Morlock Elloi on Fri, 22 Nov 2002 02:52:48 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> [Masses and Multitudes] a question and mini-critique Hardt on the Network |
The (erronous) leap of faith happens when words on a rectangular screen and "groups", "communities" etc. are taken seriously and for the face value. It is so easy to do that, in the ornamented world of user interfaces, stylized text and function buttons. The real power gets so well disguised that it is taken for non-existant. The interface becomes the message :-) All these characters that you read right now, that appear on my screen as I type on my keyboard, get transported over wires owned by very few corporation, switched through routers owned by even fewer, and end up on server where moderator decides what to do, unmoderated reading being passe for reasons I won't get into now. So if, indeed, you are reading this ascii, it only by the good will, mercy and blessing by not so many powerful parties that you do. There is nothing free here. The homeless guy shouting in the street as I type this is more free. He makes the sound, air unconditionally carries it and I can hear him. What we have instead, on the Net, is a benign multiuser game with strict rules set by the game owners, and we choose to pretend that they don't exist. We shout on the wire, harmless to anyone, trying to relieve the testosterone pressure. ===== end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus – Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net