Monday, August 15, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Let's take back the Internet!
Rebecca MacKinnon describes the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, and asks: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control? She believes the internet is headed for a "Magna Carta" moment when citizens around the world demand that their governments protect free speech and their right to connection.
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Thursday, June 9, 2011
Inspirations for Cyberian Occulture Jamming
How might we take inspiration for Cyberian Occulture Jamming from older ideas such as the one included bellow? What elements might we glean?
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Poetic Terrorism
via http://hermetic.com/bey/taz1.htmlWEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. Later they will come to realize that for a few moments they believed in something extraordinary, & will perhaps be driven as a result to seek out some more intense mode of existence.
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Grafitti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public momuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive breakthrough, dada-esque angst--no matter whether the PT is aimed at one person or many, no matter whether it is "signed" or anonymous, if it does not change someone's life (aside from the artist) it fails
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life--may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE.
Don't do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don't stick around to argue, don't be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives--but don't be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.
Dress up. Leave a false name. Be legendary. The best PT is against the law, but don't get caught. Art as crime; crime as art.
Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer
Is facebook and other popular social media today’s version of IBM’s Hollerith punch-card machines that helped the Nazis in their task of cataloging and dispatching their millions of victims?
“Here's a map of the world, as drawn by Facebook. What does that mean? Well, basically: The entire image is defined not by topographical features or political boundaries, but by Facebook friendships.” Click image to read more.
“Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction.” http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/excerpts.php
Facebook doesn't have to guess who its users are or what they like. Facebook knows, because members volunteer this information freely — and frequently — in their profiles, status updates, wall posts, messages and "likes."
It's now tracking this activity, shooting online ads to users based on their demographics, interests, even what they say to friends on the site — sometimes within minutes of them typing a key word or phrase.
For example, women who have changed their relationship status to "engaged" on their Facebook profiles shouldn't be surprised to see ads from local wedding planners and caterers pop up when they log in. Hedgehog lovers who type that word in a post might see an ad for a plush toy version of the spiny critters from Squishable.com. Middle-aged men who list motorcycling as one of their hobbies could get pitches from Victory Motorcycles. If a Facebook user becomes a fan of 1-800-FLOWERS, her friends might receive ads telling them that she likes the floral delivery service. (via Facebook looks to cash in on user data http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook-ads-20110417,0,1887797.story
This data mining article has triggered my memory of ECHELON.
I am sure there is a way to nullify the effectiveness of online data mining. I was thinking word lists like those that were done for ECHELON http://www.nsawatch.org/eaves101.html back in the day. Of course they aren’t just mining/monitoring words, though their add-ware/spyware does just that.
I agree with the statement by Jamie Lee in a facebook post comment thread, “I think a lot of it has to do with the networks formed between people and how information passes between them rather than any sort of direct analysis of, like 'hey that guy just said crystal meth labs kill the president! let's take him down!'" They do look at the relationship and browsing patterns.
One idea I have around the user data idea is to compile word lists that can be posted by as many people as possible to nullify effective data mining. It can be creative and fun to encourage participation. Story games back and forth to mess up effective data mining. Maybe facebook pages dedicated to storytelling that would use as many random trigger words to confuse their system. All kinds of different posts with product placement, then notice how the ads on facebook change.
I am not sure how to screw with their browsing and relationship patterns though. This article Are You Following a Bot? by ANDY ISAACSON, and this article U.S. Military Using Fake Social Media Identities To Spread Propaganda give some great ideas.
Would it be possible to not only “Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction” as suggested by the Product placement posts/stories, but to design programs that will run in the background, allowing us to randomly browse the web? Would that even be necessary?
I wonder what ideas you may have.
Cyberian Occulture Jamming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Beware online "filter bubbles"
Every year, thousands of entrepreneurs, change-makers, innovators and scientists gather in Long Beach, California for TED, the world’s leading thought conference. In 2011, the audience included executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other Silicon Valley startups.
So when Eli Pariser explained the filter bubble concept and then called on them from the main stage to change how they do business, it wasn’t at all clear how they’d react. Watch the video to see what happened:
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