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INFOWAR: What do Metropolis, 1984, and Infowar have in common?

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
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I don't really know what to say about this symposium - I'm puzzled.

First we get an authoritarian set of instructions set in appropriately
authoritarian colours. You will do this. You must do this. We will oversee
this. You will be enlightened. Geert says,  "Let us see if we can make a
step forward in the development and preservation of
the free and open exchange of information and opinions" and then tells us
what to do! Scary stuff.

Then we get what seems like a very flat, superficial doomsday scenario, the
kind of thing offered by
someone who has somehow missed a crucial aspect of the current epistemology
(How can you give information enough value to war over if you also believe
in the relativity of all knowledge? Wouldn't the real information war (in
this guise) be more like Pepsi vs Coke, rather than feuding clans like the
Hatfields vs the McCoys? I mean, we all know that since time began, the big
fight has been over the control of information, so what else is new?). All
this introductory material has that 'fear of computers' feel about it (the
kind of thing you hear from middle-aged people who can't type) or, at the
other extreme, the 'fear of the end of computers' that keeps the whole
geekocracy tossing and turning at night.

Didn't John Badham make a teen movie about this in 1983? War Games? Here are
some key words from the film: "computer, defense, game, hacker, inheritance,
missile, teenager, video-games, war, computer-whiz" and some plot lines:
"Computer (creates nuclear disaster), Computer (on rampage),
Race-against-time, Technology (on rampage), Problems-modern,
Science-runs-amok". Sound familiar?

We are experiencing in computing what the last generation experienced with
rock and roll. The power is no longer in the hands of an elder generation.
The young can truly compete (successfully) at similar (or better) levels of
competence than the middle-aged generation. Maybe the real inforwar is among
people who actually realize they are dinosaurs at 30.

Brian Leigh Molyneaux
April 20, 1998

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