Re: <nettime> notes from the DIEM25 launch

[morlockelloi@yahoo.com]

> I think you are overrating technologies of control, neither the Stasi
> nor the KGB could save their systems from collapse (though the ruined
> a lot of lives....).

I think that the conclusion that nothing really changed and that power 
grabbing and re-grabbing mechanisms are the same as they were (and will 
stay the same in indefinite future) is grossly wrong (as is the notion 
of immutability of 'human nature'.)

This school of thought is essentially waiting for the next successful 
'organizing of masses and revolt' to make things right again. The 
organizers have just to say the right words and tweets, publish the 
right pamphlet, which somehow they missed to figure out so far (in all 
previous failed revolts), but they will find the magic words eventually, 
and then the Revolution will happen. It's all about words.

It is going to be a long wait, as it's a classic example of Einstein's 
Insanity.

> It really depends how you think repression works these days. If you
> think that it's about repressing particularly dangerous individuals,
> then both encryption (when they can be dealt with individually) and
> large numbers (when they cannot be dealt with individually because you
> cannot imprison, or shoot, a very large number of people) help. If you
> think repression works by influencing the patterns of how people think
> (e.g. creating an environment that incentivizes people to put all
> emphasis on maximizing the number of useless "friends", or competing
> in a rat race of faking their own happiness), then encryption won't
> help much, but nothing much will.

Neither of the above. Targeted repressing or influencing is not 
relevant, it's too expensive and ineffective. That's smokescreen and 
useful for PR.

It works by inferring correct forecasts, from exposed communications, 
about group behaviours, before groups themselves understand them. The 
rest is easy. The biggest obstacle is that this is hard to understand by 
those who haven't been exposed to the data. It's not intuitive - it's 
statistics and number crunching, it's a new phenomenon. The way around 
is to look for secondary tell-tale signs, for example what's legal and 
what's illegal, what goes into standards, etc.

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