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INFOWAR: Whose Infowar?
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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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"Infowar" may be un-winnable by definition.
I object to calling the new media renaissance an "information age."
Communication is not about information as much as it is about contact and
community. The experience of interactive media is an interpersonal one.
A living exchange between living beings.
To reduce interactivity to "bits" and "data" is, at best, a misguided
effort to make sense of a new form of communication and remote presence.
At worst, it is a conscious and deliberate attempt to disempower human
beings by disconnecting us from ourselves and one another.
By accepting the current battle for the consensus reality (or, if you
prefer, public opinion) as an information war, we reduce our ability to
use what real weapons we have. Information itself is dead. It is at
least one step removed, and usually more, from any living human being.
The further we get from the human, the less able we are to exercise any
control over our collective destiny, and the more susceptible we are to
the efforts of others to coerce us towards their will.
The beauty and success of the Internet has been its ability to foster
living relationships between people. It has been this access to one
another -- and not the access to "fringe information" or "radical
websites" -- that has threatened the imbalance of power that masquerades
as ordered status quo. Reframing this revolution in human communication
as an "information revolution" confuses our priorities and diverts our
efforts from real social change towards the archives of deadmatter.
Meanwhile, contrary to what our defense departments advertise,
surveillance and other hi-tech weaponry do not stand to make war
"cleaner." They are just the latest way for wealthier warriors to exercise
their authority over poorer ones. Today, an information agencies' chief
enemies are not the information agencies of other equally armed
governments, but the legions of smaller, so-called "terrorist" groups for
whom conventional and more easily monitored forms of warfare have proven
too expensive.
But the real information war is not simply an old-style propaganda battle
of bad information against good. It begins with the assertion that human
beings are the mere conduits for information -- be it measured in words,
hours, or dollars. On the contrary, information is simply a conduit for
the thoughts, feelings, and aspirations of the human spirit.
Douglas Rushkoff
New York City
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