<nettime> [Fwd] A Spit in the Ocean

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

...ripples...




----- Forwarded message from hellekin -----

Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:56:16 +0100
From: hellekin <hellekin@riseup.net>
Subject: A Spit in the Ocean

   A Spit in the Ocean

   I'm going to reach 1000 followers soon. To all of you, I want to
   say thank you for the conversations we've had and the attention you
   gave to me.

   But I'm going to close my Google+ account, as well as my GMail account,
   because I don't like the idea of having a corporation, however well
   intended it could be, have me as a Guinea pig for their social
   mass-surveillance. I'm referring to the upcoming privacy policy of
   Google.

   I know that I'm alienating myself by doing so, by refusing what
   seems like an evidence nowadays. I have no Facebook account, no
   car, no phone, no TV set, not even a bank account. Now, I'm gonna
   have no Google. G+ is a great product. But it's not worth the
   trade-off.

   I am the enemy, the marginal, the terrorist, the fool. I'm a spit
   in the ocean. Hopefully others will follow and realize that "the
   profit motive" is not the right way to look at life on Earth.

   I wish there were more people willing to stand by their heartbeats,
   follow the intuition of the blood pounding hard from within. I find
   it shameful that we know how to send people in deep space and are
   unable to deal with poverty, with war, with corruption, with the
   other.

   Who really wants to measure the success of their life to the size
   of their TV set or the ability to travel to foreign countries where
   people live a year with your monthly spending in chewing-gum?

   In the few thousands of years of civilization, human morality
   barely evolved. Humans should be the most beautiful living things
   on this planet, because of their ability to become: but we're the
   most hideous, for our infinite capacity to look away, cherish our
   own stupidity as the best manifestation of genius, and refuse to
   embrace powerful visions that cannot bear a listing price.

   By participating in this mass-surveillance system, be it Facebook
   or Google+, we leave the space for evil people to get the grip and
   break the most beautiful things apart, we allow them to exist and
   thrive. By not participating, we take the risk that only people
   like us don't participate, and that society evolves to make us the
   next Roms, the next Jews, the next generation of non-conforming
   humans that need to be eliminated.

   I will continue working on alternate communication systems that
   take privacy as a design requirement, not something obsolete. I
   will continue to use the Internet for end-to-end purpose, with
   people I cherish. But I won't participate anymore in so-called
   social media that don't proceed from actual communities nor nourish
   them. Facebook and Google+ nourish like baby milk: with poison
   inside. Stop smoking before cancer strikes.

----- End forwarded message -----

I'll add some things

You make an interesting association between the current state of
 "social networking" (and more in general, the use of the "social"
 word) and the general expectation of profit. As Internet is
 sanitized, the places where "sociality" can happen, have indeed a
 ghastly presence of profit-minded reasoning, something still between
 the lines, but for how long this will be implicit? Let me suggest, as
 it might just help to avoid confusion once and for all, we stop using
 the "social" word in association with the Internet. Today we could
 just consider the Internet as a market place, where even what we have
 formerly considered as net-art is now the craft of ready-made
 souvenirs.  Yes. we knew this moment would come my friend.

If you have a look in what I2P or the ".onion" network of Tor are
 nowadays, you'll find a way to shrug off these delusionary feelings
 and enjoy a taste of the Internet as it really looked back 15 years
 ago. They are beautiful places :) And even just analyzing the
 language used, there could be so much to say about it.

What strikes me the most about them is how anonymity can make intimacy
 possible. Does this sounds like a paradox? in fact, it is
 not. Anonymity is a form courtesy, a (forgotten?) tradition in
 hospitality, a condition to make an environment truly public.

Today we have lost the good manners. There is no netiquette on the
 Internet, no voluntary courtesy, just policy. Ultimately now I really
 understand why you are leaving Hellekin, because you do love the good
 manners.

ciao


-- 
jaromil,  dyne.org developer,  http://jaromil.dyne.org
GPG: B2D9 9376 BFB2 60B7 601F 5B62 F6D3 FBD9 C2B6 8E39




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