wikileaks Fracas: senseless challenge - or sensible defiance? (section #7) Just as with The Pirate Bay, the Wikileaks affair is still in the unfolding stage. And, in so far as we have to do with a spectacle here, a (spectacular indeed) turn of events is always on the cards. Yet, next to everything that has been written about Wikileaks displays a disturbing lack of critical analysis. One hardly finds anything beyond mundane standpoints of the 'Like/ Don't Like' variety. Left-wing groups, especially in Europe, generally take Wikileaks for a champion of the oppressed daring to go against corrupt governments. The logic here is once more borrowed from the battlefield: my enemy's foes are my allies. Seen from the viewpoint of governments, or of those taking a patriotic and/or conservative position, Wikileaks is perceived as a project threatening the international diplomatic intercourse. It endangers the lives of soldiers of 'the forces of good' engaged in peace keeping operations / the war against terrorism and 'the forces of evil', and also saps the reputation of the institutions of constitutional government. We, every thing else notwithstanding, do consider Wikileaks - granted, in an ambiguous fashion - to be part and parcel of the libertarian galaxy. So let's go quickly through the facts (as known): Wikileaks, the site, started in 2006, publishes restricted, confidential, secret (official) documents. Till 2010 it used the same interface as Wikipedia [i.e. a Wiki -transl] and claims itself to be a spot where dangerous documents may be dropped in an anonymous fashion. The site itself then makes such documents public, after a checking process. In the beginning of Wikileaks, dropping documents on the site was neither risk-less nor very anonymous, and it was in a later phase only that the Wikileaks team rigged itself with relatively secure systems. The site won acclaims from the international press in 2007, by which time Julian Assange proclaimed himself editor-in-chief. Assange, born 1971, is an Australian hacker, and his technical competence is outstanding; many of his contribution to a range of (free software) coding projects are highly original [58]. He was condemned in Australia for what federal institutions deemed to be crimes (but his prison sentence was commuted in a fine). Julian Assange made the front-page of newspapers worldwide in November 2010 and thereafter, when Wikileaks published a throve of secret (but not top-secret) diplomatic documents (/'cablegate'/), exposing misdeeds of governments, but principally those of the US Government. It is not so much the content of documents published on Wikileaks that is problematic. It is preferable that news circulates, rather than be censored. But both aims and methods of Wikileaks come dangerously close to those of Facebook. The idea is to achieve the radical transparency project, (but now) at the level of governments: expose the wrongs of big, bad governments, and be on the lookout for the sins of the powerful just like we do with our 'friends'. Millions of secret documents are then dished out to the general public, provoking a phenomenon of mass voyeurism which in its turn begets mass indifference. We are confronted with shocking, shocking revelations: wars turn out to be not intended to export democracy, but instead to get a stranglehold on the sources of oil, uranium, and to secure access to precious earth resources, all this with world domination as ultimate aim. Truly shocking, however, may rather be the realization that public opinion has become accustomed to believe without further ado such mendacious slogans as the war for freedom against the axis of evil. Julian Assange is the public face of the white knight hackers, profiling themselves as the guardian priests of a liberating technology, and who are willing to defy the system even at the cost of their own freedom. Of course, some contradictions remain, but (the most important is that) it is all for our best will. The most obvious contradictions is that this battle for transparency demands a semi-secret, un-transparant organization, run by an occult hierarchy with equally occult funding, and with a single public leader, a charismatic figurehead able to attract the attention of television cameras and prepared to engage in broadcasted duels with the planet's presidents and other big leaders, all this in prime time media warfare. There is no mediation possible, no work to be done, no commitment to be shown. There is one single and only truth, the one that speaks from the documents made available to us by Wikileaks' supreme, liberating technology. Yet, as we have shown in the case of Big Data, having a massive
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #5 (concluded)
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two The Hacker Spirit and the disease of Anarcho-Capitalism: long time buddies? (concluded) (from previous installment: In the 17th and up to the beginning of the 18th century, pirates in the New World had a more adventurous, and also more free and egalitarian life than the sailors embarked on Spanish, English, French or Dutch ships [44].) --- Later they often sold their liberty under duress, coerced by institutional imperialism, and enlisted under the flag of various European powers, whose ships they previously used to pillage. 'Letters of Marque' transformed pirates into privateers, or with other words, into mercenaries. In the same fashion, hackers at the beginning of the 21st century were confronted with joint attacks by institutional colonizers and often opted to co-operate with them. From being free explorers they became proficient mercenaries in the employ of companies and governments who are out to establish a new order of things in the digital worlds [45]. The 'global war' frame of mind lampooned in /War Games/ (the film) has unfortunately materialised in the realm of digital sociality. News reach us everyday about malevolent hackers engaged on this or that front, against - or on the side of - white, black, yellow, or red terrorists, all with vague, unintelligible or downright absurd demands, and who are battling or collaborating with intelligence services, and shady, conspiring, manipulative, and occult powers or outfits. The one time impish and spiritual scenarios out of the hacker lore (gnosis), which started with friendly /Illuminati/ and Voodoo goddesses of cyberspace have become concrete and turned extremely ugly. Cyber-war is by now an everyday concept: Internet has turned into a (massive) resource, but also into a threat to the established order [46]. The enormous quantities and the computing power of PCs and on-line servers can be used to manage flows of malignant data in order to extract private informations, or to carry out attacks, as with the armies of /zombie/computers remote-controlled by other computers (/botnet/), e.g. by those owned by government agencies, or to disconnect network(s). Viruses are created to carry out attacks on enemy targets, to slow down or disable military research programs. Today's wars like the one in Afghanistan (in defense of democracy), are fought at a distance with drones, remote controlled from bases thousands of kilometers away, which fire missiles on targets identified by yet other drones. The modus operandi is exactly the same as that of video-games, only with all to real deadly effects. Are hackers a menace in such an apocalyptic scenario? Are they buccaneers or privateers? Are they dangerous subversives combatting the established order, or are they the hired hands of strong powers with libertarian tendencies? Let us now take a trip to the far North (of Europe), to the land of Sweden, the locale where we find a number of elements in the patchwork of hacking, piracy, and libertarianism: the Pirate Bay site, the /Pirat Partiet/ and ... Wikileaks. (to be continued) Next time: section 6: Pirate parties, or technology in politics -- (note belonging to previous installment) [44] Still seen today as heroes in popular imagination, pirates have embodied a very specific world-view, whose values were based on liberty and equality. They were libertarians in the sense of an socialist international /avant la lettre/ This thesis is supported by Marcus Rediker's research, with a lot of historic examples and pictures. Marcus Rediker, /Villains of All Nations, Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age/ London, Verso 2004 Synopsis: http://www.marcusrediker.com/books/villains/Synopsis_of_Villains.htm Excerpts on Googlebooks: http://bit.ly/1rjEyVP --- [45] Exemplary in this respect is the 'Tiger Team' case. This was the name of a group of /security hackers/ working for Telecom Italia - and for the Italian secret services. The TT team was involved in tampering with the (electronic) electoral process and also in selling confidential informations to French, Israeli, and American secret services. For details see the article (in Italian) by investigative journalists Beppe Cremignani and Enrico Deaglio: 'gli Imbroglioni' /Diario/, special issue with film (2007): http://forum.tntvillage.scambioetico.org/?showtopic=218923 Short excerpt of the film on Youtube - with a long description: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U25aWYjR8U8 One of the darkest character in this murky story is Fabio Ghioni, a security - and paranoia - expert, and also essayist and novelist in the /fantasy/ genre. As instructor of dark hat hackers for various grizzly governmental 'agencies' he also promotes the E.N.O.C. program (for Evolution and New Order Civilization) [I couldn't find anything in English, but here's a short, very 'new edge' clip on YT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHki7N0St6M - transl.] Maybe this is simply a crude
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #5 (continued)
We resume our feuilleton after some intermission due to a stay in Calafou where I attended Backbone409, a very nice get-together of 'independent servers' (http://backbone409.calafou.org/index.en.html - report eagerly awaited). There I had a near-hallucinating experience encountering copies of the Bitcoin Magazine, a very glossy affair celebrating the irresistible rise and imminent world-domination of the Blockchain made ... Currency (and then soon everything else, I guess). http://bitcoinmagazine.com/ Read and convert! (I didn't) Enjoy anyway! Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two The Hacker Spirit and the disease of Anarcho-Capitalism: long time buddies? (continued) /Nerd supremacy/ has ancient roots. In a society that is run by machines, it is quite logical to assume that those who master the machines also command society. Though the ins and outs are not that clearly established, it is at least arguable that a certain type of relationships definitely have their impact on (the way) a great deal of the instruments we are making daily use of and which shape, as intermediaries, the way we interact with each other (are operated/developed). Here again, it makes no sense to seek (to establish) the absolute truth, nor to figure out what is a 'real' hacker. In all probability, after having gone through thousands of cases and personal stories, and analysed an untold amount of data, we would be left with such a diversity that we wouldn't be able to come to a valid interpretation. There is no doubt we could marshall enough 'evidence' in case our aim was to prove that hackers are dangerous criminals, but then we could just as easily come up with 'proof' that hackers are actually exemplary citizens, fearlessly out to do battle against multinationals, banks, and authoritarian governments and work for a better world. Therefore, let us rather observe the following: among the most influential and powerful individuals in the world of to-day, whether it is in the 'real' economy or in the realm of the imaginary, we find a lot of hackers, ex-hackers and aspiring-to-be-hackers. So in what measure are Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder, and Steve Jobs, the uhr-boss of Apple, hackers? Opinions may differ, but nobody would cast doubt on the fact that they both moved around in the cultural hot-house of early information technology enthusiasts that was the hallmark of Silicon Valley in the 1970s. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google at Stanford University, and moved then - true to classic /geek/ tradition - into a garage to house the machines running their fledgling search engine. They might be hackers with outspoken commercial ambitions, unlike Steve Wozniak - Apple's other Steve - but it can not be denied that they possess solid IT competences. As can be seen in the feature film /The Social Network/, Mark Zuckerberg is very much at ease with machines, so much so that he had devised a computer-assisted chick-dating [#***] system - a contrivance we now know as FaceBook. Julian Assange, Wikileak's somewhat petulant founder, has a past as Australian /security hacker/ before he upset half the planet's governments by publishing secret diplomatic cables. Linus Torvalds, Linux operating System's creator, is typical of those many hackers who spend the best part of their time trying to write better code than everybody else's. Possibly less well-known to the public at large, Richard Stallman, the founder of the /Free Software Federation/ (FSF) [34] is may be the truest example of the hardcore hacker following his (her) own ideals of freedom brooking no compromise - on nothing and with no-one. Hence, it is very important to understand which values underlie what has been called 'the hacker spirit' or even 'the hacker ethic'. This because these values tend to have a deep influence on the collective, technological imaginary, and on on-line sociality, and from there, on the society in which we live as a whole. We must look beyond hagiographic reconstructions of a mythical past peopled by weird, thin and bespectacled geniuses ruling over machines and the Internet, true heroes of a nascent digital revolution, and also gifted with a convoluted and absurdistic sense of humor, driven by love for knowledge in its purest form and a very peculiar and personal interpretation of what 'fun' means [35]. Human actions are never pure, nor can they be second-guessed in advance, following some automated pattern. Or at least: not yet. Simplistic trivialisation of assumed differences, as between good and bad, /'white hats'/ vs. /'black hats'/ hackers, or between hackers who have sold out to governments or multinationals vs. those who remain 'independent' are not helpful either and only serve to foster opposite extremism. The irreducible differences between individual histories are, as always, a starting point for observations; but the question is - do these differences also betray similarities? Is there
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part Two The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics Social networks as seen through the anarcho-capitalist lens - or the management of sociality through Big Data. (section 4, continued) Profiling marks the pledge for automatic, instant freedom: contextualised ads, research into the users' sentiments so that everyone gets a personalised, 'bespoken' ad, so as to promptly realize a click-thru sale, followed by the disposal of the purchase as soon as possible in order to ... order a new one. We, the users, are in this all 'suspects' of sorts, whose most intimate details must be known so as to satisfy our compulsive craving for ever new, yet instantly obsolete objects. The fake issue of confidentiality is also regularly being bandied about, but the issue itself seems only to arise for real once confidentiality has been breached. This usually goes together with shocked, shocked rants about the shameful and pushy immorality of a system that divides people into categories. And high-octane paranoid (conspiracy) theories are rife in the era of Big Data. But the real, much more concrete, and also much more concerning issue is about the individuals themselves, not the amorphous mass we are all part of. On the one hand, people want to be profiled, and on the other, whatever we do in order to avoid profiling, our digital footprint sticks to us like glue: no way we can opt out once enlisted in the army of the data-feeding-data-suppliers, aka /prosumers/ (all at once producers and consumers). For some time already, a massive debate has been raging about the gross abuse of the /data mining/ that takes place to make profiling possible [31]. New lines of digital discrimination are being created, related to the degree of access: which researchers, which institutions, which groups have actually both the means and the opportunity to put these data to use? What are the rules, what are the limits - and: who decides? Here is not the place to go into all these issues in detail [32]. Let's stick to our main point. This is not about going against progress (and its promise of a brilliant future), nor to escape into ludism, or into its exact opposite: crypto(graphy). To hide serves no purpose, neither does the refusal to make concessions to the present (order of things). What should be done is to get a clear understanding of Big Data and profiling, in so far as they are part and parcel of concrete strategies to arrive at a society shaped by anarcho-capitalism, the ideology according to which everyone is 'free' to ransack everybody else. We do not dig this 'utopia', for sure. We rather would call it a dystopia of control and auto(self)-control. (Yet) We are, bit by bit, and very swiftly nonetheless, going from a world endowed with signification, rich as it is with relationships we are developing for our own benefit, to one that finds significance only through relationships (pre-)determined by machines. It looks like as if we no longer need neither theories nor practices that are grounded in personal belief and validated by personal experience. The status of knowledge is thereby transformed, now that data are supposed to speak for themselves. Knowledge suddenly becomes self-evident and impose itself as a certainty. Statistical correlations determine existing links between things and direct relationships between people. We do no longer shape a discourse: the data have taken over the floor. This is the pipe dream of a society ruled by data, where the role of the human subject has been blanked out to all practical purposes. All the human remnant needs to do is to obediently accept to be 'freed' (of everything), including from the possibility to choose and to desire. Give us ever more powerful machines, hand over all your data, be transparent with the machines, and we will be able to foretell the (radiant) future - the future of the market, of course. We fly above the world, we observe it from the outside, we see oceans of data, expanding at a vertiginous rate, only to be swamped by tsunamis of social crazes, as sudden as fleeting, occupying all available space before making room for the next upstart. Mass sentiment can be analyzed, and the aggregate opinion is easy to distill by way of /sentiment analysis/ and /opinion mining/ [33]. All this while we, as enthusiast and willing victims, love to be 'free' consumers: generalised, global recording is the price to be paid if we want to be truly 'free' to choose. The algorithm will tell us what we really want: it already advises us on which book to buy on Amazon.com, it edits our searches on Google, it suggests us which just-out film we should see, and it tells us which music best suits our taste. It is an algorithm which points out our potential friends on Google+ and on LinkedIn, and also those subscribers we might want to follow on Twitter. Algorithms are paying attention
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Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part Two
The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s),
Activism and Institutional Politics
Social networks as seen through the anarcho-capitalist lens - or the
management of sociality through Big Data. (section 4, continued)
(The story and the stratification of this web of relationships that we
call society forms a kind of consensual imagination which we can access
thanks to the symbolic and linguistic functions of the neocortex and the
peridium (?)) [rerun from previous installment]
Societies of animals with only a small frontal cortex are less
complex than human societies and produce practically no artefacts.
Neuro-scientific research also shows that when the functionalities of a
person's frontal cortex are compromised, sHe loses the specifically
human characteristic of empathy. Such a person will no longer be able
to conceive what someone else experiences while they share the same
space. Having seen their reflexive capacity either damaged or even,
destroyed, they are no longer able to conceive themselves as
individuals belonging at the same time to various social groupings
(like family, sporting club, network of friends, social class,
workplace or project team, local community, nation, etc. etc.), neither
are they longer able to interact purposefully with all of them. The
meaning usually assigned to things and to the world becomes undefined,
everything is muddled, fluid, interchangeable and equally valid.
Nothing makes sense any longer, in a distinct, articulated and
communicable way.
To understand the world of which we are part means to position ourselves,
in space and time, in an environment which transcends our finiteness as
individuals, while still re-placing this environment through an imaginary
creation endowed with signification. The very prospect of imagining and
planning a future with the help of previous experience, and hence to
understand what is around us, becomes moot at the moment that we are no
longer able to go through and modify in a significant way (that is with an
idea that has stricken us, or a shared emotion that moves us), the
networks of which we are part. Then, even by way of imagination, this has
become impossible. And paradoxically, when we are confronted with too many
data, we become unable to make sense of them. The sheer mass of data and
the speed at which information hits us makes analysis either garbled, or
potentially extends the time necessary towards infinity. Such an analysis
hence becomes pointless, and impossible on the long term - yet two
concepts may render a further exploration feasible: Big Data and
profiling. Both are thoroughly interlinked.
At the beginning of the 21st century, one gigabit (GB, one billion bits,
i.e. one billion typographic signs) was considered to represent quite an
amount of data. Ten years later and the Internet contains a hardly
imaginable amount of data, something like five trillion - and counting:
the numbers are bound to double every year [29]. Two examples so as to
grasp this order of magnitude: a high-definition feature film needs a
number of GBs; a personal computer contains more data than an entire
family would have been able to produce over several generations. There are
billions of site-pages on the Internet, but there exists also a number of
non-Internet-linked networks on top of that, and they are probably larger
than anything one can imagine, or even what a human brain can fathom [30].
We have entered the era of Big Data, and we are seeing only the beginning.
In everyday life also, even when one is not directly involved in the use
of all kinds of devices generating data, there are countless occasions to
notice that the gathering, stocking and analyzing human activities-related
data have multiplied manifold over time. Details are ever more numerous,
the resolution is ever more fine-grained. Every single day, an
extraordinary amount of SMSs, mails, calls, posts, pics, videos and chats,
together with an innumerable amount of various documents are produced.
There is no way we could memorize even a fraction of all data being send
and exchanged, including those travelling over WiFi and other mobile tools
that register our every single move in space. Search engines register
meanwhile all our web-requests (bwo. /logs/, cookies, LSO - local shared
objects). Automatic payment systems in toll booths, supermarkets, ATMs
etc, keep track of all our purchases. /Social networking/ platforms
memorize all our connections with friends, colleagues, co-workers, loved
ones, etc. Register, stock, archive,and analyze all and everything, and
ever more of it, and faster and faster: mass and speed are still being
viewed as something positive.
However, it is not so much the size of all these data that counts -
inordinate as it may be - but their inter-relationship, and the ever
greater opportunity to access and make use of them from out a smartphone,
a
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Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium, Part Two The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics Section 3: Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible rise of anarcho-capitalism.) (Thiel) often displays his profound disappointment in Silly Valley's entrepreneurs, far too much concerned about profits, and unable to do anything to save the world. For Thiel, capitalism is a truly revolutionary tool that, thanks to technology, will liberate the human species (if only the best of it). But if capitalism has already triumphed, what then remains to be saved?) [rerun from previous installment] Simple: invent a better capitalism! At the moment, it's all talk about 'green capitalism' - everything must be 'green', or at least 'clean'. Okay, we all know that 'green capitalism' is a scam with has as sole purpose maintaining current consumption and pollution levels while pursuing increasingly unsustainable growth. But official environmentalism - which has very little to do with a real protection of the environment - is probably preferable to upfront contempt towards the ecosystem. When it comes to predatory capitalism, the former Paypal Mafia boss' ideas are crystal clear: the anarcho-capitalist revolution requires faithful, enthusiastic consumers on one hand, and priests, bishops, and popes with deep pockets on the other. And the merchandise must be allowed to circulate between the two at top speed, without friction, and always be in stock. Limits to the availability of natural resources cannot be tolerated within a win-win free market scenario. In which case a transfer to the cyberspaces might be a better option than to try to manage all the material problems ensuing from a frenzied form of development (in the real world). At which stage a third keyword pops up, besides 'speed' and 'abundance': wastage! Thiel ferociously opposes any form of effort at energy efficiency - and that is not fortuitous. According to him, no venture capitalist worth his (her?) salt should invest in projects closely or remotely associated with 'clean' technologies - an euphemism that has supplanted 'appropriate' and 'sustainable' in official discourse [25]. Wastage, in his turbo-capitalist vision, means nothing less than to make a stand against all talks about (natural) limits - the fig leaf of impotence. Wastage is also connected to the (need for) clear and defined, /owned/ identities - and to the deep angst for corporality and physical contact. This represents the exact opposite to a conscientious, autonomous, and self-managed use of technology, meant to satisfy individual and collective needs and desires. The throw away attitude as a source of physical and psychical waste is not only a consequence of 'abundance capitalism'; it is also a structural requirement of the paradigm of unlimited growth and of the unbounded economic expansion of the anarcho-capitalist individual's liberty to act. Wastage is all-pervasive within the 'world domination' delirium of the big technological companies, as can be seen in the never ending string of functionalities changes and new applications development. Wastage slots seamlessly into a long-term process of distancing from and denial of the physical body, about which we wrote in the first part of the book. We will elaborate more on this later on. So, yes, it is quite easy to analyze the way Facebook operates, yet nonetheless one sees a number of culture-related issues appear in the background, and they require closure as well. Which is then an uphill task, as a close monitoring of Peter Thiel's multifarious activities is wellnigh 'mission impossible'. Also the message he conveys through the work of his foundation may be off-putting - just as is the bulk of the anarcho-capitalist discourse. We read in it that the Thiel foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. [26]. Projects receiving the foundation's funding are about 'frontier technologies', 'anti-violence', freedom. Let's (therefore) ask the question once again: what sort of freedom?. What type of society are anarcho-capitalist supporting with their funds? Social networks as seen through the anarcho-capitalist lens - or the management of sociality through Big Data. (section 4) (Strange as it may sound,) Social networks predate the Internet. Living beings in general, human beings in particular need relationships among each other. Few things indeed are worse than loneliness. Even violent criminals, hardened by the prisons' inhuman conditions of detention, shudder at the prospect of solitary confinement. Former POWs (prisoners of war) have testified that they'd rather be tortured than put in solitary lock-up, since at least there remained a bond of sorts - with their torturer. (Scientific) Experiments conducted on sensory deprivation have showed that a
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Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #3 (continued) (Section #3) Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible rise of anarcho-capitalism. (...) It is therefore appropriate to provide information on these initiatives - actually each of them would warrant an enquiry of its own. The Singularity Theory is futurologist Ray Kurzweil's baby and is supported big time by Californian transhumanist movements, but also by scientists like Marvin Minsky, one of the proponents of 'strong AI' (artificial intelligence). Discussing transhumanism might sound weird to anyone not privy to technophile Californian sects - but it is equally out to lunch for the largest majority of human beings whose prime day to day concern is survival, as they battle to obtain drinkable water and enough to eat, and are not exactly enthralled about issues of technological immortality. And although, generally speaking, the enthusiasm for post-human dystopias is fortunately rather limited in Europe, few voices are raised against the prevailing technomania. There are not a many people who question their own dependance on all kinds of technologies, be it their car or their mobile phone. In this regard, the absence, in the mainstream political discourse, whether in Europe or anywhere else, of any questioning of the myth of ever more efficient technology-based unlimited economic growth - alsothe mainstay of post-humanist extremism - is very striking indeed. To sum up, Facebook is part and parcel of a set-up manipulated by the most powerful anarcho-capitalist businessperson in the world. Radical transparency is one of the component of a vast political project that aims at controlling human relations through surveillance technologies. (According to this creed) An information war is at hand, autarchic closed communities are planned in the middle of the ocean, kitted out with the ultimate in hi-tech, while research goes on technological immortality. All this has been known for long time. Yet all we hear is the deafening silence of the established media, of users, of activists, and (in general) of all people who (should) have enough common sense to be concerned about their independence and autonomy. And for the remainder, most of the political positions espoused by Thiel are fascinating, radical, and disturbing at the same time. The emerging ideology is one of frantic, unbridled individualism buffed up by a capitalism that is both techno-ecstatic and redeeming. Overtly criticising the elitist curriculum imparted by American universities, apparently not yet private enough to his taste, Thiel started in September 2010 a support program for selected, aspiring under 20s who are willing to start their own company without going through formal academic education. The '20 under 20 Thiel fellowship program' [#**] has thus funded twenty 'young promising individuals', who will receive one lakh Us Dollars each for two years. Free enterprise and meritocracy are the keywords here. Seen with Thiel's eyes it is not the Internet which created a social bubble without depth; it is the American education system which has become unable to create value with true innovation. Hence only total privatisation will be able to open the gates of a radiant technological future [23]. In a rather more theoretical text, very tellingly titled The End of the Future [24], Thiel waxes eloquent about the stagnation we are living in and fingers the fact that there is hardly any investment in leading edge technology while nobody is prepared to bank on future projects. He sees in that the root cause of today's social, cultural, and economic deadlock. The United States, traditional defenders of runaway innovation, and always on the look-out for /The Next Big Thing/, have shifted into standstill mode. And since the USA are the world's leader, you can expect the rest to follow suit into recession. Thiel sees the crisis of the West in terms of the vanishing Frontier, the frontier that needed to be reached, and then gone beyond, as essential prop of the American Dream. He often displays his profound disappointment in Silly Valley's entrepreneurs, far too much concerned about profits, and unable to do anything to save the world. For Thiel, capitalism is a truly revolutionary tool that, thanks to technology, will liberate the human species (if only the best of it). But if capitalism has already triumphed, what then remains to be saved? Answer next time! (to be continued) .. [#**] http://www.thielfellowship.org/ motto (from Mark Twain): I have never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education [23] http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/ (Famous first words: Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you. -transl) [24] http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278758/end-future-peter-thiel (October 2011) - Translated by
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Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two. - NB: Note on 'libertarism' - continued The RFC score up to now: 'libertarianism' two, 'libertarism' nil. There was also a suggestion for 'libertarian ideology' instead of either. I am sticking to my own neologism (?) for the time being - the issue will be settled at edition time. And meanwhile I discovered that there is also 'libertarianisme' in French, probably to avoid confusion with - well, 'libertarisme', apparently reserved for the left-leaning 'libertaire' attitude. Ah well ... - (Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible rise of anarcho-capitalism. section 3, continued) Among the sharky characters who started Paypal, all canny financiers, hard-core coders, slick business people, and all well-versed in the art of self-promotion, one figure stands out: Max Levchin, the guy who invented it. 'Mafia' is indeed the right word when talking about him, given the scorn he haps on the 'laughable' rules regulations of the liberal market (and indeed laughable they are, if mostly because they regulate nothing). (According to him) These rules and regulations have been set by oppressive institutions in order to restrict the freedom of individuals. The term is equally pertinent with regard to the firm's recruiting practices: 'Google may look out for the very best math graduates, we are seeking those who dropped out because they were too shrewd and too smart, we want people who work like mad, are free of moral hang-ups, and if possible already know each other and so jack up the team spirit'. And last but not least the total opaqueness of financial operations at Paypal cannot otherwise be described than as mafia-like. So let's go through the basics of Paypal's modus operandi. When buying online the simplest and most universally accepted solution is called, well -Paypal. Right at its inception, Paypal profiled itself as the global intermediary for (financial) transactions between various credit card systems. Thiel Levchin were actually dreaming of a borderless private (form of) money. One needs only to open a Paypal account, deposit some money - usually by way of a credit card debit or through a bank transfer - and hey presto, it's shop till you drop. Paypal takes a percentage (4,4% + 30 ¢, from the seller) on each transaction. And because the seller has to pay more fees to get the cash in hands, and since Paypal has in fact taken a dominant position in the world of on-line payments, the money deposited on active accounts (140 millions at the last count - May 2014) remains largely virtual. Just as with a high street bank. Yet Paypal is no bank, at least not in the United States where it is considered a go-between. In Europe Paypal first registered in the United Kingdom, in the City of London, but it became a proper bank only in 2007 - while moving to Luxemburg's even milder fiscal climate in the process. It has therefore become next to impossible for users to make use of the services a bank is supposed to provide them according to the current European rules and regulations. Or to put it differently: no country in the world can force Paypal to go by normal banking rules - just as if the firm was a not-for-profit, which it is quite precisely not! Paypal does not have a customers service department [#*] and rip-offs are frequent, as usual when money changes hands. Paypal is rather better known for blocking users' accounts, and hence their money, and this for the most variegated of reasons (homonymy, fraud, suspicion, or just a glitch). Cryptome's tale is exemplary in this regard. This site, on the net since 1996, edits and make accessible a bevy of documents, all downloadable, which governments and enterprises worldwide are keeping under wraps. In 2010 Cryptome's Paypal account was suddenly suspended and its funds blocked [18]. The very controversial sale of Paypal to eBay made Thiel and his affiliates seriously rich. A long string of unbelievably successfull investments - even to Silicon Valley's standards - followed on this deal. LinkedIn, Groupon, Youtube, Facebook, Zynga, Diggs, all these ' Web 2.0' firms got funding from members of the 'Paypal Mafia'. This is public information, one can check it out on financial sites such as crunchbase.com - even Wikipedia provides trustworthy sources (articles books, audio and video footage etc.) on this going-ons. And as far as Thiel goes, he has his attaches with most of these companies, either because he was the founder, or one of the founders, or because he seats on their board. And the activities of these companies all tell a story of utopian technology-messianism. Just to name a few, significant ones: Palantir Technologies Inc. (seat in Palo Alto, Calif., founded in 2004), which, incidentally, is co-financed by the CIA, develops
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Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #3
--
A Note and a Request for Comment: on 'libertarism'
As you will see I am using that world to give a name to the libertarian
ideology, but after a discussion with the authors it turns out to be a
neologism - in English. Or if you like, a gallicism/batavism - since both
French and Dutch language use the word 'libertarisme'. French, according
to Wikipedia, even with the luxury of both a left-wing ('libertaire') and
a right-wing ('libertarien') flavor - libertarisme in Dutch is solely
'anarcho-capitalist', apparently ;-) Now the Ippolita Collective folks
seem to prefer the word 'libertarianism', which I find a bit ... cluncky.
So I am not convinced - yet. What do _you_ think? (This is basically a
'Quick-and-Dirty translation, remenber?)
--
Technological Darwinism from the Paypal Mafia to Facebook: the resistible
rise of anarcho-capitalism.
Following this disgression, a necessary one so as to give some economic
and political context to our argument, let's turn back to social networks,
and more specifically, to Facebook. It is no secret that Facebook belongs
to the libertarian galaxy in the US - it can even be said to belong to its
hard-core anarcho-capitalist wing. Big European newspapers covered this
issue already years ago [12]. This story holds, at first glance, little
relevance to the Facebook saga, but in fact it is of crucial import,
because it shows that the world's largest social network is actually part
of a much larger strategy, which, at the very last, is geared towards the
viral propagation of libertarism-inspired values and practices.
In the first part of this book, we have used Facebook as an example of a
social network whose modus operandi stands very far from the way we
perceive things. This does not mean that the other big social media
(Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ etc.) come out scot-free in our analysis. What
holds true for Facebook also holds true for the others, despite the vast
differences in terms of targeted demographics, but also as regard to their
respective histories and their impact on society. In order to streamline
somewhat our analysis we are going to focus on Peter Thiel, the
zillionaire champion of anarcho-capitalism. Note that not all social media
are as closely linked to anarcho-capitalism as Facebook is, but just like
Facebook stands for the quintessence of on-line sociality, so is Peter
Thiel an iconic representative of the spirit of libertarism within a
large number of capitalist (ad)ventures born in Silicon valley - and a key
figure to understand the way it functions.
As (the very) first 'angel' investor in Facebook with a five lakhs US$
checkoff in 2004, Peter Thiel now holds 3% of Facebook's shares. Thiel
made his name as celebrity /venture capitalist/ in the Bay Area - he
manages, among others the Clarion capital hedge fund (with a $ 3bn
portfolio) and also the Founders Fund /venture fund. Born in Frankfurt am
Main (Germany) in the late sixties, he went to study at Stanford, the
well-known cradle of Californian ueber-capitalism. At 46, Peter Thiel is
amongst the 400 richest men on the planet [13]. He contributed generously
to ultra-right, libertarian Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign
fund when he stood up against George Bush in the republican primaries. He
is also member of the Bilderberg Group, officially a yearly conference
gathering of influential politicians, military people, industrialists and
bankers discussing the planet's problems. And he has also forcefully
expressed his political opinions on the Cato Institute's Cato Unbound blog
[14].
One of Tiel's pet projects is the framing of a radical critique of the
social and political set-up of the United States and, by extension and
pars pro toto, of the whole western value system, this since the United
States are the standard-bearers of freedom worldwide and, also the best
performers in the western world. Democracy, according to Thiel, cannot be
reconcillied with freedom, because nation-sates and other supposedly
democratic institutions choke individual liberties. On this particular
point, we actually could agree: libertarians, in the traditional,
socialist (left wing) meaning of the word [see note/RFC above - transl] ,
say exactly the same thing. Representative democracy in its current
dispensation is far removed from the idea of direct democracy, or better
still, of the free and autonomous management of the commonwealth.
Corporate interests, together with and just like the structural
cross-overs between organised crime, institutions, and major financial and
economic groups have all too often reduced democracy to a risible ritual
on election day. Yet Thiel's approach is in other aspects clearly more
reactionary, not to say mysoginist:
Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
The previous installment of FBA II did not make it the list for some reason. Hence a somewhat longer piece this time, with, for the sake of easier reading, a slight overlap with the previous one. (http://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1404/msg00048.html) cheerio, p+5D! Long Live 1st of May! In the Facebook Aquarium, Part Two Libertarians - or a short history of capitalism on steroids (section 2, to end.) Of course, praxeology [*#] is a bit more complex in the writings of the Austrian School's authors than in our present rendering. Yet, like all theories pretending to hold absolute validity at all times, at all places, and for all people, praxeology displays a number of irreducible contradictions. Yet we need to pause on one particular aspect it shares with the anarchist American individualistic tradition: absolute subjectivism. According to classic economic theory, especially the english one (and that includes Marx also), there exist such things as objective values, from which an axiology may be derived [5]. But according to Austrian praxeology no such thing as objective value exists. Economic transaction could, no - should - be equally advantageous for both parties; if was this not the case then the axiom of whole maximization of individual benefit in as little time as possible would collapse. This entails that a good has a value that differs according to the individuals involved. Therefore, it is possible to arrive at distributed profits while at the same time underwriting unlimited growth, and this thanks to errors due to a wrongly estimated 'objective' value being avoided [#]. But this generalized expansion of individual, /economic/ well-being, which (is made to) coincide(s) with freedom /per se/, is only possible in a situation of absolute (economic) freedom, without any interference from (the side of) institutions, which are by definition oppressive, as they seize private properties, manipulate consciousnesses, anaesthesize the senses of individuals who are by nature able to strive for the swift and total satisfaction of their immediate needs, and to project themselves forward in a fresh action in order to satisfy new desires, and this ad infinitum. Hence, this is the absolute reference point of individualism: the individual, (as) absolutely posited absolute subject, demands freedom absolute. sHe needs to be liberated - in the most literal sense - of all ties (/absolutus/ - absolved). The nation state, whether it is in a capitalist or socialist guise, is clearly the enemy shared by the Austrian School and American individualism alike; and the more so since the Federal Government and all its institutions which claim to regulate the capitalist marketplace are basically shrinking individual freedom. (Yet) not all libertarians are in agreement about the absolute necessity to abolish the state. Nowadays, the best known standard bearer of anarcho-capitalism is David Friedman, a US economist who favors the gradual cutting down of government tyranny. The whole anarcho-capitalist discourse can be subsumed in one single word: privatization. Privatization can and should be extended to all sectors of society - from firms to common law. If the individual is set to triumph, no mediation whatsoever should be tolerated. But then, who is this putative individual? Needless to say, the same critique as the one we applied to digital social networks applies equally to anarcho-capitalism: the crucial question remains the relationship between individual and collective identity. So long as humans develop their individuality within a social context, and there only, it does not make sense, even theoretically, to consider the individual as a given, absolute identity, unchanging in and separate from the social, biological, and cultural environment within sHe is embedded. To put it more precisely: philosophically speaking, absolute subjectivism, from which springs the economic theory linked to anarchist individualism, is in open opposition with the radical relativism which is the commanding feature of our (type of) research. Our ambition is not to describe social network 'as they really are' , following the method of mainstream technological determinism which asserts revealing a technology's true essence. We can even less accept the idea that it would be possible for someone to really know everything about human nature, and hence to be able to deduce without fail from it the essence of society as a whole. This would entirely lack in realism, as well as being totally defective. The fact that there are 'realities' outside ourselves does in no way mean that 'the world' could vouch for the authenticity of a belief. True, some descriptions of the world are more appropriate than others, but only because they enable us to act better, not because they represent the world better than other descriptions. And going for radical relativism does not mean that all viewpoints (analyses/descriptions) are equally valid. On the
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two,
A bit 'hefty' piece to-day, hence short.
Happy Easter Reading!
p+5D!
Libertarians - or a short history of capitalism on steroids
(section 2, contd.)
Society [in the anarcho-libertarian perspective -transl] is taken as being
the outcome of (purely) economic transactions at the individual level
(scale). But in order to understand how such a vision has come into being,
a trip down Memory Lane is called for. As per Austrian economic theory,
especially in the Ludwig von Mises - Rothbard's guru - declination, the
individual is endowed with a praxis which defines her/him a priori,
without need for her/his concrete actions to be taken into account. (And)
by applying praxeology, studying this practice, one can arrive at
unvarying axioms.
And absolute truth springs forth from one (and one) axiom only: the
Fundamental Axiom - or 'Action One' [4]. In other words, individuals /act/
in order to achieve their (subjective) /ends/, and in order to do so,
apply /means/. All human beings, at all times, have taken this axiom for
granted; it can neither be denied nor falsified, since by doing so one
/acts/ (even if by negating). In philosophical terms one may therefore say
that the action axiom is a / synthetic a priori proposition/[**]. From the
fundamental axiom springs forth the following, equally absolute truth: all
individuals always try to maximize their own interests ('utility'). An
individual always acts in such a way as to alter her/his present
condition, which sHe views as unsatisfactory (by definition), in order to
replace it by a condition which sHe thinks would be a better one. Every
human action therefore, consists in the elimination of a perceived want
and of the satisfaction of a need. Put differently, every human action
tends towards the advancement of one's own benefit [***]. Every action is
geared towards individual profit, and this in an entirely subjective
fashion. The individual cannot but act, move, maximize his profit, or at
least try to do so, and this finds its materialization in the accretion of
wealth. Plenty is good and more is even better - let the numbers talk for
themselves!
The concept of /time/ as a 'weak resource' sheds more light on the
far-reaching influence this doctrine has exercised, according to which a
human being is (only truly) free as (in the capacity of) consumer. This
is exactly the definition of liberty underlying the digital social
networks and the ideological aggregate going with the monicker 'Web 2.0'.
As time is a weak resource, and all human action are geared towards the
satisfaction of needs through the accumulation/consumption of
wealth/goods, speed becomes the essence of achievement. From this purely
deductive affirmation derives the case that in the matter of production
and consumption, the shorter the action lasts the better. Individuals, as
consumers driven by subjective needs, want it all now rather than latter.
Soon is good, now is better - and fast is king!
Of course, praxeology is a bit more complex in the writings of the
Austrian School's authors than in our present rendering. Yet, like all
theories pretending to hold absolute validity at all times, at all places,
and for all people, praxeology displays a number of irreducible
contradictions. Yet we need to pause on one particular aspect it shares
with the anarchist American individualistic tradition: absolute
subjectivism. (...)
(to be continued)
Next time: on objectivism in classic (esp. english) economic theory.
..
[4] Murray N Rothbard Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics,
in: The Logic of Action One Method, Money, and the Austrian School.
Cheltenham: Elgar, 1997, pp 58-77. See esp p 70 of:
https://mises.org/rothbard/praxeology.pdf
[**]
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/578646/synthetic-a-priori-proposition
[***] 'acquisition of utilities' in the original; I don't know if a
literal translation would make much sense in English, hence my
interpretation.
-
Translated by Patrice Riemens
This translation project is supported and facilitated by:
The Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
(http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/)
The Antenna Foundation, Nijmegen
(http://www.antenna.nl - Dutch site)
(http://www.antenna.nl/indexeng.html - english site under construction)
Casa Nostra, Vogogna-Ossola, Italy
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nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #2
(section 2)
Libertarians - or a short history of capitalism on steroids
Libertarianism is a rather heterogeneous set of political currents which
came to the fore in the sixties promoting a radical strengthening of
individual liberties, this strictly within a 'free market' context. These
political positions have nothing in common with and are totally adverse to
any kind of socialist tradition or practice. Some of its representative
may admit to keeping a bare minimum of shared society, and may head under
the banner of /minarchism/ - proposing a minimalist state by deliberately
jumbling together social relationships with social institutions. But truly
radical individualism, posing as anarchist, as it is set out in the
works of the better known libertarian authors as Murray N Rothbard, Robert
Nozick or Ayn Rand, can only come to fruition if all oppressing social
institutions are dismantled, first and foremost the State; hence the
somewhat paradoxical definition 'anarcho-liberals' [anarcho-libertarians?
-transl] or 'anarcho-capitalists' [1].
A good start to understand the theoretical context in which
anarcho-capitalism came into being, is the work of Murray Rothbard, the
first author to use the 'libertarian' monicker in his writings. Rothbard,
an economist who was also a student of Ludwig von Mises in New York in the
40s, manages a quirky synthesis between the ferocious anti-socialism of
the Austrian (economic) School and American individualist thinkers,
especially Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. According to the Austrian
School, free market capitalism is the only economic system that will
vouchsafe individual freedom: it is good 'by nature'. Equally, property
rights are 'natural rights', and expanding property forms the only bulwark
to protect 'true liberty'. Any system interfering between the individual
and the enjoyment of her/his private property is oppressive by definition,
and constitutes a tyranny which should be gotten rid of by all means
available. Being a staunch advocate of individual freedom as supreme good,
Rothbard criticises the moral legalism of those libertarians who
accommodate to the institutional status quo. For Rothbard market freedom
can only be effective if the political practice itself is free of
oppressive laws and regulatory measures by the State.
This approach shorts the definition of liberty at its core, since the only
liberty that matters then, is that of the capitalist market, itself the
outcome of the free agency of totally free individuals motivated by their
purely private interest in accumulation and consumership. And since
individualist anarchism constitutes the apex of individual liberty and
that the free market is itself the realisation of that liberty, anarchism
and capitalism are, according to Rothbard, one and the same thing.
(W)e are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism
is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest
expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't
really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and
true capitalism will be anarchism. [2]
We will see further on what are the paradoxes underlying this blind belief
in the goodness of the free market. For now let us just underline the
affinities between the libertarian economic and political orthodoxy and
the actual practices of Californian turbo-capitalism [3]: individual
liberty can only be validated through economic and monetary transactions;
individuals are taken to be free 'by nature', and they assign, in a
totally subjective fashion, value to goods, services, and utilities that
are available in an ideal free, capitalist market; full and absolute
de-regulation is the necessary condition to bring about a market that is
'benign by nature', without statist or 'over-individual' intervention;
private property, as a 'natural right' is the bedrock of individual
identity; and the accumulation of goods and utilities constitutes the very
substance of (the concept of) liberty.
(to be continued)
Next time: society, individuals, aims, and actions - in the libertarian
perspective.
..
[1] A libertarianist '101', with many references to the 'foundation texts'
check out the anarcho-capitalist site
[2] http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard103.html
[3] Conservative economist Edward Luttwak coined the term
'turbo-capitalism' in his book /Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in
the Global Economy/, New York, Harpers 1999. We use the term in a much
more polemic way, since it has become clear that today's economic trends
have gone much further - for the worse - than Luttwalk's analyses. We may
refer to the second chapter of our book The Dark Side of Google ('The
Googleplex, or Nimble Capitalism at Work'), where we draw a tentative
description of Google's 'abundance capitalism' , and of the 'Silicon
Valley model' in general.
-
Translated by Patrice Riemens
This
nettime Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, section #1
Part II The Libertarian World Domination Project: Hacking, Social Network(s), Activism and Institutional Politics. (section 1) Online Ideologies: Google as Heir to the Enlightenment, and Facebook the Libertarian one. We are now coming to the issue which is concerning us directly and is also the closest to our heart: politics. Even though politics appears to have very little connexion with social network, it is precisely the political ideology behind their respective business model that makes out the major difference between online sociality's two giants and long time competitors: Facebook and Google. Our Ippolita Collective spared no effort to attack wholeheartedly the totalitarism of Google [*], the platform where the world's information transits through. Yet one may also somehow position Google within the tradition of the Age of Enlightenment. Google pursues the old dream of global knowledge accessible to all who benefit from its benign and enlightened tyranny. To liberate the human being from her/his 'minority position' and making her/him more autonomous was the aim of Enlightenment, and one will surely gladly adhere to that ideal. But then, the dark side of Google is also the Enlightenment's dark side: its unrestrained display of scientific rationality, of technological advances, and of all myths that go with them. Ratio's regressive moment comes with the advent of the barbary of total control, of human alienation - and of the life-world as a whole - all in the name of a machinic religion. There is no doubt that Google represents the icon of the mega-machine in all its positive and negative aspects. Google develops innovative algorithms and filters providing snappy search results, as outcome of scientific research and technical invention. Yet Google's contents are not solely the offshoot of profiling its users, they are also, and even mostly so, the result of a creative tension born out of a stock of freely available information resources, (but) this within the limits of a freedom to access which is managed by a technical subject - and thus not by the users (themselves) - who intends not to be malevolent (the famous /Don't be evil/ motto), all this within the context of a capitalist 'free market'. In the United States, Google is being seen as politically 'liberal', which is tantamount to left of the center in European parlance. In the rest of the world, Google is perceived as supporting the freedom of expression and to be inimical towards repressive (and usually anti-American) governments. Its dissensions with China have earned it a reputation as a firm holding up democratic values, or at least, abiding by the democratic framework when it comes to access to information. There is undoubtedly something good about the idea of making all information accessible to all comers. In a certain sense it is (also) about furthering the American Dream. Google reproduces the saga of the Frontier by transmuting (the advance of) the conquest of the Far West online. Progress here is about accumulating ever more data, making the network denser, and, in the universalist outlook towards an community (/koinè/) at the world-scale, about building up an intensely collaborative encyclopedia, embracing everything, absolutely everything - searches, e-mails, cards, books, articles, images, etc etc. So actually, if one just glosses over the huge problem that is the management of all knowledge by a private entity, and if one decides not to care very much about the issue of technological transfer of authority, well, then, Google is not bad at all! Of course, there will be more and more conflicts - due to Google's humongous material interests, and the global reach of its services. These conflicts will include both with private individuals as well as national and international authorities and they will be about infringements of the fundamental right to privacy, suspicion of abuse of its dominant (market) position, cartel-forming, undue collaboration with intelligence agencies, etc. But it is also true that, as a firm dealing with global knowledge, Google does not lean on a clearly definable political position. This is certainly not the case with Facebook, which is supported and sponsored by the libertarian extreme right in the US - or to use that strangely apposite oxymoron: the anarcho-capitalists. But then it is not easy to describe this particular ideology in a few sentences, especially from an European perspective. Libertarian ideas (in Europe) may come in many shades, from municipal libertarism to anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, individual anarchism, etc. - yet they all are historically linked to anarchism, and hence to socialist internationalism. Therefore, a fundamentally anti-socialist reading of anarchism doesn't make logical sense (in our parts). And yet, as we shall see shortly, libertarians US-style (or /right libertarians/, who have nothing in common with /left libertarians/ - the real anarchists) not
