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INFOWAR: Re: what info wants (four responses)
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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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From: Dinka Pignon <dinka@mbox301.swipnet.se>
To: infowar@aec.at
Subject: CORRECTION Re: what info wants
I just read again the post I sent last night and now I see that the bit
about "war" can easily be misinterpreted (my fault!). I did not mean that
it is you , Speer, in particular whose thoughts I dislike and who I don=92t
trust (even though I explicitly say so). It was just a clumsy and
unfortunate construction where I used my little disagreement with what you
said (too general to offer material for any significant disagreement
anyway) and magnified it hugely to provide an exmple of a situation
"asking for war", addressing =91you=92 by inertia all way through the whole
paragraph. I=92m sorry about that. And (I have to make sure you don=92t get=
me
wrong on this point as well), all I wrote about dishonesty, responsibility
and intellectual games =96 I wasn=92t targeting you there at all, that was
only meant in general.=20
Yours, Dinka
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From: Jim Gasperini <jimg@well.com>
Subject: Re: INFOWAR: what info wants
Hey, Speer--
I believe it was Stewart Brand who said "Information wants to be free,
information wants to be expensive." He was talking about intellectual
property issues, but the context is lost when his corollary is dropped:=20
The production and organization of information can be very costly, for
example a work of software that can take many man-years to create.=20
Shorthand: "wants to be expensive." Information once produced, on the
other hand, is easily replicated at little or no cost (and is becoming
more so in the digital age). Shorthand: "wants to be free."=20
Of course Brand knows that information qua information doesn't really
"want" anything. By lightly anthromorphizing it he was putting an
important issue in a nutshell. When the corollary is dropped the
significance of the phrase becomes blurred and leads to lots of useless
argument.=20
--Jim
Jim Gasperini
616 Plateau Drive Kensington, CA 94708 510.927.3590
"If the Unabomber had attacked Microsoft, no jury of Windows users would
ever have convicted him."
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From: =3Dcw4t7abs <antiorp@tezcat.com>
>OK Guys
zecz!st
>It is high time I got involved
>Kasper is very sad :-(
sad!zt
>The ARS symposium for 1998 needs to have its theme changed
>I am of the firm opinion that the name "INFOWAR" merely perpetuates the
>crap element of sensationalist individuals who rather than getting a life,
>spend
>their time, supporting the evils of the world by grandstanding and boostin=
g
>their
>infantile egos in the grandiose speaches they throw at us.
peace !=3D firm opinion
us =3D_?
>Lets see if we are at all capable of turning positive and making
>affirmations on life?
>I wonder - big time?
branch b.lo
>I am all too aware of the many ways we can have war and if war is what the
>world (sic symposium) wants then a lot of us are quite capable of shutting
>down
>almost any system. Hey, I do not want to do these things, they are games
>for silly
>people with pimples or big moustaches. Ha!
umpz
>To start the great new trend in "INFOPEACE" I will mention a great usage
great =3D pr!nc!pl bassd on fasc!zm + rasc!zm.
trend =3D def + ob non.sensz.
great +
great +
big moustaches +
great +
great + grandiose +
big time?
=3D
peace zu[kx [log!k =3D defekt!v]]
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From: Dinka Pignon <dinka@mbox301.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: what infowar wants
Re to Speer's "what infowar wants":
> "Information wants to be learned!"
Don=92t worry about what information wants. It is there at your disposal
to use it or ignore it, the question is what You want, what you need it
for.
> Being free is great, if you're an amoeba, but being human we
> have another calling, to fight the war, to continually struggle to
learn
> the facts, to stare reality in it's harsh face and then to continue on
to
> the next arena. The new info technology is here to force us to learn
> harder, faster, and in the process experience a lot of pain..
If this is our calling as humans then yes, pain is the only thing we can
experience. You don=92t have to be an amoeba to feel free, to choose your
own way of "facing reality". What are the arenas of our struggle, of Your
struggle? What is the ratio between the amount of information you have to
learn and the amount of thinking you have to do in order to "win a battle"
in those arenas? What do you suggest the ratio should be? Easy access to
information is not a reason to stuff ourselves with knowledge we have no
time and capacity to even digest, let alone use in a sensible way. If the
ratio of what we are able to absorb to the total amount of information
available were to determine our validity as people, then we should have
all killed ourselves the first time we entered a city library.=20
> War is hell!
First of all, how are we using the concept of "war" here. I take it as
obvious that it is rather metaphorical. We don=92t mean the atrocities of
Vietnam or Bosnia, or even the more "sportsmanlike" slaughter of wars in
earlier times. Taking it metaphorically gives plenty of latitude for
everybody to put their own slant on it. I would call war a mode of
behaviour we employ to resolve conflicts, and as such it doesn=92t imply th=
e
manner in which we carry out our battles. It is the motivation by which we
are driven and the nature of our "mission" which it depends on. Wars can
be fought honourably. If the conflict serves as a stimulus to questioning
things we stand for in order to bring them to a higher level of definition
and clarity, then the war is an honourable thing, it has its redeeming
aspects, it is nowhere near hell. I could have ignored your slogans with
which I don=92t agree, let them pass for the sake of peace (your right to
think whatever you like), I could have said what I thought without
confronting you, so you would not need to feel challenged if you didn=92t
choose to. Would that be the sort of paradise you wish we were in, as
oposed to the hell of war? We share this world we all create and affect. I
don=92t like what you think and say and I don=92t trust you, what do I do? =
It
is my thought, my vision, my word against yours. I want to see how true
and solid your grounds are, I want to examine my own. And I see it as
something personal. Because it is OUR thoughts and visions we present here
(is it not?), thoughts that we didn=92t come up with just anyhow (did we?),
that have importance for us and that we care a lot about (don=92t we?), are
responsible for having (aren=92t we?). Or is this just an intellectual game
we play, the way we play Doom (did I get killed? Oh well, up again, shoot
some more, and so on for ever and ever). It should hurt when we are false
or dishonest or say things without even making sure we believe in them
ourselves. That is what wars are for, to make it hurt so we can learn,
where we are wrong and where we are weak, what it is we stand for and how
good it is. If our "information exchange" doesn=92t generate a change (a
change of a personal nature) then there was no exchange.=20
Dinka
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