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New World Order, Same Old Shit
'Paul Garrin
Paul Garrin
GENERATIONS AND LIFESPAN ... THESE ARE TWO THINGS THAT MACHINES AND HUMANS HAVE IN COMMON. It took millions of years of life and death to produce the energy [oil] that machines will consume in just a few centuries.
This acceleration curve is roughly analagous to the amount of knowledge and experience which has accumulated, [especially in recent times] and the level at which all that knowledge will be globally available through datanetworks.
Unlike energy which always diminishes to its lowest level, knowledge persists, in defiance of entropy, and accumulates – its vehicles and filters [media, human minds, more media...] thriving and decaying throughout the generations, mutating and evolving according to the conditions of dominance and economy, through war, prosperity, deprivation...
The Industrial Revolution placed the highest value on the fuels for the machines that built the post-industrial society – that society which now places the highest value on knowledge – the fuel for what the hype calls the "Information Age", the "Age of the Immaterial". But look carefully at the so-called "immaterial" world of the information age: it takes a lot of material to realize the immaterial. The overly euphoric inhabitans of virtual worlds who wish to leave their bodies overlook the obvious fact that the networks which convey their phantasy-existance are made of parts assembled in Malaysia or Taiwan or Mexico or in other "low wage countries" by people who probably don't even have telephones, don't own computers and are certainly not connected to the internet. Food and shelter are the greatest challenge to these laborers – to feed the bodies that produce the components of a system they could never afford to be a part of.
Keep in mind that "being digital" means paying for the continuance of the war machine which brought the internet and computers into your living room and into your bedroom and into your office and into the museums. The same war machine which when necessary can effectively deliver a "body count" over long distances with minimal effort, can also effect a "data-body count" with even greater ease and better yet, with less expense. The cost, as always in one way or another is borne by the victims, in this case the euphoric digizens who enslave themselves to the military-corporate web that seduces them into ecstatic complicity.
Stare reverently into the screen, that holy place of immateriality, the devine portal into the promises for the next version release, the world of the "wired" that worships unquestionably the wonders of virtual immortality, the triumph of the will of the technological miracles that will bring deliverance and utopia. The machine is perfect ... the machine is divine … Big Blue can play better chess than that human can … the F16 can outfly its own pilot … that 20G maneuver can save the aircraft from destruction by the missile even if it does squash the pilot … but the machines are there to make better war for the humans … they may even execute war better than the humans do … but the machines themselves have no need for war … only the humans who built them to control other humans have the need for war – war over identity … over territory … over power.
Humans battle eternally over their identities. The struggle over identity, heritage and land is the fuel for wars since time immemorial. Identity and geography are "worth fighting over" so the humans say … so they develop technology in their own image … They create machines, and give them names and places to live … Domains … an artificial concept that helps the humans organize the machines into metaphorical regiments that they can easily understand … and other humans jump in and stake claims to "their" Domains … sometimes to be evicted, not by Ethnic-Cleansing Thugs toting AK47's but by McDonalds toting multimillion dollar Lawyers and tons of paper … all over a simple identity … this all only matters to the humans … not to the machines to whom identity is essential. Every node on a network must have its own unique identity … a network address number and a name … if there is an identity conflict, it just won't work on the network … there's no struggle … just no acknowledgement. The machine becomes invisible to the rest of the network … if it moves to another location and is given a new network D it will still function faithfully without struggle over its identity or the desire to regain its past, and certainly without a war.
The mechanisms of war effect destruction and waste creating new opportunities for the enslavement of the surviving bodies who assemble the components for the next war … the digital war that moves in to manage the perception of those on the "cool" battlefields, over the modems and airwaves in the digital domain, their databodies filling the ranks of demographic conquests, targets of advertising, their input feeding the furtherance of the oppressive demands for the output of other less fortunate enslaved bodies who struggle to survive by producing the tools of their own opression.
The "World Wide Wasteland" is a staging ground for one of the latest wars against the human spirit. Information overload obscures the obvious crimes against humanity that are hidden in plain view. Complicity is rampant. Denial of the flesh is fashion. Control the Art and you control the People ... Own the dataways and you own the databodies that inhabit them. The greatest crime is the paradox of new media ...We have yet to learn how to use the knowledge and communications that took centuries and many generations of humans to develop. Generation upon generation the accumulation of knowledge and experience has yet to bring the evolution of mind that is overdue at the end of this millenium. With all the means to communicate, access information, technological and conceptual advancements available the wars fought are still the wars of old and have never reached the ultimate evolutionary war, the War against Ignorance.
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