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INFOWAR: Re: Info.War.101

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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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>                        Information warfare may be the ultimate stealth
>                        weapon -- victims may not realize an information
>                        attack has taken place until considerable damage
>                        has been done, and even then, tremendous expertise
>                        may be required to recognize and identify the
>			 attack and counteract its effects.

"Infowar" initially evoked in me the "militarized heirarchical detached
theory unrelenting linear purecode, get me outa here" response, but of
course i've become completely desensitised to the term in a few short
weeks. however im still rather reticent to engage in an arena defined as
combat. must i attack or defend positions? what personal borders do i
pat/con/trol? am i a subversive agent?, or am i a casualty? do i occupy
multiple sites simultaneously? can i casually observe outside the kill
zone? 

the info war/avalanche/tsunami which concerns/consumes me is that
personal, mundane, day to day, seeping one. there is no drama, no crisis,
nor an apparent security breach, when one is sitting within the safety and
intimacy of ones home sending enormous amount of private data on the net. 
Data, which is treated in the same way as any other data...bits to be
stored some where. Is the unwary net user an "innocent" victim, or does
each of us have the responsibility to be (un)in.formed, and is that even
possible within the overwhelming morass of data? 

and data is dumb.. i find my old posts to now defunct mailing lists
indexed on search engines by good little crawlers doing thier assigned
tasks.. - archived for posterity?.. hardly -some of thes eposts were crap
one_liners when i wrote them and they should have been forgotten like any
other spontaneous conversation..but no..they are indexed, hence have
achieved meaning and strategic position, etched?in binary code in the info
cyberheaven of the web, which actually feels more like like wading thigh
deep in an info sewer, wishing somone would flush it... 

Conversely.. the volume of information which requires my discernment is a
slow wearing down water torture .. is it truth or propaganda..after
disposing of the spam that gets thru the filters every piece of data
thatscrolls down my screen is still suspect. i dont use encryption, even
tho im fully aware of the total lack of security and privacy on the net.
as with recent "faked" press relases i have never been sure that my
personal email comes from the stated source and i have no idea who else
has read it.  its too tiring to continually process, so i co-exist with it
in the same way that i process everything i see on broadcast tv or read in
news print - as untrustworthy pushy media. 

I can only assume relative truth in what i can expereince with my other
senses now, so reality only exists in my immediate locale. visual
info/data has to become light entertainment to be manageable - something
to be kept at arms length in the same way lethal weapons systems emulate
arcade games.[or vice_versa] Art and fiction are a relief from info
fatigue - they at least are safe to consume. 

allen:

>the effective participant in the
>INFOWAR will package and push out information on an ever larger scale.
>it is possible to win the INFOWAR game... but you have to be a player!

Is this a boyz toyz game?  My arbitrary, dangerous and powerful
information is bigger than your arbitrary, dangerous and powerful
Information - so there! The overload spans anything that can be coded.
Bioinformatics is infowar, but so is spam. mailing lists are infowar.
pushing out more data only contextualises one within the battle zone, and
I've just willingly engaged in this circular game. 

mr

   melinda rackham
http://www.subtle.net


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