Patrice Riemens on Mon, 19 May 2014 20:22:06 +0200 (CEST) |
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<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 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 healthy individual, if immersed in a liquid at body temperature, left in the dark, and deprived of auditive and visual stimulation, rapidly looses any awareness of his own body and turns insane, driven mad by the sound his own heart-beat. It is only through the acceptance of one's own limitation that overcoming solitude in a way that is not harm2ful to others becomes possible. Rising above loneliness through socialisation means that one recognises one's own limitations and at the same time, furthers creative sharing. According to Luce Irigaray, proximity with the other, or more precisely, together with the other, comes to the fore in the opportunity to create, with the other, a common world that does not destroy the world of each and everyone, a world that is always in the making [27]. The necessity to maintain contacts within the own species is not limited to those activities directly concerned with survival (obtaining food, protection against predators, reproduction), and it growth at the same pace as neuronal complexity does [28]. Among humans (but equally among the bigger man-apes) the relational dimension slowly becomes separate from the individual, literally so, and this thanks to the technè, which circulates relationships, that is the connection between the self and peers, and the world. The first social mediation tool, in a certain sense the first social medium, was probably fire. Instead of huddling together like most social animals do, human groups started to relate to the social medium - fire - by defining a social space organised around that specific technical artefact/item. All techniques that evolve into technologies are instruments of mediation in the relation with the world and the others. Language is the simplest and most powerful instance of this phenomenon: it establishes a separation/distance between the individual and the others (= mediation) and allows to project into the future (= projects, desires) the memory of the past, or, in other words, to share the personal imagination of a shared imaginary. 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 (?) . (To be continued) Next time: more Damasio replication ... ----------------------------- [25] "Cleantech too difficult for software and social networking investors.": http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/peter-thiel-doesnt-like-cleantech-mankind (2011). (quote: "OK, folks, go on home. Stop all this saving-the-world, green-energy stuff. It just isn't working. Thiel has spoken." - transl) [26] http://thielfoundation.org/foundation/ Fuller quote: "Freedom is always under siege. Around the world, authoritarian regimes deprive millions of people of basic economic and social rights. Even elected governments can burden their citizens with labyrinthine bureaucracies and complex, unnecessary laws. And while some regimes are obviously worse than others, they all have apologists who obscure these conditions by twisting the relationship between freedom and human fulfillment. The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. How do we do this?" (followed by bullet points ) (-transl.) [27] Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World, Continuum, 2008. [28] For a scientific, but not scientist approach to the neurology of this issue, see the work of Boris Cyrulnik, especially Les Nourritures affectives, L'Ensorcellement du monde, and De Chair et d'âme, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1993, 1997 and 2006 As far as I could ascertain none of these books have been translated in English, but others have been: http://amzn.to/1mLDHd8 (amazon.com) On Boris Cyrulnik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Cyrulnik (-transl) ........................................................ NB. The 'libertarism' saga continued - and conluded. It's 'libertarianism', folks. Translator raises the white flag, as the RFC results stand at libertarianism four, libertarism nil (and red dots under the word by my spelling checker which does accept libertarianism - but not 'anarcho-capitalism'). Commentaries have included a statement to the effect that "I was never given a magic want to change the English language" , which, coming from the West Coast (States, not Somerset), sounds a wee bit overbearing. All the same the traitor that is a translator needs to be halted at some point. So shall we say, rather blasphemously parakeeting Jens Stoltenberg: 'gjerningsmannen mislyktes, folket vant' ... .......................................................... ----------------------------- 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 # 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: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org