Patrice Riemens on Sat, 2 Aug 2014 10:35:23 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Three, |
Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part III The Freedoms of the Net Orwell, Huxley, and the Sino-American model (section 2) Online freedom is (counter)balanced by the demand for greater security, which in its turn begets a demand for more control. The wish to be anonymous is at odds with the will to go after those who present a threat to the social stability. In democratic regimes, this may be about paedophiles, serial killers, mafiosi, terrorists, subversives, etc. The wave of emotions caused by some spectacularly heinous crime or other sensational misdeed has triggered a crazy response: the enacting of laws trampling the most fundamental liberties. But all the same, a (potential) perpetrator is (made) aware that sHe is under surveillance. But since sHe is aware of this, and even in the (rare?) cases the perpetrator is not in cahoots with her/his watchers, a delinquent is actually freer that the rest of the population, which is subjected against her will to an increasingly stringent, blanket electronic control. And never mind the fact, already underlined, that control does not prevent crime. At most it simply eases the metting out of punishment, at least in theory, by further hardening of the courts and of the prison system. The pressure to regulate the Web goes together with a demand for more transparency, better traceability, and generally, the all-out probing of what happens on-line. Such requirements also allow for the bringing together of very heterogenous social categories. Parents associations are worried about the risks their kids may be exposed to. Lobbies of big media copyright owners (Hollywood, the music industry, publishers) all want to make investigation into, and removal of (on-line) protected content easier. Banks wish they could better verify their account holders' identities so as to cut online fraud back. Harassed ethnic minorities want to find out the identity of their tormentors. Xenophobe nationalists (which, once in power, and amidst generalized indifference, will give a totalitarian twist to already security-obsessed democracies), want to identify and register all foreigners in order to assuage their frustrations and bolster their group identity by going for ritual pogroms. Victims of violent incidents want to be able to denounce their persecutor(s) without risk of retaliation: on one hand they want the police to protect their anonymity, while at the same time demanding stricter control measures in order to identify criminals better. Outraged citizens want to see the income tax returns of corrupt politicians published so as to name and shame them in the media. Even authoritarian regimes like more transparency since they want to keep a close eye on their citizens . Transparency enhance the opportunities for surveillance and that is precisely the wish of next to all political powers. The 20th Century saw two major dystopias profoundly influence Western thought in the matter of surveillance: George Orwell's Big Brother in his novel /'1984'/ (1949) and Aldous Huxley's /'Brave New World'/ (1932, followed in 1958 /'Brave New World Revisited'/). Both authors (re)present opposite dystopias: Orwell, Englishman, was worried about total 'optical' control, whereas the Californian Huxley saw an upcoming emotional mutilation generated by out-of-control consumerism. For Orwell, the emergence of totalitarian systems marked a new phase, smacking of the Inquisition, in which technology serves to abolish any private life for citizens. Big Brother's omnipresent eye exercises a power both sadistic and oppressive, meant to modify reality through baneful, continual propaganda worded in newspeak, the language specifically created to limit the range of possible expressions. Every personal move must be completely predictable, and everybody must obey. The main character in '1984', Winston Smith, indeed discovers that neurologists in employ of the regime are working on the elimination of orgasm, so as to cancel desire as well, that tricky moment of psychic and physical instability, which could therefore well be able to trigger a revolt. In Huxley's vision, technology, on the contrary, is applied so as maximize pleasure, as (essential) part as of the consumption loop. In Huxley's Fordist consumerism, throwing away is far preferable to repairing, and citizens have no incentive whatsoever to think in an autonomous and critical way, since their pleasure find satisfaction even before having been formulated. For sure, not everyone's desire are identical: a rigid system of castes, from 'Alphas' to 'Epsilons' obtains, managed by edgenic control. Different categories of consumers exist, which are (pre)assigned by their consumption of specific goods and services. But then, exces has stumped desire, so that a compulsive system has been put in place: sexual promiscuity is encouraged, family bonds are deemed pornographic, since they are privileged links; social interactions organized in a fully transparant way, so much so that women are forced to wear a contraceptive belt, which signal their (eventual) immediate disposability for sex. Individuals, being consumption goods like many others, must tell who they are without ambiguity, so as to be always available. Whereas, with Orwell, one glimpses a higher grade of conspiracy in which some freedom is possible, at least among the oppressors, with Huxley, nobody is free, not even the 'Alphas'. They too must perform their consumers' duty, just as those they command. Conformism is the supreme good, submissive obedience is necessary to have the whole population reduced to a state of mandatory infantile bliss. A daily dose of 'Soma' and of hypnopedia (indoctrination session administered during the sleep) does away with such mortal sins as the desire to be left alone and the possibility to perceive oneself as /different/ from other people. And (hence) to be able to choose, to be autonomous and independent. It is precisely to these forbidden desires that we will have to return in order to imagine a new format for social networks. Refusing to participate in the competition society is the only way to escape conformism and induced desires. One cannot deny that both Orwell's fear-filed dystopia and Huxley's enforced entertainment have become variously mixed up in (our) contemporary societies. Evgeny Morozov stresses our tendency to underestimate the number of Orwellian elements in democratic regimes (no wonder the reality show 'Big Brother' reaches such a wide international audience: the fear of control has become the butt of jokes [****]), while at the same time discounting the Huxleyan elements present in dictatorships. Most dictators rather distract and entertain the masses than dominate them by terror, the more so since repression tends to beget bloody, unmanageable revolts in the long run. Enjoyable consumerism on the other hand, allows, if not for full consensus, at least for acceptance from the side of the oppressed. Better still, /'panem et circuses'/ politics may even prod the masses into supporting a despotic regime. Why shouldn't a Chinese, a Turkmen or a Cuban person not applaud a government if sHe gets some benefit in exchange? By and large, the Internet does bring to many undemocratic societies exactly the type of entertainment people need to escape the (daily) frustrations of reality: rancid porn, gossips, zestless TV series, quizzes and betting shows, videogames, online dating chat forums, together with government supervised discussion forums devoid of political references. (Guess what:) Precisely the same type of entertainment allowing citizens in democratic societies to escape /their/ reality. Naomi Klein does not err in forefronting marked similarities that exist between China and the West (and more specifically, between China and the United States). In "China's All-Seeing Eye, she describes the well-balanced combo of Orwellian control with Huxleyan distraction dished out to citizens in the following words: "China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale)." [11] (to be continued) Next time: more on China-USA Bhai Bhai, and on profiling, Google Facebook, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [****] No wonder either that Big Brother is a Dutch invention, from the country that contributed the word 'apartheid' to the world language. [11] Naomi Klein, "China's All-Seeing Eye", May 2008: http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye "With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export." ----------------------------- 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