Ars Electronica 98
Festival for Art, Technology und Society

Pressrelease:
20.08.1998

Pressrelease on the book accompanying Ars Electronica 98 InfoWar

InfoWar has become a discursive, institutional reality. Indeed, many aspects of this phenomenon remain controversial, but the general conception of InfoWar is something that radically differs from the way warfare [...] is recalled in the collective memory and how it is waged by [...] the military. It is termed a "revolution in the military field" and - even more emphatically - a complete reinvention of the very essence of war.

Michael Geyer, Electronic Ways of Death

The acronym infowar subsumes, on one hand, the various different categories of electronically-supported warfare waged in the so-called electronic/digital sphere of communications and information¬war, the very epitome of violence and destruction, which mutates in the conceptions of its protagonists and propagandists into discreet action in cyberspace and the infosphere. In this "invisible domain," information warfare is waged "without physical form or bloodshed" (Shen Weiguang; see his paper in this volume). On the other hand, the range of meanings encompassed by the term infowar has long since ceased to be of a purely military nature. It also includes the efforts of states to conduct surveillance of its citizens, and the strategies of those states to achieve economic and ideological hegemony, as well as the struggle (by hackers, for instance) to prevent the erection of "new walls" on the front lines of knowledge. One feature is shared by these theaters of operation: their use of the same means based upon the same infrastructure.

Information or informational warfare as the focus of Ars Electronica 98 INFOWAR -information.macht.krieg, thus not only brings together the various aspects of a military revolution; it also enables infowar to assume, to a certain extent, a prismatic function: the social implications of the Information Revolution attain a particularly high degree of clarity in light of the phenomenon of infowar. The capacity of this theme to perform this function was also determinative in the process of conceiving this book, and has made it a publication that is unique among all those dedicated to this topic.

Presse-Release of Ars Electronica 98 Infowar

This anthology, including all addresses delivered at the Ars Electronica 98 Symposium plus nine additional papers, is the first European publication to take into account the full range of this issue's complexity. It provides insights into the spectrum of new conflict situations and potential for conflict, examines images conjured up of enemies and threatening scenarios, and offers an explanation and elaboration of the concepts and theories of infowar. One of the prime considerations in assembling this anthology has been to reflect the global dimensions of these developments by presenting the perspectives of experts from a wide array of cultures and nations including Europe, the US, China, Russia, and Nepal, of those active in the civilian sphere such as hackers and cypherpunks, and of representatives of the art scene and the world of science.

This range of contributions includes Cyberwarfare is Coming!, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt's ground-breaking text that has already assumed the status of an infowar manifesto, Shen Weiguang's Information Warfare - A New Challenge, an elaboration of China's position explained on the basis of cultural and historical background factors, Russian military theoretician Igor Nikolaewitsch Panarin's consideration of the informational-psychological struggle for supremacy in the global infosphere using the example of the US/USSR (InfoWar and Authority), Michael Wilson's confrontation with aspects of infowar having to do with intelligence agencies and game theory (National Security and Infrastructural Warfare), and a critical summary compiled by Georg Schöfbänker, who also elucidates these diverse concepts in light of their nature as self-fulfilling prophecies (From PLATO to NATO).

Aside from a comprehensive appraisal by the theoreticians and critics of this military revolution which had its origins in the US, this publication also encompasses the perspectives of well-known thinkers on issues related to infowar¬beyond the realm of military planning as this is conventionally understood.

In Economics, Computers and the War Machine, Manuel DeLanda describes the gradual militarization of civil society as the manifestation of a dynamic process of complex "institutional ecologies" that has been at work since the 16th century. DeLanda identifies its currently decisive effects not so much in the history of the development of the technologies themselves, but rather in the influence exerted upon production and management methods by the command structures characteristic of the military and inherent in these technologies.

In Norn Attacks and Marine Doom, Birgit Richard elaborates on the role of death in a binary world and its relation to real death in light of artificial life residing in computer processors. The crux of her considerations is the military deployment of creatures and scenarios developed for computer games. She focuses on two examples: "Creatures", a game featuring the Norns, a species capable of learning who are trained to pilot the Eurofighter, and "Marine Doom", a game employed to teach "social skills". Richard shows "that the process of simulation in the form of reality models is becoming a two-edged sword. The models which have been crystallized into the form of games are now being projected back into real life and are influencing real organizational forms".

In his text Coercion and Countermeasures - The Information Arms Race, Douglas Rushkoff analyzes the dynamic interrelationship between a youth culture which defines itself as resistance to any sense of belonging to a strictly defined group, and practitioners of advertising and target-group marketing who go about the business of searching out new cultural developments and exploiting them with a "virtually warlike precision and hostility vis-à-vis their target groups". Rushkoff dovetails this analysis with a call for interaction and communication¬the driving forces behind the process of change with which he counters the preservationists of the status quo and apparative death as a consequence of standstill.

Kunda Dixit (Star Wars) argues against the credo of neutrality in news reporting as practiced by global television, and in favor of a paradigm shift in the direction of "non-dispassionate journalism". Neutral reporting is "tantamount to castration of reporters, who can no longer differentiate between right and wrong". In connection with the media's neglect of journalism in favor of a presentation of the voyeuristic dimension of events, objectivity places itself in the service "of those institutions that dominate society".

Ute Bernhardt (The Empire Strikes Back) focuses her considerations on information warfare, its consequences for information technology and its deployment using the example of cryptography (methods of encoding/decoding). Cryptographic processes are the foundation of the digital authentication of information and of the consummation of binding transactions; at the same time, they are a matter of contention pitting civilian interests against those of the military, which has given rise to a growing mistrust of security standards demanded by the state. Bernhardt illustrates this using the example of military job-creation measures¬in contravention of ethics that were once generally accepted, hackers break into the processors of federal agencies, demonstrate security deficiencies and thus attempt to establish solutions conceived along military lines. In light of such suspect measures used to conquer a terrain conceptualized as the latest theater of war, the author poses the question of civilian demands for evaluative criteria with respect to the security of information technology and its significance in everyday life.

Patrice Riemens (Don't Panic! Hack it!) sketches the ideals and the program of the hackers¬those activists who are conceived of as one of the prime opponents in military infowar scenarios. Their frequently catastrophic public image undergoes a process of rectification here, since hackers are said to function as a corrective in the context of closed systems of knowledge and control¬systems that deny access to or scrutiny by democratically- constituted institutions or private individuals.

Doyne Farmer elaborates on Self Organizing Evolution in Financial Markets and Elsewhere in light of the struggle for control of information, and the intensification of this development leading to ever-greater levels of complexity due to an inexorable process of self-organization. His discussions of functional interconnections oriented upon competition are based upon the theory that self-organizing evolution constitutes an ever- present phenomenon "that ranges far beyond the field of biology, emerges spontaneously and, as soon as an appropriate medium [such as commerce or the Internet] is present, creates complex structures". Farmer illustrates how the degree of complexity encourages and reinforces the trend to permit computers to reach "their own" decisions with regard to certain transactions¬a trend capable of imparting an additional dimension to "information warfare" waged in the near future.

These are only a few examples of the issues dealt with in this anthology, in light of which infowar appears to be a universal phenomenon of Information Society. Beyond all theorizing and futuristic imagineering, the topics treated by these authors are highly illustrative examples of the tremendous degree of reality that this Information Society has already attained.

InfoWar (English Edition)
Editors: Gerfried Stocker, Christine Schöpf
Springer Vienna/New York, ISBN 3-211-83191-6
320,- ATS (festival price)
398,- ATS (retail price)

Information.Macht.Krieg (German Edition)
Herausgeber: Gerfried Stocker, Christine Schöpf
Springer Wien/New York, ISBN 3-211-83192-4
320,- ATS (festival price)
398,- ATS (retail price)

The Ars Electronica 98 Festival Catalog and a work on the Prix Ars Electronica 98 are also being published.

Ars Electronica 98
INFOWAR - information.macht.krieg Springer Vienna/New York, ISBN 3-211-83134-7
320,- ATS (festival price)
420,- ATS (retail price)

Cyberarts 98
International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica
Springer Vienna/New York, ISBN 3-211-83135-5
420,- ATS

The publications will be available in bookstores beginning on September 7, 1998.

Press Information:

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Ars Electronica Festival Hauptstraße 2 4040 Linz Austria Gabriele Hofer T: ++43.732.7272­780 F: ++43.732.7272­77 gabriele@aec.at

Ars Electronica Center Hauptstraße 2 4040 Linz Austria Maria Falkinger T: ++43.732.7272­16 F: ++43.732.7272­2 maria@aec.at